Goddess (4 page)

Claire smiled, finally relaxing a little. “Eat your soup,” she admonished suddenly, like it just occurred to her.

Helen snickered and obeyed. She knew this was Claire’s way of reassuming her usual role as the boss, and she dutifully reached for her spoon while she thought about the gods. They might not be smiting any mountaintops just yet, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t out and about. After thousands of years in a prison, they had to be back on Earth, but where were they? The Scions were weak and scattered. If the gods wanted to fight them, now would be the time to strike. What were they waiting for? Helen took a few sips of soup before noticing Claire’s wide eyes.

“What is it?” Helen asked around her food.

“You never picked up your spoon,” Claire responded, her eyes unblinking as she stared at Helen’s hand. “You held out your hand, and it just
flew
to you.”

Helen looked at the spoon and tried to remember picking it up. She remembered reaching for it, but that was it. She put the spoon down and held her hand over it. Nothing happened.

“I think you need to go back to bed, Gig,” Helen said with a dubious smile.

“Yeah. Maybe you’re right,” Claire said, but she didn’t look convinced.

When Helen finished her large breakfast, Claire helped her back upstairs and into the shower. While Helen scrubbed away the last of the blood and dirt, Claire sat on top of the sink rubbing lotion absentmindedly on her legs and feet, keeping herself handy in case Helen got woozy.

“Are you sure you don’t need help?” Claire asked for the tenth time.

“I’m sure.” Helen laughed as she toweled off. “Honestly, I feel pretty good.”

“You really are the strongest, aren’t you?”

Helen looked away. Although she and Claire had showered together after track meets a million times and were not the least bit shy around each other, Helen suddenly felt naked. She didn’t like Claire thinking she was some kind of . . . well, demigod. They were more than best friends. They were sisters, really, and Helen hated to be reminded that there was anything unequal about them.

“What makes you say that?” she asked in a tense voice. Claire pursed her lips.

“You should see the guys as soon as you’re done.”

“My dad first,” Helen said with a definitive nod.

Claire helped Helen dress and then let Helen lean on her as they made their way down the hallway. The door was open so she could see Jerry lying in bed, and Kate sitting up in a chair next to him. Both of them were fast asleep. Jerry was so thin and wan that Helen didn’t want to believe it was her dad. She had to remind herself that she should be grateful, but it was difficult to feel anything but fear when he looked so ill.

They walked a few paces down to Hector’s room. Helen could hear deep, male voices behind the door. It sounded like all the guys were in there. They knocked and went in to find that Hector had moved Jason and Lucas in with Orion.

Helen had another vision or memory, or whatever it was. All the men were bunking together in a tent at the middle of a large, dusty camp—the siege camp just beneath the great wall of Troy. She shook her head, and the vision cleared.

“Aren’t you all a little old for a pajama party?” Claire teased.

The guys laughed gingerly at Claire’s joke.

“I got sick of running up and down the hall to check on them, so I just carried all the beds in here,” Hector admitted sheepishly.

Hector the Protector,
Helen thought.
He could never bear to be away from any of his men when they were injured—whether they were indispensable generals like Aeneas, or simple foot soldiers. That’s why every man in his army loved him and followed him to certain death.

Helen shook her head and tried to blink away the unwanted memories. They weren’t even
hers
.

“I can’t believe you’re walking,” Orion said to Helen. She could see that despite the adrenaline-fueled burst of energy when Orion woke them with his scream, he and Lucas were still bedridden. They were nowhere near as far along in their healing as she was, and Jason was completely wrung out from saving Jerry. The three of them could barely sit up without wincing in pain, let alone stand.

“Just trying to stick it to you guys. Make you look bad,” Helen joked, trying to hide how worried she was about them all.

Claire went to Jason, and Helen automatically went to sit on the edge of Lucas’s bed. She realized what she was doing at the last minute and changed direction to join Orion. Lucas watched her, a tight expression on his face to hide his feelings. Helen swallowed and forced herself to avoid his eyes. In this life they were cousins, she reminded herself, regardless of what she’d seen in her dreams.

She took Orion’s hand and felt better. He smiled tenderly at her, and her heart tingled. She
did
love Orion, she thought as she swelled with pleasant warmth. So what if it wasn’t the dizzy rush that she felt around Lucas? Maybe “dizzy” wasn’t the best way to go through life, anyway.

“What are you all talking about?” Helen asked lightly, trying to tell herself that it would get easier someday to see Lucas wearing the blank look he adopted as he watched her hold Orion’s hand. For a moment, Helen thought she saw a toxic, acid-green color flashing underneath Lucas’s skin. She blinked and looked away, hoping her eyesight wasn’t totally messed up because of her damaged eye.

“We were talking strategy. The Scions need a plan, fast,” Hector replied, his face hardening. “We’re weak. Divided. This is the time to strike against us.”

Helen breathed a mirthless laugh. “I was just thinking the same thing.” Hector looked at her approvingly, and Helen considered the possibility that he might have made a soldier out of her after all.

“But we haven’t heard anything. As far as we know, the gods are still on Olympus,” Claire said, frowning with worry. Jason pulled her closer to him.

“Matt found some things. He’s coming now to explain,” he told her. Jason looked at his brother. “Where is he, anyway?”

“With Ariadne,” Hector replied, testily at first, and then his tone changed. “He checks on her about a dozen times a day.”

“It’s not a dozen times,” Matt protested as he came through the door, propping up Ariadne with one hand and carrying his iPad in the other. “Ten. Tops.”

Helen nearly did a double take when she saw Matt. She’d watched her friend get stronger over the past few months. She’d even noticed that he was turning into quite the piece of man-candy, though the thought of Matt as a love interest was icky to her. But this was different. He looked electric.

“How’re you feeling, little sis?” Hector asked Ariadne, but his eyes ticked up and down Matt, sizing him up. Whatever had changed, Hector saw it, too, Helen was sure of that.

“Ugh,” she groaned comically as she plopped down next her big brother. “Like cud.”

“Cud?” Orion asked like he must have heard her wrong.

“Chewed, swallowed, barfed, and rechewed,” she told him with a grin.

“How are you?” Matt asked Helen while everyone laughed at Ariadne’s gross analogy. And suddenly he was just Matt again, her old pal, and there was nothing strange about him at all.

“I’m all right,” she said, patting the hand that he laid on her arm.

“You sure?” he pressed, looking deeper into her damaged eye. Helen remembered that her confrontation with Ares had left a blue scar running down the iris of her right eye. She was told it looked like lightning, but she hadn’t seen it yet. There had been more important things for her to do than look in a mirror.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, and then she grinned. “I’d be better if I could get Ari to stop kicking in her sleep.”

“Hey, at least I don’t snore,” Ariadne joked back with Helen.

“You
both
snore,” Claire chimed in, grinning. “It’s like rooming with a couple of dudes.”

They all got a laugh in at Helen’s and Ariadne’s expense. Helen was struck by how happy they all were just to be together—safe and comfortable in each other’s company as if they’d hung out like this a thousand times. But none of them could ignore why they were there for very long, and the easy feeling quickly dissipated.

“So what’ve you found out about the gods, Matt?” Orion asked, sensitive as always to the subtle shift in mood. “Have you heard anything?”

“Yeah. There have been some . . . attacks,” Matt said reluctantly.

“What does that mean?” Claire asked.

Matt tapped his iPad and started flicking through newspaper headlines, and everyone crowded together.

“Two days ago, a woman in New York City was found on top of the Empire State Building gored to death by what looked like giant talons. And this morning, a girl’s body was found trampled to death by a horse on a Cape Cod beach. Both women had been raped before they were killed.”

Hector took the iPad and looked at it. “This is a tabloid headline,” he said dubiously. “It says that the witnesses in New York claimed to have seen a woman getting carried off by a giant bird.”

“Eagle. It was an eagle,” Helen said softly, repressing a shiver. Everyone stared at her for a moment, expecting an explanation. “It’s just a hunch, but I’ve been having strange dreams and weird
flashes
,
I guess you’d call them,” she admitted with a shrug, trying to downplay the full-blown memories she’d been experiencing until she understood them a bit better.

“When did they start?” Lucas asked, concerned. Helen scrunched up her face, trying to think back to the first time she saw him and the other guys in armor.

“Halloween,” she said, realizing it as she spoke. She looked at Orion. “Remember how I forgot everything for a second there after touching the water from that river?” she asked. She avoided saying the name of the River Lethe almost superstitiously, just in case it made her forget everything all over again.

“Uh-huh,” Orion replied with a small smile. Helen smiled nervously back at him, remembering how they had jumped on each other as soon as they forgot who they were. By the warm look he was giving her, Helen was sure he was remembering that as well. Then his face darkened. “You couldn’t even remember your own name for a bit. That was bad.”

“Well, when I did remember again, it was like there was too much in my head or something.” Helen sighed with frustration. “I can’t explain it yet, but now I’m getting all these weird images when I dream.”

“And one of them was of an eagle?” Matt asked.

“Yeah. Why? What are you thinking, Matt?” Helen asked, gesturing to his iPad and the articles about the murdered girls.

“I know this looks like tabloid nonsense, but Greek myths talk about women being carried off by gods disguised as animals all the time. I think the eagle is Zeus and the horse is Poseidon,” Matt said.

“Matt, I can turn into a horse,” Orion said with an apologetic look. “Everyone in the House of Athens can.”

“Get the hell out,” Helen said, whirling on Orion with wide eyes.

“What? I can turn into a dolphin,” Jason said like he was telling them the time.

“Shut up!” Claire and Helen shrieked in unison. Jason laughed.

“Some Scions can shape-shift into their god’s animal avatars,” Hector said, giving Helen a weird look. “How can you not know this?”

“Nobody told me, and I’ve never been able to do it!” Helen shouted back. She rounded on Orion again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s not like it’s useful or anything,” he said with a shrug. “Think about it. How many horses do you see trotting around town these days?”

“Yeah.” Jason chuckled. “And then when you change back, you’re buck naked. Try explaining that one. It’s crazy fun to be an animal, don’t get me wrong, but it’s rarely practical.”

“Yeah, but . . . ,” Claire sputtered. “Oh my god!”

“This is so unfair. I get all the miserable talents like descending and having freaky dreams, and you get to turn into a dolphin.” Helen pouted, throwing a pillow at Jason.

“Okay, okay,” Matt interjected, holding up his hands to get everyone back on target. “But how many Scions can turn into an eagle large enough to carry off a woman?”

“None.” Hector cocked his head to the side. “Okay, Matt. What do you think is going on?”

“I think the gods are doing exactly what they used to do before they were locked up on Olympus—running around and raping mortal women. But this time, they aren’t leaving their victims alive.”

“Huh.” Hector chuffed. “They aren’t taking any chances.”

“No. Not this time,” Matt replied.

“What do you mean?” Ariadne asked.

“In every single one of the stories about a god appearing to a woman as a bull or a swan or a shower of gold, nine months later a Scion was born,” Hector said, spreading his hands to indicate all of them. “It’s like they never miss.”

Lucas tactfully ignored Hector’s off-color comment and looked at Helen. “What else have you seen in these flashes?”

“What other animals, you mean?” Helen said haltingly. She’d very nearly blurted out, “I keep seeing
us
, and we’re married!” but stopped herself just in time.

Lucas narrowed his eyes at her, sensing Helen’s odd fumble, and opened his mouth to begin what she was sure would be an embarrassing interrogation.

“I’ve seen an eagle, a dolphin, and a stallion,” she continued before he could start. Knowing Lucas the way she did, Helen was certain that she had only delayed his questions. He wouldn’t forget, and since he was a Falsefinder she had the choice of either telling the truth or staying silent. Lying to Lucas was not an option—which was a giant pain in the butt.

“And the dolphin is
Apollo
, right?” Claire asked sharply, looking up from the iPad.

“The dolphin, the wolf, the mouse, and the crow were all Apollo’s animal avatars,” Ariadne answered.

Claire showed them the article she’d been reading about a strange attack at Wellesley College. They all leaned their heads together to read. A girl, whose name was left out of the paper, had been terribly injured by a young blond man the previous night. She fought off his savage attack long enough for campus security to respond to the silent alarm she managed to activate. The young man got away under “suspicious” circumstances. The Wellesley police were looking for leads from the public. They considered her attacker extremely dangerous.