Chapter Thirteen
Swathed in black shadows, Creon crouched outside Helen’s house, his eyes glued to her bedroom window.
He could hear Hector four doors down, slipping through the neighbor’s yard, searching for him.
But Creon knew Hector didn’t have a prayer.
No one could find Creon at night if he didn’t want to be found.
His little cousin Lucas was up there, in Helen’s bed, holding her while she slept.
Creon shook from head to toe, resisting the nearly all-consuming urge to leap through the glass and fight his cousin for her life.
Or maybe just for her. Creon wasn’t sure what he would do anymore, and he didn’t like this newfound uncertainty.
He gritted his teeth and forced himself to get control.
If he challenged his cousin, it would be a fight to the death.
Creon had no doubt he would win, but in winning he would lose everything.
He would become an Outcast, and Atlantis would remain lost.
The choice was clear: immortality or Helen.
So why was he sweating with the effort to resist?
He heard Helen sighing in her sleep and Lucas shifting his body under hers, pulling her even closer.
Creon’s legs straightened as if of their own accord.
He took two steps toward the window, his head swimming in the red-lit haze of bloodlust.
His phone vibrated in his pocket.
Alerted to the danger, Hector broke into a sprint and headed straight for that slight sound. Creon had no choice but to run. He couldn’t take both his cousins and Helen. He would have to come back some other time.
It took him ten minutes to lose Hector in the center of the island. His cousin was persistent, but eventually the suffocating darkness of Creon’s shadows disoriented Hector enough so that Creon could slip away.
Trotting up the eastern side of the beach, Creon finally checked the ID on the call that had saved him from a terrible mistake.
It didn’t surprise him that it was from his mother.
She might not be a Scion, but she had uncanny timing.
He called her back and told her what he had discovered when he tried to stab Helen.
At first she didn’t believe him, though in her careful choice of words, Creon sensed that her incredulity came not from a belief that what he had described was impossible, but rather that she doubted Helen herself was responsible for the phenomenon he had witnessed.
Somehow, his mother had seen or heard of a Scion being able to break blades with his or her skin before, and Creon pressed her to tell him who it was.
Instead of answering, she asked yet again for Creon to describe Helen. He did.
“Well, it must have been that your blade was defective. From how you describe Helen, it can’t be her or her daughter,” Mildred said quickly.
Creon continued to press his mother and she grew increasingly frustrated, raising her voice and even swearing a bit.
Creon was shocked by her crass behavior.
A lady never cheapened herself by using foul language, and he hadn’t even considered his mother capable of it until that moment.
He asked her politely how she could be so sure his blade was defective.
“Because if this girl truly was impervious to weapons, then you would have also said she has the most beautiful face you’ve ever seen. You wouldn’t be able to ignore that fact—it’s in your blood,” she replied petulantly.
“And if she does have the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen? What then?” Creon asked calmly, although a wonderful rush of adrenaline was sending a chill across his skin. The line went silent for a full five seconds.
“You need to come home now. We need to tell your father. This is much bigger than you know,” Mildred finally choked out before she abruptly ended the call.
The next morning Helen jerked herself awake, her entire body snapping from sleep to high alert in a blink. Her hand flew to that spot on her chest where Creon’s blade had broken, and she had to press her fingers into her breastbone to convince herself that there was no gaping hole there.
She heard faint whispers coming from across the room. Sitting up, she saw Lucas standing in the window, talking to someone outside in such a low voice that no human could hear. The clock by her bed read 5:25, and the sky was barely gray with the dawn.
“She’s safe, that’s all that matters,” Lucas said out the window.
“Not all that matters,” came the whispered reply.
Helen got out of bed and joined Lucas at the window. She looked down and saw Hector standing on the edge of her lawn. He looked up at them, glancing back and forth from Helen to Lucas, an indignant look on his face.
“You okay?” Hector asked Helen gruffly.
“Yeah. But you don’t look so hot,” she said. Even from one flight up she could see that Hector’s eyes were bloodshot with fatigue and worry. He grimaced sarcastically at her compassionate look, and turned to Lucas with a warning.
“Stay high until we’re sure. She’s safer in the air.”
Hector ran off so fast that Helen could only make out his blur. Lucas shut the window and leaned against it. His eyes were wide and unblinking.
“What was that about?” Helen asked in a nearly inaudible voice. She could hear her dad’s deep breathing from his bedroom. Thankfully, he was still asleep.
“My family went looking for Creon last night,” Lucas answered with downturned eyes. “We think he caught a charter flight off the island, but we aren’t sure yet.”
“He’s gone?” Helen asked, a little too hopefully.
“Maybe. But if he did leave, it won’t be forever.” Lucas stared at Helen so intensely she had to reach out and touch him somehow just to break the tension. She stepped forward and placed her hand on his chest. He was shaking.
Straightening suddenly, Lucas crossed to the door. “Put on something warm.”
“Why? Where are we going?” she whispered.
“Up.”
As soon as they were airborne, Lucas seemed to relax a little, but not much.
She asked for a flying lesson, partly because she wanted to learn, but mostly just to distract him.
They worked on Helen’s air-pressure control for over an hour before they got a call from his family.
Castor had called from the airport, finally confirming that Creon had left the island by private charter like they had suspected, and it was safe for Lucas to bring Helen in.
Hector took the phone and insisted they come in right away—he wanted her to resume her combat training that morning. The cousins got into a heated exchange. Finally, Lucas agreed to land, but he seemed put out by the request.
“What’s wrong?” Helen asked, confused that he wasn’t happier to learn that Creon was gone.
“Hector has the wrong idea about us being up here alone. I’m not keeping you aloft so we can . . . damn it, you need to learn this!” he snapped, raking a hand through his hair. “I want you to be able to fly away from trouble, rather than try to stand and fight.”
“Me too,” she replied enthusiastically, grabbing on to Lucas’s shoulders so she didn’t waft away. “Call your cousins back and tell them we’re not done. I’d rather spend the day flying with you than getting sweated on by Hector any time.”
Lucas gave Helen a sinking look, like he was thinking a painful thought. “We’d better go in,” he finally decided, his face darkening. “You need to learn both.”
Helen knew Lucas was worried, but after spending the morning soaring weightless, she couldn’t feel anything but elated.
She took both his hands and swung him around her so they spun in a spiral and tumbled in the air like they were on a roller coaster.
The swooping sensation in her stomach made Helen shriek, but it worked. Lucas grinned and took the bait.
He seized on her arms and brought her into a dive that had her screaming bloody murder.
At the last moment he pulled up, holding Helen cradled in his arms before allowing her to float to his side.
They hovered over the Delos lawn like that for a moment, holding hands and laughing hysterically.
They failed to notice the worried stares they were getting from the rest of the Delos family inside the house.
“Now, before you land I’m going to teach you another skill,” Lucas said as he looped over her shoulder and put an arm around her from behind.
“I’m going to teach you how to transition into the massive-state—turn up the gravity pulling on you.
The best way to get the hang of it is to do it while you’re landing. ”
“Is that what you did when you landed on Hector the other day in the tennis courts?” Helen guessed. “And last night?” She was thinking of how heavy he’d made his body when they were wrestling in her bed. She pinched her lips together to keep herself from smiling.
“Exactly,” he said against her ear, letting his lower lip brush against her skin. “It’s the third state of gravity for fliers, and it could save your life in a fight.”
With his arm around her waist and the two of them floating ten feet above the ground, he taught her how to warp the way the world pulled on her.
Lucas guided her to reverse the impulse that made her weightless and imagine her body becoming heavier.
She was able to pick up the basics right away and when Lucas told her to touch down she thudded into the lawn with a jarring blow, kicking up two great divots of grass with her heels.
She was impressed with herself and looked up at Lucas for approval, but apparently, there was still a lot left for her to learn.
“You’ll get better at it,” he said encouragingly as he pounded into the lawn next to her, skidding two deep trenches with his feet.
“You are such a show-off!” she said, grinning at him.
“Hey, I’ve got to impress you as much as I can, while I can. Soon you’ll be flying circles around me,” he said. He took her hand and pulled her tight up against his side as he led her toward the house.