Goddess (3 page)

When the first stone struck her, she did not cower or try to cover herself. More stones followed, battering her from all sides, until the mob ran out of stones to throw. But still the other Helen did not die. Frightened now, the mob began to back away.

A sickened hush fell over the crowd as they watched the gruesome spectacle they had created. Still alive, the other Helen twitched and flailed amid the piled-up stones, her skin pulpy and ragged over her broken bones. She started humming softly to herself—a groaning tune sung in desperation to keep her mind off the unbearable pain she was in. She rocked back and forth, unsteady as a drunk. She was unable to find relief in any position, but she swayed as she hummed to comfort herself as best she could. Helen remembered the pain. She wished she didn’t.

The crowd began to whisper, “Behead her. It’s the only way. She won’t die unless we behead her.”

“Yes, get a sword,” the other Helen called out weakly, the words garbled in her ruined mouth. “I beg you.”

“Someone have mercy and kill her!” a woman shouted desperately, and the mob took up the cry. “A sword! We need a sword!”

A young man, hardly more than a boy, strode out of the crowd, tears streaming down his pale face at the sight of the other Helen. He unsheathed his sword, swung it high over his head, and brought it down on the gory mess at his feet.

A slender arm knocked the blade out of the way before it could strike.

A woman appeared, bathed in golden light, her shape changing repeatedly. She was young and old, fat and thin, dark skinned and fair. In an instant, she was every woman in the world, and all of them were beautiful. By choice, it seemed, her shape settled on one that looked very similar to Helen’s.

“My sister!” she screamed pathetically, scooping the injured girl up out of the rubble. Sobbing, Aphrodite cradled the other Helen in her arms, wiping blood from her face with her shimmering veil.

The crowd shrank back as the goddess wept, their emotions captured by her magic. Helen could see their faces turning into masks of sorrow as their hearts broke along with Aphrodite’s.

“Let me go,” the other Helen begged the goddess.

“Never,” Aphrodite vowed. “I would rather see a city burn to the ground than lose you.” The other Helen tried to argue, but Aphrodite quieted her and stood up, cradling her close, as she would a baby.

The goddess of love faced the mob, glaring at them. Her eyes and mouth glowed as she cursed them all in a thunderous voice:

“I abandon this place. No man shall feel desire, and no woman shall bear fruit. You will all die unloved and childless.”

Helen heard the pleas of the crowd beneath her as she felt herself soaring up into the air along with the goddess. They were tentative, confused at first. Soon the pleas turned into wailing, as the crowd understood how dark their futures had become with a few words from an angry goddess. Aphrodite flew out over the water with her beloved sister in her arms, leaving the cursed place behind.

Far out on the horizon was the mast of a great ship—a Trojan ship, Helen remembered. The goddess flew straight to it, carrying both of the Helens with her.

Matt looked out at the dark horizon. The wind off the water was cold, and the sky was so full of stars that it looked like a city dangling upside down in midair. He’d just survived the longest two days of his life, but Matt wasn’t tired. Not physically, anyway. His muscles didn’t ache, and his legs didn’t drag. In fact, he’d never felt better in his life.

Matt looked down at the ancient dagger in his hand. It was made of bronze, and even though it was mind-bogglingly old, it was still razor sharp and balanced perfectly from tang to hilt. Matt held the pretty thing across his palm and watched it settle into the muscles of his hand like one was made for the other.
But which for which,
he thought bitterly.

Zach’s blood had been washed off the edges, but Matt still imagined he could see it. Someone Matt had known his whole life had died with this dagger in his heart before bequeathing it to Matt. But long ago it had belonged to another, much more famous master.

The Greeks believed that a hero’s soul was in his armor.
The Iliad
and
The Odyssey
told of warriors who had fought to the death over armor. Some had even dishonored themselves to get their hands on the swords and breastplates of the greatest heroes in order to absorb that hero’s soul and skill. Ajax the Greater, one of the most revered fighters on the Greek side of the Trojan War, had gone on a rampage to possess Hector’s armor. When Ajax woke from his madness, he was so horrified with how he’d tarnished his good name that he fell on his own sword and killed himself. Matt had always puzzled over that part in
The Iliad
. He would never have fought over armor, not even if it meant he could become the greatest warrior the world had ever known. He wasn’t interested in glory.

Matt tossed the dagger as far out into the churning water as he could. It flew, end over end, for a very long time. He watched it moving away from him impossibly far and fast. Many seconds later, Matt could hear the faint splashing noise the dagger made when it hit the water, despite the roar of the surf.

It was humanly impossible to throw anything that far, and doubly so to hear it splash down. Matt had always relied on logic to solve his problems, and logic was telling him something so unbelievable that logic no longer applied.

He had secretly wished for this. But not
like
this. Not if this was the role he was meant to play. Matt didn’t even understand. . . . Why him? He’d learned to fight because he wanted to help his friends, not because he wanted to hurt anyone. Matt had only ever wanted to protect people who couldn’t protect themselves. He was not a killer. He was nothing like the first man to ever own the dagger.

A wave turned over at Matt’s feet, leaving something bright and glittery behind on the sand. He didn’t have to pick it up to know what it was. Three times he had tossed the dagger out into the ocean, and three times it had returned to him impossibly fast.

The Fates had their eyes on him now, and there was nowhere for Matt to hide.

The ship had square, white sails. Above them, snapping in the wind and hanging from the tallest mast, was a red triangular pennant embossed with a golden sun. Row after row of oars stuck out from the sides of the ship. Even from the air, Helen could hear the rhythmic thumping of a kettledrum, sounding out the tempo of the strokes.

The water was not the brooding navy blue of the Atlantic but a clear, startling blue—the same jewel-blue as Lucas’s eyes.
Azure,
Helen thought. Still clinging to consciousness, the other Helen moaned in Aphrodite’s arms as the goddess brought her down to the ship’s deck.

As Aphrodite landed, frightened voices cried out. From the place of command behind the tiller, a large man stepped forward. Helen knew him instantly.

Hector. He looked exactly the same, except for his hair and the style of dress. This Hector kept his hair longer than the one Helen knew in Nantucket, and he wore a brief linen garment tied around his waist with a leather belt. Leather straps were wrapped around his hands, and a thick, gold ornament encircled his neck. Even half-naked he looked like royalty.

“Aeneas,” Hector called over his shoulder as he stared down disbelievingly at the bloody mess in Aphrodite’s arms. A carbon copy of Orion, minus the disfiguring scar across his bare chest and back, stepped forward and stood at attention at Hector’s right shoulder. “Go below and wake my brothers.”

“Hurry, my son,” Aphrodite whispered to Aeneas. “And bring honey.” He nodded respectfully to his mother and strode off, but his gaze stayed on the other Helen as he moved past. His face was drawn with sadness.

“Water!” Hector barked, and many feet marched off at once to obey him. Half a moment later, Paris ran up from belowdecks, with Jason one step behind. Like the other ancient versions of the men she knew, Jason looked exactly the same, apart from the clothes he wore.

A strange, choked-off cry burst out of Paris when he realized what he was looking at, and he ran to the other Helen on unsteady legs. His hands shook as he took her from Aphrodite, his face blanching under his deep tan.

“Troilus,” Hector said to Jason, indicating with his chin for his youngest brother to take the bucket of water that had just arrived. The other Helen pushed weakly at Paris’ chest when he tried to bring water to her lips.

“What happened, Lady?” Troilus asked Aphrodite when it was clear that Paris wouldn’t, or couldn’t, speak.

“Menelaus and his city turned on her when they found out about the baby,” the goddess said simply.

Paris’ head snapped up, his face frozen with disbelief. Hector and Aeneas shared a brief, desperate look and then both glanced down at Paris.

“Did you know, brother?” Hector asked gently.

“I hoped,” he admitted, his voice hushed with emotion. “She lied to me.”

All the men but Paris nodded, like they could understand Helen’s choice.

“The Tyrant.” Aeneas barely whispered the word, but it was obvious they were all thinking it. “Mother. How did Menelaus find out that Helen was pregnant?”

Aphrodite tenderly brushed her fingertips across her half sister’s shoulder. “Helen waited for your ship to clear the horizon and then she told Menelaus herself.”

Paris started shaking all over. “Why?” he asked the other Helen, his voice high with the effort to hold back tears. The other Helen ran her bloody hand across Paris’ chest, trying to soothe him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and put her hand on her belly. “I tried, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill us myself.”

Troilus leaned against his brother, propping him up, as they all regarded Helen with a mixture of awe and dismay.

“Don’t mourn, Paris. Your baby lives,” Aphrodite said. “She will grow to look just like our beautiful Helen, and her daughter will grow to look just like her mother—and so on and so on for as long as the line lasts. I have seen to it, so that even after my half-mortal sister is gone, I may always look upon the face that I love best in this world.”

The golden glow of the goddess brightened, and she regarded the men of Troy one at a time, her voice taking on the timber of quiet thunder rolling in the distance.

“You must all swear to me that you will protect my sister and her child. If Helen and her line of daughters die, there will be nothing on Earth for me to love,” she said, her eyes falling apologetically on her son, Aeneas, for a moment before they hardened against him. He dropped his head with a wounded look, and Aphrodite turned to Hector. “As long as my sister and her line of daughters lasts, there will be love in the world. I swear it on the River Styx. But if you let my sister die, Hector of Troy, son of Apollo, I will leave this world and take
love
itself
away with me.”

Hector’s eyes closed for a moment as the enormity of the goddess’s decree sank in. When he opened them again the look he gave was one of defeat. What choice did they have? He glanced around at his brothers and at Aeneas, all of them silently agreeing that they could not say no, despite the consequences that were sure to follow.

“We swear it, Lady,” Hector said heavily.

“No, sister. Don’t. Menelaus and Agamemnon have sworn a pact with the other Greek kings. They will come to Troy with all their armies,” the other Helen moaned urgently.

“Yes, they will. And we will fight them,” Paris said darkly, as if he were already facing the warships that would inevitably sail to their shores. He lifted her up, and she struggled lamely in his arms.

“Drop me over the side and let me drown,” she pleaded. “Please. End this before it begins.”

Paris didn’t answer her. Holding her up high in his arms to keep her close, he carried her belowdecks to his bunk. The other Helen finally lost consciousness, and Helen’s visit to this terrible dream or vision or whatever it was ended abruptly as she fell back into a natural sleep.

TWO

A
ndy glared at the metronome on top of the organ she was playing and willed it to explode. It didn’t. She took a deep breath, waited a measure, and dove back into Bach. Ten swings of the metronome’s pendulum later and she was growling through her gritted teeth and shaking her fists in the air rather than pounding them on the keys. Abusing instruments was an unforgivable offense in Andy’s mind. But metronomes, on the other hand . . .

“You’re lucky you’re an antique,” she told it, just to let it know how close it had come to a splintery end. She emptied her mind and started again.

This time she let Bach do the work, and for several measures she found the art inside the complicated math of the fugue.

Bliss. Right up until she was interrupted by the ding of an egg timer. Andy’s fingers slid off the keys with the deafeningly loud blarting noise that only a giant, hundred-year-old organ could muster.

“Really?” Andy said to the heavenly glow of the Tiffany window that reached high above her head. Even the beauty of the patchwork colors, warming her face like a bright quilt made out of light, was not enough to calm her. Just when she was getting it, she had to stop.

She repressed the urge to swear in church and looked at her watch. It was 8:00 a.m. already. Drat. Her rehearsal time was over, and she had to hoof it in order to make it to her first class.

It was freezing cold. Outside, the sun was just starting to peek up over the far edge of campus. Andy hunkered down into the boxy layers of flannel and wool she used to conceal her stunning figure and made her way through the frost-stiffened scrub of her “shortcut.” Truth be told, it was a long cut. What mattered was that it was off the path and farthest away from everyone else. Andy wasn’t looking for friends at school. She liked her solitude. Actually, that wasn’t quite true. She hated her solitude, but she trusted it more than she trusted people.

“I saw you playing,” said a young man with a musical voice.

Andy screamed and whirled around. She saw a tall, beautiful youth crowned with golden curls. The edges of him twinkled in the thin sunlight of the chilly November morning.

“What are you doing here?” Andy said calmly. She blinked her sun-dazzled eyes and glanced around for another person. Wellesley College was an all-girls’ school in the most blue-blooded, upper-crusty, and thoroughly traditional area of Massachusetts. Unless this boy was a professor or a security guard, he was not allowed this deep into the campus without a visitor’s badge.

“You’re very talented,” he said, moving toward her.

“You said you saw me, huh?” Andy took a step back, not liking this situation. “How could you see me in the chapel? I was alone.”

He laughed, his voice dancing around the notes like a wind chime. “I wasn’t in the chapel, of course. I saw you through that big window.”

“You saw me through a
stained-glass
window? How’d you pull that off?”

“I could find someone as beautiful as you no matter where you hide. You’re so radiant, I bet you even glow in the dark.”

The way he said it didn’t sound phony. He wasn’t leering or rude in any way, but he was still moving toward her, even though she obviously didn’t want him to. When he got closer, Andy saw something wrong in his eyes—something distinctly animal and not human at all. She remembered the sunlight hitting her face through the stained-glass window and figured out how he’d seen her. She knew who, or rather, what, she was dealing with now. Andy backed away quickly, her breath starting to rasp with real fear.

“Are you going to run from me?” the youth asked poignantly, like this had happened to him many times before.

“Would you chase me?” she asked, adding to her voice the seductive, hypnotic edge that could drive mortal men to their death. She needed to stall for time, maybe get him to follow her back to the path. There was sure to be someone up there to help her.

“Of course I would,” he said, his eyes smoldering and his voice low. He was aroused, but not hypnotized—unfortunately for Andy. “Only the ones who run are worth catching.”

Doesn’t it figure?
she thought with that desperate hilarity that only happens in the most hopeless circumstances.
I spend my whole life deathly afraid of tempting a boy, and I end up getting jumped by one at an all-girls’ school.

The light sparked off him again, catching his edges and making him look more real than real, like he existed in 4-D. Andy knew this was no trick of the rising autumn sun. She also knew this was no boy. Her mother had warned her of the possibility of something like this, but Andy had never thought it would come to pass.

“Hey, Andy!” called an intensely chipper girl Andy had met over a month ago at freshman orientation and avoided ever since. She eyed Andy and the boy uncertainly. The noisy cluster of girls behind her went silent when they saw that Andy was with a boy. “Are you coming to class?”

“Hi . . . Susan!” Andy yelled back frantically, remembering the girl’s name at the last moment. “I want to go with you!”

The beautiful youth smiled sadly at Andy as the chattering knot of young women moved closer to collect her. Then he turned and ran off toward Lake Waban.

“Where did your friend go?” Susan asked, perplexed.

“He’s not my friend,” Andy said, grasping at Susan’s mitten-covered hand with relief. “We need to go to campus security
right now
.”

“I can describe him!” squealed a girl in Susan’s posse who had shiny black hair and cinnamon skin. She told the security guard, “He must have been freezing because he was only wearing jeans and a tight T-shirt!”

“He had curly blond hair, and he was really tan. Like a Malibu surfer boy,” a chubby girl with stick-straight, blonde hair blurted out, like she couldn’t contain her exuberance.

“He had really smooth skin, too. Like a dolphin!” tittered the cinnamon girl back to the blonde girl, and the two of them fell in a fit of snickers, drooling over Andy’s almost-rapist.

Andy dropped her face into her hand and rubbed her eyes while she listened to more of the same from the rest of the witnesses—or “groupies” as she was beginning to think of them. She reminded herself that they couldn’t help their response. They were only human.

After spending the next two hours with security, relating the entire experience, and walking the guards to the exact spot where she had been accosted, Andy had gratefully accepted a new fob for her key chain. She had an official stalker, one who had made it onto the campus, without a pass no less, and the guards were not about to let her wander around without taking a few precautions. The fob was a panic button that would bring them to her in an instant. If she even caught sight of the boy again, she was to summon them. Andy wondered if she would really press it and endanger them all, or if she would face him alone.

Although Susan and her gaggle had stepped up and corroborated Andy’s story, they all did so with a touch of confusion. Andy had reported word for word what the boy had said to her, and any one of them would have given her eyeteeth to have the same things said to them by such a hottie.

Andy couldn’t explain that this wasn’t romance. Men had always said things like that to her, but it had nothing to do with love. She went to all-girl Catholic schools her entire life and had run away from every man who’d pursued her, but that didn’t stop them from chasing. She’d run away from the girls who had pursued her, too, and there had been plenty of those. After that horrendous experience in seventh grade when her best friend had tried to kiss her in front of Sister Mary Francis’s history class, she’d never even allowed herself to have girl friends.

Andy stayed away from people as a rule. It was for their own good. Her kind were too dangerous for mortals to be around.

Somehow, after several classes, she managed to get rid of Susan and her entourage. Susan had looked at her with a mixture of worry and longing when Andy made it quite clear that she was ditching them. Andy felt bad about it. Susan was pretty and popular and seemed like a genuinely good person. That was exactly why Andy had to nip this relationship in the bud. She didn’t want to hurt someone as awesome as Susan just so she could have a friend. Susan deserved better than that.

It was after 9:00 p.m. when Andy’s astronomy class ended, and she made her way past Paramecium Pond to her dorm. Her nose itched. She took her hand out of her pocket, letting go of the fob for just a moment, and felt thick, muscular arms grip across her chest from behind.

“Run,” he whispered in her ear. “I love to chase.”

Helen dreamed of dolphins, but this was no happy little dream about visiting SeaWorld. The dolphin Helen saw did not do flips or tricks. The dolphin in the dream was hunting a girl about Helen’s age. The girl tried to swim away from it, but the dolphin kept pushing her down beneath the surface, hitting her with its flippers and tail until she bled.

The girl swam for a buoy, bobbing out in the middle of nowhere, gasping and crying as she struggled through the waves. The dolphin attacked, but this time, instead of flippers, a man’s arms wrapped around the girl and squeezed.

Helen’s eyes snapped open and she gasped for air, feeling like a vise had clamped down on her chest. She awoke to darkness.

How many days had she been fading in and out? she wondered. She remembered her mother cleaning off the worst of the blood and dirt with a wet sponge, Kate spoon-feeding her soup, and Claire dividing an orange between her and a puce-colored Ariadne. She remembered Orion’s scars, and her heart squeezed painfully for him all over again.

Helen remembered other things, too—things that had never happened to her, like tying a toga (
Chiton
, she remembered.
The Greeks wore chitons, and the Romans wore togas
) and carding wool. Helen Hamilton was damn sure she’d never tied a chiton or carded wool in her entire life, but she
remembered
doing both.

Those “visions” of Helen of Troy always felt like memories, and now that she was fully awake, Helen was pretty sure that’s exactly what they were. But how could she remember someone else’s memories? It was impossible. And considering how horrible these borrowed memories were, what Helen really wanted to know was how she could make them stop.

“Lennie?” whispered Claire, somewhere by Helen’s feet.

Helen looked down and saw Claire poking her head up over the back of the fainting couch that Ariadne had at the foot of the bed. Usually, Ariadne just threw her clothes over it, so Helen thought of it more as a place to pile outfits than something to sit on.

“Are you awake for real or just visiting for a sec?” Claire asked. Even in the bleached predawn light coming through the window, Helen could see the worry in Claire’s eyes.

“I’m awake, Gig.” Helen sat up painfully. “How long have I been out?”

“About two days.”

That was it? To Helen, it felt like weeks. She looked over at Ariadne, still sleeping. “Is she going to be okay?” Helen asked.

“Yeah,” Claire answered, sitting all the way up. “She and Jason are going to be fine.”

“Orion? Lucas?”

“They’re all right—beat up, but getting better.” Claire looked away, and her brow furrowed.

“My dad?”

“He’s been awake a couple of times, but only for a few seconds. Ari and Jason are doing their best.”

That wasn’t the response Helen had been hoping for. She nodded and swallowed the lump in her throat. Her father wasn’t a Scion, and he’d come closer to death than any of them. It was going to take him a lot longer to recover. Helen pushed the thought that he might never fully recover out of her mind and looked at Claire.

“How are you?” Helen asked, seeing the sad look on her best friend’s face.

“Wicked tired. You?”

“Starving.” Helen swung her legs out of bed, and Claire got up to help her. The two friends wobbled downstairs together to raid the refrigerator. Even though Helen knew she had to eat as much as she could shove down in order to help her body rebuild itself while she healed, she couldn’t take her eyes off Claire.

“What is it, Gig?” Helen asked quietly after swallowing only a bite or two of chicken noodle soup. “Is it Jason?”

“It’s all of you. Everyone got hurt this time. And I know that this isn’t the end of it,” Claire answered, still uncharacteristically sad. “There’s a war coming, isn’t there?”

Helen put her spoon down. “I don’t know, but the gods are free to leave Olympus and come to Earth again. Because of me.”

“It’s not your fault,” Claire began defensively. “You got tricked.”

“So? Tricked or not, I failed,” Helen said in a matter-of-fact way. “I let Ares corner me, even though I’d been warned that something was going to happen.”

She felt horrible, but she knew she couldn’t allow herself to wallow in guilt, so she kept the self-pity out of her voice. The Underworld had taught her that indulging in negativity, no matter how justified, would never solve any of her problems. She filed that revelation away for some other conversation with Hades and got back on topic. “Have the gods appeared anywhere yet? Have they done anything?”

The image of a big, beautiful stallion running down a beach flashed in Helen’s head. There was blood on his forelegs. The image made her shudder with revulsion.

“We haven’t heard anything,” Claire said with a shrug. “At least, no wrath-of-the-gods stuff.”

“What has Cassandra foreseen?”

“Nothing. She hasn’t made any prophecies at all since the three of you were brought back here.”

Helen pursed her lips together, lost in thought. Just when the Scions needed an Oracle the most, of course, she’d be silent. That’s the way Greek drama worked. Still, it bothered Helen. Greek or not, there still had to be a
reason
Cassandra couldn’t see the future. “Because it’s ironic” just wasn’t a good enough answer for Helen anymore.

“Len?” Claire asked, her voice a frightened whisper. “Can you stop the gods?”

“I don’t know, Gig.” Helen looked over at her best friend. Claire was pale with fear and lack of sleep. “But if any of them try to hurt any of us, I’ll fight them with everything I’ve got.”