Goddess

by Josephine Angelini

  “Oh, you know. Here and there,” he replied with a mysterious smile, his eyes on his task. “Used to make jewelry for the tourists when I was kicking around India and Tibet. Just to make a buck. I got good at making little things like this fast.” He finished tying it off and released Cassandra’s wrist.

  “When were you in Tibet?” Helen asked, surprised and a bit envious. She’d always wanted to go there.

  He locked eyes with her, his lips sealed. Helen glanced down at Orion’s chest, but he was doing that thing where he snatched the colors away before Helen could really see them.

  “We’ll talk about that when we go out tonight,” he said finally.

  “Okay. But you gotta teach me how you do that cover-up swirly thing, or I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said, pointing first to his chest, then to hers. “I’m at a serious disadvantage here.”

  “So, you are leaving,” Cassandra said anxiously, turning to Orion. “You two are going on a date?”

  “Not exactly,” Orion said, staring at Helen with an enigmatic smile. Helen had no idea what he had in store, so she just shrugged.

  “You’re not going for long, are you?” Cassandra persisted, a desperate note creeping into her voice.

  “No way,” Orion said. He took her hand up playfully and shook it, making the bells on her new bracelet ring for a moment. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

  “Good,” Cassandra said, sighing the word with relief. She noticed Helen watching her carefully and squared her shoulders. “Hector said w-we should all stick together. I-I think he’s right.”

  For the life of her, Helen couldn’t remember Cassandra ever stammering before, and she wondered if Cassandra had foreseen something about her and Orion going out. Maybe it was too dangerous for them to leave the Delos compound at all? Then Helen remembered that Cassandra hadn’t made a single prophecy in days. Since Halloween, Helen thought.

  Before Helen could ask her if this was normal, Cassandra spun around and glided down the hallway.

  “Speaking of Hector,” Orion said, completely unfazed by Cassandra’s odd behavior. “I should probably go get him. He can’t be wandering around right now when he’s supposed to be lying low, no matter how lovesick he is.”

  “Yeah,” Helen mumbled, still thinking about Cassandra. If Orion could see hearts, how could he not see how different she was around him? Helen decided that she had to be imagining it.

  “Are you okay?” Orion asked, touching her arm gently. His concern for her only proved her point. If Orion didn’t notice it, then there couldn’t be anything going on inside Cassandra—she was just a strange girl, and Helen must have misinterpreted what she saw.

  “Yeah. I guess,” she waved her hand, dismissing her thoughts and smiling at him. “Go get Hector. Drag that numbskull back if you have to.”

  “He’s probably in the ocean. He likes to swim when he’s upset. Shouldn’t take me long,” he said, and then studied her closely. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry about me.”

  The corners of Orion’s mouth turned up in the faintest of smiles. “Easier said than done.” He leaned across the few inches separating them and brushed his lips across hers. “I’ll be back soon,” he whispered, and turned to leave before Helen even had a chance to kiss him back.

  Matt could feel his warriors getting closer. They were tied to each other by blood oaths and could sense one another, as if they were all different limbs of the same body.

  Sometime over the next few days his troops would arrive on this beach in ships, echoing the journey they had made thousands of years before to claim Helen of Troy. Matt looked for their approaching mast from the beach. The remnants of this once-great army had begun their journey the moment the dagger had fallen into the chosen hand, but scattered as they were to all parts of the globe, it would take time for them to reach this shore.

  Finally, after so many millennia, they were to be reunited with their newly reborn master. And with the dagger on which they had all pledged their lives.

  It was because of the dagger, the magical gift of silver-footed Thetis to her only son, that they were all fated to live until they died in battle for his honor and glory.

  They had been unlucky.

  Their nearly indestructible master had died before they had had the chance to die for him, but their oaths still bound them. They could not die of old age, or of sickness, or of broken hearts, no matter how horribly the world treated them. They could only die in battle, and most of them had. None but the strongest were left—those most committed to their master and their master’s pledge to kill the Tyrant.

  Just thirty-three in all.

  But Matt knew that thirty-three 3,300-year-old Myrmidons were enough to set the world on fire.

  FIVE

  Helen stood over her father and watched him breathe. Every rise and fall of his chest was long and labored. The twins assured her that he had no injuries left for them to heal—but for some reason Jerry just wasn’t able to stay conscious. It was as if he were very tired. It might be that he only needed to rest, they said, but if that were the case, it didn’t make sense to Helen that her father wasn’t physically able to stay awake for more than a few moments at a time.

  Helen tried to pin down what she was feeling, but when she asked herself how she felt about the fact that her father was still in such bad shape, and that no one knew what to do about it, her mind started to wander.

  Distracting thoughts kept popping up—like how Luis and his kids were doing after being hurt by Automedon, how the store had held up since the riot, and whether or not anyone had checked on her father’s house to make sure it wasn’t vandalized. All of these thoughts were logical enough, but they were not the things she should be thinking when her father was barely clinging to life.

  She sat down in the armchair that was pulled up to the side of her father’s bed and wondered what was wrong with her. How could she be so distracted at a time like this? She noticed her leg was bouncing up and down and put a hand on her knee to keep it still, but it didn’t work. About to jump out of her skin, Helen stood up and started pacing.

  “A few more steps and you’ll wear a hole in the floor,” Lucas said softly from the doorway. Helen spun and faced him, clenching her fists. She wasn’t in the mood for an emotional encounter, and for once Helen wished Lucas would just go away.

  Leaning against the frame, Lucas’s eyes skipped over her. He gave her a half smile, gesturing over his shoulder with his head.

  “Come on,” he said, his voice clipped.

  “Where?” Helen challenged. She crossed her arms and glared at him.

  “Down to the cage,” he fired back, not at all intimidated by the look she gave him. Lucas pushed himself off the door frame and crossed to Helen slowly. When he got to her, he took her wrists, unwound her tight arms, and parted them. He stepped closer, until he was nearly up against her. “You need to hit something.”

  Helen opened her mouth to argue and immediately shut it again. Lucas was right. Seeing her father so ill made her feel helpless and useless. She had gotten accustomed to being the one who had to fight all the tough fights, but she wasn’t the one caught up in this battle. Her father was, and there was nothing she could do to help him.

  She needed to pummel something or someone—anything to release the infuriating tension she felt sitting on the sidelines while her father struggled. And Lucas knew that because he knew her. Helen let her arms relax. Her hips swayed slightly toward him, like a challenge.

  “Let’s go,” she said, her voice humming deep in her chest.

  A muscle in his jaw pumped as Lucas clenched his teeth. Heat rolled off his skin like his blood was boiling. Helen could smell him—baking bread and new snow, hot and cold, sunshine and darkness—all opposites that should cancel each other out, but that somehow managed to live next to each other inside Lucas. Helen shut her eyes and breathed him in shamelessly.

  Lucas pulled away. He ya
nked hard on her arm and snapped her out of the spell. It really ticked her off when he bossed her around like that, and she had no doubt he knew it, too. She wrenched her wrist out of his grip and shoved him toward the stairs. His back stiff in front of her, Helen stormed after Lucas as he led her through the house and down to the fight cage.

  As soon as they reached the steps to the basement level, they started stripping off clothes. No shoes, no jewelry, no belts, no hard or sharp objects of any kind were allowed in the cage, but they couldn’t be bothered to put on softer gear to replace what they shucked off so frantically. Every time Helen removed another article of clothing, all she could think about was how much she wanted to tear into him.

  The jumble of “other” Helens inside her head made it worse. In most of her memories, he’d been forbidden to her, dangling just out of her reach over and over again. She was so frustrated, she didn’t need the Furies to want to kill him anymore. And she could tell by the sound of ripping fabric as he wrenched his shirt off, and the slap of leather as he yanked his belt from the loops on his jeans, that Lucas was just as fed up with their impossible situation as she was.

  By the time they got to the ring, they were so worked up they barely shut the door of the cage before they began to whale on each other.

  Helen started it. She threw her right and punched Lucas in the face. At the last second he deflected most of the blow and swept her legs out from under her, trying to bring the fight immediately to the floor, which was his specialty.

  She rolled and leapt up before he could capture her under him, taking another swing at him as she did so. He brought his arms up to block, ate a few more shots as he pulled her into a clinch, and then pushed Helen back against the chain-link fence. He leaned his shoulder into her sternum, pressing the air out of her lungs as he tied up her hands.

  “What did you and Orion talk about in the hall after breakfast?” he hissed into her ear.

  “Who said we were talking?” She said it on purpose to get to him, and it worked. A pained look crossed his face, and Helen took the opportunity to break one of her wrists from his hold and hit him in the gut.

  Lucas grunted and lunged down to take her leg out. He slammed Helen into the mat and, wrenching her thighs apart, he took position between them. She pulled guard under him—wrapping her legs tightly around his waist and squeezing hard to cut off his air.

  “I heard you talking,” he growled through gritted teeth. He was using all his strength to try to pin her arms down. “And it’s kinda hard to talk when your tongue’s in someone else’s mouth.”

  She glared up at him, not answering his question.

  “Tell me what you told him, Helen!” he yelled into her face.

  If this were an MMA fight, the guy on top would start hammering on the guy under him in a move called “ground and pound.” But Lucas didn’t hit her. In fact, Helen realized that although his cheek was bruised, and he was bleeding from a cut over his eye, he hadn’t taken one swing at her. He was doing this for her, so she could work out her frustration. He was trying to help her.

  When she realized this, Helen’s anger evaporated and she went still. She didn’t need to be able to see through his chest to know how much he loved her. He was constantly proving it by how much of her crap he was willing to take.

  “I can see emotions, like someone from the House of Rome can, and I have no idea why,” she admitted with an exasperated sigh. Lucas stared down at her with a startled look as she struggled to continue. “And I didn’t tell Orion this, but I think I can control other people’s hearts, too.”

  “Keep going,” he said when she paused again.

  “I made the police officer who was guarding Andy let us into her room—and he didn’t even ask us our names. At first, I just thought it was the whole ‘face that launched a thousand ships’ thing. It happens sometimes with men. But the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that wasn’t it. I did something to his heart. It feels wrong to do that to someone.”

  “Huh.” Lucas released her slowly and sat back on his heels, frowning.

  Helen sat up and rubbed her sore wrists, waiting for him to be ready to share what was going on in his head.

  “Look at me,” he said suddenly, leaning close and locking eyes with her. “You’re the only girl I’ve ever kissed.”

  “Liar,” Helen said so fast she practically cut him off. He flashed a grin at her and quickly dropped it again, gazing at her levelly.

  “How do you know I’m lying?”

  “Apart from the fact that I’m pretty sure you’ve done a heck of a lot more than just kiss other girls? Something was wrong in your voice, I guess. Also a feeling, like . . .”

  “Like you’d lost something. And you needed to find it.” She nodded, agreeing with him. He stared at her for a moment, blank-faced. “You’re a Falsefinder, Helen. You can hear lies.”

  “But how?”

  “Our blood,” he said, nodding his head as if he could hear the truth in his own words. “When you, Orion, and I became blood brothers, you absorbed some of our talents through our blood. I haven’t noticed any new talents in myself, and I don’t think Orion has either or he’d have mentioned it while we were healing together. But apparently, you got something from both of us. You took Orion’s talent to control hearts, and my talent to recognize lies.” He cocked his head to the side. “Maybe you took even more than that,” he whispered to himself, still mulling it over. Helen stared at him.

  “Why? Why is this happening to me?” she asked fearfully. “The last thing I need are more powers.”

  “I don’t know yet. But I’ll figure it out,” he promised.

  “You figure out everything,” she murmured, adoring him.

  “You figured out which river the Furies needed to drink from. Not me.”

  “Yeah, but you helped. You always do.” Hating the inches of cold air between them, she slid closer to him, painfully aware that they were both in their underwear.

  His bare shoulders curved toward her, and his chin tilted down to come level with her mouth. With her new talent, Helen could see gold clouds spilling out of his skin in puffy gusts and a warm fire flickering low in his belly. Lucas reached out for her, his lips parting, eyes closing.

  He stopped. The glorious golden haze that was enveloping them froze in midair, solidified, and dropped to the ground in shards. Lucas’s bright blue eyes darkened as the shadow slipped in and snuffed out his inner light.

  “That’s why you should come and talk to me when you’re confused, Helen,” Lucas said heavily, and pulled back. “No matter what happens between you and Orion, I’ll always be here to help you work out your problems. Even if it means I have to get my ass kicked first.” He turned away, wiping blood out of his eye and flicking it onto the mat.

  “Does that hurt?” Helen swallowed and stopped herself from reaching out and touching his wound—stopped herself from leaning forward and throwing her arms around him, really.

  “No,” he replied, shaking his head. “Not compared to the rest of it.”

  Helen stayed in the ring long after Lucas left. She started to get cold sitting on the mat in nothing but her skivvies, and eventually forced herself to stand up and find her clothes. Jeans in one hand, she was hunting around for her shirt when she heard the door open.

  “Why are you practically naked?” Hector yelled from the top of the stairs.

  Helen didn’t even bother to jump or get embarrassed. It was only Hector, coming back at just the wrong moment to mess with her, as usual. She finally understood her contentious but still deeply caring relationship with Hector. It wasn’t exactly like brother and sister, and it never had been.

  She’d been married to the guy once, and from the snippets that Helen could vaguely recall, neither of them had been too happy about that fact even though they had tried their best to make it work. Sort of like being permanently handcuffed to someone that you love, but who also really annoys you.

  “Lucas and I had a fight
,” Helen said, figuring it was easier to just say it than make him wheedle it out of her. Hector came down the stairs while Helen yanked on her jeans.

  “Uh-huh. And your clothes got so sick of all the bitching and moaning they jumped off your body and ran away?”

  Helen had to laugh at that one. “No. We finally decided to smack each other around physically instead of just emotionally for a change.” She motioned to the ring with her chin while she zipped.

  “Funny, but you don’t look beat up. Tousled, yeah. Beat up? No,” he said, raising an eyebrow and holding out her dark, V-neck sweater. She ignored his suggestive comment. Helen took her warm top and gladly pulled it on, and then looked at Hector carefully.

  “How’re you doing?” she asked pointedly.

  Hector shrugged and turned away, heading toward one of the heavy bags. “I’m fine. I don’t know why you and Orion are all worked up about Andy.”

  “You are so full of it,” Helen snipped, but not unkindly, as she followed him. She stood on the other side of the bag and held it steady so he could hit. “You’re hiding down here. Same as me.”

  Hector started to jab the bag, giving it halfhearted whacks at best. He slowly amped up the intensity. Moving her feet as he worked his way through a few combinations, Helen watched Hector’s face harden and take on the set of a real fighter.

  No, more than that, she thought. He’s a warrior, right out of some legend.

  As soon as that thought crossed her mind, she saw his demeanor lose all its ferocity, and something vulnerable and sad moved in and stilled his restless body.

  “She can’t stand the sight of me, Helen. The one girl, the only girl who’s ever really shook me up—and I horrify her.” He dropped his fists and leaned into the bag, facing Helen. “I could take it if she thought I was an idiot or a pig. Eventually, I’d prove to her I wasn’t. But fear?” He shook his head. “I’ve got no chance. I can’t chase her because that’s what he did. The only thing I can do is stay away from her, like she told me to. The problem is . . . I don’t know if I can do that.”