Chapter Eleven #3
“None of you are qualified to be my confidants anymore. I’m the only one who can decide what to reveal or keep hidden,” she said gently.
Cassandra stepped away from Helen’s side and stood up straighter.
It was as if she was throwing off her support system with one painful gesture.
She took a wistful breath and turned back to Helen.
“Standing there, waiting for me to cut your head off?” said the newer, older, and slightly more melancholic Cassandra. “That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”
That’s because you couldn’t see yourself, Helen thought.
Cassandra looked down at Lucas, who was still in shock over what he’d done. She put a hand on his shoulder and shook it until he looked up at her.
“Let’s go inside and check on Hector,” she said as she helped her brother off his knees.
Helen still felt shaky with adrenaline. Walking back to the house next to Lucas, she wished he would take her hand like he used to, but then scolded herself for even thinking that. She sped up and walked in front of him so she wouldn’t be tempted to feel sorry for herself.
All of them sat down at the kitchen table to hash out the new discovery, but no one had any answers.
They asked Helen if she could ever remember a time when she had been wounded by a knife, but Helen’s childhood was remarkably violence free, especially for a Scion.
She couldn’t remember ever getting anything bigger than a paper cut.
That sparked a philosophical debate on what qualified as a weapon—if paper could cut her but a spear couldn’t, could you make a spear out of paper and kill her?
“Is a fork a weapon?” Jason asked, gesturing to one sitting on the counter. Ariadne shrugged and stabbed Helen in the shoulder with it, and it squished up like a soggy ice-cream cone on contact.
“Guess so,” said Ariadne. “Maybe a spoon?” She turned to find one.
“Could you stop that, please?” Lucas said with a wince. “Eventually, we’re going to find something that actually can hurt her. Maybe even kill her. I think we should hold off on the experiments until we figure out why she’s like this.”
“I agree with Lucas,” Castor said carefully. “And the sooner we find out how she got like this, the better.”
“It can’t be something she inherited or we would have seen it in another Scion before,” Pallas said, staring at Helen like she was a fancy, new bug he’d found under a log.
“Dipped in the River Styx?” He threw it out there, like it was the most logical explanation.
“She doesn’t seem like a zombie, but maybe Achilles didn’t, either. ”
“No. I would bet anything she still has her soul,” Castor said, shaking his head.
“And how would she have gotten to the River Styx? There hasn’t been a Descender in millennia,” Cassandra added doubtfully.
Descender? Helen wondered.
“What about something more basic, like a gun?” Jason asked. He was still trying to wrap his head around Helen’s unbelievable talent.
“Since when were bullets ever fast enough to hit a Scion? That’s why we still use swords, dummy,” Ariadne said with a smirk. “We’re the only things that can move fast enough to kill us.”
“Yeah, but what if we had her just stand there and take a few bullets? Technically, we can be killed by them, if we’re hit enough times,” he said logically.
“It doesn’t matter how many times she gets shot. You could drop a bomb on her and she’d be fine, that’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Cassandra said with tired frustration.
“There has to be a reason behind it. It isn’t a talent, so she must have some form of protection we don’t know about. I’ll start doing some research and put together a list of possibilities,” Pallas interjected, still staring at Helen.
“I’ll help you, Dad,” Hector said from the doorway. He limped into the kitchen, his hair damp from a shower. “I’m dying to know how Sparky here does her little impervious trick.”
“I tried to get him to lie down, but he wouldn’t listen,” Pandora complained from the hallway behind him. Hector walked straight over to Lucas.
“How are you feeling?” Lucas asked guiltily.
Hector clasped hands with him. “It’s okay, brother. I would have done the same thing if I were you,” he said. Then he flashed one of his mischievous smiles. “Only I would have hit you harder.”
They hugged each other, and just like that the whole confrontation was forgotten. Ariadne started to ask Pandora a question, but Helen couldn’t hold her tongue for a second longer.
“Will someone please tell me why you all call me ‘Sparky’?” she burst out in frustration. “And if I get stabbed one more time tonight I’m going to lose it!” she added, rounding on Jason, who was sneaking up behind her holding a stapler.
“You haven’t told her yet?” Cassandra said to Lucas with disbelief. “You should have done it days ago.”
“I was going to tell her today, but I never got the chance,” he replied, looking at the floor.
Helen thought about how he had hunted her down in the hallway after school, like he had something urgent to say, and how she had told him she didn’t want to see him. But that was his fault, she reminded herself. He was the one who was forcing himself to teach her how to fight and fly, right?
“Well, tell me now, then,” she said briskly. Lucas looked up at her sharply. His eyes were angry.
“You can generate lightning. Electricity. I don’t know how strong a charge you can create, but from what I’ve felt, and what Hector felt in the grocery store, I’m thinking it’s big.”
“Lightning?” Helen said with disbelief.
She remembered Hector convulsing when he first touched her in the grocery store, and then she remembered Lucas letting go of her so abruptly in the hallway the very first time she had seen him.
She had been so afraid of them both, so desperate to defend herself .
. . . Was it possible she had summoned a power she had never been aware of? Had she created lightning?
Somewhere in the back of her mind she saw a blue flash, and Kate crumple to the ground. A terrible thought occurred to her. She tried to banish it as she had done since childhood, but this time the thought wouldn’t go away.
“We think that means you are descended from Zeus,” Cassandra said.
“But from which House is still uncertain. The Four Houses were founded by Zeus, Aphrodite, Apollo, and Poseidon. Aphrodite and Apollo were Zeus’s children, so Scions from their Houses could display his traits as well.
The fourth House, the House of Athens, was founded by Poseidon, so it can be ruled out. Well, maybe.”
“My House?” Helen said, still so wrapped up in her own head that she was having a hard time understanding English.
She was remembering a blue flash from her past, and a scary man that kept trying to touch her hair, flying away from her off the back of the Nantucket ferry.
The smell of burning filled her throat. Helen rubbed her hand over her face and tried to rebury that memory.
She had always believed that she couldn’t have been the cause of that. And worse—had she hurt Kate, too?
“When we say your House, we mean your heritage, Helen,” Castor said gently, noticing Helen’s disquiet. “Zeus had a lot of children, so your House can’t be pinpointed with any certainty yet. But don’t worry, we’re still trying to find out who your people were.”
“Thanks,” Helen muttered, still overwhelmed.
“You can’t control the lightning yet, it sort of jumps out of you when you’re upset,” Lucas said after a long pause. He was looking at her strangely.
“Is it like a Taser?” Helen asked anxiously, suddenly snapping out of her trance.
“Yeah,” Hector said as if he was recollecting both sensations and comparing them in his mind. “But stronger.”
“Does it really hurt?” Helen said quietly. She felt sick to her stomach.
“I guess,” Hector said with a condescending shrug. “You know, if you put in some real training, you could probably generate a lethal charge soon.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Helen said, jumping to her feet, horrified with the suggestion. And with herself.
“Wait, Helen, it could be a good thing,” Jason replied. “You could learn how to use your bolts instead of fighting.”
“You don’t have to use them to kill. Just to knock people out,” Lucas amended, aware now that something was disturbing Helen deeply.
He couldn’t know that what he was saying to make it better only made it worse.
Helen thought of Kate’s unconscious body—how Kate had convulsed in that nauseating way when the blue light flashed.
How her head had lolled back and her mouth fell open uncontrollably when Helen had picked her up off the ground.
She couldn’t get the horrifying images out of her head so she started pacing around, wringing her hands to dispel the nervous energy she felt.
She knew everyone was staring at her. She looked up and locked eyes with Pandora, who was clearly attentive to her strange reaction.
“Why don’t we talk about this tomorrow?” Pandora said to the room in general. “Hector needs to eat and everyone else needs a shower. No offense, but pee-ew, guys.” She got a few laughs, but more important, she got the focus off Helen. Helen smiled at her gratefully.
“Are you okay?” Ariadne whispered in Helen’s ear as the family meeting broke up. Helen squeezed Ariadne’s hand and tried to smile, but she had no idea what to say. She started to wander toward the door.
“I’ll take you home,” Lucas called out over his shoulder to Helen, ending the brief conversation he was having with his father and uncle.
“I’m supposed to watch Helen tonight,” Jason said apologetically.
“And I have my bike,” Helen said. She couldn’t bear to be with him alone.
“I don’t care,” Lucas replied bluntly to them both. He stared down Jason for a moment, speaking volumes with his eyes, then turned back to Hector. “I need your truck,” he said with barely controlled anger. Hector nodded, glancing over at Helen and back at Lucas with something approaching sympathy.