Starcrossed (30 page)

whole body shook with fear.

Cassandra swung her sword. In that millisecond Helen knew

she’d had a good life, because she suddenly loved it so much that

she could have wept with gratitude. She’d had amazing friends, the

best dad in the world, and a strong, healthy body. She’d even experienced

the joy of flight. And once, just once, in the middle of the

night, she’d almost kissed the only boy she ever wanted. . . .

Helen felt a strange, vibrating tickle, like someone had pressed a

gigantic kazoo against the side of her throat and blown on it. She

saw Cassandra’s eyes widen as she pulled the blade back from the

side of Helen’s neck and looked at it.

The sword was totally mangled in the middle section, all

crunched up on itself like a squeezed piece of tinfoil. Cassandra

stared at Helen in shock for a moment. Relieved tears spilled down

her cheeks.

“I was right.” She dropped the sword and grabbed Helen in a

hug. Then she started jumping up and down, making Helen jump

with her. “You’re not dead! This is . . . You have no idea how happy

I am I didn’t just kill you!” she squealed.

“Ditto,” Helen said in a daze. She was alive.

“Hang on. We still have to test this,” Cassandra said excitedly as

she ran over to a chest of weapons in the corner of the fenced off

court. She threw open the lid and grabbed a bow and arrow. Grinning,

she shot Helen in the chest.

Helen heard Ariadne scream something behind her, and

someone running at demigod speed to overtake the arrow, but it

was too late. The arrow struck her and bounced off her chest, making

a faint twanging sound as it did so. Too late to change course,

Jason plowed into her from behind and knocked her to the ground.

They rolled over together until he was propped up on his elbows

above her, staring at her chest with disbelief.

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“I saw that arrow strike you,” he said vehemently as if he were

swearing in front of a grand jury.

“It did,” said Cassandra from the other end of the tennis court,

beaming with pleasure.

“I think Cassie’s finally lost it,” Hector whispered sadly, but

without surprise, to Ariadne.

“No, I haven’t lost it, Hector. I saw it,” Cassandra said, still smiling

from ear to ear. “Helen can’t be hurt by any weapon. Try it

yourself.” She pulled a sword out of the box, offering it to him.

“Cass, just put the sword down,” Ariadne said with a hand raised

in an appeasing gesture. “We can talk about this.”

“I’m not crazy!” Cassandra screamed, suddenly livid.

“She isn’t crazy,” Helen said with conviction. She untangled herself

from Jason and stood. “Go ahead, Cass. Shoot me.”

Cassandra locked another arrow in her bow and shot Helen—in

the head this time. Ariadne screamed again, but the scream trailed

off lamely when they all saw the arrow bounce right off. Everyone

was silent for a moment.

“No frigging way!” Hector shouted, a touch of envy making him

sound almost angry.

“Did that hurt?” Jason asked as he turned to Helen, a look of disbelief

on his face.

“Maybe a tiny bit,” Helen said, but Jason was too excited to really

listen. He ran over to the box, pulled out a javelin, and chucked it

at Helen. It bounced right off.

“Okay, that stung,” Helen said, smiling and raising her hands to

signal in a friendly way that she’d had enough, but Hector had

already picked up a sword and was stalking toward her.

“I’ll stop as soon as you start bleeding, okay?” he said casually before

he started hacking away at her. Four strokes in, and the blade

was ruined.

Helen stumbled back with raised arms and fell down. She wasn’t

wounded, but the instinct to protect herself was still there, and

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Hector was absolutely terrifying when he attacked. The rain of

blows ended abruptly when the sword fell apart. She tried to stand

back up, but as soon as she did she was thrown down again as

something fell from the sky and landed violently on top of Hector.

Lucas had rammed into Hector from above, driving his cousin two

feet into the dirt before he reared back on his knees to hit him.

“Lucas, stop!” Helen screamed in concert with Cassandra and

Ariadne.

Jason didn’t yell, but as usual, he dove on top of the other two to

put himself between them. In his rage, Lucas hit Jason accidentally,

and that misguided blow made him stop and look at his cousins

more clearly. Hector lay at the bottom of the pile, covered in

layers of dirt, his hands held up in a surrendering gesture. Jason

lay across his brother’s body, bleeding from the mouth and pushing

on Lucas’s shoulders to keep him back. Lucas blinked and

looked up at Helen.

“He was trying to kill you.” Lucas lowered his raised fist. He

forced his eyes to focus on Hector and his voice frayed at the edges,

like he was a young boy. “I saw it. You had a sword.”

“I’m okay. Look at me, Lucas. No blood. I’m fine,” Helen said

gently as she moved to the side of the trench. She put her hands on

his shoulders and tried to coax him off his frightened, panting

cousins. Lucas allowed himself to be led up out of the trench, docile

with regret and confusion.

Cassandra briefly explained Helen’s imperviousness to her brother

as Helen, Ariadne, and Jason pulled Hector up out of the collapsing

ditch. He was injured—not too seriously, but badly enough

that he couldn’t walk on his own. Ariadne and Jason took Hector

into the house, having to hold him up as he walked. Lucas watched

his cousin half limp, half drag himself across the yard. He had to

sit down in the sand at the sight.

Three fast-moving shapes came rushing out of the house to see

what was wrong. Pallas helped his children the rest of the way into

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the house while Castor and Pandora briefly conferred with Ariadne

and then moved toward the tennis court.

“Why didn’t you warn me, Cassie?” Lucas pleaded quietly while

Castor shouted questions as he and Pandora entered the tennis

court. Cassandra shrugged, avoiding everyone’s eyes.

“She was afraid,” Helen answered defensively, cutting off Castor’s

questions. She took Cassandra’s hand and pulled her close, a little

angry that they would try to blame Cassandra for Lucas’s actions.

“She had a vision of herself swinging a sword at me and she

thought she was going to kill me. She thought she had to kill me.

Would you have told anyone if you were in her shoes?”

Pandora looked at Helen questioningly as if to ask if she was

okay. Helen gave her an uncertain smile in response, relieved that

Pandora had been sensitive enough to keep this exchange silent.

Then they both turned their attention back to Lucas, who was still

shell-shocked.

“If you were scared, why didn’t you tell me, Cassie? You know

you can always come to me,” Lucas said firmly, but she shook her

head.

“None of you are qualified to be my confidants anymore. I’m the

only one who can decide what to reveal or keep hidden,” she said

gently. Cassandra stepped away from Helen’s side and stood up

straighter. It was as if she was throwing off her childhood with one

painful gesture. She took a wistful breath and turned back to

Helen.

“Standing there, waiting for me to cut your head off?” said the

newer, older, and slightly more melancholic Cassandra. “That was

the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

That’s because you couldn’t see yourself, Helen thought.

Cassandra looked down at Lucas who was still in shock over what

he’d done. She put a hand on his shoulder and shook it until he

looked up at her.

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“Let’s go inside and check on Hector,” she said as she helped her

brother off his knees.

Helen still felt shaky with adrenaline. Walking back to the house

next to Lucas, she wished he would take her hand like he used to,

but then scolded herself for even thinking that. She sped up and

walked in front of him so she wouldn’t be tempted to feel sorry for

herself.

All of them sat down at the kitchen table to hash out the new discovery,

but no one had any answers. They asked Helen if she could

ever remember a time when she had been wounded by a knife, but

Helen’s childhood was remarkably violence free, especially for a

Scion. She couldn’t remember ever getting anything bigger than a

paper cut. That sparked a philosophical debate on what qualified

as a weapon—if paper could cut her but a spear couldn’t, could you

make a spear out of paper and kill her?

“Is a fork a weapon?” Jason asked, gesturing to one sitting on the

counter. Ariadne shrugged and stabbed Helen in the shoulder with

it, and it squished up like a soggy ice-cream cone on contact.

“Guess so,” said Ariadne. “Maybe a spoon?” She turned to find

one.

“Could you stop that, please?” Lucas said with a wince. “Eventually,

we’re going to find something that actually can hurt her.

Maybe even kill her. I think we should hold off on the experiments

until we figure out why she’s like this.”

“I agree with Lucas,” Castor said carefully. “And the sooner we

find out how she got like this, the better.”

“It can’t be something she inherited or we would have seen it in

another Scion before,” Pallas said, staring at Helen like she was a

fancy, new bug he’d found under a log. “Dipped in the River Styx?”

He threw it out there, like it was the most logical explanation. “She

doesn’t seem like a zombie, but maybe Achilles didn’t, either.”

“No. I would bet anything she still has her soul,” Castor said,

shaking his head.

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“And how would she have gotten to the River Styx? There hasn’t

been a Descender in millennia,” Cassandra added doubtfully.

Descender? Helen wondered.

“What about something more basic, like a gun?” Jason asked. He

was still trying to wrap his head around Helen’s unbelievable

talent.

“Since when were bullets ever fast enough to hit a Scion? That’s

why we still use swords, dummy,” Ariadne said with a smirk.

“We’re the only things that can move fast enough to kill us.”

“Yeah, but what if we had her just stand there and take a few bullets?

Technically, we can be killed by them, if we’re hit enough

times,” he said logically.

“It doesn’t matter how many times she gets shot. You could drop

a bomb on her and she’d be fine, that’s what I’m trying to tell you,”

Cassandra said with tired frustration.

“There has to be a reason behind it. It isn’t a talent, so she must

have some form of protection we don’t know about. I’ll start doing

some research and put together a list of possibilities,” Pallas interjected,

still staring at Helen.

“I’ll help you, Dad,” Hector said from the doorway. He limped into

the kitchen, his hair damp from a shower. “I’m dying to know

how Sparky here does her little impervious trick.”

“I tried to get him to lie down, but he wouldn’t listen,” Pandora

complained from the hallway behind him. Hector walked straight

over to Lucas.

“How are you feeling?” Lucas asked guiltily.

Hector clasped hands with him. “It’s okay, brother. I would have

done the same thing if I were you,” he said. Then he flashed one of

his mischievous smiles. “Only I would have hit you harder.”

They hugged each other, and just like that the whole confrontation

was forgotten. Ariadne started to ask Pandora a question, but

Helen couldn’t hold her tongue for a second longer.

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“Will someone please tell me why you all call me ‘Sparky’?” she

burst out in frustration. “And if I get stabbed one more time tonight

I’m going to lose it!” she added, rounding on Jason who was

sneaking up behind her holding a stapler.

“You haven’t told her yet?” Cassandra said to Lucas with disbelief.

“You should have done it days ago.”

“I was going to tell her today, but I never got the chance,” he

replied, looking at the floor.

Helen thought about how he had hunted her down in the hallway

after school, like he had something urgent to say, and how she had

told him she didn’t want to see him. But that was his fault, she reminded

herself. He was the one who was forcing himself to teach

her how to fight and fly, right?

“Well, tell me now, then,” she said briskly. Lucas looked up at her

sharply. His eyes were angry.

“You can generate lightning. Electricity. I don’t know how strong

a charge you can create, but from what I’ve felt, and what Hector

felt in the grocery store, I’m thinking it’s big.”

“Lightning?” Helen said with disbelief.

She remembered Hector convulsing when he first touched her in

the grocery store, and then she remembered Lucas letting go of her

so abruptly in the hallway the very first time she had seen him. She

had been so afraid of them both, so desperate to defend herself

. . . . Was it possible she had summoned a power she had never

been aware of? Had she created lightning?

Somewhere in the back of her mind she saw a blue flash, and

Kate crumple to the ground. A terrible thought occurred to her.