Finally able to move her fingers, she scrabbled at her slit throat, looking to rip off her heart necklace so Zach would be able to kill her. Zach slowly shook his head at Helen, choosing to misinterpret what he’d heard her say. He caught her hands and held them still, took off his shirt, and pressed it against the wound at her throat.
Incensed with frustration, Helen watched helplessly from the ground as Lucas and Orion fought Automedon, all three of them moving so quickly she could barely make out their separate shapes. Automedon stood between the two of them, mechanical and accurate, every motion begun and completed with surgical precision.
Helen knew just enough about fighting to know that she was watching the perfect warrior. He was stronger, faster, and more patient than any fighter Helen had ever seen. If Orion or Lucas darted in to wound him, he took the blade into himself and let it leave again without concern. He leaked a vaguely greenish-white fluid from several places, but Helen already knew that he couldn’t be killed that way. He was just waiting for them to get tired.
Still bleeding from the chest, Orion faltered and took another wound to the stomach. As he fell back, Automedon saw his moment. Rather than attack Orion on the ground, he engaged Lucas. With a deft flick, Automedon spun Lucas’s smaller blade out of his hand, sending it flying. Then he made a move to go after Lucas while he was unarmed.
“Luke!” Orion yelled, his voice breaking with exhaustion. He tossed Lucas his sword and left himself defenseless. Automedon let Lucas catch it.
Lucas flew over Automedon and landed in front of Orion who was grimacing and clutching his newest injury. He tried to get up, and fell back down with a grunt, blood pouring out of him alarmingly fast. Lucas dug in, making it clear that if Automedon wanted to get to Orion, he would have to go through him first.
Helen saw Automedon smile and felt a panicky thrill radiate out from her belly and shoot down her arms and legs. This what exactly what Automedon wanted. He was counting on them to be brave and selfless. That would be their downfall. Her skin crackled with desperate static, but she didn’t have enough strength to generate a bolt. Ignoring the fiery pain it caused her, Helen managed to flop over onto her broken forearms and began to drag herself toward them.
“Helen, don’t!” Zach said in surprise. He tried to stop her, but as soon as he touched her he jumped back, getting a mild shock.
“Stop fighting him!” she tried to yell as she crawled, but even though she was healing fast, her vocal cords were still severed. The only sound she could make was a harsh, grating whisper. Automedon hefted his sword confidently and swung it over his head.
“Brace yourself,” Orion warned Lucas, and before Automedon could bring his sword down on them, the ground shook violently.
A booming noise sounded out through the dark, and a giant chasm opened up between Automedon and Lucas as Orion yanked the earth apart. Automedon fell to his knees and scrambled frantically as the ground beneath him gave way. Lucas disengaged gravity and floated, while Automedon seemed to magically regain his footing. His sense of balance was so good he could ride an earthquake like a surfer riding a big wave. Seeing this, Orion’s and Lucas’s hopes flagged.
When the shaking subsided, Lucas landed in front of Orion, adjusted his grip on the sword, and faced Automedon grimly. They both seemed to know that they couldn’t win this fight, but neither of them would quit. Automedon faced Lucas and Orion in turn, and then bowed to them courteously.
“Clearly, you are the Three I’ve waited thousands of years for,” Automedon said across the ten-foot-wide rip in the ground. “I thank Ares I’ve had thousands of years of battles to prepare myself for you or I would not have been ready. But the time is here, and I am ready.”
Automedon leapt easily over the gap, landed, and turned to face Lucas and Orion. In three moves, he had disarmed Lucas. In two more moves, he had Lucas on his knees, shielding Orion with his body and bleeding from a deep cut in his shoulder.
Helen heard Lucas scream and her pain vanished. She stood up, her skin glowing blue and coursing with power.
“Don’t you touch him!” she whispered hoarsely, her lips curling with rage. She held out her left hand and a blinding white bolt arced out of her palm and connected with Automedon. He crumpled to the ground, convulsing in agony. Helen dropped her arm and staggered to the side.
Finally able to get to his feet again after Orion’s earthquake, Zach stumbled after Helen and managed to prop her up as she tipped over, nearly fainting with the effort of generating a bolt. He got another nasty shock, but he gritted his teeth and held on to her as they staggered their way toward Lucas.
She fell down next to him, reaching out and pressing on his shoulder as if she could hold him together with her bare hands. She was vaguely aware of thunder rolling and she knew that his blood was mixing with hers, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t stop herself from touching him. All she had to do was get him away from Orion before their blood mixed, and the ritual would be stopped.
Helen felt something grab her bare ankle, and looked back to see Automedon as he yanked her toward him across the ground to keep her from interfering.
“It’s too late, Princess,” he said calmly.
Helen looked and saw Orion holding Lucas up as both of them reached out to her, trying to snatch her away from Automedon. Orion’s wounded chest was pressed against Lucas’s bleeding shoulder. Thunder rolled across the sky for the third and final time.
“It is done,” Automedon said, closing his eyes for a moment in relief.
Helen looked at Lucas and Orion. From their searching, confused expressions, she could tell that they could feel something had happened to them all—they just didn’t know the name for it yet.
“And now to deal with you, slave,” Automedon said as he jumped dexterously to his feet, completely recovered from Helen’s bolt. “You swore on this dagger to serve or die. And in the end you did not serve.”
He took a bejeweled bronze dagger out of its sheath on his belt. Before Helen could haul her broken body up onto her knees to shield him, Automedon threw the blade right into Zach’s chest.
Helen caught Zach as he fell down next to her on the ground. She had a memory flash of a time in second grade when Zach fell off the monkey bars and sprained his ankle. He’d had the same wide-eyed and baffled look on his face, and for a moment he looked like he was seven again and they were pals, trading treats out of their lunch boxes.
“Oh no, Zach,” Helen whispered, laying him down as gently as she could. Automedon turned away from the carnage he had caused and raised his hands to the blue beginnings of the dawn on the horizon.
“I have fulfilled my end of the bargain, Ares,” he said rapturously. “Now give me what I ask. Reunite me with my brother.”
“Helen,” Zach wheezed urgently, while Automedon was addressing the sky. “His blood brother . . . wasn’t a god, like Matt thought.” He grabbed the blade still sticking out of his chest and started yanking on it, hurting himself more and more.
“No, leave it in. You could bleed to death!” she tried to argue with her cracking, whisper of a voice, but Zach wouldn’t quit until Helen helped him pull it out. He wrapped her hands around the small blade meaningfully.
“It was Achilles.”
Zach let his head fall back and turned his face to Automedon’s feet, which were just inches away from his dying eyes. Without giving it another thought, Helen flipped the blade over in her hand, grabbed the hilt firmly, and stabbed it into Automedon’s heel.
His head snapped around to look down at Helen. Utter shock and disbelief froze his face in a blank O. In mere seconds, he hardened into a stone statue that began to crack, then crumble, and then disintegrate into a pile of ash. Helen looked down at Zach and saw that he was smiling.
“Hold on,” Helen croaked as she looked around for something to put on Zach’s wound. She saw his bloody shirt lying a few yards away and began to scramble toward it.
“Don’t go,” Zach begged, holding on to Helen’
s arm. With his other hand, he reached into the pile of dust that had been Automedon, and pulled out the pretty dagger, handing it to Helen. “Tell Matt I said he was a great friend.”
His body relaxed and his eyes emptied, and Helen knew he was dead.
“See, Eris, I didn’t double-cross him—the Myrmidon got his wish,” tittered a voice that made Helen’s heart stop for a moment. “He is reunited with Achilles. Just not on Earth, where he would have liked it!”
“At least his slave will be there to care for him in the Underworld,” hissed a woman’s voice.
Helen closed Zach’s eyes, promising silently that she would make sure Zach made it the Elysian Fields, drank from the River of Joy, and never had to serve anyone again. Then she turned to look at what she could already smell.
Ares stood on the other side of the chasm, flanked on either side by his sister Eris and his son Terror. Helen dropped her head and panted, knowing it was true. The Olympians were free. She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to see Lucas and Orion crouching next to her.
“How?” Orion gasped, motioning to Ares.
“The three of us,” Helen responded. “We became blood brothers.”
Lucas and Orion shared a pained look, realizing too late how their better natures had been used against them.
“Can you fly?” Lucas whispered, clutching his wounded arm to his side. Orion was next to him, pale and shaking with blood loss. Neither of them was in any condition to fight. Helen looked across the deep rip in the ground at Ares.
She’d felt rage before, but this was different. She thought about how helpless she had felt when she was tied up and completely at his mercy while he beat her. He’d probably done that to countless thousands of people, she thought. And now he was free again. It was Helen’s responsibility to make sure he never tortured anyone else. She had loosed this monster into the world. Now she had to put him down.
“I’m not going anywhere.” She stood up stiffly. One of her legs still wasn’t responding very well, but for what she had planned, she didn’t need it to.
“Are you insane?” Orion sputtered, tugging lightly on her arm, trying to get her to duck down. Helen put her hand over his until he stopped.
“Helen, you can’t hope to win this,” Lucas said resignedly, like he knew he’d already lost this argument. He stood up next to her, took her hand, and looked at Orion. “How are you doing?” he asked.
“Terrible,” Orion winced as he staggered to his feet as well. “And I’m pretty sure I’m about to feel even worse.”
Helen tried to smile at the two of them and tell them how much she loved them both, but her face hurt too damn much and she could barely speak, so she settled for squeezing their hands gratefully.
“Do we have a plan?” Lucas asked Helen, like he figured the answer was no, but he may as well ask, anyway.
“Are you really going to try to fight me, little godlings?” Ares shouted across the gap incredulously. Helen ignored him.
“How deep is that rift, Orion?” she asked under her breath.
“How deep do you need it to be?”
“Does it go down into the caves? The ones with the portals?” she continued. Orion nodded, still confused. “And can you make it wider when I ask you?”
“Sure, but . . .” Orion broke off as Helen’s meaning suddenly dawned on him. He frowned and began to shake his head at her, but he never got a chance to voice his concerns.
Ares raised his rusty, serrated sword over his head and burst into flames. But if Ares expected her to be afraid of fire, he was sorely mistaken. Helen launched herself over the chasm and landed on him in her supermassive state before he could even finish his battle cry.
She ground him two feet down into the dirt, right at the edge of the chasm. He tried to cut her head off, but she knocked the blade of his sword away with the back of her impermeable hand like she was swatting away a fly. The abominable sword went flinging up over the edge of the chasm. Ares watched it moving away from him with his mouth hanging open.
Before he could recover from his shock, Helen clamped her knees around his ribs and dug her fingers into his throat, choking him with all four of her battered and bruised limbs. His fire burned brighter, like he was trying to scorch her, but Helen only squeezed tighter. Her lightning was ten times hotter than any flame, and to show him, she sent two bolts directly into his neck with both her hands.
As Ares convulsed under Helen’s relentless onslaught, Lucas and Orion threw themselves at Eris and Terror, tackling the startled gods and hitting them repeatedly. None of the Scions could actually kill any of the immortals, but Helen didn’t care. Death was too good for Ares, anyway.
“Orion! Now!” she screamed, clutching Ares in a bear hug and taking on more mass than she had ever attempted before. She felt Ares growing in size, getting larger and larger as he bellowed with fury, and she clamped on to him desperately. For a moment, she thought Orion wouldn’t be able to do it.
The ground beneath them rumbled and shook, and then it gave way. Locked together, Helen and Ares fell down into the deep chasm, tumbling and spinning toward the icy portal that glowed faintly at the bottom.
Helen didn’t know if it would work or not. She could come and go from all levels of the Underworld while she was sleeping, but this was the first time she had ever tried it awake. She didn’t know if she could open a standing portal, or if she could only create new ones when she slept. She concentrated on staying calm, like she did when she relaxed herself into sleep when she descended, and hoped for the best. Right before they hit, Helen spoke.
“Open, Tartarus, take Ares, and seal him up forever with all the evil souls he has double-crossed,” she said.
She couldn’t kill an immortal, but she was pretty sure if she could get Ares through a portal, she could imprison him in Tartarus forever. Helen knew from experience that it was way worse than death.
The ice split, and she and Ares stopped falling and started hovering. A hundred hands came through the rocks and ice and grabbed a different part of Ares.
“Impossible,” he breathed, his eyes locked with Helen’s.
“Go to hell,” she whispered.
And then she released him. With a deafening squeal, Ares was dragged into the dark pit of Tartarus by the hundred hands. An incalculable number of writhing arms closed over him until finally, Ares, the god of war, disappeared underneath them forever.
The portal closed, leaving Helen hovering at the bottom of the dark rift. The only sound was her, panting with exhaustion.
Her vision blurred. Barely able to float, she used her hands to guide her up the wall of the chasm. Her body began to tremble violently and her head lolled on top of her neck. As she got higher, she heard her name being called repeatedly by several voices. She fumbled her way toward the sound, sobbing with fatigue and pain.
Just as her strength failed, two different but dearly loved hands reached over the edge of the pit and hauled her up into the pink air of a new dawn.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I stabbed him, but it was all Zach, really. He was the one who figured out how to kill Automedon.” Helen pried Matt’s hand off Zach’s wrist and replaced it with the beautiful dagger. “He wanted me to give you this and tell you that you were a great friend. Which, of course, you are.”
Matt looked down at the ancient artifact and shook his head. “I don’t want it.”
“Take it,” Helen said. “It was his last wish, and my throat hurts too darn much to argue.”
Matt gave her a sad smile and a sideways hug. He stared blankly at the dagger for a moment, then tucked it into his belt under his shirt. Both of them felt horrible about the decision to leave Zach’s body on the streets in Nantucket, but they knew there was no better way to conceal the true cause of his death than to blame it on the riot.
“I won’t leave him in a disrespectful place, I promise. I’m very sorry about your friend, Matt,” Pallas said in a surprisingly tender voice. He put a hand on Matt’s sho
ulder and squeezed it reassuringly until Matt looked him in the eyes and nodded, signaling that he was ready to let go. Pallas picked Zach up gently and ran away so fast Helen knew it almost looked to Matt as if they had disappeared.
Without making her ask, Matt took Helen’s arm and put it over his shoulders, half carrying her back to the main powwow that was taking place at the edge of the chasm. Her leg had been broken in several places when Ares kicked her, and she still couldn’t walk on it but, like the rest of her, it was healing. She could see out both her eyes again at least, even though the right one was monstrously swollen. Helen still had plenty to be grateful for. Eris and Terror had run off as soon as Ares was defeated, and as soon as Helen had opened her eyes, Daphne had told her that her father and the twins were still alive. Unlike Zach. Matt placed her in between Orion and Lucas, and went to stare down the hole like Hector and Daphne.
“I already told you,” Orion said, gingerly pressing gauze pads to his two wounds. “The portal is closed. Look at my wrist.” He held up the Bough of Aeneas. “When it’s not glowing like that? That means it isn’t near a portal. Can I close the rift now so the farmers who own this place don’t accidentally fall down it?”
Lucas began to laugh at Orion’s tone, then quickly stopped laughing and clutched at the shoulder his father was bandaging. Helen could tell Orion was done with answering questions. He tended to get more sarcastic when he was ticked off. She decided it was time to step in and let him off the hook.
“I shut the portal, and I shut it forever,” she rasped through her tender vocal cords. “Ares isn’t getting out that way, if at all. Go ahead and close the rift, Orion.”
“But how can you know that?” Daphne interjected with mild exasperation. “Is there any way for you to go down and check, Helen?”
“Daphne, look at her. She’s suffered enough for one night. Stop pushing,” Castor said with his usual levelheadedness while he finished wrapping Lucas’s shoulder. “If Helen and Orion say it’s okay to close the rift, then let him close it.”