by Rae Else
‘I’m sorry,’ Helena said. Her voice was growing hysterical. ‘I’m so sorry…’
El stared at her grandma. Her eyes were completely healed, a shade of hazel similar to Louisa’s. El could feel the sting of cold from them.
‘It’s okay, Grandma,’ she said. ‘You’ll do it next time. You’ll do it soon.’ El assumed that her grandma was apologising for her failure to attack Louisa, but Helena shook her head.
‘No, El,’ Helena said. ‘I can’t.’
El fixed her gaze on her grandma. Her voice was steady and solemn as she urged her. ‘When Louisa comes, you have to, Grandma.’
Helena had started to wring her hands and tears welled in her eyes. El searched the back window for any sign of the typhon.
‘Focus,’ El said again, trying to sound firm, wishing that she had her mum’s level-headedness. She’d thought her grandma would take care of them, that she’d look Louisa in the eye and that would be the end of this. ‘Try to use your power, Grandma. We’re going to need it’
Helena caught El’s eye. ‘I can’t. You don’t know what you’re asking. It’s why she’ll never forgive me.’
El hadn’t wanted to talk about how her grandma had killed for the Order, how she’d used the full power on hundreds of arete, but what was she saying now? A cold feeling crept through her as she recalled Louisa’s rage and hatred at Helena. You killed her.
Through tears, Helena looked at El. ‘I killed her. Maria, our sister. We were girls. I didn’t mean to but Louisa saw it happen.’
El gulped. She remembered the stories of Perseus, unintentionally turning his eyes on his wife Andromeda or his son or daughter, not knowing he bore Medusa’s power and murdering the ones he loved. El wanted to tell her that it wasn’t her fault, that whatever had happened when she was young was an accident, but there wasn’t time. This wasn’t helping. They could talk about this later. They needed to focus on getting away. Once they were away from here they could get more graeae blood. Alex would see to it. They could disappear.
El’s scream cut the taut silence when she caught sight of the dark figure streaking through the sky. The next moment she was flying too. She was rising into the air. For a second, she thought Louisa had hold of her, but she kept tumbling as the car flipped and rolled. As it rocked to a halt, a dull pain broke out in her chest. She opened her eyes and saw that she was lying on the ceiling of the car. Louisa had thrown the entire vehicle.
‘El,’ Helena whispered from the back seat.
El raised herself and looked ahead. She could see Luke suspended in the seat next to her, his seatbelt still holding him. His head and arms hung still and he didn't respond as she called to him. He was breathing though. Her anxiety ebbed a little.
‘It's alright,’ El said. As she said it, she knew things were far from alright. She felt her grandma stirring behind her. She had to concentrate, knowing that the car crash was a minor issue compared to the one that was coming. El could still see Louisa in her mind's eye: floating through the air, gaining on them, the air bringing her closer. Her raven hair streamed behind her like a witch, without the need of a broom.
El had spent so much energy conjuring the wall of fire earlier that she felt weak. The crash had stunned her too and a dull pain issued through her body. She felt the air growing thinner, her breathing becoming shallow and her grandma’s voice sounded distant.
‘Louisa, please. Just leave her. You don't have to–’
Even in this trancelike state, a thrum of fear ran through El.
‘But I do,’ Louisa said.
El hovered on the edge of consciousness and managed to latch onto Louisa’s movements. The typhon had pulled Helena from the car.
One corner of Louisa’s lips curled like a scythe. ‘For you to suffer, she has to die.’
El tried to shout but all she could do was rasp and gulp at the air. Helena’s hands touched the neck of her blouse. El willed her grandma to do it – to look at Louisa. She’d done it before. She could do it again. Louisa had cut off the air around Helena completely now and, as Helena grasped at her own throat, a guttural sound escaped her lips.
‘The great Helena defeated,’ Louisa whispered, crouching down to watch Helena’s reddening face. ‘How the mighty have fallen.’
El tried again to call out to her grandma but her breathing almost failed. Her eyes were heavy and she couldn’t keep them open. She could still sense what was going on outside the car. Her grandma’s larynx was convulsing while Louisa watched with satisfaction.
El struggled to open her eyes. If she could only see Louisa. She could picture her sharp eyes, but as she opened her own, all she could see from her viewpoint on the car roof was her grandma’s knees and Louisa's boots at the window. She crawled to the passenger door, her hand on the latch. It clicked and she pulled herself up, heaving herself out through the door.
Clear air penetrated her lungs. Still gasping, she pushed herself onto her knees, wanting nothing more than to look her enemy in the eye. If her grandma wouldn’t do it, she would. For the first time, she truly wanted to kill. It was as if the fire in her had left a black cloud of smoke and it was consuming her, billowing up into her gaze, hungry and insistent. Louisa noticed her movement. The typhon didn't stop her manipulation of the air around Helena though. Helena’s face was tinged with blue, her eyes wide and bloodshot.
‘Do it,’ El said. She didn’t know if she was speaking to her grandma or to herself.
El's gaze flew to Louisa's again and she willed herself to take her life, to absorb it, to stop what was happening. El stared into her eyes, trying to grasp her life, searching their depths for that spark. Helena’s ragged breath gave out; her hands fell from her throat, her arms and head went limp before she pitched sideways. The silence was absolute.
El felt the cool moisture spreading over her back as she collapsed into the dewy grass. She heard Louisa speak to Helena as she stooped over her.
‘You can find peace now, Maria.’
The typhon trod towards El. ‘Seems the Triad was wrong. You don’t have it.’
El stared up at the night sky, unfocused; her senses were fixed on her grandma’s lifeless body that lay a few metres away. Her eyes filled with tears. Her grandma hadn’t saved her, and she didn’t have the full power after all.
The realisation washed away the last of her energy and she closed her eyes. She wondered what to expect. A sudden rush, a crack and then nothing – like her mum’s death – or would the end come slowly? Would it be like her grandma’s? Ironically, she held her breath as she waited for whatever Louisa was about to do.
It was the cool flurry around her that was unexpected. Her eyes snapped open to see what was happening: a massive volume of water was growing around her. A blurred frame was visible through the torrent. At first she thought it was Louisa, but then Luke rolled through. A protective dome shimmered around them. Luke eye’s stole over her. His gaze darted back up to hold the water in place.
‘Are you hurt?’ he asked.
She shook her head. She could tell he was drawing up all the moisture around them as the ground grew dry and dusty beneath her. She got up.
‘Have you got it,’ he shouted.
She blinked confusedly and then remembered the jet lighter, groping in her back pocket, her fingers curling round it thankfully.
She ignited the lighter, coaxing a ball of flame into existence.
Luke peeled back a little of the water and El fired the glowing orb out from the dome. She didn’t find her mark, but instead the grasses nearby started to burn. A gale roared outside the watery wall, trying to siphon the moisture away. El continued to shoot streams of fire through the spaces that appeared like windows in their barricade. Each time Louisa’s focus was diverted by El’s fire, the whirlwind’s force lessened. Despite their strategy, the water was dwindling, it wouldn’t keep Louisa out for long.
There was a glimmer of light nearby, not thrown by the flames which cont
inued to eat their way through the grasses; but these beams were colder and paler: headlights. At the same moment the wind died down outside. Luke no longer had to add to the wall to maintain the dome. El locked eyes with him and the watery chamber dissolved. They were still alert as they looked up into the black sky, blotched with patches of stars. The source of the light was a cluster of cars up on the driveway. Dan and Alex were running down the bank, past the upturned car. There were more people stood on the driveway. Opposition members. They had brought reinforcements with them. Louisa must have retreated when she sensed them arriving.
El went to her grandma. Her brown hair was fanned out beneath her head. In the dim light, it was almost black. Her olive complexion was washed out, making her face look even smoother and younger. She looked at her eyes and the clear skin around them. No scars, no lines. She almost missed the interlacing marks, where papery-thin skin crisscrossed the rough texture. Remembering those scars, there were newer images attached to them. Her grandma gouging her eyes out, only to have Louisa grow them back nerve by nerve. Not once, but perhaps dozens of times. El closed her grandma’s eyes and tried to trace the woman she knew and loved in the face before her.
She wished her grandma had her black glasses on. The wounds weren’t the thing she’d been intent on concealing with them but her eyes in general. Her power. She’d used those glasses to leave that aspect of her life behind. El searched the grass for them but remembered they were back at the house, where only empty rooms awaited her.
A deep crevasse opened in her. She clutched at her grandma but, at the cold touch of her skin, let go. El’s forehead dropped to the earth and she balled herself up on the damp ground, beginning to sob. It was Alex who pulled her up, whose chest she buried into. She felt his breath catching irregularly too, his own grief pouring out. They were crying for both her grandma and mum.
El didn’t know if it was a few minutes or hours that had passed but, when she finally unfurled herself from Alex, she knew that he’d see that her grandma got safely to the house. She walked past his car. Dan’s was gone. As were the other vehicles. They must have gone up to the house already. She wanted to walk. In a stupor, she started back up the drive. To think that she’d chosen this walk only a week ago in order to delay seeing her grandma. Her chest felt hollow. She tried to still her thoughts, to fool her mind into believing it was a night like any other, that she was simply returning from Cobbold House.
Up ahead the silhouette of a figure beneath the branches and trees startled her back into the moment. She froze. Had Louisa come back to finish what she started? Her gaze travelled the rest of the gloomy drive and she realised that there were arete standing all the way along it. Opposition members: standing guard. She shook her head, feeling both relieved and annoyed that they were here. She was grateful that they’d come when they did but couldn’t she have one moment alone to grieve? She strode up the path, desperate to reach the privacy of the manor.
- Chapter Twenty-Eight -
Hindsight
When she reached the house, El was relieved to find that it hadn’t been lost to the flames. The damage was contained to the living room. Louisa must have extinguished the fire completely or Dan and Luke had on returning. El sought refuge in her bedroom upstairs. The sharpness of loss drove through her and she wanted to give into it but couldn’t. There were Opposition members surrounding the house and that could only mean one thing. They were still in danger. El allowed herself the luxury of changing her clothes – the first time in a week that she’d worn her own – before hastening back downstairs to find out what was going on.
When she came into the kitchen, Alex’s eyes were full of concern. She’d expected to find him, Dan and Luke, perhaps some other Opposition members, but was unprepared for who else sat at the table, behind a steaming cup. His broad features looked blurred through the vapour wafting up before him. It was Janos, the male graeae – the one present in the catacombs, who had passed the initial sentence of exsanguination on her. The one who had decreed her mum’s execution.
El stared in horror. He was sitting at the rough, oak table in the farm-like kitchen. A place familiar and comfortable to her, where countless meals with her grandparents had been taken. It felt like a desecration.
‘It’s alright,’ Dan said, laying a hand on El’s shoulder as he got up. A wave of heat rose in her, responding to his touch. ‘Janos is with us. Has been all along. The rest of the Triad is dead. He’s here to explain everything.’
The long benches in the kitchen had always seemed silly with so few people ever coming to visit. They had only served to highlight how bereft of family El was. Especially when it was only her grandma and her. Now, at the sight of Alex and the graeae on one side, and Luke opposite, it seemed just as well that there were a couple of chairs at either end too. She sat down in the chair furthest from the graeae, while Dan opted for the chair at the other end.
El tucked her feet up on the seat, keen to get them off the cold, stone floor.
‘We don’t need to talk about anything else tonight if you don’t want to,’ Alex said.
Janos disagreed. ‘It’s important that you hear everything as soon as possible.’
Her eyes were on Janos. ‘Tell me.’
He nodded curtly. ‘I was working with your mother from within the Order. For six years, she obtained graeae blood from me and we were able to circumvent the Order’s designs, most of the time.’
‘Why didn’t you warn her?’ she said. ‘You let Louisa and the others execute her. I saw it.’ Her eyes leapt to the others, trying to make them see that he was an imposter.
‘Anna knew that after Louisa had discovered her connection to your grandma and, forgive me for saying, but with you already in the Order’s custody, there was no chance of her own survival,’ he said.
El smarted, her cheeks burning. Janos’ words rang true, too close to the angry words Dan had spoken the night her mum had died. She felt that she would break with the pain searing through her – a contortion of anger and guilt that she pitted against herself.
With surprise, she felt Luke’s hand on hers. He squeezed it and she remembered that he understood the shame in making the wrong decision, the grit needed to admit it and to take a different path. She nodded to the graeae to go on.
‘That night, I followed Anna’s instruction. I lied for her, claiming that I foresaw you with the full power. It was the only way to keep you alive, but it also allowed the Opposition to get the weapon we’d been seeking for years: empousa blood – smuggled out in your veins.’
El shook her head, piecing it all together with a clarity that hurt. Her mother had saved her – but only to use her as a weapon in the grand plan to destroy the Order. The knowledge beat through her; with each blow of understanding she knew it didn’t really matter what Anna had done. Her mum was gone.
A lump rose in her throat. What mattered was that Dan had known. On the night of Anna’s death, he’d immediately talked of infiltrating the London Olympia. His words from that night in the lab came back to her: you’ve lost a lot of blood, don’t move. The day after, he’d simply said that the empousa blood was a weapon that Anna had procured. He’d failed to say that El had been the one whom she’d procured it from.
Yet again she’d been betrayed. She couldn’t help it: tears welled in her eyes. She got up and left the room.
In the library, El stood by the empty fireplace. After spending the last week in the flat in London, she had forgotten how cold the manor house got. With no one here, the fires hadn’t been lit and the place was damp. There was an undertone of rot; mould had crept into the corners of the rooms and along the stone hearth. However, the overriding fragrance to pervade the house was one of smoke and ash. El wrapped her arms around herself. She kept looking at the bare grate. Why had no one thought to light the fires? Couldn’t they feel the cold? Couldn’t they smell the decay?
She was ready to tell whoever was at the door to leave her alone but felt
winded as Dan came in. She wanted to shout at him but her expression crumpled. She turned her back. Just a few hours ago she’d been so relieved to see him. To see him and the rebels miraculously entering the Elysium to save her. Luke had said that he’d been the informant to save her life tonight, but the rebels hadn’t needed his information. They had known all along when they’d needed to turn up. Another stab of pain shot through her.
How far did Dan’s betrayal go? Attacking the Order at the catacombs was to secure the empousa blood in her veins: that’s why the Opposition had rescued her. He’d let her go on believing that the Triad’s prediction of the full power was true too, despite the nightmares about the future that had plagued her. He’d trained her to compete in the arenas, knowing the full power wouldn’t save her if she got into danger. Still he’d sent her there and kept the true plan from her.
‘If it makes any difference,’ Dan said from his position at the window, ‘before your mum went to the catacombs, she made me promise not to tell you.’
El gasped. It was meant to make her feel better that her mum was a cold callous liar too?
‘And I suppose kissing me was part of your master plan?’ she said. ‘Easier to get me to do whatever you want if I care about you.’
‘That was unforeseen.’
‘Don’t get all graeae on me.’
He came over to stand before her. ‘I wanted to tell you but I’d sworn to Anna I wouldn’t. I knew how precarious the plan was. The Opposition needed you on board. You were the plan. We needed the rumours about your full power to circulate, to draw the highest-ranking members of the Order to the London Olympia.’
She stared at him, his words hardening her heart. As usual he was explaining his actions in a logical way but giving her nothing of his feelings. First, they’d smuggled the empousa blood out – in her – and then extracted it without telling her. They’d put her into the Olympia to draw the crowds with a false rumour about her power. She’d been a mule and bait – that was all.
