Starcrossed (53 page)

“Creon said you were cunning, but this is something else entirely.

You actually believe what you’re saying! That’s why Lucas couldn’t

find anything false in what you said. All those years of hiding behind

other people’s faces and now all you are is one big lie. This is

why I have to keep you away from Castor and Pallas—from everyone

I love. I know in my heart that you used the cestus to trick my

brother. You never loved him, and he could never have loved you.”

Her words were harsh, but doubt was beginning to creep into her

tone. “Ajax was too good, he was too pure. . . .”

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“And too noble, and tender, and generous, and brave,” Daphne

said, raising her voice to talk over Pandora. She was blinking repeatedly

as her eyes squeezed at dry tear ducts and came up with

nothing. Her body was crying, but the moisture was missing, and

somehow that made it hurt more than it usually did. “Since Ajax

left the world nineteen years ago, there has been no good in it for

me,” Daphne whispered.

“What about Helen? She’s good. And she’s at least a part of

Ajax. . .” Pandora trailed off when Daphne’s eyes begin to drill into

hers.

“Helen’s birthday was yesterday—her seventeenth birthday,”

Pandora whispered in shock. “But why? Why would you want to

make her think that Lucas is her cousin. . .”

Pandora looked away, shaking her head with grief. She couldn’t

understand how Daphne, how any mother, could hurt her own

daughter like that. But they had run out of time. Creon was coming

up the beach, behind Pandora’s back. Daphne had tried to win her

over, had honestly hoped to spare her, but there had never been a

real chance for that. Daphne could only pray that Ajax would forgive

her in the Underworld.

“That’s right, Pandora, Helen isn’t his child. I have nothing of

Ajax, and so I have nothing in this world that’s of any value to me.

Even you, the baby sister he loved so much, the one he made me

promise to protect, even you have been polluted beyond hope. You

know, it would kill Ajax to see you like this.”

“Don’t you dare tell me what my brother would feel!” Pandora

screeched as something snapped inside of her, just as Daphne

knew it would. She dove for Daphne, her fingers hooked into claws,

trying to scratch her eyes out. Daphne rolled under Pandora, protecting

herself as well as she could while shackled. She knew she

only needed to defend herself for a moment.

“Don’t touch her, she could have more bolts!” Creon yelled as he

caught Pandora from behind and hauled her off of Daphne.

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Daphne turned away from Creon and Pandora as they struggled.

Covering her face with her arms, she adopted short, dark hair and

pretended to cower.

“He would never have fallen in love with her!” Pandora

screamed, lost in her grief as she struggled with Creon. “He would

have despised her just like I do, I know it!”

Pandora strained against Creon’s strong arms, but Creon followed

every motion of her desperate attempt to break free. Daphne

couldn’t have asked for a better distraction.

“Don’t let her confuse you, cousin! She is one of Aphrodite’s

chosen, and you don’t have to be a man to feel her influence. She

can twist anyone’s heart with a look,” he said as he finally managed

to drag Pandora away.

He led her down the beach and away from the valuable capture,

talking to her the entire time. They moved just far enough away

that Daphne could be sure they didn’t see her make the full transformation,

as she adopted Pandora’s shape. Then she hit herself in

the eye and the mouth and started groaning.

“Creon!” Daphne-as-Pandora yelled out hoarsely. “What are you

doing? Get away from her. That’s Daphne! She tricked us! Don’t

listen to her!”

Daphne screamed and howled until she saw Creon waver and

then grab Pandora harshly by the arm and haul her back to where

Daphne was staked to the ground.

“When we were rolling around on the ground!” Daphne sobbed,

pointing a finger at Pandora and using the influence of the cestus.

“She got out of the shackles and put me in them. She’s so strong—I

had no idea!”

“She’s lying,” Pandora stammered. She tried to pull her wrist out

of Creon’s grasp, but he didn’t let go. She glanced from Creon to

Daphne, so shocked she didn’t know what to do.

“Don’t believe a word she says!” Daphne said, her eyes locking

with Creon’s as she folded up his will like a piece of tissue paper

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and tucked it into one of the back pockets of his mind. “She wants

to be taken to your father, but she wants to be taken to him as Pandora

so she can get close enough to kill him! She’s been planning

this from the start and I played right into her hands! I’m so sorry,

cousin. I had no idea how cunning she was!”

Creon stared at Pandora with perfect hate. He wrenched her arm

in its socket and she fell to her knees, screaming. With blank eyes

he drew a small bronze blade from his belt and slit Pandora’s neck

so deeply he nearly cut off her head. She was dead before her blood

had a chance to soak into the sand.

Helen flew about fifty feet over Hector as he ran out the front door

of the Delos compound and began a circuit around the edge of the

island. It was dark, unbelievably dark, especially since most of the

island didn’t have power back yet. It was also cold. Everyone on the

island would be inside, huddling around fires, or turning on their

emergency generators. The rest of the Delos family was certain that

Creon would take advantage of the fact that the streets were deserted

to move her mother off island. Cassandra was exhausted and

drawing a blank, so they were forced to guess as to how that would

be done. After a long discussion, the family was convinced that

Creon would leave by helicopter or private plane. Lucas was to fly

over Castor and Pallas while they covered the airport on the west

side of the island, and Ariadne was to watch the ferry landing in

the northwest, just in case Creon tried to sneak Daphne off by boat.

Hector did something unexpected. He chose to run around the

dark, deserted east-northeast shoreline, apparently on a fool’s

errand.

Of course, Helen immediately volunteered to fly over him. If

there was one thing she had learned in her few short weeks of

training, it was that Hector could get inside his opponent’s head

and figure out exactly what he or she would do next. No matter

how logical the Delos family’s strategy was, Helen would bank on

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Hector’s gut instincts about Creon over any carefully laid plan.

There had been a heated argument about whether or not Helen

should be allowed outside the compound at all, but in the end, no

one from the House of Thebes could deny the Heir her the right to

look for her mother, the Head of the House of Atreus. It also

helped that everyone thought Helen would just end up flying

around in the pitch black over Hector, safe and useless and on the

wrong side of the island.

Below her, Helen watched Hector plow into the waves a few

times. She stared at him, perplexed. Each time he would pause, fan

his hands out as he ran them through the water, and then bound

out again, looking thwarted. She knew he had a Scion talent that

had to do with the water, and from the way he seemed to be testing

the waves, almost communicating with them, Helen guessed that

he was looking for something out in the dark ocean. She suddenly

realized why Hector had chosen this gods-forsaken route—he was

looking for something in the water, probably a boat offshore. Why

bother with airport records or ferry manifests when you were on an

island? In the dark of night all you needed was a rowboat and a

small ship of some kind anchored in deeper waters and you could

move on and off the continent without having to declare anything

to the authorities. You could even move a kidnapped woman.

Helen’s heart turned over and she started to scan the black water

frantically for any hint of a boat. She couldn’t stop picturing the

animal look Creon had in his eyes as he brought his dagger down

over her heart. Helen didn’t love her mother—she barely knew

her—but she wouldn’t wish the terror that she had felt in that moment

on anyone. There was an evil inside Creon, and Helen suspected

she had only seen a tiny fraction of what he was capable of

in their one brief struggle.

Hector’s shape suddenly darted forward, urged on by a huge

burst of speed. Helen’s eyes weren’t as keen in low light as Hector’s

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and she had to squint to see what he had seen, but when she did,

she faltered and nearly fell out of the sky.

There were dark shapes on the beach. There was no fire, no flashlights

to illuminate the scene so it was hard to tell how many

people were there. Helen sped up, overtaking Hector from the air,

and watched helplessly as a woman was brought to her knees by a

big man. Helen heard the woman scream, and suddenly the scream

was silenced with a gurgle. Flying faster than ever before, Helen

swooped down and got close enough to see Pandora fall lifeless

onto the sand at Creon’s feet, and another Pandora, chained and

staked to the ground behind them, shimmer and shift into

Daphne’s form.

A second later, a bestial roar erupted out of Hector as he saw the

body lying in the sand. His whole frame shook with unnatural rage

and pain, and Helen knew the Furies had possessed him. Still far

away, Hector bounded across the wet sand, his eyes locked on

Creon, as Creon turned and stared at Daphne. Creon clutched the

bloody knife he held in his hand and advanced with murderous

purpose toward Daphne.

“Get back!” Helen yelled at Creon as she thumped down into the

sand next to her chained mother.

Helen’s hands glowed icy blue with the light of a gathering bolt.

Knowing he was outnumbered and outgunned, Creon immediately

turned and ran inland. Just seconds away from reaching his target,

Hector snarled and changed direction, chasing after Creon.

“Hector, wait! Don’t go after him alone!” Helen called after him,

unable to leave her bound and wounded mother behind. But Hector

didn’t listen to her. Helen saw the two of them sprint away, so

similar in looks they could be twins, and for all the world, it looked

to her like Hector was chasing a shadowy version of himself.

Helen turned back to Daphne and ripped the chains off the

shackles with her bare hands.

“What did you do, Mother?” she asked through gritted teeth.

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“Not this!” Daphne said breathlessly as she gestured to Pandora’s

body.

“I saw you in Pandora’s shape from the air!” Helen yelled, raking

her hands through her hair and starting to pace with frustration.

“I did that to confuse Creon—I had no idea he would kill her!”

“And you didn’t use the cestus to influence him?” Helen asked

skeptically.

“I never influenced him to kill!” Daphne asserted vehemently as

she got up off her knees and faced Helen. “I was just trying to buy

some time, stall for as long as I could. I never thought he’d do

this!”

“Okay. Whatever,” Helen said, suddenly done with the conversation.

She took her jacket off and put it over the gruesome

corpse—Pandora’s corpse—Helen thought in grief before she

turned back to her mother. “Are you badly injured?” she asked.

“I’ll be fine. You need to go stop Hector,” Daphne said as she

changed gears seamlessly. “Go. I’ll take Pandora back to her family.

Then I’ll find you.”

Helen nodded at her mother, knowing there was more to the

story, but that would have to wait. She jumped into the air and

headed west, staying low to the ground so she didn’t miss Hector

and Creon as they ran through the unbelievably dark interior of the

island. Her eyes couldn’t manipulate light the way the eyes of the

Children of Apollo could; out here she was the one at a disadvantage.

She wished Lucas was with her. He would be able to see perfectly

even in the dark of the moors. He would also know where to

look because he was a better strategist. Most of all, she just wished

he was with her so that she wouldn’t have to face Hector and Creon

alone.

Putting that thought aside, she flew from one end of the island to

the other, but she didn’t see them anywhere. She backtracked,

knowing that her adversary wasn’t stupid enough to keep running

until he fell into the ocean. Creon was trapped on the island, unless

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he was trying to get to someplace where he could get off of it.

Helen took a sharp turn and flew north toward the ferry.

It was late, too late to catch the last ferry, but maybe Creon didn’t

know that. In a second, Helen was approaching the more populated

area by the town center, and she had to either fly up high to

avoid being seen or touch down and run the rest of the way. She

decided to land while she still knew she could do so without being

spotted. She started to trot toward the ferry, looking and listening