Waiting in the shadows outside the Hamilton house was a long shot, but Creon had no other choice. He couldn’t get within a thousand yards of the Delos compound now that he had shown his hand and put them on the defensive. He had been so close, so close, but underestimating his cousin had cost him. Lucas was stronger than he had thought. He would never make that mistake again, but it was possible that once was all it would take to change Creon from a savior to an embarrassment.
Now that his target was being protected by his own family, he had few options but to wait and see if she was stupid enough to go out on her own. He was hoping that if she went anywhere it would be to the place she had once called home.
It wasn’t much of a chance, but it was all he had at this point. He couldn’t go back to the yacht and face his other cousins empty-handed. He had to come up with something else—a lead, an opportunity, something—before he involved any of the Hundred. No matter how this turned out, his father could never know about his failure outside the hotel. It was too humiliating to even think about.
Tantalus had finally entrusted Creon with the truth, and for the first time in over nineteen years, Creon had been allowed to hear his father’s actual voice. He hadn’t been allowed in the same room, or seen his father’s face, because that woman had deformed it so monstrously it would be death to look upon him, but for the first time in such a long time Creon had actually spoken to his father and learned about the burden he carried.
His father praised him for being so strong and faithful over the years. Then he told his son what had really happened in that rowboat, how his thoughts and his will had been so grievously twisted that he had had been led into a type of sin that had marked him forever—marked like Medusa. Tantalus admitted his wrongs, repented for them, and told his son that he had been trying to right them ever since. He had sworn to remove the feminine evil of the cestus from the world so that all men, Scions and normals alike, could finally control their lust. Then he had entrusted Creon with the same sacred mission.
And Creon had failed.
Creon felt his phone vibrate in his pocket for the fifth time. He had been ignoring it for a while and he didn’t even want to know who was trying to contact him, but this time he caved and pulled it out to look at the screen. It was his mother. He debated answering for a moment, then finally relented.
“Where are you?” Mildred asked in a low voice.
“Hunting,” Creon replied vaguely, sensing his mother was being watched, maybe even listened to. It had happened before.
“One of the traitors just called me,” she said in an urgent whisper. “She told me about your failure in front of the hotel, and she wants to change sides. She wants her men freed of the cestus. . . .”
Creon heard the crackling sound of his mother’s phone as it brushed up against fabric, as if it had been shoved into a pocket or under a sweater. A few seconds passed during which all Creon could hear was the rhythmic brushing of clothes against the mouthpiece as his mother walked somewhere else.
“Are you still there?” she finally asked when she got to relative safety.
“Yes. Mother, what’s going on?”
“Sssh. Just listen. The Hundred are starting to doubt you. I can’t let them know we’re in contact,” she whispered urgently. “Where are you? She wants to meet right now, to make a plan.”
Helen spent fifteen minutes on the phone with her dad, trying to get him to calm down. He had been just about ready to go down to the police station, and he demanded to know where she had been all night. She didn’t have an answer for him. Jerry was as angry as he had ever been with her. He demanded that she come home immediately. He even yelled at her, which he hadn’t done since she was a kid. Helen wasn’t used to disobeying her father, but she found herself telling him that she was safe and that she wasn’t coming home just yet. She hung up on him while he was still sputtering.
She knew she was being unfair to him, but she didn’t know what else to do. She hadn’t decided if she was going to tell her father about Daphne’s return and then tell him that she was leaving to live with her, or if it was kinder to just disappear. Daphne insisted that a clean break would be better for everyone, including Jerry, but Helen couldn’t quite bring herself to accept that. He might be physically safer, but emotionally he would be destroyed. Helen went through both scenarios in her head, and neither of them felt right. Either way her father, the person who deserved to suffer the least, was the one who would be hurt the most. Eventually, her brooding was interrupted by Noel, who let Helen know that Claire and Jason were awake.
Helen went upstairs to Jason’s room and pushed the door open a crack. Daphne was sitting on the edge of the bed next to Claire, holding her hand and looking down at her with a fretful tenderness. Daphne had loved Claire when she was a baby, she had explained to Helen the night before, and she had always worried for Claire’s safety growing up alongside a Scion. In the hotel during the storm, Daphne had removed Helen’s curse, and she had also explained that she had left Claire excluded from being able to trigger the cramps, even though it could have exposed Helen, just in case Helen ever needed to protect Claire. Helen had thanked her for that, although there was little else her mother told her that night to make her grateful.
“Did you sort things out with Lucas?” Daphne asked as Helen entered the room. Helen flinched when she heard his name, nodded hastily, and put the attention back on Claire.
“Hey, Gig. You really freaked me out,” she said. She came over to stand next to the bed.
“Freaked myself out,” Claire said, gesturing for her to sit down. Then she noticed Helen’s puffy face. “Are you okay?”
“Not important,” Helen said as she perched next to her mother. “How are you two?”
“It was easier than I thought it would be,” Jason replied. “We never went into the rubble, all we did was climb the dry hills.”
“Good,” Helen said, smiling with relief. “That’s far away from the river.”
“I know,” Jason said, smiling back at Helen before he looked back down at Claire. “She really is strong.”
“What river? What rubble?” Daphne interjected, glancing from Jason to Helen, but she was overruled by Claire’s urgency.
“That was real?” she blurted out, her eyes dark and wide with fear.
“Yes and no,” Jason said softy, briefly brushing his lips against Claire’s forehead as he sat up painfully and gently pulled her up with him. “It’s a real place, but we only went there in spirit.”
“But I was so hungry. So thirsty,” Claire whispered, suddenly terrified.
She trustingly turned her face into Jason’s neck and he held her close to him. The bond they had forged in the dry lands still tied them to each other, and Helen had a feeling that Jason was reluctant to let it dissolve.
“Don’t be afraid, we only walked along the edge of it, we never crossed the river and went in. Not even the best Healers can go all the way in and make it out alive,” Jason said reassuringly. He met Helen’s eyes as if to ask her to help him explain.
“The place you went is just beyond the place you go when you’re sleeping. It’s not something you should be afraid of,” Helen said, putting her hand on Claire’s back and trying to comfort her. “Just think of it as an intense dream if that makes it easier, because that’s what it feels like.”
“Nightmare is more like it,” Claire said as she pulled her face away from Jason and got ahold of herself.
“Well, you almost died,” Helen said with a shrug. “That shouldn’t be fun.”
“Helen?” Daphne asked, comprehension dawning on her face. “How many times have you been to this place you’re talking about?”
“I’ve lost count,” Helen said softly, shaking her head.
Daphne stared at her daughter with a hard look on her face. There was a knock on the door. Matt poked his head in sheepishly.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Matt said with a slight grimace. “Hey, Claire. You okay?”
“Come in,” Claire responded as she tried to sit up a little straighter. She reached out to Helen, who helped brace her. “I’m glad you’re in one piece,” she said gratefully.
“Yeah, so am I,” Matt said with relief. “But there’s still a big problem that we need to fix. I noticed some people staring at us when we . . . uh . . .”
“Hit Luke with your car?” Jason finished for him with a humorous glint in his eye.
“Right. So I need to go take care of that. Before it gets out of control,” Matt said uncomfortably. “The longer I stay here, the more everyone will talk. If I start denying it, showing everyone that I couldn’t have been in an accident because I’m not injured . . .”
“Then the whole thing goes away before it gets started,” Daphne finished for him. “Are you really willing to lie to your own kind for us?” she asked coldly.
“I don’t see it as your kind or my kind. All I see are my friends and they need my help,” Matt said with narrowed eyes. He glanced over at Helen uncertainly, as if to ask if she was sure about this new mother she had acquired.
“I’ll take you wherever you need to go,” Helen said as she stood. “I’ve got to go talk to my dad, anyway. I’ll drop you off on the way.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Daphne said, surprised that Helen would even suggest it. “It’s far too dangerous.”
“I can’t just leave him,” Helen said. “That’s what you did, and I’ve spent my whole life cleaning up the mess you left behind. If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that I don’t want to repeat your mistakes. Not now, not ever.”
“Well, I can’t tie you down every time we disagree, but I can tell you to be careful, Helen, especially when you use words like ‘never,’” Daphne replied, her eyes soft with understanding. “The gods know what it is to be eternal, and they love to toy with mortals who use absolutes.”
Helen turned and half stumbled for the door, so shaken to hear an echo of Lucas in her mother that she lost all sensation for a moment.
“I got you,” Matt whispered into her ear as he took Helen’s elbow and steered her through the door so she didn’t clip her shoulder on the frame.
“Your mom’s a real trip,” he said with a touch of fear when they were outside and the door was shut safely behind them.
“I haven’t decided if she’s right about everything that ever mattered to me, or if she’s just evil,” Helen said honestly.
“That’s what everyone wonders about their mother,” Matt said with a smile as he rolled his eyes. “The thing is, nobody’s mom is entirely one or the other.”
Helen smiled at Matt, hoping he was right, and led him downstairs. They went into the kitchen, looking for someone to lend them a car, but the only person they saw was Pandora, who was just coming back into the house from the garage.
“Helen,” Pandora said, surprised. “You’re not leaving, are you?”
“Matt needs to go home and I need to . . .” Helen started to say, but Pandora shook her head.
“I can’t let you leave this house. You know that,” she said forcefully.
“Then maybe you can take him?” Helen asked.
“I’m sorry, I can’t right now,” Pandora said, looking down at her unadorned hands. “Why don’t you ask Ariadne? She’s in the library.” She smiled briefly at Helen and Matt, and silently hurried off toward the fight cage. It took Helen a moment to realize what was missing. For the first time Helen could remember, Pandora wasn’t wearing any jewelry.
Helen led Matt to the library, where Castor, Pallas, Hector, Ariadne, Cassandra, and Lucas were all talking in a tight circle around Cassandra’s chair. The conversation ended as soon as they saw Helen.
“Matt needs a ride home,” Helen announced nervously. She tried to keep her gaze away from Lucas, but her eyes kept jumping back to him.
“I’ll take him,” Ariadne offered, immediately coming forward and motioning for Helen and Matt to leave the room.
“What’s going on?” Helen mouthed to Ariadne, who took her hand and led her away. When they were a few paces from the library, Ariadne answered.
“We’re trying to figure out what Creon’s up to,” she said.
“Why was I excluded?” Helen asked, offended.
“Come on, Helen,” Ariadne replied with a chiding look on her face. “Lucas can’t bear to be in the same room with you right now, and no offense, but he’s a much better soldier than you are. We need him at the table and we need him focused.”
Matt shot her a confused look, but thankfully, he didn’t ask any questions about her and Lucas. It wouldn’t matter in a few hours, anyway. Helen would be gone and she would never see him or any of them again. Later, she’d crawl into some strange bed in some strange state and then she didn’t care if she ever got out of it or not. But she couldn’t let herself think about that yet. First, she needed to make sure that the people she loved were taken care of.
When they reached the kitchen, Ariadne grabbed her bag off the back of one of the chairs and fished her keys out, looking around like she had misplaced something. She looked out in the garage, counted the cars, and then glanced back into the house, whispering, “She’s back?” to herself. Before Helen could ask what was wrong, Ariadne said good-bye and hurried Matt out to her car.
Helen waited a few moments for Ariadne’s little car to disappear down the drive before she crept out onto the lawn. It wasn’t dark out yet, but Helen still felt like even the shadows under the bushes were reaching out to grab at her. As soon as she was clear of the house she jumped up into the air, frantic to get into the sky, the one place she knew Creon couldn’t catch her. Calmer once she was safely airborne, Helen flew home, circling high for a few moments to watch for random neighbors before coming in steep and fast to avoid being seen. Touching down in her backyard, Helen listened for the usual sounds of her father and heard that he wasn’t alone. Kate was with him.
They were talking softly, and here and there they would laugh or lapse into silence as one or the other gathered their thoughts to make sure the words came out right. Helen looked in the window and saw them sitting on the couch together, TV off, having what looked like an important conversation. If she concentrated she could probably make out what they were saying, but Helen didn’t want to intrude on such a private moment between two people who were obviously falling in love.
She touched her heart-shaped necklace and wished them perfect happiness together. She wasn’t sure if the cestus worked like that, but all that mattered was that Jerry would have someone to care for him when she was gone. Helen realized that if she left now, without confronting him, he would never have to know about Daphne returning to the island, and if that wound was left unopened, then this fragile understanding between him and Kate might stand a chance.
She stood at the window for a moment, deciding which course to take, until finally the sharp drop in temperature and the tangerine color staining the clouds told her she had run out of time. She flew up to her window, sat down at her desk, and wrote a note to her father. She told him that she loved him, that she was safe, and that she was never coming back, making the note brief so she wouldn’t have to fill it up with lies. He had been a good father, and if she couldn’t be completely honest with him, the least she could do was lie as little as possible.
She flew out of her window and back to the Delos compound as soon as she was done writing. It was a comfort to Helen to know that while she was sneaking away later that night her father would still be oblivious. Hopefully, for all of their sakes, Kate would be there for Jerry in the morning when he found the note. Thinking of that, she flew east across the darkening island with a feeling that approached peace.
Before she even touched down, Castor was running out of the house to meet her on the lawn, waving his arms over his head as if to signal her to hurry. He was shouting something about her mother.
Daphne had to wait until the little strategy session broke up before she could sneak into the library and look around. All she needed was the return address on the last few bits of mail from Tantalus to the Nantucket faction of the House of Thebes. Then, after so many years, she might finally be able to figure out Tantalus’s pattern of motion.
She was only missing a few bits of information—a city name and she would know where to go from there. Then she would find Tantalus and kill him exactly the same way he had killed her sweet Ajax. Daphne had imagined it a million times. As soon as he came to the door she was going to chop off his head while his wife watched. If she avenged him, then maybe when Atropos cut her string, Ajax would be waiting for her on the other side of the river. She still had a ways to go and a lot of work to do before she could allow that to happen. First, she needed a city.
Daphne started reading the postmarks on the topmost letters on Castor’s desk, but a quick glance told her that what she was looking for wasn’t there. She knew Tantalus’s handwriting like she knew her own, and she didn’t see it anywhere. Then she realized that although Castor was the smartest and the bravest of the Delos clan, he would be the last person Tantalus would contact. She went over to the other side of the library and began another search in another desk.
She saw a safe under the other desk, put her hand on the spin dial and hoped that it wasn’t designed by a Scion. After a few moments on her knees listening for the click inside the tumbler, her search was abruptly ended. She felt the hot, thick jab of a needle invading the vein in her neck. She gasped, recognizing the drug cocktail she used on other Scions. She dimly remembered that when she had subdued Helen, she had left a spare syringe in her bag, loaded and ready, just in case. In seconds, her field of vision shrank to nothing.
When she woke, Daphne could feel that her hands had been shackled with something metallic. As she blearily tried to focus her eyes she saw that she was on a dark beach. She heard the jingling of chains as she moved her hands closer to her face, and saw that her wrists had been cuffed. There were deep vertical slashes on both her forearms that were still leaking fast-pumping blood even as they healed. She was thirsty from the blood loss, but she ignored that and summoned a bolt.
The cuffs heated up until they glowed so bright Daphne had to turn her closed eyes away or be blinded by the light. The brightness was nearly unendurable, but the cuffs didn’t melt, not even as she drained the last of her volts. There were few substances that could withstand so much heat at normal atmospheric pressure without turning into a liquid or a gas.
“Tungsten,” she whispered through her dry, cracked lips, angry with herself for acting without thinking first.
The white-hot links of nearly unmeltable metal led to a lightning rod that was jammed into the ground like a stake. Not only was she immobile, but any attempt she made to throw a bolt at an enemy would only end up dissipating in the sand.
“I wouldn’t have thought you had any bolts left,” a woman’s voice called from down by the waterline. The crouching shape rose and walked over to Daphne. “I took a lot of your blood to dehydrate you, or at least I thought I did.”
“Why are you doing this?” Daphne asked softly. “You’re not a killer, Pandora.”
“I know I’m not,” Pandora admitted with a humiliated nod. “I tried to kill you while you were unconscious, but I couldn’t do it.”
“Then let me go,” Daphne said with a sad smile. “I know why you’re doing this. Denial is a powerful thing, and grief can make a good person evil.” Daphne hauled herself up onto her knees. “But why don’t you believe me? Or if not me, why not Lucas, your own nephew? He’s a Falsefinder.”
“Lucas has every reason in the world to want your version of the story to be true,” Pandora hissed, kicking at the sand as she began to pace. “He is blinded by his love for Helen, and he would do anything to keep her. Maybe even lie to his own family.”
“First of all, Lucas can only have half of Helen,” Daphne said darkly. “And second, you know there are easier ways to see if I’m telling the truth about who killed Ajax than kidnapping me. Have you ever asked Tantalus why he’s still in hiding?”
“Probably because he knows you can look or sound like anyone!” Pandora shouted back, furious. “The only thing you can’t do is fake someone’s handwriting. That’s why he’s only communicated through letters—to protect himself because he knows you want him dead!”
“And why would I want him dead?” Daphne’s own temper rose. “If it’s a Triumph I wanted, why wouldn’t I have killed any one of you Theban rats as soon as I saw you? Why would I want Tantalus, and Tantalus alone, unless he stole something precious from me?” she asked, her voice breaking at last.
Pandora watched Daphne as she settled back into the sand, turning her back on the ocean she dreaded, to stare slack-jawed at her own feet. Pandora moved away from her and crossed her arms, tilting her face into the wind. She was breathing hard and her eyes darted from left to right as if she was reading the dark horizon. Suddenly, she snapped back to attention.
“You snake,” she said, turning to stare at Daphne with awed rage. “Creon said you were cunning, but this is something else entirely. You actually believe what you’re saying! That’s why Lucas couldn’t find anything false in what you said. All those years of hiding behind other people’s faces and now all you are is one big lie. This is why I have to keep you away from Castor and Pallas—from everyone I love. I know in my heart that you used the cestus to trick my brother. You never loved him, and he could never have loved you.” Her words were harsh, but doubt was beginning to creep into her tone. “Ajax was too good, he was too pure. . . .”
“And too noble, and tender, and generous, and brave,” Daphne said, raising her voice to talk over Pandora. She was blinking repeatedly as her eyes squeezed at dry tear ducts and came up with nothing. Her body was crying, but the moisture was missing, and somehow that made it hurt more than it usually did. “Since Ajax left the world nineteen years ago, there has been no good in it for me,” Daphne whispered.
“What about Helen? She’s good. And she’s at least a part of Ajax. . .” Pandora trailed off when Daphne’s eyes began to drill into hers.
“Helen’s birthday was yesterday—her seventeenth birthday,” Pandora whispered in shock. “But why? Why would you want to make her think that Lucas is her cousin. . .”
Pandora looked away, shaking her head with grief. She couldn’t understand how Daphne, how any mother, could hurt her own daughter like that. But they had run out of time. Creon was coming up the beach, behind Pandora’s back. Daphne had tried to win her over, had honestly hoped to spare her, but there had never been a real chance for that. Daphne could only pray that Ajax would forgive her in the Underworld.
“That’s right, Pandora, Helen isn’t his child. I have nothing of Ajax, and so I have nothing in this world that’s of any value to me. Even you, the baby sister he loved so much, the one he made me promise to protect, even you have been polluted beyond hope. You know, it would kill Ajax to see you like this.”
“Don’t you dare tell me what my brother would feel!” Pandora screeched as something snapped inside of her, just as Daphne knew it would. She dove for Daphne, her fingers hooked into claws, trying to scratch her eyes out. Daphne rolled under Pandora, protecting herself as well as she could while shackled. She knew she only needed to defend herself for a moment.
“Don’t touch her, she could have more bolts!” Creon yelled as he caught Pandora from behind and hauled her off of Daphne.
Daphne turned away from Creon and Pandora as they struggled. Covering her face with her arms, she adopted short, dark hair and pretended to cower.
“He would never have fallen in love with her!” Pandora screamed, lost in her grief as she struggled with Creon. “He would have despised her just like I do, I know it!”
Pandora strained against Creon’s strong arms, but Creon followed every motion of her desperate attempt to break free. Daphne couldn’t have asked for a better distraction.
“Don’t let her confuse you, cousin! She is one of Aphrodite’s chosen, and you don’t have to be a man to feel her influence. She can twist anyone’s heart with a look,” he said as he finally managed to drag Pandora away.
He led her down the beach and away from the valuable capture, talking to her the entire time. They moved just far enough away that Daphne could be sure they didn’t see her make the full transformation, as she adopted Pandora’s shape. Then she hit herself in the eye and the mouth and started groaning.
“Creon!” Daphne-as-Pandora yelled out hoarsely. “What are you doing? Get away from her. That’s Daphne! She tricked us! Don’t listen to her!”
Daphne screamed and howled until she saw Creon waver and then grab Pandora harshly by the arm and haul her back to where Daphne was staked to the ground.
“When we were rolling around on the ground!” Daphne sobbed, pointing a finger at Pandora and using the influence of the cestus. “She got out of the shackles and put me in them. She’s so strong—I had no idea!”
“She’s lying,” Pandora stammered. She tried to pull her wrist out of Creon’s grasp, but he didn’t let go. She glanced from Creon to Daphne, so shocked she didn’t know what to do.
“Don’t believe a word she says!” Daphne said, her eyes locking with Creon’s as she folded up his will like a piece of tissue paper and tucked it into one of the back pockets of his mind. “She wants to be taken to your father, but she wants to be taken to him as Pandora so she can get close enough to kill him! She’s been planning this from the start and I played right into her hands! I’m so sorry, cousin. I had no idea how cunning she was!”
Creon stared at Pandora with perfect hate. He wrenched her arm in its socket and she fell to her knees, screaming. With blank eyes he drew a small bronze blade from his belt and slit Pandora’s neck so deeply he nearly cut off her head. She was dead before her blood had a chance to soak into the sand.
Helen flew about fifty feet over Hector as he ran out the front door of the Delos compound and began a circuit around the edge of the island. It was dark, unbelievably dark, especially since most of the island didn’t have power back yet. It was also cold. Everyone on the island would be inside, huddling around fires, or turning on their emergency generators. The rest of the Delos family was certain that Creon would take advantage of the fact that the streets were deserted to move her mother off island. Cassandra was exhausted and drawing a blank, so they were forced to guess as to how that would be done. After a long discussion, the family was convinced that Creon would leave by helicopter or private plane. Lucas was to fly over Castor and Pallas while they covered the airport on the west side of the island, and Ariadne was to watch the ferry landing in the northwest, just in case Creon tried to sneak Daphne off by boat. Hector did something unexpected. He chose to run around the dark, deserted east-northeast shoreline, apparently on a fool’s errand.
Of course, Helen immediately volunteered to fly over him. If there was one thing she had learned in her few short weeks of training, it was that Hector could get inside his opponent’s head and figure out exactly what he or she would do next. No matter how logical the Delos family’s strategy was, Helen would bank on Hector’s gut instincts about Creon over any carefully laid plan. There had been a heated argument about whether or not Helen should be allowed outside the compound at all, but in the end, no one from the House of Thebes could deny the Heir the right to look for her mother, the Head of the House of Atreus. It also helped that everyone thought Helen would just end up flying around in the pitch-black over Hector, safe and useless and on the wrong side of the island.
Below her, Helen watched Hector plow into the waves a few times. She stared at him, perplexed. Each time he would pause, fan his hands out as he ran them through the water, and then bound out again, looking thwarted. She knew he had a Scion talent that had to do with the water, and from the way he seemed to be testing the waves, almost communicating with them, Helen guessed that he was looking for something out in the dark ocean. She suddenly realized why Hector had chosen this gods-forsaken route—he was looking for something in the water, probably a boat offshore. Why bother with airport records or ferry manifests when you were on an island? In the dark of night all you needed was a rowboat and a small ship of some kind anchored in deeper waters and you could move on and off the continent without having to declare anything to the authorities. You could even move a kidnapped woman.
Helen’s heart turned over and she started to scan the black water frantically for any hint of a boat. She couldn’t stop picturing the animal look Creon had in his eyes as he brought his dagger down over her heart. Helen didn’t love her mother—she barely knew her—but she wouldn’t wish the terror that she had felt in that moment on anyone. There was an evil inside Creon, and Helen suspected she had only seen a tiny fraction of what he was capable of in their one brief struggle.
Hector’s shape suddenly darted forward, urged on by a huge burst of speed. Helen’s eyes weren’t as keen in low light as Hector’s and she had to squint to see what he had seen, but when she did, she faltered and nearly fell out of the sky.
There were dark shapes on the beach. There was no fire, no flashlights to illuminate the scene so it was hard to tell how many people were there. Helen sped up, overtaking Hector from the air, and watched helplessly as a woman was brought to her knees by a big man. Helen heard the woman scream, and suddenly the scream was silenced with a gurgle. Flying faster than ever before, Helen swooped down and got close enough to see Pandora fall lifeless onto the sand at Creon’s feet, and another Pandora, chained and staked to the ground behind them, shimmer and shift into Daphne’s form.
A second later, a bestial roar erupted out of Hector as he saw the body lying in the sand. His whole frame shook with unnatural rage and pain, and Helen knew the Furies had possessed him. Still far away, Hector bounded across the wet sand, his eyes locked on Creon, as Creon turned and stared at Daphne. Creon clutched the bloody knife he held in his hand and advanced with murderous purpose toward Daphne.
“Get back!” Helen yelled at Creon as she thumped down into the sand next to her chained mother.
Helen’s hands glowed icy blue with the light of a gathering bolt. Knowing he was outnumbered and outgunned, Creon immediately turned and ran inland. Just seconds away from reaching his target, Hector snarled and changed direction, chasing after Creon.
“Hector, wait! Don’t go after him alone!” Helen called after him, unable to leave her bound and wounded mother behind. But Hector didn’t listen to her. Helen saw the two of them sprint away, so similar in physique, from the back they could be twins. For all the world, it looked to her like Hector was chasing a shadowy version of himself.
Helen turned back to Daphne and ripped the chains off the shackles with her bare hands.
“What did you do, Mother?” she asked through gritted teeth.
“Not this!” Daphne said breathlessly as she gestured to Pandora’s body.
“I saw you in Pandora’s shape from the air!” Helen yelled, raking her hands through her hair and starting to pace with frustration.
“I did that to confuse Creon—I had no idea he would kill her!”
“And you didn’t use the cestus to influence him?” Helen asked skeptically.
“I never influenced him to kill!” Daphne asserted vehemently as she got up off her knees and faced Helen. “I was just trying to buy some time, stall for as long as I could. I never thought he’d do this!”
“Okay. Whatever,” Helen said, suddenly done with the conversation. She took her jacket off and put it over the gruesome corpse—Pandora’s corpse—Helen thought in grief before she turned back to her mother. “Are you badly injured?” she asked.
“I’ll be fine. You need to go stop Hector,” Daphne said as she changed gears seamlessly. “Go. I’ll take Pandora back to her family. Then I’ll find you.”
Helen nodded at her mother, knowing there was more to the story, but that would have to wait. She jumped into the air and headed west, staying low to the ground so she didn’t miss Hector and Creon as they ran through the unbelievably dark interior of the island. Her eyes couldn’t manipulate light the way the eyes of the Children of Apollo could; out here she was the one at a disadvantage. She wished Lucas was with her. He would be able to see perfectly even in the dark of the moors. He would also know where to look because he was a better strategist. Most of all, she just wished he was with her so that she wouldn’t have to face Hector and Creon alone.
Putting that thought aside, she flew from one end of the island to the other, but she didn’t see them anywhere. She backtracked, knowing that her adversary wasn’t stupid enough to keep running until he fell into the ocean. Creon was trapped on the island, unless he was trying to get to someplace where he could get off of it. Helen took a sharp turn and flew north toward the ferry.
It was late, too late to catch the last ferry, but maybe Creon didn’t know that. In a second, Helen was approaching the more populated area by the town center, and she had to either fly up high to avoid being seen or touch down and run the rest of the way. She decided to land while she still knew she could do so without being spotted. She started to trot toward the ferry, looking and listening as she went. As she passed India Street, she heard the slaps and thuds of what sounded like a massive hand-to-hand fight. Her feet pounded against the pavement as she ran up the middle of the road toward the sounds, already knowing where she was going, where the Fates would have arranged this. The Nantucket Atheneum.
Helen rounded a corner and saw that a dark pall erased the entire end of the street. Even in a dark room it’s possible to sense other things around you, but Creon’s shadows were so complete they robbed Helen of more than just her vision; they uprooted her, tilting all of her other senses off balance as well. Looking at the thing he created, Helen understood why Creon was called a Shadowmaster. He did more than simply take away the light; he made that same thing that lurks under the basement stairs or at the back of the closet—that full darkness that your brain believes is stuffed with serial killers and monsters. Helen had to swallow down a scream just looking at it.
Somewhere inside that terrifying black hole, she could hear Creon and Hector hammering away at each other in a blind rage. Helen was at a loss. She was so scared of the disorienting nothingness that Creon had created she couldn’t force her feet to run into it. She screamed Hector’s name and scrunched her fists up in frustration, and as she did so her hands began to glow with the stark blue-white glow of electricity. Then something occurred to her.
When she was fighting for her life against Creon in her foyer, her spark had thrown back the gloom so she could see him. Even though he could control other kinds of light, her lightning had to be different somehow. Acting immediately, Helen held out her hands and summoned a bright spark to dance between her palms. She lit up the whole scene in front of her.
Hector was on his back and Creon was over him, beating his head repeatedly into the marble steps of the library. The blue glow snapped and hummed with increasing intensity around Helen’s hands, and Hector turned his swollen eyes toward her bright light. He smiled. Freed from Creon’s disorienting shadows, Hector was able to struggle out from under his cousin’s grip and he stood to face him.
They came at each other before Helen could take another step. Clashing together, Creon and Hector ground each other’s faces into the marble steps. They threw each other into the Doric columns, and yanked at each other’s skin and bones, each trying to pull the other apart. Helen began running, yelling at them to stop, but she was too late. While she was still half a block away, Hector managed to get behind Creon. With one cracking yank, he broke Creon’s neck.
Helen stopped running and froze in the middle of the street, her mouth hanging open as Creon’s lifeless body tumbled down the steps. Hector looked down at the body, and then up at Helen, momentarily free of the Furies and in complete possession of his own passion. For a split second, Helen knew that Hector understood what he had done, and that what he had done was unthinkable. He had killed his own cousin.
A dark comet fell out of the sky and plowed into Hector’s distracted body, knocking him through three columns and cracking the very foundation of the faux temple.
“Lucas, stop!” Helen screamed, her voice breaking painfully as she cried out with all of her strength.
Lucas couldn’t hear her. The Furies had him. All he could hear were their commands to kill the kin-killer. Lucas hit Hector over and over, trying to beat him to death.
Helen half flew the last few strides to the battling pair. She threw herself up into the air and then came crashing back down on top of them with as much gravity as she could muster. Pushing the two boys back into the cracked rubble of the library steps, Helen threw her arms up in a V over her head and summoned matching bolts for each hand. Before either of them could block her, she brought her bolts down onto the heads of the warring cousins and shocked them both into unconsciousness. As they fell still under her hands, Helen could hear rapid footsteps behind her. The rest of the Delos family was coming.
“Get back,” she screamed with her ruined voice as she spun around to face Ariadne and Pallas, who were both running toward her from opposing streets.
Hector was unconscious, but he could still incite the Furies in his family. His sin was so recent that the impulse to kill him would be urgent and blinding, even to those who loved him the most. Helen had made peace with the House of Thebes, but she had not become a part of it, so she was mercifully free of the urge to kill Hector, who had now become their greatest enemy—an Outcast. She got in touch with the sensation that connected her to her lightning and felt a disappointingly small spark. She had been running around for hours now without a sip to drink.
She looked back at Hector and Lucas, made sure that they were both breathing, and then stood up and walked out into the street, putting herself in between Hector’s unconscious form and his infuriated family.
“Don’t come any closer,” Helen said, forcing what voltage she had left to spark out of her fingertips in a false show of power.
Helen held out her icy blue hands as she came down what was left of the steps and looked from Ariadne’s sly eyes to Pallas’s bared teeth. They were not themselves anymore, but blunt instruments for the Furies. She stepped into the street and raised her glowing hands to warn them off. At the sight of Helen’s lightning, they backed off a step or two, but just as they were about to back off completely, Castor rounded a corner, following the whispers of the Furies.
Helen was ridiculously outnumbered. She had no idea how far she would have to go to protect Hector from his own family. She couldn’t kill any of them any more than she could let them kill him. If they didn’t buy her bluff, she was out of options. She had never felt so alone in her entire life.
“Helen, I’ve got Hector! Stay between us while I take him away,” Daphne called out behind her. “Whatever you do, don’t let them lay eyes on him or we will lose this fight!”
Helen sighed at the sound of her mother’s voice, so relieved that she had someone on her side that she found the strength she needed to make the only choice that she could.
She didn’t care if she drained every last drop of water out of her body. The only thing that concerned her was stopping the vengeance cycle before it devoured a family that she loved. She flung her arms out wide and with a last gasping push made her lightning dance in a great, blinding circle around her body. Ariadne, Pallas, and Castor threw up their arms to protect their eyes from the one kind of light they had no control over.
Helen’s halo of ball lightning was hotter than the surface of the sun. It melted the pavement under her feet into lava and heated up the air around her until it literally hummed. The Delos family jumped away from the intolerable light and heat, but more important, they jumped away from Daphne as she ran into the darkness with Hector’s unconscious body slung over her shoulder.
The pain was unbearable. Helen couldn’t hold the ball of electricity for more than a few seconds. As soon as she heard Daphne’s footsteps move away, she switched off like a fried lightbulb and stumbled desperately out of the white-hot liquid asphalt that was pooling below her, burning her and choking her with noxious gases. She crawled on hands and knees toward Ariadne, Castor, and Pallas, their faces matching masks of agony as they all suddenly became aware of what they had nearly done. But Helen couldn’t let them fall apart just yet.
“Lucas needs help!” she rasped, gesturing back to the shattered steps of the Atheneum.
“Ariadne,” Castor said in a brittle voice. “Go get Lucas. Helen, can you walk?”
“No,” she admitted, shaking her head.
“People will be coming,” Castor said as he picked Helen up and started to carry her off, but he stopped when he noticed his brother wasn’t following. “Pallas! We need to go!”
“My son,” Pallas whispered, unable to move.
“Dad, come on! You have to take Creon’s body!” Ariadne hissed from the stairs of the Atheneum. She had Lucas draped over her shoulders and she was glancing around frantically to see if there were any witnesses.
The sound of his daughter’s voice managed to distract Pallas enough to get him to pick up Creon and follow Castor out of the town center and out into the moors.
