Chapter Seventeen #3
Helen’s jaw dropped and she stared at her mother in disbelief. After everything Daphne had told her to get her away from the House of Thebes, this change didn’t make any sense.
“But, we’ll miss the ferry. . . .” Helen stammered, still uncertain.
“The Oracle has spoken,” Daphne said, shouldering her bag with a greedy look in her eyes. Helen had no idea what her mother was up to, but lacking any reason to object, she had no choice but to obey.
Helen and Daphne assumed their disguises and the three of them went down to the lobby. Lucas asked them to wait a moment when they got to the front door. He pulled out his phone and called Hector, telling him to bring the car around to the entrance of the hotel.
“Stay here,” he said, firmly. “Let me check the street before you go out there. Hector said that Creon was headed our way.”
“That’s not necessary, Lucas. As long as you keep your distance from us, we’re well hidden,” Daphne said confidently as she stepped out onto the sidewalk, rolling her fancy leather suitcase behind her.
As Helen watched her mother walk out the door, she happened to glance across the street. Creon was standing on the other side, staring up at the hotel windows with his reflection-defying vision. His eyes dropped down when he saw Daphne.
As soon as she saw Creon, Helen’s senses rewound to her last encounter with him.
She could still feel his humid breath on her neck as he whispered preciosa in her ear right before he stabbed her.
Most of all, she remembered the suffocating darkness that had left her feeling like she was lost in space and utterly helpless.
The terror-echo she felt made her forget for a moment that both she and her mother were protected by their borrowed shapes.
“Mom! Stop!” she screamed instinctively, reaching out to pull Daphne back into the hotel.
Creon made eye contact with Helen as she shouted.
Then he saw his cousin Lucas stride up and grab the strange girl frantically.
Creon looked from the cute brunette to Lucas, noticing how they held each other so protectively.
Then he looked back at the tacky woman with the expensive luggage and smiled.
He ran across the street, his head lowered and his shoulders rounded like a bull.
“Daphne! He knows!” Lucas shouted, throwing Helen behind him and moving impossibly fast to intercept Creon.
The cousins collided in the middle of the street, both of them using their momentum to put power into their first punches.
But Lucas could do something Creon wasn’t expecting.
At the last moment he made gravity pull harder on him, and in his massive-state he pushed his stunned opponent back into the asphalt with so much force he fractured the surface of the street.
A split second later Lucas glanced up and saw Matt’s terrified face through the windshield of his car as he slammed on his brakes.
Matt tried to stop, but it was too late.
He hit the two figures that had appeared out of thin air in the middle of the street and his car crumpled in on itself as if it had run into a brick wall.
“Lucas!” Helen screamed as she tried to run past her mother.
Daphne grabbed Helen and restrained her just as Hector’s big SUV screeched to a halt in front of them, blocking Helen’s way to the accident. Ariadne jumped out of the passenger side before Hector had even come to a full stop and sprinted to the wreck.
“Get in the truck!” Hector bellowed at Daphne as he came around from the driver’s side and stomped to the smoking front end of Matt’s car.
Helen struggled, unable to see what was going on. She was still calling Lucas’s name as Jason and Daphne bundled her into the back of the SUV.
“Luke’s fine!” Jason said to her through gritted teeth as he wrestled with her. “Helen, please! We’re attracting enough attention as it is.”
Reminded of where she was, Helen forced herself to calm down and get into the backseat.
She slid over to one of the tinted windows, and sighed with relief when she saw Lucas standing up in front of Matt’s destroyed car.
He was uninjured and holding on to Hector to keep him from running off somewhere.
Creon was gone, so Helen assumed that Hector was trying to follow him.
For a moment, it looked like Lucas was going to hit Hector, but then he whispered something that seemed to convince his stubborn cousin, and all at once Hector calmed down and nodded.
“He looks just like Ajax,” Daphne whispered behind her, her eyes glued to Hector.
Helen glanced briefly at her mother, then turned her attention back to the wreck. Ariadne was helping Matt out of his car, holding him up. He was reeling and bleeding from the head, ash-white and owl-eyed with astonishment, but he didn’t seem to be badly hurt.
“We should get you to a hospital,” Ariadne insisted as she studied Matt’s uneven pupils.
“No,” Matt said vehemently. “There’s no way to explain this. Normal people don’t get up and walk away after you run them over with a car.”
They all knew he was right. Even concussed, Matt was a quick thinker.
“You hit your head,” Jason warned as the Scions shot each other uncertain looks.
“And I still know what I saw. Look, don’t worry about me, I’d never rat out a friend, but we have to go now,” Matt insisted. “Before the police come.”
“Ari?” Jason asked as he met his twin’s eyes in an honest exchange. “Is it life threatening?”
Ariadne ran her hands just over Matt’s skull, a faint glow coming out of her palms. “He’ll be just fine,” she said after a brief moment. She started to lead Matt toward Hector’s truck, but Matt giggled and stopped dead.
“Wow. What did you do to me?” He gave her a goofy smile.
“I healed you. That’s my gift,” she answered as she smiled back at him, suddenly looking exhausted.
“Thanks,” Matt said. He allowed himself to be moved toward Hector’s truck. “Wait. Where’s Claire?”
Helen was out of the truck and barreling down on Matt before her mother could even hold out an arm to stop her.
“What do you mean ‘where’s Claire’?” Helen demanded, balling her fists so hard her arms started shaking. “Where did you last see her?”
“The front seat,” Matt replied weakly as he gestured toward his car.
Jason’s whole body went rigid. Moving so fast he was little more than a blur, Jason tore the door of the car off with one hand and tenderly scooped Claire out from underneath the dashboard with the other. She was unconscious, bleeding, and as limp as a wet cotton doll.
“No,” Jason whispered to her. “You were supposed to stay away from me.” He placed his lips a hair’s width away from hers and held statue still.
“How is she?” Ariadne asked urgently.
“She’s breathing,” he said after a moment, his voice breaking. He lifted his head up and met his twin’s eyes.
“Well, can you heal her or not?” she asked him calmly, as though she and her twin had prepared themselves for this.
He clenched his jaw and nodded but didn’t speak, carrying Claire into the back of the truck and holding her carefully on his lap while everyone else organized.
“I’ll take care of Matt’s car and meet you back at home,” Lucas said to Hector, already obscuring the particulars of the wreck by bending the light around it.
“Wait,” Daphne commanded. She raised a hand like she was hailing a cab and closed her eyes.
“This will draw less attention,” she said.
Thick wreaths of pearl gray fog rolled off the water and down the street, the long, ropy tendrils racing toward her delicately tilted fingers.
Helen had the feeling that the recent storm was no accident, and wondered if her mother had conjured it.
“Great Zeus, Cloud-Gatherer,” Hector said under his breath, thinking along the same lines as Helen. The scene of the accident disappeared in the fog, and then he turned to Lucas. “Where are you going to hide the car?”
“In the ocean. We can clean it up after dark,” Lucas answered as he plunged into the thick mist to push Matt’s lump of twisted metal and leaking toxins off the dock.
Everyone else squeezed into Hector’s truck. The whole incident, from Creon’s attack to their getaway, had only taken a few minutes and they were a full four blocks from the scene before they heard the first siren sounding through the fog.
They drove in complete silence, at a completely lawful speed, out to Siasconset, each of them stuck inside their own thought box of shock and worry.
As they cruised along, Helen couldn’t take her eyes off of Jason and Claire.
Jason had started moving his hands an inch above her body, his palms glowing like his sister’s had when she healed Matt.
He whispered in her ear. He blew soft, sparkling breaths against her closed eyes as if he was exhaling energy directly into her unconscious dreams.
Whatever he was doing was helping Claire, but it was also causing him excruciating pain.
A thick, slick sweat beaded up on his graying skin as Claire seemed to settle with more comfort in his arms and gather more color in her cheeks.
By the time they parked at the Delos compound, Jason was so spent Helen didn’t even ask, she just picked Claire up off his lap and carried her into the house for him.
“My room. Quickly,” Jason croaked as Helen carried Claire into the crowded kitchen.
She ducked past the startled faces of the Delos family, cradling Claire close to her chest to shield her from prying eyes as she and Jason made their way to the stairs.
Halfway up the staircase she felt Jason put his hand on her shoulder and lean into her for support.
He was so weak he could barely put one foot in front of the other.
Eventually, he made it the rest of the way.
“How can I help you?” Helen asked Jason, easing Claire down into his bed.