“We’ll get you more,” he promised, but the leader shook her head.
“As much as I want to feel that again, I’m afraid it will never last,” she said sadly. “We cannot repay this gift, but we wish to give you something in return for the few blessed moments you gave us.”
“A gift for a gift that we’ll remember forever,” moaned the whiny one.
“We release the both of you from all of your blood debts,” the leader said, and waved her hand in the air in blessing. “We will never torment either of you again.”
She stepped back and joined her sisters, then the three of them began to retreat into the shadows of their tree.
“Wait! Don’t give up yet,” Orion pleaded. “Maybe we didn’t bring you enough. If we get you more . . .”
“Orion, don’t,” Helen said, putting her hand on his arm to stop him from chasing after them. “They’re right. We could spend forever bringing them water, but in the long run joy is just an experience—it’s not supposed to last. I see that now. Persephone must have meant a different river.”
“And what if she didn’t?” Orion asked, frustration cracking his voice. “What if this is our best hope at helping them?”
Helen stared up into his bright green eyes and shook her head mutely. She didn’t know what to do next. The littlest one poked her head out from somewhere deep in the shadows.
“Thank you,” she whispered before ducking back into the extreme dark on the other side of the tree trunk.
“We have to help them,” he said urgently. “We can’t let them suffer like this forever!”
“We won’t! And I swear to you, we’ll keep trying until we get the right river!” Helen’s eyes suddenly went out of focus, and she grabbed a handful of Orion’s shirt to keep herself from falling over.
“What’s happening?” Orion asked, bracing himself. The landscape blurred and Helen felt the world slow, like she was about to wake up.
“I think they’re making us leave,” she told him. She wrapped her arms around Orion’s neck and held on tight. . . .
Matt and Claire ditched the car when they discovered that the traffic was stopped dead for the night, and instead started running down the post-sunset dark of the deserted street, toward the center of town.
Technically, they weren’t supposed to be doing this, but neither of them was willing to sit safely at the Delos compound while the Scions went out to fight. Matt was more than a little insulted that Ariadne had begged him to stay behind, like he was a child who couldn’t defend himself. He’d tried to argue, but Ariadne, Lucas, and Jason had simply run away so fast Matt could barely see them move, let alone get a word in edgewise. It really annoyed him when they did that.
Cassandra warned them not to go. Common sense had told her it would most likely tick everyone off. Matt much preferred it when Cassandra used her unusually deep wellspring of common sense, as opposed to her talent as an Oracle, to suss out the future. He couldn’t even force himself to watch anymore when the Fates pushed their way out of her, like they were digging their way up from under her skin.
It was one of the many things that made Matt question the value of Scion “gifts” and the so-called gods that gave them to the Scions to begin with. What good were the Fates if they only used people like cups to be filled and then emptied, and eventually tossed away? As much as Matt abhorred violence, the thought of what the Fates did to Scions made him want do something athletic, preferably while wearing a pair of brass knuckles.
As he and Claire neared the town center, they could hear shouting and more than a few screams, but the voices were disconnected. In one spot, there were shrieks of fear, and in others there were shouts of rowdy enjoyment. It sounded as if different parts of the crowd were watching different movies.
“Hold up, Claire,” Matt said as they rounded a poorly lit corner. “The streetlights are out down that way.”
“But the News Store is that way,” she protested.
“I know, but let’s circle around back and go in through the alley. I want to get an idea of what’s going on before we go charging down the middle of the street.”
Claire agreed, and she and Matt slipped around the back of the News Store. It was quiet in the back alley, although they could both hear the raised voices of the crowd, like sneaking down the side hallway of a stadium while a rock band performed. They got the sense that something big was happening close by, but they felt strangely separated from it.
“My God, it’s dark,” Claire said, her voice wavering with fear.
“Yeah, and it’s not a normal darkness, either,” Matt murmured nervously as they went in the back entrance to the News Store.
“I think I’ve seen this before,” Claire whispered as she rubbed her arms in either cold or fear. “When Hector was attacked by Automedon and the Hundred at my track meet, this same menacing blackness covered everything. I think it means a Shadowmaster has been here.”
Inside, the store was a mess. Tables were overturned, crystal jars of candy had broken on the floor, and everything was covered in a layer of flour that must have been deliberately flung out of several torn bags. Matt and Claire picked their way through to the front, looking for injured people who might have been left unconscious, hoping like crazy that they wouldn’t find Jerry or Kate. Thankfully, the News Store was entirely empty.
The darkness seemed to be getting thicker as they made their way to the front, and Matt and Claire stumbled blindly out onto the street. They paused as their eyes adjusted to the fog-like darkness left by the Shadowmaster. Coming down the street was a mob of people in costume, led by a tall woman. As the gloom dissipated, Matt instinctively cringed.
“That has to be Eris,” he said in a lowered voice to Claire.
“Then who’s that?” she asked, facing the opposing street. She was pointing at a tall, skinny boy who seemed to be made up of spare parts. His arms were too long for his body, and he walked with a bandy-legged stride, even as he hunched his rounded shoulders. Despite his towering height, he seemed to creep rather than walk. Still pointing in mute fear, Claire backed up against Matt. He could feel her entire body trembling, and the gasping breaths she took threatened to turn into screams in her throat.
Matt had known her since kindergarten, and if there was one thing he was absolutely sure of, it was that Claire Aoki did not scare easy. Looking around at the behavior of the crowd, Matt could see people running around, frightened far beyond any normal measure. It was as if each person were being chased by his or her own worst nightmare.
“It has to be another god, like Eris.” His voice shook as he spoke. “Think, Claire! Eris is Ares’ sister, and she is the personification of chaos—she makes people feel like creating havoc. So what do we feel when we look at that creepy kid?”
“Panic?” Claire wheezed, trying not to hyperventilate. “But I thought the god Pan was a goat!”
“No, no, it’s not the damn satyr! There was another,” Matt groused, digging thorough his memory. The convoluted, inbred family tree of the gods popped into his mind. “Ares, the god of war, walks with Eris, the goddess of discord, and with them is his son, Terror. That freaky kid has got to be Terror.”
“Matt,” Claire gasped, using one arm to point one way and the other arm to point another. “The two mobs are headed right toward each other!”
Matt’s heart sank. Eris and her nephew were herding their crazed groups down adjacent streets that met at a large intersection kitty-corner to the News Store.
With every step, the horrible gods drew their helpless followers closer to an inevitable clash. Even Matt and Claire, who were making a conscious effort to control their reactions, felt more crazed as the gods drew near. Finally, like a cork blasting out of a shaken champagne bottle, the group surrounding Terror met with the bedlam around Eris, and a full-blown stampede began. In the midst of it all, Matt saw Eris laughing and her misshapen nephew sneering with satisfaction at her side.
Terrified people clashed with rioters in cost
umes, tearing each other apart in a frenzy of destruction and fear. There was nothing Matt and Claire could do but get out of the way. Gripping Claire’s hand tightly, Matt pulled her behind a parked car, ducked down, and used his body to shield her from the flying glass and debris.
The two of them held on to each other, trying to control their emotions so that they didn’t join in the fray. The air stank with the smell of rotten milk and burning plastic, and Matt noticed that the scents seemed to play on people’s emotions—the more intense the scent, the greater the swell of feeling both in himself and in the crowd.
The glow from the streetlight above them dimmed and then disappeared as a dark pall fell over the intersection. Matt found he couldn’t see more than two feet in front of his face.
“What are you two doing here?” growled a voice from inside the nexus of darkness.
Lucas’s voice, Matt realized with a jolt.
“Come on,” Lucas said, holding his hand out to them from the billowing folds of his cloak of shadows, motioning for them to follow him. “I’ll hide you in here until I can get you someplace safe.”
Matt and Claire hesitated, neither of them wanting to go near him. As they balked, the shadows broke up and moved away from Lucas. There was something menacing about the sound of his voice and the way the tattered ends of darkness clung to him. His blue eyes were black and he seemed so angry.
“Ah, Lucas?” Claire asked in an uncharacteristically timid way. “Are you, like, a Shadowmaster?”
Lucas’s face fell and he nodded sadly.
“Just how many secrets have you been keeping from the rest of us?” Matt asked, stunned to a hush.
Lucas opened his mouth and looked back and forth from Matt to Claire pleadingly, but whatever he was going to say got interrupted. Moving faster than Matt could focus his eyes, Jason and Ariadne appeared next to them, already asking a dozen questions at once. Lucas held up his hands and tried to explain that he had only recently discovered his talent as a Shadowmaster, when they were all interrupted a second time.
“Kids! Where’s Helen?” Kate shouted frantically. They all spun around to see Kate, half running, half limping back toward the vandalized News Store. Her clothes were torn, her hair was disheveled, and she was covered in dirt and flour like she’d been rolling around on the ground, fighting.
Hector was next to her, carrying Jerry who was unconscious and bleeding badly from a head injury.
Hector’s eyes were wide and his mouth was parted in surprise. Matt turned back around and saw Lucas, Ariadne, and Jason bristling with tension. He couldn’t hear what they heard, but Matt knew from the looks on their faces that all of the Scions were being taken over by the Furies.
“Jason, no!” Claire screamed, throwing herself in front of him before he could attack his brother.
“I’ve got Ari!” Matt yelled as he tackled her.
Ariadne hissed at him and scratched at his neck and chest, but quickly stopped herself when she saw Matt’s blood begin to flow. Ignoring his injuries, Matt covered her eyes with his hand and tucked her close to him as she shook with rage. Glancing up, Matt saw Lucas tilt his head like a lion on the hunt and take a step toward Hector.
No one was left to restrain him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Helen’s eyes opened and she saw the icy pillow next to her, so she knew she had to be back in her room. It was dark, but it was the navy-blue dark of evening, not the pitch black of late night. She was lying facedown on top of something uneven and warm—something that definitely wasn’t her mattress.
Propping herself up on her elbows, Helen looked down on Orion’s sleeping face. She told herself to get off him, but hesitated. He was frowning slightly in his sleep and for some reason Helen found that adorable.
In the Underworld, his face had been merely gorgeous, but back in the real world, it was downright hypnotic. Everything about the way he looked worked together in harmonious balance, like a visual symphony. The curve of his cheek played off the length of his neck, which led to the sweeping swell of his chest. He was a son of Aphrodite, and as much as Helen knew that irresistible attraction was one of his Scion gifts, knowing that fact didn’t make him any less magnetic. He still needed a haircut, but even so, he was truly an Adonis, the pinnacle of male beauty. He always had been, she realized, and the longer she looked at him, the harder it was for her to even think about looking away.
Unable to stop herself, Helen ran a curious finger across his lower lip. She only wanted to see if it was as soft as she remembered it, as soft as Morpheus had played it.
Orion’s body spasmed underneath her, and his eyes flew open in reaction to her touch. Before he was fully aware of his surroundings, he grabbed Helen and nearly chucked her off him.
“It’s me!” Helen squeaked, clinging to his shoulders so he didn’t send her sailing through the nearest wall.
Scrambling up onto his knees, Orion glanced around for a moment with a shocked and slightly bewildered look on his face. He released his tight grip on her and reached out with his fingertips to touch the melting ice that lay on top of the bed. An amused smile tugged at his lips as he rubbed the last of the dissolving crystals between his fingers.
Helen could tell just by looking at him that he was making the connection in his mind between the rapidly diminishing cold in her room and the constant, unearthly cold of the portal cave. She was amazed that she was so familiar with Orion’s expressions that she could practically read his thoughts. It was like she’d known him her whole life. Or longer, she thought with a little shiver.
“This is your bedroom?” he asked. Helen smiled and nodded. He gave her a dubious look. “So . . . what’s with the bed-wetter sheets?”
They both burst out laughing.
“I had to get them! I was trashing my regular sheets with mud from the Underworld!” she said, smacking Orion on the leg. He captured her hand and kept it there against his thigh.
“Helen, be honest,” he teased. “You still pee the bed, don’t you?”
She smiled and shook her head, giving him a look that warned him not to push it. The playful laughter died down quickly, and the fun was replaced by a delicate tension. For some inexplicable reason Helen was still touching Orion’s thigh. She snatched her hand away but found that she ended up immediately replacing that same hand on his calf.
Orion leaned back against the pillows and reached out to touch her upper arm at the same time, as if he needed to reassure himself that Helen was really there.
“I’m not attacking you,” he whispered with a faraway look in his eyes. He ran his fingers down her arm and cupped her elbow in his palm. “The Furies really released us.”
“They did,” she whispered back. “Now you can go home.”
The awed look on his face crumbled. “You and I might be out, but it’s not over, you know,” he said.
“Not yet,” she agreed, her voice breaking just above a whisper. “But I understand if you have more important things you want to do now.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked with a curious look on his face.
“You’re free. You can be with your dad.” Helen couldn’t look at him. Glancing around for something to do with her hands, she realized she was still wearing the fairy wings. She shrugged out of them and spoke in as calm a voice as she could muster. “I understand if you don’t want to go down to the Underworld with me anymore.”
Orion’s lips parted in surprise and he narrowed his eyes at Helen. “Unbelievable,” he said under his breath. “After everything I’ve told you about myself.”
Orion flung the bunched-up covers out of his way with an angry snap and tried to stand, but Helen grabbed his arms and stopped him.
“Hey. You haven’t been able to see your father since you were ten, and this isn’t really your burden to begin with. It’s mine. I had to at least bring it up,” she said seriously.
“I already told you. I’m in this with you to the end, no matter what.”
“
I was hoping you’d say that,” she whispered, smiling up at him gratefully. His stern look softened into a smile, and he allowed Helen to gently nudge him back into her bed.
She couldn’t seem to stop touching him. Orion had probably spent his whole life beating girls off with a stick, and it was embarrassing to know that she was no different from any them.
“So don’t put this away just yet, okay?” she said, lowering her hand to touch the Bough of Aeneas, still in the guise of a gold cuff around his wrist. She allowed herself one tiny, trailing caress across the backs of his fingers and then forced herself to remove her hands from his body altogether.
“I don’t think it comes off, anyway,” he said softly.
His breathing sped up as they stared at each other. He seemed to relax into her bed and get more alert at the same time, and she wondered if he could see her heart beating in her chest. For just a moment, Helen was certain he was going to lean forward and kiss her.
She panicked, wondering what she would do if he did. This was no dream, and Helen wasn’t sure if she was really ready for anything physical, no matter how much she wanted him right then. Orion’s eyes flicked down to her chest, and his expectant expression fell away.
“It’s okay. I’m not in a hurry, Helen,” he told her in a thick voice. “In fact, I’d rather we take our time.”
At the mention of time, a wave of panic tightened every muscle in Helen’s body. She leapt out of bed, ran to her window, and lifted the blue tarp. She could hear unusually loud noises on the street coming from the center of town.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe I forgot!” she yammered hysterically, doubling back to grab Orion’s arm and pull him with her as she jumped out of her broken window. “I left my family in the middle of a riot!”
They landed together and took off running with Helen leading the way. A moment later they arrived in the town center and stopped. Helen could barely believe her eyes. People she saw every day, people she chatted with as she served them muffins and lattes, were trying to tear each other to shreds. Even uniformed police officers and firefighters were running around, smashing car windows and brawling in the street.