Nodding a quick good-bye as he lightly tapped the roof of Claire’s car, Matt turned and ran back into the center of town. His town, not the mad god’s, he reminded himself fiercely, before looking through the frenzied, masked throngs for Zach.
“Put your arms around me,” the tall young man said.
“Why?” she asked nervously, trying not to giggle. He grinned at her.
“Just put your arms around my neck,” he cajoled. She did. “Now. Repeat after me . . . I want us to appear . . . um,” he broke off, biting his lower lip in thought.
“I want us to appear . . . um,” she parroted back to tease him.
“I can’t remember what I was supposed to say,” he said through an embarrassed laugh.
“Then it must not have been very important, right?” she said logically. “What are we doing here, anyway?”
“I don’t know. But whatever the reason, thanks.” He moved his hands from her waist up her back, pressing her closer to him as he felt her shape under his hands.
“Are we dating?” the girl asked.
“I don’t know, but it seems that way,” he said, gesturing to their tight embrace. “Let’s check it out.” He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her.
Her knees melted. This guy was that good a kisser. The only problem was, the girl had no idea who he was. She pulled back and blinked a few times to clear her vision, sensing that something was off.
“Wait. Is your name Lucas?” she asked.
“No. I’m . . . hang on. I know this one. I’m Orion,” he finally decided.
“I’m probably going to kick myself for this later, but I don’t think you’re my boyfriend.”
“Really?” he asked doubtfully. “Because that felt damn good.”
“Yeah, it did,” she mused. “You know what? I’d hate to be wrong about this, so maybe we should check again?” She kissed him, and this time she completely let herself go with it just to be sure. A tiny voice in her head kept saying, That’s not him, but the rest of her was really enjoying kissing this Orion guy.
He guided her down to the ground, careful not crush her underneath him. The tiny voice started yelling. She tried to ignore it because this guy felt amazing, but no matter what the rest of her body was saying, the damn voice wouldn’t shut up until she pulled away from him.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is right,” she said reluctantly, unable to stop herself from running her fingers through his soft curls one last time. The gesture felt strangely familiar. She looked up at his confused face and noticed he had something strapped to his back, which the girl thought was odd, considering they were making out and all.
“Why are you wearing a backpack?”
“I don’t know,” he said, reaching back to touch it, like he was just noticing it himself. His eyes flared and he sucked in a breath as his hand felt the shapes through the outside. The contents made a sloshing sound. “The water! Helen, let me see your arm!” he said, leaning back and reading the inside of her arm. She heard the name Helen and remembered that it was hers.
“I’m sorry. I nearly forgot myself,” he said in a shaky voice as he got off her and helped her stand. He placed her arms around his neck and then put his hands on her hips in a perfunctory way, all the seduction gone. “Say this. I want us to appear near the Furies.”
Helen saw a twisted tree in her mind, and a hillside of sharp rocks and thorns. Something told her that this was important and that she should include it.
“I want us to appear on the hillside under the tree of the Furies,” she said clearly.
The heat was unbearable, but the flat, blinding light was even worse. Helen shaded her face with her hand and blinked repeatedly, trying to relax the squeezing feeling in her eyes as her pupils rebelled against the insulting brightness. The air was so dry it tasted bitter and caustic—like it was trying to scour the moisture out of Helen’s mouth.
She licked her dry lips and looked around. A short walk away was a tree that was so old and starved that it looked more like twisted rope than a plant. Under the shade of this tree stood three trembling girls.
“We told you not to waste your time,” the one in the middle said. “We are a lost cause.”
“Nonsense,” Orion said cheerfully. He took Helen’s hand and led her to the tree. The Three Furies backed away from them.
“No, you don’t understand! I don’t think I can bear to feel that joy, only to lose it again,” the littlest one whispered urgently, her voice quieter than rustling leaves.
“Nor can I,” said the leader sadly.
“Or I,” agreed the third.
“I don’t think we should drink, sisters,” decided the smallest. “Our burden is heavy enough already.”
The Furies began to shrink away from Helen and Orion, back into the dark shadow of their tree. Helen realized that they were shrinking away from something that could make them happy, even if it was for only a few moments.
She recognized herself in this abnegation, and something inside her lit up. Lucas. Would she really rather forget Lucas entirely? The floodgates opened, and all of Helen’s memories came rushing back in 3-D. She saw the lighthouse on Great Point, her meeting place with Lucas. She also saw another lighthouse, the size of a skyscraper, and shaped like an octagon. Lucas was waiting for her there, about to beg her to run away with him. Standing in the slanted light of winter, he shone like the sun in his armor. Armor?
“I know exactly what you mean. I do,” she said to the littlest one, trying to shake out of her head the image of Lucas taking off a bronze breastplate. “And as far as I’m concerned, the jury’s still out on the whole ‘it’s better to have loved and lost’ argument. But this is different. It won’t swallow you whole and then abandon you, like joy always has to. We brought you something that will hopefully last forever.”
“What is it?” the leader asked with cautious hope.
“It’s bliss.”
Orion looked over at her sharply, and she nodded him on. Still uncertain, but following her lead, Orion stepped forward and took off his backpack. As he took out the three canteens the Furies could hear the liquid moving around inside their containers, and it was too much for them to resist.
“I’m so thirsty,” the third one whined, stumbling forward desperately to take a canteen. Her two sisters quickly gave in and followed suit, and the Three Furies gulped the water down.
“Do you really believe that? Ignorance is bliss?” Orion said under his breath to Helen. From the complicated look he gave her, she could tell he had all of his memories back as well.
“For them? Definitely.”
“And for you?” he persisted, but Helen didn’t have an answer. He looked away from her and tensed. “I don’t want to forget anything about tonight. Or about you.”
“No, I didn’t mean that,” Helen began to say, realizing that she had hurt him. She was about to explain that she wasn’t talking about forgetting their kiss, even though just the thought of it made her whole body heat up in a head-to-toe blush, but Orion shook his head and gestured to the Furies. They had finished their canteens, and were looking around shyly, laughing and shrugging at one another like they were waiting for something to happen.
“Hi,” Helen said. The Furies glanced at one another with mounting fear.
“It’s okay,” Orion said in his wild-animal-tamer voice. “We’re your friends.”
“Hello, friends?” the leader said, and then turned her palms up in a questioning gesture. “Forgive my confusion. It’s not that I don’t believe that you are our friends, I just don’t know who we are.”
Her sisters smiled and looked at the ground with relief now that the reason for their anxiety was out in the open.
“You are three sisters who love one another very much. You’re known as the Eumenides. The kindly ones,” Helen told them, remembering what little she could of the Oresteia by Aeschylus. It was the first thing in Greek literature that she’d read, before she even knew she was a Scion. It seem
ed so long ago. “You have a very important job. Which is . . .”
“You listen to people who have been accused of terrible crimes and if they are innocent, you offer them protection,” Orion finished for Helen when she stumbled.
The three Eumenides looked at one another and smiled, sensing that this was the truth. They hugged and greeted each other as sisters, still not fully understanding everything that had happened to them, and that troubled Helen.
“I sort of skipped over a lot of this play. I don’t know that much about the Eumenides,” Helen admitted under her breath to Orion.
“Neither do I,” he whispered back. “What are we going to do? We can’t just leave them like this.”
“I can take you to someone who can explain this better,” she said, raising her voice to include the girls. “Everyone join hands. I am going to take you to the queen.”
The three girls blushed shyly at the thought of going before a queen, but they obeyed Helen and the entire party linked hands in a circle. Helen had never tried to move so many people at once, but she knew she could do it.
Persephone seemed to be waiting for them. Or maybe she was just sitting in her garden, staring off into space—Helen couldn’t be certain. Whatever Persephone was doing, she was unsurprised by the arrival of Helen and Orion and the three newly made Eumenides.
She welcomed them all with her characteristic gentility. Without missing a beat or needing much of an explanation from Helen and Orion, Persephone took charge of the three sisters and promised to prepare them for their new life as something like supernatural defense attorneys. The first thing she offered the Eumenides was refuge in her palace, and the second was a bath. The three sisters nearly sighed with happiness at the idea of ridding themselves of the dust of the dry land.
Persephone led the party back to the edge of the garden where it ended at a grand staircase that led into the black Palace of Hades. At the bottom of the adamantine steps, Persephone stopped and politely informed Helen and Orion that they could go no farther. Halfway up the stairs she turned to address them in a formal manner. Helen had the feeling that this was some form of ritual, like a blessing, or maybe even a curse.
“Over the millennia, many have found that it was their fate to attempt to do what you have done. They all failed. Most Descenders and their Shields only wanted to kill the Furies, or to break the curse by using magic tricks and even blackmail. You were the only two who were humble enough to listen to my suggestion, and then brave enough to use compassion as a cure, rather than force. Hopefully, you’ll remember these lessons in the days to come.”
She suddenly raised her voice, like she was making an announcement to a large audience.
“I have witnessed this incarnation of the Two Heirs, and I say that they have been successful. As queen of the Underworld, I find them both worthy.”
Persephone’s words fell like stones.
Helen had the uncanny feeling that millions of ghostly eyes were watching and witnessing this oath. Taking her cue from Orion, Helen crossed her arms in an X over her chest and bowed to the queen. A rush of flowing minds surged past them like a whispering wind, leaving fragments of the deads’ fears, doubts, and hopes hanging in the air like half-finished questions. The ritual was complete.
“Worthy of what?” Helen whispered to Orion, but he shrugged distractedly, his attention captured by the dark door that led into the palace. A cloaked figured appeared from behind the locked door at the top of the stairs. Although he had been forbidden entry into the palace, Orion began to climb the stairs as if he was drawn to the apparition.
“No, Orion!” Helen scolded fearfully as she grabbed his arm and pulled him back. “It’s Hades. Don’t go anywhere near him.”
She clung to Orion, certain that something terrible would happen if the man and the god came face-to-face. Hearing the desperate note in Helen’s voice, Orion relented and came back down the stairs to join Helen at the bottom.
“Descender,” Hades said in a kindly voice, unruffled by Orion’s aggressive behavior. He spoke softly, yet the sound carried everywhere and his tone was disapproving. “You have not done as I suggested.”
“I apologize, sir.” Helen racked her brain for what it was that he had suggested. There were a lot of confusing images swimming around in there. A ride on the ferry from Nantucket to the mainland was blending with the wooden deck of a giant battleship and the sound of creaking oars. A walk on a white-sand beach turned into a beach stained red with blood under her feet. She blinked and tried to get rid of the mental pictures. She knew that she had seen them before, but didn’t know how or where.
“Be sure to remedy that, niece. The Scions are running out of time,” Hades warned her sadly as he and his queen disappeared into the shadows of their palace.
“What does that mean?” Orion asked, turning to Helen urgently. “What about the ‘Scions running out of time’?”
“I—I don’t know!” she stammered.
“Well, what did Hades suggest to you?” Orion was trying to stay calm, but she could see that he was really frustrated with her. “Helen, think!”
“I was supposed to ask the Oracle something!” she blurted out in a high-pitched voice. “Something about the quest.”
“What was it?”
“Something about asking Cassandra what she thought about freeing the Furies. I’m supposed to ask if she thought it was a good idea. But that’s silly because she’s been helping me do this, so of course she’s all for it!”
Orion frowned darkly, and Helen knew she had really messed up. Now that she thought about it, not taking a god’s advice seemed like an unbelievably dumb thing to do.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, feeling like an ass.
“Well, it’s too late, anyway. Besides, I don’t put that much faith in Oracles. Don’t worry about it,” he said dismissively. But he still wouldn’t look at her. Helen apologized again and promised to ask Cassandra as soon as she could, but Orion continued scowling at the ground, deep in thought. She reached out to touch his arm and get his attention.
But before she could do so, Helen felt herself getting picked up by a mile-wide hand. She lurched against Orion, grabbing on to him.
Matt lifted the unconscious woman off the street, opened an abandoned car door, and left her on the seat. Hopefully, she’d be safer in there than lying on the ground. There were a lot of people who had come to their senses after being trampled by the stampeding hordes, and they called out to him for help. Matt did what he could, but as soon as the most vulnerable were taken care of he ran off, feeling like he was betraying everyone he left behind.
He wanted to help them all, but he knew that first he had to find Zach, and he had to do that while he still had some strength. Every muscle in his chest and arms was aching, and some of them were beginning to twitch, just to let him know how unhappy they were with the boss’s new hobby of lugging unconscious people around.
Matt rubbed one of his many sore spots and spun in a circle. He had no idea which way to go. He remembered that Helen said she had last seen Zach heading down Surfside. Grasping at straws, Matt took off in that general direction, and ended up following a hunch that led him straight to the school grounds.
Someone was on the football field, throwing perfect spiral passes into a soccer net. Matt jogged through the stiff, frosty grass in time to see Zach bury one in the back of the net.
“Did you see that?” Zach asked, barely even glancing at Matt. “That was just pretty.”
“Yeah, it was. But you always had a great arm. You could throw like that freshman year,” Matt replied, close enough now to see Zach in the bright moonlight. He looked awful—pale, sweaty, and haunted. If Matt didn’t know him better, he would have thought Zach was doing serious drugs. “Is that what this is all about? Football?”
“How do you do it?” Zach asked with a bitter scowl on his face. “How do you hang out with them? Watch them do the things they can do and not hate them?”
“It’s h
ard sometimes,” Matt admitted. “Damn. I wish I could fly.”
“Right?” Zach said through a laugh. There were tears behind that sound, though, and Matt heard them threatening to break out. “It’s like you wake up one day and there are all these invaders, taking your opportunities away. They aren’t from here but we’re supposed to try and compete with them? It isn’t fair.”
There was a dangerous note in Zach’s voice. He sounded calm when Matt knew he was anything but. Matt spread his stance, just in case Zach did something crazy.
“I know a bunch of Scions that would say the same about what’s happening to them,” Matt said evenly. “I understand how you feel, Zach, I do. There are so many times I’ve envied them, even resented them a little. But then I remember that they didn’t choose to be Scions, and I haven’t met one who didn’t suffer for it. I can’t blame them for being born what they are, especially when all of them have lost so much because of it.”
“Well, you always were the better person, weren’t you?” Zach scoffed, and turned to leave.
“Come back with me. Come to the Delos compound. We’ll figure something out,” Matt said, grabbing his arm and making Zach face him.
“Are you insane? Look at me, man!” Zach said, shoving Matt away from him violently and yanking up his shirt so Matt could clearly see that his ribs were covered in huge black bruises. “This is how he treats me when I’m loyal.”
“They’ll protect you. We all will,” Matt promised, horrified by what had happened to his friend but trying to keep his voice calm. Zach’s eyes narrowed and he flicked his shirt down.
“Oh, so now you feel bad. Now you want to help me. Let me guess, you need something.”
“I just want to keep you alive!” Matt was so insulted, he wanted to hit Zach but settled for yelling at him instead. “I was wrong. I should have been there for you the first time you came to me. I get that now, and I am truly sorry. But even if you never forgive me and you’re still throwing this in my face fifty frigging years from now, I still don’t want you to die, you dumb bastard! Do I really need another reason to want to help you?”