Goddess (2 page)

Like a warrior.

Helen saw herself running down a beach toward the biggest lighthouse she’d ever seen.

It was strange at first. How in the world could she be watching herself like she was watching a movie? It didn’t feel like a dream. No dream had ever felt so real or been so logical. Still not understanding what was going on, she quickly got wrapped up in the drama and just went with it.

Dream Helen was wearing a long, diaphanous white dress, held together by a richly embroidered girdle. Her sheer veil had come loose from the pins in her hair, and streamed behind her as she ran. She looked frightened. As the giant lighthouse loomed closer, Helen saw her dream-self recognize a figure standing at one of the points of the octagonal base. She saw a flash of bronze as the figure undid the buckles at his neck and waist, and allowed his breastplate to fall into the sand. She saw herself cry out with happiness and pick up speed.

After shedding half his armor, the tall, dark young man turned at the sound of her voice and ran toward her, meeting her halfway. The two lovers crashed together. He caught her up against his chest and kissed her. Helen watched herself throw her arms around his neck and kiss him back, then pull away so she could kiss his face over and over in a dozen different places—as if she wanted to cover every bit of him. Helen’s mind drifted closer to the entwined pair, already knowing who the other Helen was kissing.

Lucas. He was strangely dressed and wearing a sword around his waist. He had sandals on his feet, and his hands were wrapped with worn leather straps and covered with bronze gauntlets, but it was really him. Even the laugh he gave as the other Helen smothered him with kisses was the same.

“I’ve missed you!” the other Helen cried.

“A week is far too long,” he agreed softly.

The words were not English, but Helen understood them just the same. The meaning echoed in her head, just as the relief of being reunited with her love echoed through her—as if it was her body that was pressed against his. Suddenly, Helen knew that it was her body, or had been, once. She had spoken this language, and she had felt this kiss before. This wasn’t a dream. It felt more like a memory.

“So you’re coming with me?” he said urgently, catching her face in his hands and forcing her to look at him. His eyes glowed with hope. “You’ll do it?”

The other Helen’s face fell. “Why, always, do you talk of tomorrow? Can’t we just enjoy right now?”

“My ship leaves tomorrow.” He let her go and pulled away, hurt.

“Paris . . .”

“You are my wife!” he shouted, pacing in a circle and tugging his hand through his hair exactly like Lucas did when he was frustrated. “I gave Aphrodite the golden apple. I chose love—I chose
you
over everything that was offered to me. And you said you wanted me, too.”

“I did. I still do. But my sister has no head for politics. Aphrodite didn’t think it was important to mention that while you may have been tending sheep that day, you were not a shepherd boy as I believed, but a prince of Troy.” The other Helen spared an exasperated sigh for her sister and then shook her head, giving up. “Golden apples and stolen afternoons don’t matter. I cannot go with you to Troy.”

She reached for him again. For a moment, he looked like he wanted to resist, but he didn’t. He took her hand and pulled her to him as if he couldn’t bring himself to reject her, even when he was angry.

“Then let’s run away. Leave everything behind. We’ll stop being royalty and become shepherds.”

“There’s nothing I want more,” she said longingly. “But no matter where we go, I would still be a daughter of Zeus and you a son of Apollo.”

“And if we had children, they would have the blood of two Olympians,” he said, impatience making his voice harsh. Apparently, he’d heard this argument many times already. “Do you really believe that’s enough to create the Tyrant? The prophecy says something about mixing the blood of four houses that are descended from the gods. Whatever that means.”

“I don’t understand any of the prophecies, but the people fear any mixing of the blood of the gods,” she said. Her voice dropped suddenly. “They’d chase us to the ends of the Earth.”

He ran his hands over her belly, cupping it possessively. “You could be pregnant already, you know.”

She stopped his hands. Her face was sad and—for just a moment—desperate. “That’s the worst thing that could happen to us.”

“Or the best.”

“Paris, stop,” Helen said firmly. “It hurts me to even think about it.”

Paris nodded and touched his forehead to hers. “And what if your foster father, the king of Sparta, tries to marry you to one of those Greek barbarians like Menelaus? How many kings are asking for your hand now? Is it ten or twenty?”

“I don’t care. I’ll refuse them all,” the other Helen said. Then she cracked a smile. “It’s not like anyone can force me.”

Paris laughed and stared into her eyes. “No. Although, I’d like to see one or two of them try. I wonder if Greeks smell better after they’ve been struck by lightning. They certainly couldn’t smell worse.”

“I wouldn’t kill anyone with my lightning,” she said with a chuckle, twining her arms around his neck and molding her body closer to his. “Maybe just singe them a bit.”

“Oh, then please don’t! Singed Greek sounds like it would smell far worse than fully cooked,” Paris said, his voice growing heavy as he smiled at her. Suddenly, the humor ran out of their shared gaze and sorrow replaced it. “How am I going to sail away without you in the morning?”

The other Helen had no answer. His lips found hers, and he threaded his fingers through her hair, tilting her head back and taking her weight as she gave herself up to him. Just like Lucas did.

Helen missed him so much she ached—even in her sleep. It hurt so much she woke up and rolled over, groaning as she accidentally put too much pressure on her healing bones.

“Helen?” Daphne asked softly, her voice inches away from Helen in the darkness. “Do you need anything?”

“No,” Helen replied, and let her swollen eyes drift shut again. The dream that greeted her made her wish she’d stayed awake, despite her injuries.

A terrified woman was struggling against a massive claw that was wrapped around her waist. Enormous wings, fringed with feathers each larger than a person, beat the air as the giant bird hauled her into the night sky. The skyline of New York City flashed past as the woman struggled.

Helen saw the bird tilt its beaked head to look down at the woman in its talons. For the briefest of moments, the menacing eye of the eagle rounded until it was shaped like a man’s. He had amber eyes. Blue lightning flashed in the black middle of his pupils. The eagle screamed, freezing Helen’s blood and sending shivers through her sleeping body.

The Empire State Building rose up in front of them, and then Helen saw no more.

Orion was screaming his brains out.

Helen shot up at the sound, shoved her mother aside, and started running. She charged down the dark hallway and halfway across the room, Lucas a blur at her side, before the two of them suddenly processed the situation and froze.

“What the hell?” Hector roared from the foldout bed that was set up next to Orion’s. He flipped on a light.

Orion was standing on his mattress, wearing a pair of brief shorts, pointing at a tiny, dark figure crouched in the narrow gap between the two beds. It was Cassandra, huddled on the hardwood floor with only a pillow and a thin blanket to sleep on.

“What are you doing down there?” several voices clamored at Cassandra. Castor, Pallas, and Daphne had come up behind Helen and Lucas in the doorway.

“You bit me!” Orion howled, still dancing on the bed, freaking out. Noel, Kate, and Claire, running at a human pace, arrived shortly and filled the room.

“I’m sorry!” Cassandra wailed. “But you stepped on me!”

“I thought you were a cat until I . . . I nearly took your head off! I could have killed you!” Orion raged back at her, oblivious to the large audience. “Don’t
ever
sneak up on me!”

Orion suddenly clutched his chest and bent double with pain. Hector jumped up to grab him before he fell down—but not before everyone saw. Orion had two fresh wounds on his chest and stomach from his fight with Automedon. They were an angry red, but healing fast and in a few days they would disappear completely and leave him unmarked. But what caught everyone’s attention wasn’t the new wounds, it was the long scars that marred his otherwise perfect physique.

One cut across his chest, and another was on his left thigh. As he slumped against Hector, his strength spent, they all saw the worst one on his back. Helen stared at the ghastly bone-white seam that ran parallel to his spine. It looked like someone had tried to hack him in two from the top down. She felt Lucas take her hand and she clung to it, squeezing back.

“Everyone out!” Hector barked when he noticed the shocked silence and the stares. Tilting his shoulders, he tried to hide Orion with his body. “You too, little pest,” he said softly to Cassandra, still crouched on the floor.

“No,” she protested. The thick, black braid that snaked down her back was coming undone in wild ruffles, and her face was a stubborn mask of alabaster skin, wild eyes, and bright red lips. “I’m staying here. He might need me.”

Hector nodded, giving Cassandra his reluctant assent, and folded Orion’s fainting body back into bed. “Get out,” he said over his shoulder to the rest of them, quietly this time. Everyone turned at once.

Passing through the doorway, Helen and Lucas leaned toward each other, both of them feeling their injuries again and needing support now that the adrenaline rush had passed. But instead of letting the two of them help each other, Pallas caught Lucas, and Daphne propped up Helen, pulling them apart.

“Did you know about those?” Lucas asked before they were led away in opposite directions.

“No. I’ve never seen him without his clothes on,” she answered, too shocked to be anything but blunt. She had seen Morpheus
as
Orion half-naked, she reminded herself, but not Orion himself. Lucas nodded, his face shadowed with concern.

“Back to bed, Helen,” her mother said sternly, and urged her to turn.

Helen let her mother lay her down next to Ariadne’s slack form. As she shut her eyes and tried to fall back asleep, she heard Noel and Castor speaking to each other in the next room. For a moment, Helen tried to block it out and give them some privacy, but the urgency of their voices wouldn’t allow even a mortal with normal hearing to ignore them.

“How did he get those scars, Caz?” Noel asked, her voice trembling. “I’ve never seen anything like it. And I’ve seen plenty
.
”

“The only way for a Scion to scar like that is for it to happen before he or she comes of age,” Castor said, trying to keep his voice down.

“But our boys fought all the time when they were little. Remember Jason’s javelin pinning Lucas to the
ceiling
that time? They don’t have one scar between the three of them,” Noel snapped, too upset to take Castor’s cue to be quiet.

“Our boys always had plenty of food and a clean place to heal after they beat each other up.”

“And Orion didn’t? Is that what you’re saying?” Noel’s voice broke.

“No. He probably didn’t.”

Helen heard the sound of rustling fabric, followed by deep sighs, like Castor was pulling Noel close against his chest.

“Those scars mean that Orion was very young when that was done to him. And afterward, he must have starved through his heal without anything to eat or drink or anyone to care for him. You’ve never seen those scars on a Scion before because most wouldn’t survive what it takes to get them.”

Helen gritted her teeth and turned her face into her pillow, knowing everyone on the top floor had heard the exchange between Noel and Castor. Her face got hot as she thought about how they were all probably judging Orion—pitying the abused and abandoned little boy that he once was.

He deserved better than that. He deserved love, not pity. Helen also knew that her mother was watching her while she tried, and failed, not to weep with pity for that little boy herself. She pulled the covers over her head.

Daphne let her cry herself back into a deep sleep.

Helen saw her other self getting kicked down a dusty street by an angry mob.

The other Helen’s dress was torn, covered in dirt, and smeared with stains from the rotten food that had been thrown at her. Blood leaked from a huge gash on her head, from her mouth, and from the heels of her hands where she had scuffed them on the ground as she fell repeatedly. The mob gathered around her, picking up stones from the side of the road as they closed in.

A blond man, twice her age and more than twice her size, ran forward to beat her with his fists—as if his anger needed a more immediate outlet than just hurling a stone. It seemed he had to use his own body to hurt her in order to feel satisfied.

“I loved you more than anyone! Your foster father gave you to me!” he screamed, half out of his mind as he hit her. His eyes bulged and spittle flew from his mouth in a white spray. “I will beat the child out of you and love you still!”

Helen could hear the mob murmuring, “Kill her, Menelaus!” and “She may carry the Tyrant! You must not try to spare her!”

The other Helen did not fight back or use her lightning to defend herself against Menelaus. Helen watched her other self get knocked down so many times she lost count, but each time the other Helen got back to her feet again. Helen could hear the thumping of his fists against her back and hear the man grunting with exertion, but the other Helen did not cry out or plead for him to stop. She made no sound at all, except for the huffing of her breath as it was knocked out of her lungs by the blows he dealt.

Helen knew what those fists felt like, she even knew what Menelaus smelled like as he beat her. She remembered it.

Finally, Menelaus fell to his knees, unable to beat her any longer. The other Helen was simply too strong to die by his hand, though it was clear to Helen that dying was what the other Helen had intended to do all along.