Starcrossed

by Josephine Angelini

  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

  as she went. As she passed India Street, she heard the slaps and

  thuds of what sounded like a massive hand-to-hand fight. Her feet

  pounded against the pavement as she ran up the middle of the

  road toward the sounds, already knowing where she was going,

  where the Fates would have arranged this. The Nantucket

  Atheneum.

  Helen rounded a corner and saw that a dark pall erased the entire

  end of the street. Even in a dark room it’s possible to sense

  other things around you, but Creon’s shadows were so complete

  they robbed Helen of more than just her vision; they uprooted her,

  tilting all of her other senses off balance as well. Looking at the

  thing he created, Helen understood why Creon was called a Shadow

  Master. He did more than simply take away the light; he made

  that same thing that lurks under the basement stairs or at the back

  of the closet—that full darkness that your brain believes is stuffed

  with serial killers and monsters. Helen had to swallow down a

  scream just looking at it.

  Somewhere inside that terrifying
black hole, she could hear

  Creon and Hector hammering away at each other in a blind rage.

  Helen was at a loss. She was so scared of the disorienting nothingness

  that Creon had created she couldn’t force her feet to run into

  it. She screamed Hector’s name and scrunched her fists up in frustration,

  and as she did so her hands began to glow with the stark

  blue-white glow of electricity. Then something occurred to her.

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  When she was fighting for her life against Creon in her foyer, her

  spark had thrown back the gloom so she could see him. Even

  though he could control other kinds of light, her lightning had to

  be different somehow. Acting immediately, Helen held out her

  hands and summoned a bright spark to dance between her palms.

  She lit up the whole scene in front of her.

  Hector was on his back and Creon was over him, beating his head

  repeatedly into the marble steps of the library. The blue glow

  snapped and hummed with increasing intensity around Helen’s

  hands, and Hector turned his swollen eyes toward her bright light.

  He smiled. Freed from Creon’s disorienting shadows, Hector was

  able to struggle out from under his cousin’s grip and he stood to

  face him.

  They came at each other before Helen could take another step.

  Clashing together, Creon and Hector ground each other’s faces into

  the marble steps. They threw each other into the Doric columns,

  and yanked at one another’s skin and bones, each of them trying to

  pull the other apart. Helen began running, yelling at them to stop,

  but she was too late. While she was still half a block away, Hector

  managed to get behind Creon. With one cracking yank, he broke

  Creon’s neck.

  Helen stopped running and froze in the middle of the street, her

  mouth hanging open as Creon’s lifeless body tumbled down the

  steps. Hector looked down at the body, and then up at Helen, momentarily

  free of the Furies and in complete possession of his own

  passion. For a split second, Helen knew that Hector understood

  what he had done, and that what he had done was unthinkable. He

  had killed his own cousin.

  A dark comet fell out of the sky and plowed into Hector’s distracted

  body, knocking him through three columns and cracking the

  very foundation of the faux temple.

  “Lucas, stop!” Helen screamed, her voice breaking painfully as

  she cried out with all of her strength.