Matt’s phone went directly to voice mail. She tried Claire, Jason, Ariadne, and finally Lucas, but in every case she either got shunted directly to voice mail or the call was dropped entirely.
“No one’s answering?” Hector asked with growing alarm as call after call failed to connect.
“It’s the weirdest thing!” Helen huffed, and began typing an email. Hector reached out and prevented her, taking the phone and deleting the email.
“Helen, go home,” he said in a low, tense voice. He gave her back her phone, stood up, and began looking around in alarm. “Go home right now and descend.”
A lab table from the science department at Nantucket High came soaring through the front window of the store, shattering the glass and sending the displays tumbling across the floor. The rancid smell of Eris came wafting in after it. Helen fought off the urge to light something on fire, knowing that her emotions weren’t real and that she was being manipulated by a malevolent goddess. She heard customers scream in the back room and that snapped her out of her dangerous mood. She vaulted over the counter, but Hector held out an arm and stopped her from sprinting into the back.
“I’ll protect Kate and Jerry—from themselves if necessary. You descend,” he said in a firm but blessedly calm voice. Helen gave him a level look and nodded once to show she understood his orders.
“Don’t be a hero,” she ordered him back. “If the Hundred or your family comes, you run.”
“Hurry, Princess,” Hector said, and kissed her on the forehead. “We’re counting on you.”
Helen ran out of the News Store. Behind her, she heard Hector explaining to her father that she was going for the police. Avoiding the raucous mob, she darted down a dark alley where she couldn’t be seen and soared into the air. Flying under the blue tarp that still covered her window, Helen landed directly in bed, hoping she would eventually calm down enough to fall asleep.
Her feet slammed down hard between row after row of sterile, white flowers. It was the first time Helen could recall ever having a hard landing in the Underworld, and it was most likely because she had been so desperate to get there. Helen spun around in a circle and discovered that she was in the dreadful Fields of Asphodel. Thankfully, she was not alone. She hadn’t realized it until she saw Orion’s solid shape a few feet away, but she had been worried about him.
“Orion!” Helen said with relief. She ran the last few steps toward him through the tombstone blooms. He turned and caught her up in his arms with a worried frown.
“What’s the matter?” he said into her neck as he hugged her. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” she said, laughing a little at her overly emotional reaction but still clinging to him tightly. Finally, when she felt calm enough, she eased away and looked Orion in the eyes. “I have a lot to tell you.”
“And I want to hear it, but can you do something first? Say out loud that you don’t ever want anything to attack us again while we’re down here?” he asked expectantly.
“I don’t ever want anything to attack us again while we are down here!” Helen repeated emphatically. “Good thinking.”
“Thanks. I like your dress. But, you know what? I actually think you’d be warmer in those little shorts with the hissing cats. They covered more.”
Helen whirled on him with a shocked look on her face. She couldn’t believe he remembered seeing her in her pumpkin pajamas.
“You have no idea what happened to me this morning! I had to wear this,” she said defensively, trying not to blush.
“You look beautiful. Not that that’s anything new,” he said softly.
Helen stared at him, completely thrown, and then pulled her eyes away and stared at a boring asphodel flower like it was really interesting. She felt Orion move closer to her and told herself to relax. She hadn’t kissed Orion last night, she reminded herself. That was Morpheus as Orion. Big difference. And the real Orion didn’t even know anything about it, so there was no reason for her to feel shy around him. Except that she did. In her head, Helen heard Hector say that she could have a lot of fun with Orion if she wanted, and she lost her train of thought.
“Now, tell me what happened to you this morning,” he said, concern creasing his forehead.
Helen snapped back to reality and quickly recounted her accident, the student revolt that Eris had caused at school, Thanatos walking the streets of Manhattan, and the bedlam that erupted in the News Store right before she descended. Orion listened silently, clenching his jaw more and more tightly as Helen went on.
“Are you okay?” he asked in a controlled voice.
“Yeah, but I feel awful!” Helen blurted out. “I left Kate and my dad in the middle of a riot! How could I do that?”
“Hector won’t let anything happen to them,” Orion said with certainty. “He’ll guard them with his life.”
“I know he will, but in a way that’s even worse,” Helen said, almost pleadingly. “Orion, what if the Delos family comes to check up on me at the store and they find Hector?”
“You mean what if Lucas comes to check up on you and finds Hector. You’re not really worried about Jason or Ariadne,” he clarified, frustration edging his tone.
“The twins are different. Even before Hector became an Outcast, he and Lucas used to fight a lot, and sometimes it got really bad,” she said in a shaky voice. “It’s like they’ve always been headed toward something violent, and I keep thinking maybe it’s another one of these Scion cycles that’s doomed to happen.”
“Lucas and Hector are practically brothers, and brothers always fight,” Orion said, like it was obvious. “Not everything in our lives is part of a cycle.”
“I know. But the Furies! They won’t be able to stop themselves.”
“That’s why we’re down here. We have all the time we need now, and hopefully, we’ll take care of the Furies tonight,” he said. He made her stop and brushed her wrist with the tips of his fingers. It was a slight touch, almost nonexistent, but it commanded her attention.
“If I can even find them,” Helen admitted with a pleading look. “Orion. I have no idea where the Furies are.”
Orion leaned away from Helen and adjusted his backpack, assessing her.
“You’re just about to panic, aren’t you? Don’t.” He was deadly serious. “This is where you need to be, right here in the Underworld, not back in the real world fighting a hysterical mob. Any member of the Delos family can do that, but you’re the only one who can do this. Let’s get the water first and take it from there.”
He was right. They had to do what they could here in the Underworld or nothing back in the real world would ever get any better.
“Okay. Let’s do this.” She reached out and put her arms around Orion’s neck, and felt him lay his heavy hands on her hips. “I want us to appear by the banks of the River of Joy in the Elysian Fields,” she said in a clear, commanding voice.
Soft, sun-streaked light filtered down through a canopy of gigantic weeping willow trees. A lawn of thick, green, living grass cushioned their feet, and Helen could hear the sibilant rush of water over rocks nearby. Not too far off in the distance, Helen could see a large, open field of knee-high grass and pastel-colored wildflowers that served as little stars to the orbiting bees and butterflies.
There was no sun directly overhead. Instead, the light seemed to radiate from the air itself, creating the feel of different times of day in each area. The light in the stand of willow trees that shaded Helen and Orion appeared to be the ripe, long light of late afternoon, but in the meadow it was the light of early morning, still innocent and dewy.
Orion let go of her hips, but took up one of her hands, keeping it loosely clasped in his as he turned and looked around. A breeze played across his face and brushed his loose curls back from his forehead. Helen saw him turn his face directly into the gentle gust, close his eyes, and breathe in deeply. She copied him and found that the air was crisp and energizing, like it was full of oxygen. Helen could not recall
anything so basic ever feeling so pleasurable.
When she opened her eyes, Orion was staring at her with a tender look on his face. He touched the edge of her costume, shaking his head.
“You planned the wings for this, didn’t you?” he said playfully. Helen burst out laughing.
“Sorry, but I’m not that clever.”
“Uh-huh. Come on, Tinker Bell. I think I hear our brook babbling.” Orion led her toward the sound.
“How will we know if it’s the River of Joy?” she asked. Before she was done speaking she realized she already knew.
When they reached the banks of the crystal-clear water, Helen felt a giddy bubbling in her chest. She had to fight the urge to start dancing, wondered why she was fighting it, and gave in. She put her arms out and began to twirl around; Orion put his backpack on the ground.
He knelt down and unzipped the top and then stopped suddenly. He put a hand over his own chest and pressed down hard, like he was trying to push his heart back in where it belonged. Glancing up at her, Orion laughed silently, but to Helen it looked more like he wanted to cry. She stopped dancing and joined him.
“I’ve never felt this before,” he said, almost apologizing. “I didn’t think I ever could.”
“You didn’t think you could ever feel joy?”
Helen knelt across from him, staring at his overwhelmed face. Orion shook his head and swallowed, and then suddenly reached out with both arms and hugged Helen tightly.
“I get it now,” he whispered, and then released her as quickly as he had gathered her up. She didn’t know what it was that he “got,” but he didn’t give her a chance to ask. Handing Helen an empty canteen, Orion went over to the riverbank and dipped the other two he had taken out of his backpack into the sparkling river.
As soon as his fingers touched the water, tears as big as raindrops spilled down his face and his chest shuddered with a startled sob. Joining him at the water’s edge, Helen lowered her canteen beneath the surface and touched joy. It wasn’t the first time for her like it was for Orion, but after so much sadness and loss over the past several weeks, she cried as if it were.
When they’d filled their canteens, they both sealed them up. She didn’t even consider drinking the water, and she could tell from the unwavering way he screwed the caps onto the tops of his two canteens that Orion wasn’t considering it, either. Helen knew, deep in her heart, that if she took even one sip she would never leave this place. As it was, she felt a deep longing beginning to build, knowing that this perfect moment had almost passed. She wished could stay like this forever, dipping her fingers in the River of Joy.
“You’ll be back someday.”
Startled out of her reverie, Helen looked up at Orion and saw him smiling at her, extending a hand to help her up. The filtered light shone down on him and made a halo out of his hair. His green eyes were bright and fringed with eyelashes that were spiky and dark from crying. She slipped her waterlogged hand into his and stood next to him, still sniffling a little after the storm of ecstasy had passed.
“So will you,” she told him through a teary hiccup. He dropped his gaze.
“It was enough for me to experience it, even just once. I’ll never forget this, Helen. And I’ll never forget that you were the one who brought me here.”
“You really don’t think you’ll be back, do you?” Helen asked incredulously, watching Orion stow the canteens in his backpack.
He didn’t answer her.
“I’ll see you here again in about eight or nine decades,” she said resolutely. Orion laughed and threaded his arms through the straps of his bag with a wry smile.
“Eight or nine? You realize we’re Scions, right?” he said as he tugged on her hand and led her out into the morning meadow. “We’ve got notoriously short shelf lives.”
“We’ll be different,” she said. “Not just you and me, but our whole generation.”
“We’ll have to be,” Orion said quietly, tilting his head down in contemplation.
Helen glanced over at him, expecting to find that he had fallen into one of his brooding moods, but he hadn’t. He was smiling to himself with a look that Helen could only think of as hopeful. She smiled, too, happy to just walk through the meadow and hold hands with him. The happiness she felt wasn’t like the rapture of the river, but rapture would have been too much to bear for much longer. She realized it would have broken her heart if she’d stayed.
The farther they moved from the River of Joy, the more Helen’s head cleared. She looked down at one of her hands. It had been in the water so long it had grown wrinkled. How long had they been kneeling there?
With every step, she was more and more grateful that Orion had pulled her away. He had probably been as entranced as she had been. Yet somehow, he had controlled himself, and then found the extra strength to help her break away as well.
“How did you do that?” Helen asked quietly. “How did you pull yourself away from the water?”
“There’s something I want more,” he replied simply.
“What could anyone want more than endless joy?”
“Justice.” He turned to face Helen and took both of her hands firmly in his. “There are three innocent sisters who’ve suffered for eons, not because of anything they’ve done, but because the moment they were born, the Fates decided that suffering was their lot in life. That isn’t right. None of us deserve to be born into suffering, and I intend to stand up for those who have been. That’s more important to me than joy. Help me. You know where the Furies are—I know you do. Think, Helen.”
His spoke with such conviction, such passion, that Helen could only stare at him with her mouth hanging open. Her mind went absolutely blank for a few heartbeats, and then a small voice in her head started yelling at her, enumerating all the places where she came up short as a person.
She wasn’t as doggedly persistent as Claire was, or as patient as Matt. She didn’t have impeccable instincts like Hector, or even half of Lucas’s raw intelligence. She certainly wasn’t as generous as the twins or as compassionate and selfless as Orion. Helen was just Helen. She had no idea why she was the Descender, instead of one of these other, far worthier people.
How the hell had she even gotten the job and ended up here in the Underworld to begin with? she wondered. All she knew was that one night she had fallen asleep and found herself wandering through a desert.
A desert so dry, with rocks and thorns so sharp I left a trail of bloody footprints behind me as I walked, she remembered clearly. A desert with a single, tortured tree clinging to a hillside, and under that tree were three desperate sisters who looked ancient, and like little girls at the same time. They reached out to me, sobbing.
Helen gasped and gripped Orion’s hands tightly in hers. She had always known where to find the Furies. They had been begging her to help them from the very start.
“I want us to appear by the tree on the side of the hill in the dry lands,” she announced, looking directly into Orion’s surprised eyes.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lucas had hovered over the water and watched Helen soar away from him as she headed back toward the center of town. That dress and those damn wings had almost done him in. He wondered, not for the first time, how all the full mortals that Helen had grown up with didn’t suspect that there was something supernatural about her. No matter how down-to-earth she was on the inside, Helen’s beauty really was inhuman. Especially when she had held her arms out to him and said his name like she just had.
He’d almost lost it. And the thought of what he would have done if he had lost it turned his stomach, if only because he wanted it so badly. They were inches away from crossing a dangerous line, and unless she stopped tempting him in her maddeningly innocent way, Lucas knew it would happen eventually.
Lucas had lied to Helen. The truth was there were nights, more than just one, where he had ducked under that blue tarp covering her broken window and watched her sleep. He always felt bad after he did it, but
he couldn’t seem to stop. No matter how hard he tried to stay away from her, he would eventually end up in her room and hate himself for it later. Lucas knew that one of these days he was going to be too weak to walk away, and he was going to crawl into bed with her and to do more than just hold her. That’s why he had to make sure that if that day ever came, Helen would kick him right out again.
Lucas had tried everything else, even scaring her away, but nothing worked. Orion was their last chance. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and hoped that Orion would just do what he was good at. Lucas had asked Orion to make Helen stop loving him. Then she would never try to touch him again, never look at him again like she just had. Lucas tried to convince himself it was better if she moved on, even if that meant that she moved on to another guy. But here he stopped.
Helen couldn’t be with Orion, either—at least not forever. That was the only thing that was keeping Lucas from losing his mind. They could never have a life together. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t . . .
He abruptly shut off his thoughts before they could overpower him. Already the dark tendrils were swirling out of him, inking up the sky. He tried to calm down and not picture Orion and Helen together, because he could picture it—all too easily.
Even though Lucas had never laid eyes on Orion in person, he still had a pretty good idea what he looked like. He was a descendant of Adonis—Aphrodite’s all-time favorite lover. Because Aphrodite favored this one guy above all others, the House of Rome handed down close approximations of the Adonis archetype on a regular basis, much the same way the House of Thebes repeated the Hector archetype again and again. Half the paintings and sculptures that came out of the Renaissance looked like him, because the old masters like Caravaggio, Michelangelo, and Raphael had painted and sculpted Orion’s ancestors obsessively. Florence was literally littered with images of the sons of the House of Rome.