Lucas nodded and gripped Helen’s hand tightly. She tried to pull it away but Lucas resisted.
“Don’t, Helen,” he said. “I know you don’t want to touch me, but you could still pass out up here.”
Helen wanted to scream that he couldn’t be more wrong. Pretty much the only thing she wanted was to touch him, and it was eating her up inside. At that moment, she imagined herself drifting closer and brushing against him until she could feel his body heat leaking out through the gaps in his clothes. She pictured how the scent of him would hit her in a wave, riding the tide of that heat. She knew thoughts like that shouldn’t even cross her mind, but they did. Right or wrong, whether she was allowed to act on it or not, it was what she truly wanted.
What she didn’t want was to be pushed and pulled in so many different directions that she didn’t know how to behave. She didn’t even know who she was supposed to be around him anymore. She resented him for it, but worse, she was disappointed in herself for wanting him even after he had treated her so badly.
Ashamed of her own thoughts, Helen didn’t allow herself to look at Lucas as they flew to a lower altitude. When she could breathe easily outside his slip of air, Helen noticed that they were over some dark part of the continent. She searched for the familiar glowing nets that she recognized as Boston, Manhattan, and DC at night, and couldn’t believe it when she found them. By Helen’s estimation they were hundreds of miles away.
“How fast are we?” she asked Lucas in awe.
“Well, I haven’t been able to beat light . . . yet,” he said with a mischievous glint in his eyes. Helen turned her head and stared at him, amazed that he was acting like himself again. This felt right. This was the Lucas she knew. He smiled for a moment, then seemed to stop himself. Still staring at her, his lips slowly slackened and dropped.
Helen felt like she was falling toward him. She realized that Lucas was an emotional black hole for her. If she was anywhere near him, her heart simply couldn’t get away. Helen dropped Lucas’s hand and drifted ahead of him. She needed a moment to get a hold of herself.
She turned her attention back to the situation, forcing herself to focus and take control. She had to keep her mind busy or she was lost.
“I gather from both your reactions that this Myrmidon is a really big problem,” she said.
“Yeah, it’s big, Helen. Myrmidons are faster and stronger than Scions, but worse than that, they don’t feel emotions like we do. Having one spying on you is a very big deal. And I never even knew it was there.” He sighed, like this was somehow his fault.
“But how could you have possibly known? We haven’t been anywhere near each other in over a week.”
“Come on,” he said. Lucas began drifting toward the East Coast, brushing off Helen’s last comment. “We need to get back and tell the family.”
She nodded and took the lead. They didn’t hold hands on the way down, but Helen could still feel Lucas near to her, disturbingly warm and solid. She kept telling herself that she was only imagining that they were in sync, but her actions proved her wrong. They touched down in unison, transitioned, and continued on into the house without ever breaking stride with each other.
Lucas walked in the front door loudly, flicked on the lights in the hallway, and began calling out to the rest of the family. Moments later, everyone was in the kitchen, and Helen was repeating everything that had happened to her that night, minus the bit about visiting the outer atmosphere with Lucas.
“This is cause for a Conclave,” Castor said to his brother. “Bringing a Myrmidon into the equation could be considered an act of war within the House.”
“Did you get a good look at the Myrmidon’s face?” Cassandra asked. Helen nodded and tried not to shudder at the thought of how his head had flicked around like something alien.
“It had red eyes,” Helen answered squeamishly.
“Did Hector happen to mention the Myrmidon’s name?” Pallas asked Helen quietly. “It would help if we knew which one we’re dealing with.”
“No. But next time he calls, I can ask,” Helen replied gently, aware that even saying Hector’s name upset Pallas. Helen could tell that Pallas wished for nothing more than to be able to talk to his son directly. It wasn’t right that Hector couldn’t be there, she thought angrily. They needed him.
Cassandra led everyone into the library. She went directly to a book that was so fragile Castor and Pallas had dismantled it and put each individual page in a separate plastic covering. Helen approached Cassandra as she gently leafed through the stack of pages, and noticed that the book was really old—like King Arthur old.
“This is a codex from the time of the Crusades,” Cassandra said, holding up a painted page of a knight in black armor. Like the Myrmidon, he had bulging red eyes and a skeletal face.
“It looks a lot like him,” Helen said as she peered at the page. It was a beautiful work of art, but it was still a painting, not a photo. Helen shrugged. “I can’t tell for sure from this. Do all Myrmidons look about the same?”
“No, some of them had black, faceted eyes, and some had slightly red skin. A few were rumored to have had antennae that they hid under their helmets,” Castor answered pensively. “Helen, are you sure the one you saw had red eyes?”
“Oh, yeah, no doubt about that,” Helen said positively. “They were really shiny, too.”
“Automedon,” Pallas said, looking at Castor. For the first time Helen could remember, Castor used an English curse word, and a foul one at that, as he nodded in agreement with his brother.
“Makes sense,” Cassandra said. “No Scion ever claimed to have killed him.”
“Because no one could.” Lucas looked over at Helen, shaking his head slowly as if he couldn’t believe this was happening. “He’s immortal.”
“Okay, see, that I don’t get,” Helen said nervously. She was looking for a flaw, something logical that would make the situation seem a little less dire. “If Myrmidons are immortal, then why isn’t the world crawling with them?”
“Oh, they can be killed in battle. And most of them were killed at some point in history. But, see, that’s sort of the catch with Automedon,” Ariadne said with wide, apologetic eyes. “There are stories of soldiers literally cutting Automedon’s head off, and he just picked it up, put it back on, and kept fighting.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Helen said with a raised eyebrow. “How can that even be possible? He’s not a god. Wait, is he a god?” she asked Ariadne in a hurried aside, in case she had missed something.
“No, he’s not a god,” Cassandra answered for her. “But he might have shared blood with one. This is just my guess, but if Automedon became blood brothers with one of the immortals thousands of years ago, before they were all locked away on Olympus, then Automedon can’t be killed, not even in battle.”
“Blood brothers? Are you serious?” Helen asked dubiously. She pictured two kids in a tree house pricking their fingers with a safety pin.
“To Scions, becoming blood brothers is a sacred rite, and it’s pretty hard to do outside of combat,” Jason said with a smile, seeming to understand Helen’s misinterpretation. “You have to be willing to die for someone, and that person has to be willing to die for you. Then you have to exchange blood while you are in the process of saving each other’s lives.”
Helen’s eyes darted over to Lucas. She couldn’t help but think of how they had broken out of the Furies’ curse by nearly dying for each other. From the look in Lucas’s eyes, Helen knew he was thinking exactly the same thing. They hadn’t exchanged blood the night they fell, but they had both saved each other’s lives and that had bound them together forever.
“You can’t make it happen or plan it. It’s something that comes out of an extreme situation,” Lucas said directly to Helen. “And if the two brothers live, sometimes they share a few of each other’s Scion powers. Now imagine doing that with a god. Theoretically, it could make you immortal.”
“But you don�
�t know for sure if that’s the case with Automedon,” Helen challenged. “Cassandra said she was just guessing.”
“Yeah, but Cassandra’s guesses are usually pretty close to the mark,” he snapped, his temper rising quickly.
“You’ve been blowing this out of proportion since the second I told you! The more I think about it, the more I doubt I’m in any real danger,” she continued defensively.
Lucas’s face blanched with anger.
“Enough!” Noel yelled from the doorway. “Lucas, go upstairs and go to bed.” Lucas whirled around to face his mother, but Noel didn’t give him the chance to start with her. “I’m sick to death of watching the two of you fight! You’re both so tired you’re not even making sense anymore. Helen, go upstairs with Ariadne. You’re sleeping over.”
“I can’t leave my father alone with that thing practically next door,” Helen said, slumping down on the edge of Castor’s desk. Noel was right. All the endless running around, coupled with the emotional minefield she had to navigate whenever Lucas was near, suddenly hit her like a brick. She was exhausted.
“Trust me, if you’re here, then that creature won’t be far away. I know it’s going to be hard for you to accept this, but both your father and Kate will be safer if you keep your distance from now on.” Noel said it as kindly as she could, but her words were still harsh. “Lucas, I want you to go with your father and uncle to Conclave. I think it would be best for you to spend a little time in New York.”
“Noel! He’s not eighteen yet,” Castor began to argue.
“But he is Heir to the House of Thebes, Caz,” Pallas countered gently. “Creon is dead. After Tantalus, you’re next in line. That makes your eldest the Heir. Lucas has every right to attend Conclave before he comes of age.”
“Tantalus could have another child,” Castor said impatiently.
“The Outcast, marked for death, will bear no more children,” Cassandra chanted in multiple voices from the corner of the room.
The sound made Helen’s spine recoil and bunch up, like someone had poured cold water down her back. As one, the room turned to see the eerie aura of the Oracle flicker across Cassandra’s face and purple, blue, and green lights trace like spirits along the edges of her body. Her usually pretty face was puckered like an old woman’s.
“Lucas, son of the sun, has always been the intended Heir to the House of Thebes. So it has come to pass.” The Oracle cackled, and her body convulsed violently.
The light suddenly went out and Cassandra shrank. She glanced around with terrified eyes and clasped her arms around her body, cowering inside her clothes. Helen wanted to comfort Cassandra, but there was a chill around her that Helen couldn’t ignore. She just couldn’t force herself to take a step closer to the frightened girl.
“Now, all of you, go to bed,” Noel said in a shaky voice, breaking the silence.
She pushed everyone toward the door and corralled the small herd toward the stairs, leaving Cassandra in the library by herself. Helen dragged herself upstairs and collapsed onto the guest bed without undressing or even pulling the covers down first.
When she woke the next morning she was covered in dried slime. Helen had fallen asleep in such a foul mood that when she got to the Underworld, she’d found herself chest deep in a prehistoric swamp. It wasn’t the quicksand pit, which was an enormous relief, but it still stank. It took every ounce of effort to keep the muddy water out her mouth as she waded through it, always just one wrong footfall away from drowning. After a night of half panic, Helen awoke to find herself even more tired than she had been the day before.
She hauled herself out of bed and noticed that her shirt was nearly torn off, there were odd sticks and dead leaves tangled in her hair, and she’d lost a shoe. Of course, she ran into Lucas on her way to the bathroom. He stared at her for a moment, his eyes ticking up and down her bedraggled frame while the rest of his body remained rigid.
“What? You going to yell at me again?” Helen challenged, too tired to be careful.
“No.” His voice broke. “I’m done fighting with you. It obviously isn’t helping.”
“Then what?”
“I can’t do this,” he said, more to himself than Helen. “My father was wrong.”
Her bleary brain was still processing his words when he opened the nearest window and jumped out of it.
Helen watched him fly away, too tired to be surprised. She continued on to the bathroom, sprinkling nastiness all over the floor with every step. She looked down at the mess she was making and thought about how much worse it would get when she undressed. The only solution her partially paralyzed thought process came up with was to step into the shower, still fully clothed. As she rubbed a lemony-smelling bar of soap over her torn shirt she started to laugh. It was an unstable laugh, the kind that threatens to tip into a sob.
Ariadne knocked on the door. Helen stuffed a hand over her mouth, but it was too late. Ariadne took Helen’s silence as a signal that something bad was happening, and barged into the bathroom.
“Helen! Are you . . . Oh, wow.” Ariadne’s tone changed from concerned to dumbstruck in a second. She saw Helen was still completely dressed through the glass door of the shower. “Um, you know you forgot a step, right?”
Helen burst out laughing again. The situation was so ridiculous that there was nothing to do but laugh.
“Are you still wearing a shoe?” Ariadne choked out.
“I woke . . . up . . . with only one on!” Helen lifted up her bare foot and pointed at it. Both of the girls laughed hysterically at Helen’s wiggling toes.
Ariadne helped Helen clean up, and together they dragged the dirty bedding and soggy clothes to the washroom. By the time they made it down for breakfast, everyone else was nearly finished.
“Where’s Lucas?” Noel asked, craning her head anxiously to look behind Helen.
“Jumped out a window,” Helen answered. She got a mug and poured herself some coffee. Lifting her head, she noticed that everyone was staring at her. “I’m not kidding. We bumped into each other in the hallway and when he saw me, he literally jumped out a window. Anyone want coffee?”
“Did he say where he was going?” Jason asked with obvious concern.
“Nope,” she said evenly.
Helen’s hands were shaking, but she stirred some cream into her mug and took a drink, anyway. In the state she was in, she figured it might actually steady her. She felt like her whole body was hot and cold at the same time.
“Helen? Are you feeling ill?” Noel asked with narrowed eyes.
Helen shook her head uncertainly. It was impossible for a Scion to come down with a mortal sickness, yet when she ran a hand across her forehead, it came back wet with sweat. Still staring at her hand, Helen heard an electric car cruise quietly up to the house and stop.
“Lennie! Get your butt out here and help us with these books!” Claire yelled from the driveway.
Helen turned to look out the window behind her and saw Claire and Matt getting out of Claire’s car. Grateful for the interruption, Helen scurried out from under Noel’s piercing look to help them.
“We hear you have an ant problem,” Claire said through a grin, and started stacking books on Helen’s outstretched arms.
“Because that’s exactly what I need, right?” Helen laughed ruefully. “More problems.”
“Don’t worry, Len. We’ll split up into groups and tackle this in shifts. We’ll figure it out.” Matt sounded so certain. He shouldered a backpack full of books, closed the trunk, and put an arm over Helen’s shoulders as they walked together toward the house. “Claire and I didn’t join PETA’s most wanted list for nothing, you know.”
As Helen, Claire, and Matt were just about to go back inside, they heard Castor and Pallas saying their good-byes and decided to let the Delos family have a moment alone. From what Helen could gather, Conclave was a big deal, like a Supreme Court trial and an international summit meeting combined. Once it started, no one was allowed to leave unt
il a course of action was decided upon, so sometimes these meetings could take weeks.
Helen tried not to listen in too much while they hugged and said their good-byes, but she couldn’t help herself when she overheard Castor privately pulling Noel aside to ask if Lucas was coming or not.
“I don’t know where he went. He could be in Tibet by now,” Noel replied, sounding like she was on her last nerve. “I was hoping he’d go with you to New York for a few weeks. Get him out of here and give him a chance to . . .”
“A chance to what?” Castor asked sadly when Noel ran out of things to say. “Just leave him be.”
“I have left him be, and it’s obviously not helping!” Noel said. “He’s so angry all the time now, Caz, and I think it’s getting worse—not better.”
“I know. He’s changed, Noel, and I think we’re going to have to accept that it might be permanent. I was hoping he’d just hate me, but it seems like he hates the whole world,” Castor said heavily. “And I honestly don’t blame him. Could you imagine if someone had separated us like I separated them?”
“You had no choice. They’re cousins. That’s not something that’s going to change,” Noel said emphatically. “Still, if your father did to us what you did to Lucas—”
“I don’t know what I would have done to him,” Castor said as if he couldn’t even think about it. Helen heard them kiss and immediately switched off her Scion hearing.
“Let’s go to the library and get to work!” she suggested loudly to Claire and Matt, and started walking around the house to use another entrance. Her mind was racing.
Had Castor really separated her and Lucas, and if so, how? Helen thought back over the outburst at dinner, and realized that Lucas had been just as angry with Castor as he was with her—maybe more. Had Lucas hurt her because his father had ordered him to?
“Len? You know I love you, but you really need to stop spacing,” Claire said with a cute grimace. Helen looked around and realized that she had paused in the middle of the hallway on the way to the library, like her legs had just quit or something.
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