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 physique, from the back they could be twins. 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.
“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 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 thethinghe created, Helen understood why Creon was called a Shadowmaster. 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.
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 each other’s skin and bones, each 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.
Lucas couldn’t hear her. The Furies had him. All he could hear were their commands to kill the kin-killer. Lucas hit Hector over and over, trying to beat him to death.
Helen half flew the last few strides to the battling pair. She threw herself up into the air and then came crashing back down on top of them with as much gravity as she could muster. Pushing the two boys back into the cracked rubble of the library steps, Helen threw her arms up in a V over her head and summoned matching bolts for each hand. Before either of them could block her, she brought her bolts down onto the heads of the warring cousins and shocked them both into unconsciousness. As they fell still under her hands, Helen could hear rapid footsteps behind her. The rest of the Delos family was coming.
“Get back,” she screamed with her ruined voice as she spun around to face Ariadne and Pallas, who were both running toward her from opposing streets.
Hector was unconscious, but he could still incite the Furies in his family. His sin was so recent that the impulse to kill him would be urgent and blinding, even to those who loved him the most. Helen had made peace with the House of Thebes, but she had not become a part of it, so she was mercifully free of the urge to kill Hector, who had now become their greatest enemy—an Outcast. She got in touch with the sensation that connected her to her lightning and felt a disappointingly small spark. She had been running around for hours now without a sip to drink.
She looked back at Hector and Lucas, made sure that they were both breathing, and then stood up and walked out into the street, putting herself in between Hector’s unconscious form and his infuriated family.
“Don’t come any closer,” Helen said, forcing what voltage she had left to spark out of her fingertips in a false show of power.
