Starcrossed (13 page)

could finally open her eyes and focus them. All she could see in the

sweeping, blinding flashes sent out from some distant lighthouse

were walls of sand. Under her right cheek was a warm T-shirt.

After a few moments she realized there was a person in it. She was

lying on top of a man. The lumpiness under her head was his chest

and the bobbing sensation was him breathing. She gasped. The

Delos boys had caught her.

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“Helen?” Lucas asked, his voice faint and breathy. “Make sound.

If alive,” he barely managed to say. He didn’t sound like he was going

to kill her so she answered.

“Alive. Can’t move,” she whispered back. Every syllable sent

threads of pain radiating out from her diaphragm.

“Wait. Listen to waves. Calm,” he said, struggling with every

word as her body weight tried to press the air out of him.

Helen knew she couldn’t so much as raise her arm, so she relaxed

like he told her to and just watched as the world swayed up and

then back down with every breath he took. They waited in the intermittent

light and dark of the lighthouse signal, listening to the

surf fizzing in the sand.

As the agony began to lessen into something semi-endurable,

Helen was able to notice more things about her body. From what

she could see, her outward shape seemed mostly normal, but her

insides felt gooey and soft, as if she were a freshly microwaved

chocolate chip cookie. Her bones were barely supporting the

muscles and tissue they were supposed to, and there was an itchy

heat in her marrow. She recognized that sensation as being similar

to the one she’d experienced once when she was learning to ride a

scooter and accidentally flipped the thing. Some part of her knew

at the time that she had broken her arm, but by the time she got it

X-rayed it was as good as new. The itch meant she was healing.

Somehow, she had fallen out of the sky and survived. She really

was a monster. A freak. Maybe even a witch. She started to cry.

“Don’t be scared,” Lucas managed to say in one try. “Pain will

pass.”

“Should be dead,” she whined quietly through her liquefied jaw.

“What’s wrong with me?”

“No. Not wrong. You’re one of us,” he said with a slightly

stronger voice. He was healing just as fast as Helen was.

“And what’s that?”

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“We call ourselves Scions,” he said.

“Offspring?” Helen mumbled, remembering the definition from

one of Hergie’s despised Word of the Day assignments. “Offspring

of what?”

Lucas answered her. Helen heard him, but she didn’t. The word

demigod was so far from what she was expecting to hear she had to

think about it for a second. She had prepared herself for it to be

something horrific, possibly even evil, which made her the way she

was.

“Huh?” she blurted out stupidly, so confused she had stopped

crying. Her view jiggled, and Helen realized that Lucas was

laughing.

“Ouch. Don’t make me. Laugh,” he said even though his chest

kept bouncing up and down.

It felt funny to have her head bobbing around like that so she

started laughing, regretted it, but couldn’t seem to stop. It was almost

as if the pain was so awful she had to laugh it off.

“This really hurts,” he said as he started to get hold of himself.

“If you stop, I’ll stop,” she said, her fit winding down as well.

In between recurring snickers, they went back to quietly managing

their pain and waiting for their bodies to knit themselves

back together. Despite the pain, the time ticked by soothingly. Out

of one ear, Helen could hear the steady thump of Lucas’s heart,

and out of the other she could hear seagulls. Dawn was on its way,

and she felt completely safe for the first time in weeks.

“Why don’t I hate you anymore?” she asked when she felt like her

head bones were solid enough to enunciate properly.

“I was just wondering the same thing. I think the Furies are

gone.” Lucas sighed deeply, like a huge weight had just been lifted

off his chest, even though Helen knew her head was probably as

heavy as a bowling ball. “I was scared for a moment when we were

in the air. It was very hard not to engage you.”

“We? Oh, you can fly!” Helen said, realizing.

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She remembered how Lucas had a habit of appearing and disappearing

so suddenly, and how she had heard the thuds and scuffs

of his takeoffs and landings. She had never seen him fly because

she had never thought to look up.

“How did you get under me?” she asked, shifting her position

ever so slightly.

“I caught you. I saw you faint and slowed your fall as best as I

could, but we were already close to impact when I got an arm

around you.” He shifted as well, and then flinched in pain. “I can’t

believe we’re alive.”

“Neither can I. I thought you were coming to kill me tonight, but

instead you caught me,” she marveled, still stunned. “You saved

my life.”

It was as if the fall had knocked all the rage right out of her. She

didn’t hate Lucas at all. She felt the pressure of his arms lying

across her back increase slightly, quickly, and then relax again.

“The sun’s coming up,” Lucas said after a while. “Hopefully, my

family will be able to see us now.”

“All I can see is your chest out of my right eye and mounds of

sand out of my left. Where are we?”

“At the bottom of our impact crater on the last bit of beach before

Great Point Light at the absolute tip of the narrowest strip of sand

on the northernmost end of Nantucket Island.”

“So . . . easy to find,” Helen quipped.

“Practically in my backyard,” Lucas joked, and then flinched

painfully when he laughed. He went quiet for a moment before

speaking again. “Who are you?” he finally asked.

“I’m Helen Hamilton,” she replied hesitantly, not sure what he

was getting at. She wished she could see his face.

“Your father’s name is Hamilton, but that’s not your House,” he

said. Helen could feel the capital H in the word House just from

the inflection he used. “You would normally have taken your mother’s

Scion name rather than your father’s mortal one. Who was

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she?” he asked as though he had been meaning to ask her that

question all night.

“Beth Smith.”

“Beth Smith. Right,” he said sarcastically.

“What?”

“Well, ‘Smith’ is obviously an alias.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know anything about her. How

can you say that isn’t my mother’s name?” Helen asked, getting

defensive.

She had never even known her mother, and here was this

stranger assuming he knew more than she did. It cut Helen a little

to have to admit to herself that perhaps he did. For the first time in

hours, she was also hyperaware of the fact that she was lying on

top of him, and she didn’t want to be anymore. She tried to put

pressure on her forearm but a searing pain informed her that there

would be none of that. After a few feeble attempts to roll off of him

she gave up. She could feel him smiling, and his arms tensing to

hold on to her just in case she managed to get away.

“I know your mother wasn’t named ‘Smith’ because you can fly,

Helen, now hold still. You’re hurting me,” he said frankly.

“Sorry,” she said, suddenly realizing that he’d taken the brunt of

her weight when they hit the ground. His injuries were probably

far worse than hers—and hers were awful.

As she watched the sand turn gray, then pink, then coral with the

rising sun, Helen thought that this was the second dawn she had

seen in as many days. Of the two, she much preferred this one. She

was in far more pain, but she was also alive and completely free

from anger. Helen hadn’t realized how heavy the burden of hate

had been until she was allowed to put it down.

She heard a voice calling for Lucas, and although she knew they

were in danger lying helpless in that pit, she didn’t want to be

found. What if the Furies came back with the rest of the family?

“Here!” Lucas called weakly.

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“Wait,” Helen pleaded. “What if they still see the Furies when

they look at me? I can’t defend myself in this state.”

“No one will hurt you,” he promised, his arms tightening slightly

around her.

“Hector . . .” she began.

“. . . would have to get through me first,” he said resolutely.

“Uh, Lucas?” she said leadingly, not wanting to insult him by

pointing out the obvious.

“Yeah,” he replied with a chuckle, catching her drift. “I know I’m

not exactly Secret Service material right now, but trust me. I won’t

let any of them harm you—not even big, bad Hector. He isn’t as

terrible as you think, you know.” He managed to tilt his head to the

side enough to meet Helen’s eyes.

“You’re his cousin. You have to think the best of him.”

“I’ll leave it up to you, then. I can’t hide us, but I won’t call out to

them if you don’t want me to,” he said, and let his head roll back

out of her sight.

They lay there listening to his family call his name over and over,

but Lucas kept his word. He didn’t make a sound, although he did

flinch when he heard Cassandra’s exhausted voice. She sounded

desperate and frightened. They all did. And Helen was to blame.

After a few more moments she couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Here!” Helen yelled as hard as she could. “We’re over here!”

“Are you sure?” Lucas asked carefully.

“No.” She chuckled nervously before calling out again, this time

with Lucas’s help.

There was a lot of yelling from down the beach, and the sound of

feet pounding across the sand. Then Helen felt Lucas try to reposition

his head to look at someone standing above them.

“Hi, Dad,” he said apologetically.

Castor muttered some kind of oath that Helen didn’t recognize,

but the meaning was clear enough. Then he starting giving orders,

and Helen felt someone thud down next to her.

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“My gods,” Ariadne whispered to herself. “Helen? I’m going to try

to roll you off, okay? But first I’m going to have to try to speed up

the healing of your bones a bit. It will feel a little hot, but don’t be

afraid, healing is one of my and Jason’s talents. Jase, come and do

her legs,” she called up.

Helen felt another thud, and then she felt the twins slide their

hands gently down along her arms and legs. There was a burning

sensation inside Helen’s bones that was nearly unbearable, and it

made her wonder if she would be better off without any “healing.”

Right before she begged them to stop, the burning mercifully

ended. The twins counted to three and gingerly flipped her onto

her back like she was a runny pancake. Helen tried to be brave, but

she couldn’t stop a scream from slipping out. Every muscle, every

inch of skin, every bone in her body was lit up with pain as though

someone had filled her bloodstream with flaming-hot shards of

glass.

She gritted her teeth and took deep, calming breaths before she

felt like she had enough control to open her eyes. When she did,

she saw Ariadne’s luminous hazel eyes, fringed with the same incredibly

long lashes as Jason’s, looking down at her with compassion.

She studied Helen’s face carefully, and then gave her a tired

smile. Helen thought Ariadne looked drained, as if what she had

done for Helen had cost her. Her bow-shaped lips were ashy instead

of their usual cherry red and her long, chestnut hair stuck to

her perspiring cheeks.

“Don’t worry. Your face is already going back to its right shape.

You’ll be your usual, exquisite self by nightfall,” she said, smoothing

Helen’s hair comfortingly. “Keep still. I’ll be right back.”

Helen glanced around. For the first time she could see where she

and Lucas had spent the night. It took a moment to register that

they were in a hole in the ground that was at least five feet deep

and three times that wide, and it took even longer to register that

the hole had been made by their bodies when they fell. She felt

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water seep into her clothes as it leached up from the damp sand,

and realized that Lucas must have been lying in a cold puddle all

night. She rolled her head to the side so she could look at him.

There was a faint Helen-shaped dent running down the length of

his body, and his chest was nearly caved in from the weight of her

head and shoulders. His face was pinched up in a grimace. He

hummed to himself a little as if to try to give his vocal cords

something to do other than howl. His father hovered over him,

looking Lucas directly in the eye and talking softly. She saw Lucas

give a tiny nod, bite his lower lip, then take a deep breath and

strain. His chest expanded into a more normal shape, and then Lucas

suddenly let his breath out and panted as if he had just lifted a

great weight. A tear trickled out of the corner of his eye and ran into

his hair.

His father said something reassuring and then pulled himself

smoothly out of the hole and started talking strategy with Hector.