Goddess (17 page)

“Enough,” Cassandra commanded in a low voice. An obedient hush descended as everyone’s attention turned to the Oracle. “The days of division are over. The Houses are one, and we have formed a coalition of our own to express that union. Each House is represented by its Heir, and we’ve chosen Helen as our leader.”

“Challenge,” Phaon said immediately, a smirk plastered on his face as he sized up Helen’s skinny arms and soft hands. “I challenge Helen Atreus for the right to lead the Heirs . . . and the Oracle.”

“Did Christmas come early this year?” Hector drawled as he stepped forward, grinning from ear to ear. “I’m Helen’s champion, dickhead. You challenge her, you fight me.”

Phaon’s face blanched. He sputtered something about how his House didn’t allow champions, that it was an archaic bylaw that should be removed. Hector glared at Phaon as he backed down, every inch of him glowing like a storybook hero in front of a cringing coward.

“And you, Orion?” Daedalus called out to his son in a demeaning tone. “You allow Helen to lead, and Hector to be her champion. . . . What honor does the Heir to the House of Athens hold?”

“Orion is
my
champion,” Cassandra snapped. Her mouth was pinched in anger as she regarded Daedalus. “Is that honorable enough for you, Attica?”

Daedalus bowed reverently to the Oracle, his arms crossed in an X across his chest and his torso parallel to the ground as he spoke. “May the Pride of Athens serve you well, Sibyl, to the glory of our House.”

When he stood up straight again he regarded Cassandra strangely, his eyes darting from her to Orion and back again like he couldn’t understand their connection to each other.

Helen saw the confusion inside of Daedalus, drifting aimlessly around his heart like sullen smoke. As the House Heads conferred with their members over this new development, Helen stared at Cassandra and Orion.

Cassandra was the cold hand of Fate, and as such she was not supposed to be able to be passionate about anything. Lately, she had been pulling away from everyone, including her own family, and they had all accepted this as an unavoidable consequence of her position. But that wasn’t the case with Orion. She growled like a cornered cat whenever anyone slighted him.

Chastened, Daedalus moved back to his position in front of another dark-haired, blue-eyed man from the House of Athens. Orion glanced down at Cassandra and grinned. Inside his chest, Helen saw tenderness, not attraction. He was obviously fond of his “little Kitty,” and grateful that she had defended him in front of his father, but he didn’t regard her as a woman.

The silvery orb hanging in Cassandra’s chest seemed barren and remote to Helen, like a dead star, but it flared with it’s own brand of mercurial light when Orion smiled at her. It danced. It glowed. It filled up and spilled over, just like any woman’s heart would when the man she adored smiled at her.

It was exactly what Orion had told Helen he’d always wanted—to be loved
more
—and there it was, right in front of him. But he didn’t seem to see it.

Helen glanced at the faction from the House of Rome, wondering if any of them saw what she saw.

Phaon was staring at Cassandra. He ogled the pure, crystalline light inside of her in a way that made Helen’s skin crawl. Obviously, Phaon could see it, even though Orion couldn’t.

But what Orion
did
see was Phaon staring at Cassandra.

“Don’t even look at her,” Orion growled, stepping in front of Cassandra and shielding her from Phaon’s view.

Daedalus and his second strode toward Phaon, their blue eyes icy with hatred. Even Castor and Pallas, usually so levelheaded, reacted to the threat to Cassandra and the whole room seemed to move toward Phaon like a menacing wave. Daphne intercepted them all with raised hands.

“Dae, I know. I do. But not here, not now,” Daphne said in an undertone to Daedalus, her eyes pleading. “Castor. Don’t break your oath of hospitality. Not again.”

Helen knew that Daphne was reminding Castor of how she had been attacked by Pandora a few short months ago while she was under Castor’s protection. Daedalus, Castor, and Pallas all eased back, but their faces were livid. Phaon’s shrill laughter filled the room.

“Easy, mongrels,” he said as he wound down from his disturbing laugh. “She’s too old for me.”

“Disgusting,” Orion said under his breath. He made a choked sound and his hands tensed, as if he wanted to strangle his cousin. That was enough for Phaon.

Helen saw Phaon reach for the blade strapped across his back under his clothes. It was the same kind of sheath that Orion habitually wore, except Orion wasn’t wearing it then. No weapons were allowed at House meetings, and Helen knew that Orion was defenseless. She also sensed that despite his reluctance to meet Hector in a fair fight, in a dirty fight Phaon had had more experience and would probably win. Orion could be hurt, or even killed.

Helen felt like all her insides suddenly sprouted wings and tried to fly out of her mouth. She didn’t think about what she should or shouldn’t do, about the sacred rules of hospitality, or about the “cease-fire” they had all agreed upon. All she thought about was the bare blade in Phaon’s hand.

She called to the metal. It was similar to how she summoned bolts, only this time instead of a bright splinter of electricity, Helen took the same force and widened it into a field. It was like taking a single coin and learning the simple trick of flipping it over to discover an entirely different face. She used this field to reach out and snatch the stiletto out of Phaon’s grasp.

“How dare you!” she roared, her voice booming out of her like thunder.

The hilt of Phaon’s weapon smacked into the palm of her hand, and she stormed forward, raising the blade high above her head to slash down and cut out Phaon’s twisted little heart. The insides of her thighs burned, and Helen felt the ground rock violently underneath her. She saw Phaon tumble to the ground and grovel in front of her.

“Helen! No!” Lucas pleaded in her ear, his body convulsing against hers. “P-Please, s-stop,” he stammered, his jaw shaking uncontrollably.

She looked around, confused, like she was waking from a dream. Lucas had her by the waist, and he was pulling her back. She glanced down and saw that her skin was glowing pearly pink and blue with ball lightning. Lucas held on to her, even though in that moment she was hotter than the surface of the sun.

She switched off the current immediately, and he fell down with a scream. Furniture was toppled over, and everyone else in the room had fallen from the earthquake she had created. The floor under her was a large disk of black charcoal that still smoldered around the edges like a ring of fire. Everyone stared up at her, terrified.

Except for Lucas. His hands, chest, and cheek were black and bloody, burned down to the bone by the ball lightning she had created. He writhed on the ground in agony.

“Oh, no!” Helen cried, crouching down over Lucas. “No-no-no,” she chanted hysterically.

Lucas moaned when she touched him. His crispy skin flaked off and drifted in the air like burnt paper. He was so terribly injured and in so much pain Helen knew that there was no place in the world she could take him that could ease his suffering.

She needed a new world.

It’s not that Helen forgot Hades’ promise that the Fates would bring her to this. Nor did she forget his warning that as soon as she created her own world, the gods would challenge her for it. She just didn’t care. She’d build a whole new universe from scratch and send all of Olympus to Tartarus if she had to—anything, anything at all, to fix Lucas.

Helen gathered Lucas up in her arms. As his heartbeat stopped and his eyes closed, she created a portal to her new world and took him there.

TEN

D
aphne touched her hand to the spiky crust of ice that had formed over the charcoal.

Insanity was swirling over her head while she stared at the burned-out basin that used to be a living room floor, and the snowflake-like ice that had grown over it, smothering the fire, when her daughter disappeared with Lucas. How could she use this? Daphne wondered.

Daphne had never expected this meeting to be successful, but the bickering that had ensued as soon as Helen had made her dramatic exit was rising to a fever pitch. Before everyone started hacking each other to bits, Daphne needed to take control. She didn’t plan to lose this opportunity.

“Did you make that earthquake?” she yelled up at Orion, interrupting the chaos.

“No,” he said. When he got shot several disbelieving looks, he sighed and continued reluctantly. “Helen did it. She got the Earthshaker talent from me when we became blood brothers.”

“And how did she take the blade away from Phaon?” Daedalus asked.

“Electro
magnetism
,” Pallas replied. “Although I’ve never heard of any Bolt-thrower having enough voltage to create a magnetic field like that.”

“She’s too powerful,” Tantalus said quietly to Pallas. “She could kill us all.”

Pallas nodded in agreement, as did Daedalus.

The room fell into stunned silence as they all contemplated this. Daphne couldn’t let them get distracted by that detail right now.

She grabbed the Bough of Aeneas, disguised as a gold cuff on Orion’s wrist as she stood. “Did you open a portal with this and push Helen and Lucas through it?”

“No. I can only open standing portals, not create them,” he answered. “Only Helen can make her own portals wherever she wants.”

“The ice?” Daphne asked, inviting him to explain it. She needed to get everyone thinking in the right direction.

“There’s always ice when she descends. But if she went to the Underworld, she’d be back almost instantly. Time stops here while you’re in the Underworld,” Orion said, confused by Daphne’s line of questioning.

“That’s not always the case. At least not for Helen,” Daphne countered. “I don’t know why, but in one instance I witnessed, time passed here on Earth while Helen was in the Underworld.”

Castor looked at Tantalus, who Daphne knew was a Falsefinder. Tantalus nodded. “She’s telling the truth,” he said.

“The Underworld?” Castor whispered, his voice breaking. “Why would she take Lucas to the Underworld?”

They had all felt the terrible heat of Helen’s electrical storm. Except for Daphne, who could handle the intense heat of lightning, the rest of them had raw, red burns on their exposed skin. And Lucas had held on to her while she was in that state. Marry that idea to the Underworld, and they would all come to realize that Lucas was dead or dying.

“Uncle,” Hector said gently. Castor’s eyes darted around, like he didn’t even hear his nephew. Hector looked across the room at Jason and Ariadne. All of them were speechless and searching each other for answers.

“Helen knows the Underworld better than anyone. Maybe she knows a place that could help Luke? Maybe that’s why she took him there,” Jason said, thinking out loud. Really, he was just grasping at straws. They all looked at Orion for confirmation.

“Could that be it?” Castor asked.

Orion shrugged and shook his head as if to say that he didn’t know. He didn’t look very hopeful.

Daphne allowed a few seconds to tick by to let it sink in. “What if she stays down there with him, Orion?” Daphne said quietly, reminding herself not to push too hard.

She saw Orion’s face crumple at the thought of losing Helen forever. He loved her and would do anything for her, just as Daphne had planned when she shoved the two of them together in the Underworld.

It was predictable, really. Two young, beautiful teenagers, faced with incredible odds, teaming up together to fight a common cause. All Daphne had had to do was make a relationship with Lucas impossible, give Orion a chance to hope, and he would certainly fall for Helen. Now all Daphne could do was hope that he loved her
enough . . .
so that Daphne could truly control him.

“Could you go after her?” she continued, nudging him, trying to work just the right angle in this situation to get Orion to realize what, or rather
what role
, he was meant to play in the next Great Cycle. “Could you bring her back?”

“From the
dead
?” Daedalus blurted out before he realized what he was saying. He glanced over at Castor apologetically. “I’m sorry, Castor. But your son didn’t look good.”

Castor nodded. His face was stark white, and his eyes stared blankly at the floor, like they weren’t seeing anything anymore.

“We don’t know what happened yet. Don’t give up hope,” Tantalus whispered in Castor’s ear. He clasped his brother on the shoulder comfortingly while Daphne bit her tongue to keep herself from snarling at the sound of his voice. She wanted to scream at Castor not to trust him, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good.

Tantalus spoke up so the rest of the room was included, easily shifting into the role of leader in the wake of disaster. He had always been the most charismatic of them all, Daphne thought bitterly. Even when they knew he was evil, they trusted him, anyway. They
wanted
to trust him, just as Daphne had once trusted him.

“I say we use this meeting to discuss what we witnessed and how we should move forward,” Tantalus said as he addressed the group. His eyes moved to Phaon and hardened. “Starting with how to punish Phaon for attempting to murder the Head of his House.”

Andy sat in the kitchen with the rest of the non-Scions—the rest of the non-Scions who didn’t need to lie down, that is. Kate had taken Noel upstairs after it became clear that she wouldn’t be able to stop crying. Noel was a tough lady, Andy could see that, but after what happened to Lucas, any mother would have fallen apart.

Matt and Claire waited for Kate and Noel to leave before they spoke.

“I never thought Helen would hurt Lucas. Never,” Claire whispered, her eyes blank with sadness. “I can’t believe it.”

“She’s completely out of control,” Matt whispered back.

The two friends sat, their faces unmoving like pale masks. Andy didn’t know Helen like they did, but she did know what malice looked like when she saw it. Having a siren for a mother had ensured that.

“But it was an accident,” Andy said, sticking up for Helen. “She didn’t mean to do it.”

“That makes it even worse,” Matt responded heatedly. “Can you imagine what would have happened if she
did
mean it?”

Matt, Claire, and Andy sat silently at the table and listened in on the rest of the meeting. The Scions fought over how they were going to carve up Phaon. Apparently, this Phaon guy was extra popular, especially with the older generation. They all wanted a piece of him, but it was Daedalus from the House of Athens who claimed the biggest grievance, and not just to avenge what had nearly happened to his son when Phaon tried to kill him just moments ago.

There was mention of a young girl named Cassiopeia, and the room grew quiet. Then it was unanimously decided that Daedalus and Phaon were to meet at dawn for a duel to the death. After that, the meeting was adjourned. Seconds later, Ariadne and Jason joined them in the kitchen. Ariadne’s eyes filled up with tears as soon as she saw Matt.

“Lucas . . . ,” she whispered as she wrapped her arms around his chest.

Claire went to Jason and searched his face, wordlessly asking him a question. “It’s bad, Claire. We felt his heart stop,” Jason said tonelessly.

“He’ll pull through, though. Won’t he?” Claire said. Jason shrugged, his lip trembling. Claire pulled his head down and let it rest on her shoulder.

Jason and Ariadne were gifted Healers. They knew the true extent of Lucas’s injuries. They may not have shared the details while they were in the meeting, but here in the safety of Noel’s kitchen, they could express what they couldn’t in front of the other Houses. Neither of them thought that Lucas would make it.

Matt and Claire comforted the twins as best they could, but there wasn’t much they could do apart from holding them. Matt and Claire shared a grim look over Jason’s and Ariadne’s shoulders. Andy knew what they were thinking.

If Helen could kill Lucas, the person she loved the most, she could kill them all.

Andy watched her new friends hug each other for a moment, and then started to feel like she was intruding. She hadn’t really known Lucas, and she had no idea what it was like to have a brother or a sister—let alone what it would feel like to think he or she was going to die. She’d always wanted someone to love as much as they obviously loved Lucas.

Confused that she seemed to
want
to suffer like they were suffering, that she felt almost jealous of how deeply they all felt this, Andy made her way to the kitchen door that led out to the yard.

She was a creature of the sea, and the ocean had always been her biggest comfort. Andy figured that maybe a quick swim would clear her head enough so that she could be there to help this family that had helped her so much. For the first time since she’d been brought to the Delos house, Andy left the property and headed to the beach.

“She walks in beauty, like the night,” said a lilting voice that was deep and dark, and bright and innocent all at once. Unmistakable.

Andy froze, although she knew it was too late. He’d already seen her, so there was no point in trying to stay still like a dumb deer in the middle of the road. Apollo was not a car—he was a wolf. Deer need to
run
from wolves.

“You didn’t really think I’d forgotten about you, did you?” Apollo asked as he sauntered toward her, backlit by the long rays of the lowering sun.

The water’s edge was just a few steps away. Maybe she could make it?

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Apollo said, tracking her intention. She felt the back of her throat close off with a sob, convinced that this was it. This was where she was going to die a horrible, drawn-out death.

“And I wouldn’t if I were
you
,” said what sounded like the echo of Apollo’s voice from somewhere out in the water.

Andy’s head turned to see Hector rising up out of the waves. Bare-chested and dressed only in soaking-wet jeans, he strode through the tide easily, as if the water were his ally. His face, an exact copy of Apollo’s, was rigid with anger.

Apollo smiled at his Scion double. “Interesting talent you have over the water, son. Where did you get it?”

Hector didn’t reply. He went straight to Andy. “Are you okay?” he asked her gently. She nodded and cast wary eyes in Apollo’s direction, as if to say “For now.” Hector angled Andy behind him and faced Apollo.

“My, my. How brash you are,” the god admonished. “Aren’t you the least bit worried about challenging me?”

“No,” Hector said in a steady voice. Apollo burst out laughing. It was a queer-sounding cackle—not human, and a little less than sane.

“You should be.” Apollo’s eyes gleamed. His skin shone with its own light, and it suddenly seemed as if the god wore full armor and carried a stout, bronze sword.

Although he was unarmed and half-naked, Hector did not flinch or show the least bit of fear. After a moment, the godly nimbus of light surrounding Apollo died down and the vision of armor vanished.

“You really are him,” Apollo said, impressed. “Hector reborn. And I should know. I rode with him in his chariot at Troy.”

Hector didn’t answer. He stared at his adversary, every muscle awake under his skin. Standing just inches away from his bare back, Andy could feel a storm churning inside of Hector. He
wanted
to fight this god, she realized.

Apollo’s face twitched. He was afraid of Hector. For the first time in what seemed like ages, Andy felt something close to relief.

“Soon, little son,” Apollo said, speaking about the confrontation that Hector so obviously wanted. “Soon we’ll be back on the battlefield, but this time I fight for Olympus, and you for your newly made Atlantis. And if Zeus doesn’t force us to resort to tricks like he did the last time, we’ll finally complete the Fates’ cycle and prove who is superior—the parents or their Scions.”

Apollo leapt into the sky and flew away. Hector watched him go, thinking about what Apollo had just revealed. Andy knew she should be thinking about what the god had said as well, but all she could do was watch Hector. She was wondering how she could have ever mistaken him for Apollo.

Sure, their features and build were the same, but Hector’s eyes were alive and full of emotion while Apollo’s were missing something crucial.
Something human,
she supposed. The god’s eyes had the dead-smooth quality of a marble sculpture while Hector’s were quick and fierce . . . so full of feeling they seemed to burn with it.

“Thank you,” she whispered, her whole life owed to him in those two words.

He glanced at her and nodded once, then abruptly turned to leave. He walked over to his shirt and shoes, heaped in a pile a ways up the beach. Andy followed his silent figure, stunned.

“That’s
it
?” she said, her voice pitching up incredulously at the end. “You aren’t even going to say one word to me? Just save my life, nod, and off you go like you do this every Tuesday or something?”

Hector didn’t look at her. Angling his face away, he pulled his shirt over his head and reached down to grab his shoes.

“Hey!” she shouted. He ignored her. “Hey!” She ran up to him, and pushed him as hard as she could.

“What?” he said, frustrated, as he stumbled away from her.

“What do you mean,
what
?” she yelled back at him sarcastically.

“I mean, what do you want from me, Andy? Do you want me to go, or stay, or drop dead?
What?
”

His eyes searched hers. They bounced back and forth, looking for something inside of her. Andy shrugged. She had no idea what he was looking for. He sat down in the sand with his shoes in his hand, like he was giving up.