“Are you injured?” he asked in a low, unsteady voice, still looking out over her head. There was blood on his lip and his shirt was torn. Helen had a bare moment to say she was fine before she heard the sobbing sisters start to whisper.
He looked down at her, and when his icy blue eyes met her warm brown ones, a thrill ran down her legs. Helen jumped up into a fighting crouch. The whispers turned to wails and Helen saw the bent heads and shivering white bodies of the three sisters blink in and out of her field of vision. She backed up and scrunched her eyes shut by force of will alone. The anger was so intense she felt as if her organs had caught fire.
“Please go away, Lucas,” she begged. “You just helped me, and I’m grateful. But I still really,reallywant to kill you.”
There was a short pause, and Helen heard his breath catch.
“This is hard for me, too, you know,” he replied in a choked voice.
A skipping, scuffing sound from where he stood, a rush of wind, and then Helen dared to open her eyes. He was gone, and thankfully the miserable poltergeists had gone with him.
Helen crouched next to Kate, trying to see if she was bleeding anywhere. She got down on her hands and knees to inspect every visible inch, but strangely there were no cuts, bruises, or scrapes of any kind. Kate was breathing evenly but she was still unconscious. Helen risked picking her up and hoped she was doing the right thing by moving her. She gently laid Kate down in the back of the car, and then ran around to the driver’s seat as she dialed her dad’s cell number. She started up Kate’s car as the phone rang.
“Dad! Meet me at the hospital,” she blurted as soon as he answered.
“What happened? Are you—” he began in a panicked voice.
“It’s not me, it’s Kate. I’m on my way to the emergency room now and I can’t talk and drive. Just meet me,” she said, pushingend calland tossing the phone onto the passenger seat without waiting for a response.
Now she had to think up a really good lie, and quick, because the hospital was only a few minutes away.
She called the police as she pulled to a stop at the emergency room entrance, saying nothing more than that her friend had been attacked and that they were at the hospital. Then she dithered around in the driveway for a second, not knowing how to get Kate into the actual emergency room. Helen didn’t want to leave her, but she couldn’t very well pick Kate up and reveal her freakish strength in front of so many people, so she finally went inside alone.
“Help?” she mumbled timidly to the admitting nurse. That didn’t work, so she raised her voice and hopped up and down. “Help! My friend is outside, and she’s unconscious!” That got people running.
Once her dad got there and they both knew that Kate was going to be fine, Helen made a statement to the police. She told them that a woman she’d never had the chance to see had made Kate pass out with a blue flashy thing. When Helen saw Kate fall, she went out into the alley and that must have scared the woman off because she ran away. Of course, Helen didn’t mention anything about the near abduction, the wrestling match, or the fact that Lucas Delos had appeared out of nowhere to fight the superstrong woman off. The last thing she needed was to complicate this situation any more or tie Lucas Delos to herself in any way. What was he doing there, anyway?
“What happened to your shoes?” the police officer asked. Helen’s heart started pounding. How could she have overlooked the fact that she was barefoot?
“I didn’t have them on from before,” she stated in a rush, and then continued haltingly. “Before, earlier, they had torn... while I was stocking in the back. And I had taken them off. When I saw that Kate was hurt I just dropped them, and came straight here.” Worst lie ever, Helen thought. But the officer nodded.
“We found a pair of ripped sneakers in the alley,” he said as if Helen had told him exactly what he expected. He went on to explain that Kate had been Tasered, and that since the assailant had used up the charge on Kate, she was forced to run off when she saw another person arrive.
“One more thing,” the officer said, just before turning away. “How did you lift her into the car all by yourself?” Both the officer and her father stared at her for a moment with puzzled looks on their faces.
“Willpower?” Helen said lamely, hoping they bought it.
“She was lucky to have you there. That was very brave of you.” The officer gave her an approving smile. Helen couldn’t handle being praised for lying. She looked down at her bare feet, and they reminded her of how dumb she had been not to take care of that detail from the start. She was going to have to learn to be more careful.
When the police were done questioning Kate, Helen and Jerry went in to check on her. Unlike Helen, Kate had gotten a quick look at the woman before she got zapped.
“She was older—in her late fifties at least. Short salt-and-pepper hair. She looked totally harmless, but I guess she wasn’t,” Kate said ruefully. “What the hell? Since when did little old ladies go around Tasering people?” She was trying to make a joke out of it, but Helen could tell she was really shaken up. Kate’s face was pale and her eyes were big and shiny.
Jerry decided to stay the night with Kate and bring her to her house when she was discharged. The doctors told Kate she probably shouldn’t drive for a few days, so Helen offered to take Kate’s car and bring it over to her on Sunday. Kate thanked Helen for the favor, but Helen had her own reasons for wanting Kate’s car. There was one more detail she had to take care of before she headed home.
She had just enough time to get scared as she drove across the island on Milestone Road to the Delos compound in Siasconset. The closer she got, the more she found herself shaking, but she had no choice. She had to make sure Lucas kept his mouth shut about the attack or she could get into serious trouble. She didn’t think he would tell anyone. The Delos family worked very hard to appear normal when Helen knew they were anything but. No one of regular human strength could have stopped Helen from strangling him if she set her mind to it. Lucas was like her.
The thought made her stomach heave. How could she be anythinglikesomeone she hated so desperately? First, she had to make sure he never mentioned his involvement to the police, but after that she was determined to hate him from as far a distance as she could without falling into the ocean.
Helen had to concentrate to see through the fog. In the dim predawn light, way the heck out on private property, she wasn’t sure where the turn onto the long driveway started. She pulled the car over and got out, heading on foot toward the sound of the ocean. She had only seen this particular compound from the beach, and she was trying to scour her memory for any landmark she could recognize from the opposite direction. Then she heard a stumbling, thudding sound behind her. She spun on her heel and saw Lucas walking steadily toward her with long, forceful strides.
“What are you doing here?” he half barked, half whispered. Helen took a couple of steps back and then made herself stop and hold her ground. In the gray light she could see the white bodies of the three sisters dragging themselves through the sandy grass, crawling up the soft rises, shivering with sobs.
“How did you get behind me? Were you following me?” she asked in an accusing voice.
“Yeah, I was,” he spat out, still coming toward her. “What the hell are you doing on my family’s land?”
Too late Helen realized that by coming to his house she had crossed some line. Where there had been hatred, Helen could now see violence. It distorted his features and added menace to his stance. He was still graceful, but almost too cruel to look at.Good,she thought.Let’s do this.
