Chapter Twelve #3
“Yeah. That’s because they were demigods. But that wasn’t real,” Claire said like it was obvious. Then she got it. “Oh, my . . .”
“I’m one of those heroes’ descendents. We’re called Scions, and I have a whole bunch of powers—stuff you wouldn’t believe.
But I had no idea what I was or what I could do until just days ago.
I wish I could tell you everything, but I don’t know what I can or can’t say.
Please, Gig. I know it sounds insane, but I’ve never lied to you. You just have to believe me.”
“Okay,” Claire said, nodding her head once and looking Helen directly in the eye, as if she finally felt like she was getting the respect she deserved.
“I’ve had this mostly figured out for a while now, you know.
You found out that you were a demigod—how cool is that by the way?
—when the Delos family moved here. Because they’re like you.
I knew that as soon as I saw them. I just didn’t know what you all were. ”
“See?” Helen said with a flustered smile. “That’s why I had to tell you, I need to be able to talk to you about all this so you can help me figure it out. But you can’t tell the Delos family I told you until I find out if that’s okay or not.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can bluff, or pretend I guessed on my own. I sort of did, anyway,” Claire said with a satisfied smile. Then something occurred to her and made her switch to a more serious attitude. “Where have you been, by the way? And why are you such a damn mess?”
Helen was about to explain what happened between her and Hector when Claire’s phone buzzed. Claire checked the text and then started typing in a response.
“It’s Jason. I have to tell him you’re here, he’s been looking for you all day,” Claire told Helen. The phone buzzed again.
“It’s him.” She read the screen. “He wants me to keep you here. He’s on his way over.”
“No! I’m not ready to talk to any of them yet!” Helen exclaimed, backing away.
“Len, he’s really worried about you, they all are.”
“I gotta get out of here,” Helen stammered. She ran a hand over her face and turned for the window.
“Where are you going?” Claire asked, trying to block Helen’s path with an outstretched arm. “I’ll tell him to go away if you want, but you have to let me know that you’ll be okay.”
“I’m just going home. Promise you won’t let him follow me, okay?”
Claire promised and gave Helen a hug. Then Helen jumped out the window, transitioning states in midair. She heard Claire gasp as she flew away. A minute later Helen was landing in her front yard and heading right for the stairs to take a shower and warm up.
He was waiting for her behind the front door.
He swept her feet out from under her before he even bothered to slam the front door shut.
Everything went completely dark, darker than any night, any blindfold, or any closed room that Helen had ever experienced.
She was enveloped in a disorienting blackness that made her feel so dizzy and cut off from the rest of the world that she couldn’t even remember the layout of her own house anymore.
Where were the stairs? The furniture? She didn’t know.
It was as if she had fallen into a black hole.
Helen was so shocked she didn’t have time to roll over before she felt a very large man cover her from behind.
He took her head between his hands and wrenched it to the side, trying to break her neck.
She grabbed on to his wrists and pulled them outward, trying to get him to release his grip, but he had leverage on his side.
Her neck muscles strained dangerously, and she felt herself start to panic for the second time in an hour.
But it was that recent brush with death that informed her as she kicked and struggled.
The thought of using her lightning made her stomach turn, but she knew she had no choice.
Helen felt the current start in her belly.
It was naturally trying to arc out of her toward the ground, and all she had to do was release it.
Untrained as she was, she let the bolt go, and it shot down her legs uselessly, causing her to convulse.
In her desperation, she got the last few volts to run up to her hands and jump across her skin into the man’s wrists.
For a brief moment the blue spark lit up the room with a flash, and she saw his eyes widen in surprise. Then she felt him shake with the current, and heard him scream as he was electrocuted.
Helen smelled burnt hair and ozone like a calling card from her darkest childhood nightmare.
She felt what must have been half her body’s energy empty out of her, leaving her as weak as a kitten.
The burden of the large man on top of her grew intolerably heavy, and she knew she had to get out from under him before he recovered or she would be no better off than she was when he’d had her by the head.
While her attacker was still shaking, she managed to kick some of his weight off of her, and as the barest amount of light was allowed to creep back into the room, she finally got a look at him.
The gleaming blond curls and the thick body were Hector’s, and for a moment she feared she had killed him while he might have been trying to teach her a lesson.
She leaned right over him to see if he was still breathing.
Hanging inches away from his face in the regular darkness of night, she saw it was Creon, but it was too late.
The moment she recognized him he opened his eyes and grabbed her to his chest in a deadly bear hug.
Helen screamed and struggled. She reached down into her belly looking for the current, but all that was left was weak static.
She had already discharged all the voltage stored up in her muscles.
The release of all that energy had left her weak and vulnerable.
Her arms and legs had no strength, and she crumpled under Creon’s renewed attack like a paper bag.
He fell on top of her, pinning her to the ground as he pulled a bronze knife out of his belt.
“Such a shame, preciosa. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. Almost too perfect to cut,” he grunted into her ear. “But Atlantis . . .”
She squirmed her neck away from his lips, shivers of disgust running across her skin. Then he pushed off of her, raising his knife up high over his head. He paused, and for a brief moment Helen thought he wouldn’t do it, but she saw his eyes harden. He brought it down directly over her heart.
Creon’s knife made a dozen pinging noises as it shattered and scattered off of her skin. He had just a moment to register what had happened before a foot connected with his head and sent him flying off of Helen.
Lucas jumped on Creon with a vicious snarl, and the two of them began to fight so fast Helen could barely see their hands move.
They punched and grabbed and gouged at each other, both of them changing from claw-handed boxing to some kind of strange wrestling in which they tried to bend each other’s joints in the wrong direction.
Helen barely had time to roll onto her knees before it was over.
Cornered and still weak from having been electrocuted, Creon cloaked himself inside an eerie shadow and ran at top speed out of the house as soon as he could put even one inch in between himself and Lucas, who chased him halfway across Helen’s lawn before turning around and coming back inside.
“Are you okay?” Lucas practically shouted.
“Yeah, I just can’t . . .” Helen said as she tried to stand and then fell back down on the ground with a woozy thump.
“What did he do to you?” Lucas asked, his voice high-pitched with worry. He picked Helen up and tried to balance her so she could stand on her own. “Are your legs broken?” He suddenly reclaimed her weight as he frantically assessed the damage.
“No, I just . . . Hector said to use my bolts to fight, and I did, but they went the wrong way, I think,” she mumbled. She was confused and seeing spots.
“Why can’t you stand?” Lucas asked as he tried to get her to her feet again.
Her heart hurt from seeing Lucas’s beautiful face and smelling his body and feeling his hands on her.
She had a vague sense where the ground was, but the whole world was falling over, and she was too tired for this crap.
She just couldn’t do this anymore. She needed a nap.
The next thing she knew, Helen could taste something sweet on her tongue.
Honey. She opened her eyes all the way and saw that she was sitting on the counter in her kitchen with Lucas standing between her knees, holding her head up and tilted back as he drizzled honey into her mouth from a plastic bear.
“There you are,” he breathed through a small smile when she looked at him. He looked back at her with so much tenderness Helen had to remind herself that Lucas wasn’t really interested. For the thousandth time she wondered what had happened to make him push her away the way he had.
“Hi,” she said, her voice cracking like she’d just woken from a full night’s sleep. “How’d you get here?”
“Cassie got a glimpse of Creon’s attack, but she didn’t know where it was going to take place because all she could see was darkness. I took a guess,” he said, brushing her hair back from her face and placing a long lock behind her shoulder. “Sorry I was late.”
“Don’t sweat it,” she said, her voice still shaking with fear. She took a deep breath to steady herself and pulled herself together.
“You messed him up pretty good. I’ve never seen Creon bolt from a fight like that before,” Lucas said with admiration.
“I just softened him up for you.” She couldn’t resist smiling at him, even though she knew she’d spend hours rethinking and regretting it. “Did I miss anything while I was out?”
“Just a trip from there to here,” he said, pointing over his shoulder then to the counter. “And a quick call to Jason for backup.”