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“Lennie, that’s just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Claire said, disbelief wiping all expression off her face. “Matt is a better fighter than you are and he isn’t even a Scion. And you think you can take on Ares alone?”
“Yes,” Helen said, looking around impassively at everyone’s shocked faces. “I’m the Descender. I can control the Underworld and Ares can’t. I don’t know what it says about me, that I have power over that place, but there it is. Up here, I wouldn’t have much of a shot against him, sure. But in the Underworld I can beat him—at least long enough to get my father back. I know it.”
Helen walked to Lucas’s bed and pulled the covers down.
“Helen. Your father wouldn’t want you to endanger yourself for him,” Claire said firmly as she put a hand on Helen’s shoulder and turned her around. Helen couldn’t remember the last time Claire had called her by her full name. She, Kate, and Cassandra were all ready to stop her, which they could do easily. Unless she convinced them, all they had to do was keep her awake.
“I know my dad wouldn’t want this, but . . . well, too bad!” Helen finally burst out in a rough whisper, trying to keep her voice down and nearly failing. “He’ll die if I don’t get him away from Ares, and if the twins stay down there much longer, they’re going to die, too. You know I’m right, Claire. You know how every second on the border of the shadow lands feels like forever to the soul stumbling around in it.”
Claire dropped her eyes and turned her head, nodding painfully. She did know, and the memory still frightened her.
“Just wait for Orion to go with you,” Cassandra begged, crossing the room to Lucas’s bed as Helen climbed into it.
“I can’t. It takes Orion half an hour to get down to where the portal is on the mainland from Nantucket. In the Underworld, time moves differently, but my father’s spirit isn’t in the Underworld yet. Time hasn’t stopped, it’s stretched out for him and the twins, and every second I waste up here feels like days and days to them down there. Jason, Ari, and my dad won’t last in that desert another half an hour. I have to go now.”
Kate, Claire, and Cassandra looked around at each other sadly. They knew Helen was right.
“I wish I could say everything’s going to be all right, but I haven’t been able to see your future for a while now. I’m sorry,” Cassandra said, leaning forward impulsively to kiss her on the cheek. “Good luck, cousin,” she whispered tenderly, clinging tightly to Helen’s neck.
Helen reached out her other arm and brought Kate and Claire into the hug as well.
“You’d better leave now and shut the door behind you,” she said resolutely as she let the three of them go. “It’s about to get dangerously cold in here.”
The Oracle was near. That was a problem. Her dear mortal females could die and not disrupt the plans of the Twelve, but the Oracle was almost as important as Helen herself, and unfortunately she was far more fragile.
True Oracles who were strong enough to bear the crushing weight of the future were precious, and although the gods were subject to the Fates just as mortals were, they had never had an Oracle of their own. Procuring one had always been a top priority. This Cassandra in particular was a favorite of Apollo’s. He had waited for her for millennia.
Listening in on the conversation between the princess and the Oracle, he could hear her taking the bait. No matter how dangerous it was to her, she would follow her father down to the shadow lands, just as his master had predicted.
Automedon had a very small window of opportunity. He could only strike after she created a portal, but before she descended. If he didn’t sting her then, the goddess charm she always wore around her neck would prevent any penetration. Worse than that, she would be able to incapacitate him with her lightning long enough to fly away. She was only vulnerable for a moment—the cold of the Void was the signal—and then he had a split second to act.
Pacing around the outside of the mansion, Automedon tasted the air for the scent of any of her protectors. Luckily, they had their hands full in the center of town. Automedon heard the Heir, the true princess of legend, dismiss her handmaidens with a loving embrace, and relax into the sleeping trance, the mental state from which she preferred to conjure the portal. The time had come.
Automedon leapt forward, knocking down the front door, and sprinting up the stairs on all fours. The mother mortal raised her hand to draw the curse of Hestia down upon him, but she was too slow.
Leaping over the precious Oracle to spare her, Automedon knocked the two pretty but useless handmaidens aside. He shattered the lover’s door into splinters, vaulted onto the bed, and cupped the princess’s sleeping head in his right hand half a heartbeat before she descended, the very moment she was most vulnerable. Her beautiful amber eyes snapped open. From inside his left wrist, Automedon slid his stinger out of its sheath and pierced the Princess’s slack throat. Her eyes fluttered and her lips quivered as his venom flooded her blood. He heard screaming from the hallway and from the bottom of the stairs, but the noise was inconsequential. He had his prize, and none of them was anywhere near strong enough to keep him from taking it.
The princess went still. Automedon picked her up and carried her paralyzed body out of the lover’s window and off the island.
Lucas watched Hector blur as he sped off to find his father, while he and Orion stayed back to help a cluster of injured people onto the sidewalk. A triage center was forming, and people who lived in the area were coming out of their houses with water, bandages, and first aid kits to help the wounded. Lucas and Orion had urged Hector on, but had to stop themselves when they couldn’t ignore the cries for help.
“We should check the next block, too,” Orion said when they had helped the last of the injured, and the two of them began to run at a human pace down the nearest alley.
“Hold up,” Lucas called out to Orion as he fished his buz
zing phone out of his jeans.
Lucas looked at the screen and saw that it was his mom. He answered it immediately, already feeling a sick, slithering sensation in his gut.
“Lucas, he took her,” she said in a clipped and urgent monotone. “Helen was just about to descend to help her father and the twins when Automedon broke down the door, stung her, and then jumped out the window with her.”
“How long ago?” Lucas asked coldly.
Orion’s eyes flared as he picked up on Lucas’s chaotic emotions.
“A few minutes ago. Claire and Kate got knocked down by that creature, and I just finished making sure they were still alive,” his mother responded in a disgusted tone. “I don’t understand this, Lucas. How could he sting Helen? The cestus . . .”
“I gotta go.” Lucas hung up on his mother, not because he was angry but so that he could think. After relaying the information to Orion he went silent.
