Goddess (16 page)

“Lucas is the brother of the Oracle,” Cassandra said, shaking her head sadly. “That would give too much power to the House of Thebes. Your own mother would fight it. It has to be you.”

“No,” Helen said simply. “I don’t want to do it.”

“Tough luck, Princess.” Hector smiled at her with infuriating smugness. “Come on. You always knew it had to be you.”

“But I’m clueless!” she said, bolting up out of her seat anxiously. “And the worst fighter. What if someone from another House challenges me to a duel or whatever? I’d totally lose.” Helen started pacing around, running her hands through her hair.

“If you’re our leader, you’d never fight,” Lucas said, liking this new development more and more. “Leaders choose champions to fight for them when they get challenged—usually the best fighter. It’s a bad idea for our best fighter to be the leader.”

“Okay, we all agree. Helen’s the boss,” Orion said.

“We did
not
agree—” Helen interrupted, but Orion kept talking over her.

“Now all you need to do is choose a champion.” He stood up and bowed formally to Helen. “I accept.”

“Like hell,” Lucas said, standing up and squaring off with Orion. “I’m Helen’s champion.”

“Can’t let you do that, bro,” Orion said with an apologetic shake of his head.

“Did you just say
let
me?” Lucas asked in a disbelieving voice.

“Ladies, please,” Hector said as he nudged Orion and Lucas apart and stood between them. “Weren’t you listening? The champion is supposed to be the
best
fighter. Clearly, that’s me.”

“Really? Prove it,” Lucas said coolly.

Helen could see a brawl coming. It killed her to think of any of her guys hurting each other, and although she wasn’t ready to face it just yet, she knew that there was only one of them that she would ever be able to send into danger.

“Hector,” she said firmly. “If I’m the leader, I want Hector to be my champion.” Helen looked at Lucas and Orion, her face set. “He
is
the best fighter.”

“Atta girl. Already making the right decisions. You might be a better leader than you think.” Hector grinned.

“Hold on,” Lucas objected.

“Do you accept?” Cassandra asked Hector, ignoring her brother.

“I do,” he replied immediately.

“I bear witness. Hector is Helen’s champion from this day forward. If anyone challenges Helen, Hector will fight in her stead.” Cassandra looked sharply at Orion. “Lucas will be Hector’s second.”

“Wait just a damn minute,” Orion sputtered.

“And
you
will be
my
champion,” Cassandra said loudly over his protestations. “That way Atreus leads, Thebes protects Atreus, and Athens and Rome protect Thebes. We need to show them all that the time of fighting between the Houses is over. The best way to do that is for the five of us to trust each other with our lives.”

Orion closed his mouth with a snap, thought about it for a moment, and sighed reluctantly. “That makes a lot of sense.”

“Do you accept?” Cassandra asked him, a timid note entering her tone. “Will you be my champion?”

“Yes,” Orion answered seriously. Then he cracked a smile and gave her a little push. “Of course I accept, Kitty.”

Cassandra smiled back, relieved.

“I’ll witness,” Helen said, sensing that this needed to be voiced. “Orion is Cassandra’s champion.” She looked over at Lucas, who she could tell was barely holding his tongue. “Do you have something you want to say?”

“I don’t like being sidelined,” he said angrily. “But I’ll deal with it.”

“Okay. So we’re a team now,” Orion said, looking around at everyone. “This should be an interesting meeting.”

“Matt!” Claire snapped. “Can you focus, please?”

Matt’s head turned, and he looked at Claire blankly. She had just said something about Helen, but he wasn’t sure what.

He was distracted.

At that moment, a ship was landing on the beach at Great Point, right under the lighthouse. It was a small ship. Matt didn’t hear it scrape across the sand all the way from his house in Siasconset—nor did he see the three Myrmidons vault lightly out of the vessel, grab hold of the sides, and carry the boat up the beach at an effortless run. Matt wasn’t physically present when ten more small ships followed and his soldiers took the beach, but he was aware of it happening as if he were. Even as Claire waved a hand in his face and sighed with frustration, his eyes could also see the precise steps of his thirty-three men as they tracked silently up from the waterline.

“Greetings,” Claire said with a worried grimace. “Are you ever going to land that spaceship and join the conversation?”

An ironic laugh burst out of Matt. “Land that ship,” he repeated as he sensed members of his landing party regarding the terrain with soldierly precision. With this new double awareness, Matt saw a Myrmidon warrior, his skin black and shiny like a carapace, kneel and lay a hand on the cold sand in one sleek, swift motion.

“He’s here. Our master’s mind is with us right now,”
said Telamon.

Matt remembered that Telamon was a prince of his kind, and one of Matt’s best captains.

“Another beach, brothers,”
he said ruefully. Telamon rubbed his hands together to brush away the sand. The distasteful sneer he wore made it clear that he still detested sand after all these years away from Troy.

“What are your orders?”
asked a soldier with faceted black eyes.

“Make camp. We wait for our master here,”
Telamon decreed.
“When he’s ready, he will join us.”

“Are you okay?” Ariadne asked plaintively.

Matt blinked hard and was finally able to banish the image in his head.

“I’m fine,” he said, concentrating on the task at hand. “Go on, Claire.”

“Okay, so like I said, the first time I saw something weird—well, weirder than usual—was when Lennie was reaching for a spoon. It
shook
for a second, like it was shivering, and then it just flew into her hand.”

“All three of us saw something similar to that when we were in Andy’s hospital room,” Ariadne added.

“Describe it,” Matt said, turning to Andy.

“Well, first she got angry and then she lit up. Sparks started to fall out of her skin and hair like rain,” Andy said, her lovely voice filling with awe as she remembered. “All the equipment in my room started to rattle, and I could have sworn I felt my bed move.”

For a moment, Matt’s bedroom fell silent as they all thought about this.

“I felt something strange like that when Helen got angry the other day,” Jason added reluctantly.

“What happened?” Matt asked.

“She and Lucas were checking in on Jerry, and they started fighting. I guess it was pretty bad because they went down to the fight cage to settle it. I could have sworn I felt the house shake for a second.”

“That could have been an impact tremor,” Matt said. “They’re strong enough to shake the house when they hit the ground.”

“It was before they got downstairs. They were just walking, Matt,” Jason said with a shrug. Matt paused, thinking.

“Did you see any lightning?” he asked the three girls.

“Not really,” Ariadne said for them. “What we saw was definitely electrical, but I can’t figure out why that would make stuff rattle like that. The whole thing was just strange. And scary.”

“Her voice was all funny,” Claire added, rubbing her arms like she had a chill.

“Way too much reverb,” Andy said emphatically. “I’m a siren, I know voices, and I’ve never heard anything like that before.”

“She sounded like a goddess,” Ariadne said, summing it up for the three of them. “Something’s happened to her, guys.”

“You think?” Jason said, rolling his eyes. “After everything she’s been through, she’s bound to have changed a bit. That doesn’t mean she’s changed in a bad way. Cut her some slack. She just fought a god
.
”

“And won,” Matt added quietly. “She fought a god and won. How strong do you think she’d have to be to do that?”

“Stronger than any other Scion. Ever.” Ariadne’s voice shook.

“She was
tortured
, you guys,” Jason countered sternly.

“Exactly,” Ariadne responded. “And you think an experience like that is going to change her for the
better
?”

“This is ridiculous,” Jason said angrily. He spun around and stormed to the door.

“Jason,” Claire began, but he turned back and cut her off.

“I know you and Helen have been best friends since you were little, and that she’s changing a lot and it’s scaring you. But everyone changes. Just because you don’t understand what’s happening to Helen doesn’t mean you have any reason to be afraid of her. I hope you all realize that before you go and do something stupid.”

Jason left them to stand around and stare at one another.

“There’s one more thing,” Claire said, her voice forcing its way through her tight throat. “I tried to talk to Helen about how she’s changing. She made it pretty clear that she didn’t care. She just wants to
win
.” Claire rubbed her arms again like she was cold. “The Helen I knew didn’t care about winning. She never even tried to win a track meet before.”

She was afraid. They all were. The worst part was that Matt had the sinking feeling that they
should
be.

Matt thought again about that morality question Zach asked once. Would Matt really kill someone who hadn’t done anything yet, to keep that person from possibly killing millions? What was right?

“How much longer, captain?”
asked one of the Myrmidons.

“Soon,”
Telamon answered.
“Master is still torn.”

“Impossible,”
said another soldier. His glowing red eyes narrowed with emotion.
“It can’t be him if he wavers. Achilles would never be swayed from our true mission. He died for it.”

“Patience,”
Telamon said commandingly.

“Patience,”
the Myrmidons chanted back with hushed reverence, like they were reciting catechism. This was a ritual they had performed many times.

“Old loyalties from his mortal life still pull at him,”
Telamon continued, momentarily putting a soothing hand on a comrade’s shoulder, like a sympathetic counselor or a priest.
“But loyalties that are older still are starting to surface. Courage.”

“Courage,”
the soldiers repeated in unison as soon as Telamon fed them the word. Their soldierly version of “amen” thundered across the dunes, and the force of their combined voices lifted up swells of sand off the undulating dunes and sent it airborne like smoke over the water.

“The end of this cycle is near,”
Telamon continued knowingly.
“And in the end our master’s heart will lead him back to us. Friends, remember. The blade chose this particular vessel because the blade knows that this vessel, above all others, shares our desire.”

“Matt?” Ariadne asked.

Matt blinked hard again and focused on her. She looked worried.

“What do you think we should do?”

“First we have to find out how far she’s willing to go,” he said gravely. “And then we’ll each have to decide—each of us for ourselves—how far we’re willing to go to stop her.”

NINE

T
hat night, Lucas dressed carefully. He knew the meeting of the Houses was a semiformal affair, but that didn’t mean that he was going to wear anything that would restrict his movement. He didn’t trust any of the guests they were about to receive, and there was no way in hell he was going to put on anything that would hinder him in a fight.

Of course, fighting was strictly forbidden at these meetings. But Lucas knew that this was going to be the first time in twenty years that most of these people had seen each other. On top of that, many of them had killed someone who someone else in the room had loved dearly. It was a grudge match waiting to happen.

Lucas went downstairs and found half his family crowded around the TV in the living room, listening to the evening news. The pictures on TV showed an intense lightning storm over what looked like a blacked-out city.

“Is that Manhattan?” Lucas asked, moving closer to the screen.

“Yes,” his mother responded, her voice quiet with shock. “The whole city is dark.”

Lucas could only imagine the chaos that would cause in New York. Subway lines would be stalled on the tracks with people inside, elevators would be shut down, stranding people at the tops of buildings—not to mention the lawlessness that was bound to break out in the dark.

“Why would Zeus do something like that?” Andy asked.

“To remind us he can,” Hector answered, his jaw set.

There was a knock at the front door, and Lucas heard everyone inhale a tense breath.

“I’ll get it,” Kate offered, but Noel put her hand on Kate’s shoulder to stop her.

“It has to be me,” Noel said kindly. “It’s my hearth.”

Lucas followed her to the front of the house. When Noel opened the door, Lucas felt like someone had kicked him in the gut. The man standing in the doorway had black hair, bright blue eyes, and a tall, athletic build. He looked like Lucas, aged twenty years.

“Daedalus,” Noel said through a tight jaw.

“Noel,” Daedalus replied. He crossed his arms in an X over his chest and bowed respectfully, but it was clear they were not on good terms.

Lucas couldn’t breathe for a moment. He’d been told many times that he looked like he was from the House of Athens, but he had no idea that he looked so much like the man who had killed his grandfather.

“Welcome,” Noel said, barely meaning it. “I offer you my hospitality.”

“I’m honored,” Daedalus said, and entered. His eyes went directly to Lucas, and he smiled ruefully in recognition. Then his eyes darted past Lucas and hardened. “Hello, son,” he said, and for a confused moment Lucas wondered if Daedalus was speaking to
him
.

“Father,” Orion said formally.

Lucas turned to see Orion standing right behind him with a closed look on his face. He’d been so stunned by Daedalus’s appearance that he hadn’t noticed Orion and Hector joining them.

Daedalus strode forward, his gait proud and more than a little intimidating. He offered his hand to his son, and Orion shook it without smiling.

“You look strong,” Daedalus said, his eyes measuring up Orion.

“I am,” Orion replied tersely. Their eyes locked, and Daedalus was the first to look away.

Lucas had never heard Orion speak so coldly, but after the way his father had abandoned him, Lucas couldn’t blame him. If Daedalus noticed that Orion was being uncharacteristically harsh, he didn’t show it. He looked right past his angry son and at Hector.

“Ajax,” he said under his breath. For a moment his face looked regretful before it hardened again into a forbidding scowl.

“Come inside,” Noel said. “Boys, make a hole.”

A knee-jerk reaction to protect his turf welled up in Lucas. He didn’t want to let Daedalus through, and he could tell Hector and Orion felt the same way he did. They all stood their ground.

“Oh, will you just
move
?” Noel grumbled impatiently as she pushed past them. “It doesn’t matter that the Furies are gone—you all still act like a pack of wild dogs. Everybody’s got to sniff everybody else’s butt.”

Daedalus managed to crack a smile and followed Noel. Hector, Lucas, and Orion finally eased up and let him through.

“Awkward,” Hector said after Daedalus had passed.

“A regular ray of sunshine, isn’t he?” Orion said sarcastically, acting more like himself again. “Oh, and that’s his ‘happy face’ by the way.”

“Why didn’t you warn me I look so much like your dad?” Lucas asked, glaring at Orion.

“I thought you knew,” Orion replied, shrugging.

“I knew there was supposed to some sort of resemblance, but this is ridiculous. How the hell am I supposed to feel about this?”

“It’s no picnic for me, either. Every time I look at you I see my dad. The Fates like to mess with us, Luke. They make it so that we all look like the person it would be most ironic for us to look like.” Orion suddenly grinned. “Take Hector. He looks like someone everyone liked, but he sucks.”

“Thanks, buddy,” Hector replied brightly, like Orion had just given him a compliment. They all chuckled, and the tension dissipated a bit.

“Don’t let it rattle you,” Orion warned seriously, eyebrows lifted. “We’ve got other things to deal with tonight.”

“I won’t,” Lucas said firmly. “I know what I’m here for.” He knew Orion understood that he was talking about protecting Helen.

Helen could hear lots of unfamiliar voices downstairs as more and more Scions arrived for the meeting of the Houses. She could feel the mounting tension through the floor like the deep thrumming of a subwoofer. Helen’s new sensitivity to emotions left her wide open to everyone else’s turmoil. She didn’t know all the details of the war twenty years ago, but she was certain that there were plenty of old scores that still needed settling. One story down, a toxic mixture of hatred, love, and loss threatened to explode into violence at any moment. It felt to Helen like she was standing on top of a bomb.

Helen tugged nervously at her outfit. It was a bit fancier than she was used to. She’d always been a sales-rack kind of girl, but Daphne had brought her a designer getup, insisting that it would make her feel more confident. Instead, it made her more nervous. Helen was pretty sure the buttery-soft leather boots she wore were worth more than her entire wardrobe. She wondered where her mother got the money to pay for all the clothes, but decided she didn’t want to know. Daphne had no problem stealing priceless treasures from museums. Helen was pretty sure that department store security systems didn’t even show up on her radar.

For a moment Helen pictured her mother leaving a trail of mayhem behind her as she made her way from Newfoundland to Nantucket to get from Daedalus’s house to the meeting at the Deloses’—stolen cars, robbed stores, broken hearts piling up behind her as she traveled. Her mother had been back for an hour, and all Helen could think about was how many laws Daphne had broken since they last saw each other.

“Stop fidgeting,” Daphne said. She pulled the chain around Helen’s neck and fished out the heart necklace, laying the charm over Helen’s clothes. “The House of Atreus is descended from Zeus, so it’s the highest ranking. We join the group second to last,” Daphne said, coaching Helen. “Last, of course, is the Oracle.”

Helen pulled away from her mother, reaching for a hairbrush to hide the fact that she didn’t want to be touched by her. Daphne noticed, anyway.

“It’s time. Everyone’s here,” Daphne said brusquely.

“How do you know?” Helen asked.

“I recognize all their voices.” Daphne laughed mirthlessly and tucked her hair behind her ear with her pinkie finger. “Some of the people downstairs I know better than I know you.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Not fault,” Daphne said gently. “Choice. It was my choice, Helen, and it was the right one. You really were better off without me.”

Helen opened her mouth to argue with Daphne, but stopped. As a Falsefinder, she could hear the truth in Daphne’s voice. Daphne wasn’t feeding her a line or trying to excuse herself for bad parenting. She really believed that she’d done the right thing and, thinking about her father still asleep just down the hall, Helen agreed. She
had
been better off without her mother. Daphne might have abandoned her, but she’d abandoned her to a better life—a happier life—with Jerry for a dad, and Claire and Matt as best friends. It must have taken a lot of discipline for Daphne to do that. Helen started to understand how fortunate she’d been. She’d had about seventeen years of normal life that had shaped her into the person she was now. And Daphne had been the one to give that to her, by leaving.

“Thank you,” Helen whispered.

“You’re welcome,” Daphne said back hollowly.

Surprised at her tone, Helen looked down at Daphne’s chest and saw nothing but a dark void—a gaping hole that went on and on, like an endless well of emptiness instead of a heart. She shrank away from her mother. The gesture was not lost on Daphne.

“What, Helen? What is it?” she asked.

“Your heart’s gone,” Helen answered, too overwhelmed by the unnatural hole inside Daphne to remember to conceal her new talent.

“It died the day Ajax did,” Daphne replied simply.

“But there’s
nothing
there. Not even a broken heart,” Helen said, shaking her head. “You’re not sad or angry or hurt. You feel nothing. That can’t be natural.” She locked eyes with Daphne and grabbed her wrist to keep her from moving away. “What did you do, Mother?” Daphne tried to pull away from Helen, but her daughter was too strong.

“Whatever was left of my feelings I traded in order to accomplish a goal. Women do it all the time. Scion women swear it before Hecate,” Daphne said, her eyes narrowing with suspicion as a thought occurred to her. “But how can you know what I
don’t
feel?” Daphne murmured, more to herself than to Helen.

“Helen?” Andy said as she tapped on the door. “Are you in there?”

“Yes,” Helen replied. She released her mother and quickly turned to the door. “Come in.”

Andy pushed the door open tentatively and peeked into the room. “Noel is getting . . . ah . . .
antsy
is the only polite word I come up with right now. She says you and your mom need to get your butts downstairs before somebody murders somebody else and gets blood all over her clean floors.” She smiled and held up her hands. “I’m quoting her, by the way.”

“I’ll bet.” Helen chuckled. “We’re coming.”

There was still so much she and Daphne needed to talk about, but as usual where her mother was concerned, Helen was going to have to wait until later to get any answers. She and Daphne followed Andy out of Ariadne’s bedroom and down the hallway toward the stairs.

“My, my,” Daphne said quietly as she followed Andy’s graceful silhouette. “Aren’t you a rare fish?”

Helen saw Andy’s back stiffen at Daphne’s taunt and her gait taper off to a stop.

“I’m half siren,” Andy said. She turned to look Daphne dead in the eye. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“No,” Daphne replied. She met Andy’s gaze and stood firm. “But you obviously do, and it’s time you got over it.”

Daphne brushed past Andy. Helen followed reluctantly, giving Andy an apologetic look as she passed by.

“Hector isn’t Apollo,” Daphne added when she reached the stairs. “It’s time you got over that, too.”

“You have no right,” Andy began angrily.

“Hector is one of the best men I’ve ever known, little half siren who hates herself,” Daphne interrupted, silencing Andy. Helen saw Daphne’s eyes harden until they sparkled like diamonds. “You don’t deserve him.”

Helen mouthed the words
I’m sorry
to Andy as she went down the stairs, but Andy had turned on her heel and gone before Helen could finish.

Still thinking about Andy, Helen followed her mother into the tense living room. Her eyes went immediately to a big, blond man who stood in front of Castor and Pallas in the place she knew was reserved for the Head of the House of Thebes.

He had to be Tantalus, and although she had never met him before, she recognized him. She pictured his face, red, sweaty, and twisted with rage as he tried to beat her child out of her.

Tantalus stared at Daphne. It was the same way that Menelaus stared at Helen of Troy. With Helen’s new talent she could see his chest crawling with need. For a moment, his eyes darted over Daphne’s shoulder to land on Helen. She shivered with revulsion, remembering another life when she had been forced to be his wife after Troy fell. Then his eyes went back to Daphne, where they stayed until the Oracle entered.

As soon as Cassandra glided into the room, her bell-bracelet tinkling delicately, Lucas, Hector, Orion, and Helen moved as one to join her. Cassandra sat in her giant chair. Orion stood at her left, Helen at her right. Hector and Lucas stood behind Helen, one to either side of her.

The outburst from the assembled host was immediate.

“Helen! Get back here!” Daphne scolded. Helen gladly ignored her.

“Lucas . . .
son
,” Castor said, clipping his words sharply. “You are to stand behind your uncle Tantalus.” Lucas looked away from his father, eyes forward and face expressionless like a trained soldier, and didn’t leave his chosen place behind Helen.

“You see? I told you!” hissed a slender man with full lips. He was older, about Helen’s mother’s age, but he was the kind of guy who just got more handsome as he aged. Definitely someone from the House of Rome, she decided. Helen didn’t recognize his face, but from the way Orion and Daedalus stared daggers at him, she knew he had to be Phaon.

Phaon turned his back on the group and addressed his faction. “Orion won’t even stand with us. He doesn’t care about the House of Rome, but you still call him your Head? Do we need any more proof that he is unfit to lead?”

Helen glanced down at the suppurating gash that should have been his heart, and her stomach churned. Phaon’s face and body might be beautiful, but this
creature
she looked at was rotten to the core. She saw Orion’s heart flare with anger. She caught his eyes and pleaded with him silently, trying to calm him down.