Reaching into the right front pocket of his jeans, Lucas pulled out the last of the three obols he"d stolen from the Getty and tucked it under his tongue.
He shut his eyes and opened them again.
"You know, chasing a loved one to the Underworld never ends well, my friend." Morpheus sighed.
Lucas sat up next to the G.o.d of dreams, took the obol out from under his tongue, and offered it to him.
"Please," he begged, holding out the G.o.d"s payment. "Please let me at least speak to Hades."
"Oh, you are so n.o.ble," Morpheus huffed, punching one of his silk pillows to show just how miffed he was. "Have you really thought this through? Do you think Helen would want you to do this?"
"Of course she wouldn"t. But Helen"s not making this decision, and yes, I have thought it through," Lucas said calmly. "There"s nothing for me up there anymore."
He wasn"t being self-pitying; it was the simple truth. After Lucas had refused to kiss her in Everyland, Helen had made it clear that she had chosen Orion as soon as they were back on Earth. She could barely take her hands off of him, and Lucas could only blame himself. He couldn"t very well expect Helen to pledge herself to him if he wouldn"t even kiss her. Lucas had always known that Orion could give Helen what she needed, and now he was just making it easy for her, and making himself useful at the same time.
Andy really loved Hector. Everyone loved Hector. Lucas was an extra body now, the Lover who wasn"t allowed to love. So why not do something good with his life?
"I just want to speak to him," Lucas repeated.
"All right," Morpheus said reluctantly, taking his coin and rising from his enormous bed. "I"ll take you to the tree."
Morpheus led Lucas through the many rooms of his dream palace. As they pa.s.sed, the impossibly long, slender elfin people who danced inside the glowing circles of mushrooms and chased the bright, iridescent bubbles that seemed to beckon "follow me" stopped their cavorting to stare.
Lucas could hear them gasping as he pa.s.sed. He thought he heard a few whisper "Hand of Darkness," but he couldn"t be sure.
Outside the palace, they walked across the plain that bordered Hades and stopped at the edge of Morpheus" land. They both stood for a moment, looking at the nightmare tree.
It was so large it seemed to take up acres along the border between the land of dreams and the land of the dead. The notched branches flared out as if they were a million fingers of bone reaching up, and trying to scratch the very black out of the night sky.
"Stand under the branches," Morpheus began.
"And don"t look up," Lucas finished for him, remembering his last trip to the tree.
"Try not to get d.a.m.ned or cast into Tartarus or anything horrid like that, okay?" Morpheus said with genuine fondness.
"Thank you, Morpheus," Lucas said sincerely. "I owe you."
"You and Helen both," Morpheus replied with a lazy wave of his hand. He turned and walked away, fading into the blur of the eye-teasing lights.
Lucas could hear the nightmares moving through the branches. He held his breath as a light feeling thrilled through him. He forced himself to walk under the branches, his legs marching forward in stiff little strides.
It was a cold fear he felt, responding to nightmares that didn"t threaten him in the usual way. The tree knew he wasn"t afraid of dying or pain as he had been the last time he stood under these branches. Those things were not what he truly feared anymore. This time, instead of claws and teeth sc.r.a.ping across the bark, Lucas heard familiar voices whispering above him.
He heard Matt. He heard Hector. He heard his aunt Pandora. He heard Helen weeping, "I"m bleeding," over and over. The voices and the shapes of all the people who he had loved and lost hung over him in the branches of the nightmare tree.
Lucas was surprised that Matt"s presence and tone of voice were so familiar to him after just a few short months of friendship. But then, they had shared much more than just lunch tables and homework a.s.signments. They had shared the last moment of Matt"s life, and because Lucas was the one who took it, he would carry a part of Matt with him forever.
"Hades!" Lucas called, forcing himself to shout over the sound of the nightmare-Helen"s crying. "Please, just hear me out!"
The nightmares went silent and disappeared. Lucas looked up to see Hades walking toward him. He stopped on his side of the border. It was the first time Lucas had ever seen the lord of the dead, yet when Hades pulled off the Helm of Darkness and revealed Orion"s face, Lucas was not surprised. He"d already guessed at the connection between Hades and Orion.
What Lucas didn"t expect was to see Hades swaddled in shadows, exactly like the shadows Lucas made. While Lucas stared, Hades tucked the helmet that made him invisible under his arm. I can make myself invisible, Lucas thought.
Something clicked in his head. Lucas wanted to scream it was so ironic.
"h.e.l.lo, son," Hades said softly, confirming Lucas"s suspicion.
"How?" Lucas asked, although he wasn"t sure he wanted to know. "Did my mother . . . ?"
"No," Hades said firmly. "I had a child with a woman from the House of Thebes many hundreds of years ago." He paused for a moment as a look of regret pa.s.sed over his face, even though it had happened so long ago. "The blood of a G.o.d does not dilute-we are immortal and so are our . . . well, our genes, I guess you could call them. You are mine and Apollo"s, but I see more of myself than him in you."
"Can you think yourself warm?"
"No. That trait you get from Apollo. You can withstand any heat, except Helen"s. She can get even hotter than the sun."
"I noticed," Lucas said with a little rueful laugh.
"But the majority of your talents, you get from me. I"m sure you find all this disturbing."
"Not at all," Lucas responded. "It actually makes this easier. Like it was meant to be."
"Go home, son," he said kindly. "Your absence is causing turmoil where it is least needed."
"How can anyone know that I"m absent?" Lucas asked, confused. "I thought time stopped in the Underworld."
"It does, unless you are with Morpheus or with me, in which case time pa.s.ses as it does on Earth. We must live in time in order to affect lives."
Lucas thought it through quickly and nodded. "Or you"d be trapped in one eternal moment-and no one would ever find either of you."
"Very good," Hades said musingly. "Not even Helen noticed that, and she is very clever." He smiled at Lucas like he was pleased with him before continuing. "I know you grieve for your cousin, but I don"t allow people to trade themselves for dead loved ones. If I did, it would lay too much guilt on those who would rather live than sacrifice themselves for the dead. This would hurt more people than it would help."
He even sounded like Orion, except that his way of speaking was slightly more formal. They both had a compa.s.sion for others that Lucas respected.
"That makes perfect sense," Lucas conceded. "And I think you"re absolutely right. But I didn"t come here to trade myself for Hector. I came here to trade myself for you."
"For me?" Hades repeated, surprised for the first time in what Lucas a.s.sumed to be millennia.
"I know you didn"t choose to be the lord of the dead. It was forced on you. I know how that feels. I feel as if the Fates are trying to force me into Poseidon"s role. But I am going to reject that fate of my own free will in favor of another."
Lucas stepped over the border and entered Hades" land, knowing that if he succeeded, he might never leave it again.
"Bring Hector back to life, and I"ll take your place in the Underworld for the rest of eternity."
Helen stared up at Lucas, easily seeing inside his cloud of shadows. She knew she could follow him, but if she did she would have to leave everyone else unprotected. Orion and Jason were great fighters, Daphne was a flat-out monster, and Helen knew better than to second-guess Castor"s skills, but there were twenty times more fighters on the G.o.ds" side than on hers. Almost all of the House of Rome and half of the House of Athens had joined her and Orion, but it still wasn"t enough to beat both the Hundred Cousins and the Myrmidons. If Helen left she knew that her side wouldn"t stand a chance.
"We wish to honor our dead," Castor called across the arena, the sand of which was still stained with Hector"s blood . . . and with Matt"s.
Helen felt her eyes fill and her chest heat up with sobs. Two people she loved dearly were dead. That wasn"t what she"d planned.
As the G.o.ds conferred with the generals of their mortal army, resolve solidified in Helen and froze her tears in their tracks. She knew that if she allowed herself to give in to sorrow, she wouldn"t be of any use to anyone. Let Andy cry for Hector, and let Ariadne cry for Matt. Helen no longer had the luxury to mourn.
"We can"t deny you the right to prepare your dead," Tantalus shouted back at Castor, their emotions lighting up their insides like swords being sharpened on rocks. "But the Tyrant"s champion has gone missing." Tantalus continued in a falsely innocent tone. "How can you prove that he did not run away because he has taken a mortal injury from our champion?"
"Ridiculous!" Orion shouted. "Matt never even touched Lucas. We all saw the duel."
Helen spun around and looked at her mother. "What"s going on?" she asked in a whisper.
"You"re in danger," Daphne replied tersely, but she didn"t have a chance to elaborate before Tantalus continued.
"The Tyrant"s champion isn"t here to prove that he is unharmed," Tantalus said with a forbidding shake of his head. "Produce your living champion, or hand over the Tyrant."
"And who will enforce that?" Orion called back. "The G.o.ds can"t fight us."
"My army will," Tantalus replied calmly.
Orion and his entourage of loyal Athenians moved like a swarm, ma.s.sing between Helen and the battalion of Hundred Cousins that seemed to materialize out of thin air around Tantalus.
"The House of Thebes goes too far!" hissed a relative of Orion"s who Helen didn"t know.
"Again, Tantalus wants to wipe out every other House, starting with Atreus and Athens," said another, even more boldly. "And when we are dead, the G.o.ds will let him plunder our Houses. Again."
Helen felt a hand on her shoulder and glanced over to see that her mother was pulling her back in the ranks. It suddenly seemed like the beach was filled with hundreds of men. Where did they all come from? Helen wondered in a daze.
"Get behind them," Daphne said to Helen in a low voice. A flood of armored Romans seemed to surge forward to stand with the Athenians at Orion"s side. "Back, back!" Daphne growled in Helen"s ear as she hauled her daughter away from the front lines.
In the stampede of armored men, Helen got knocked to the ground. Daphne stood over her daughter, her hands crackling with lightning. The dry, stale smell of burnt ozone wafted all around her, and the acrid glow made the swelling wave of soldiers peel off around them as Daphne helped Helen to her feet.
"Castor!" Daphne cried desperately, searching the throngs of ma.s.sing soldiers for a familiar face. "Shelter for the Heir of Atreus!"
Helen wrapped her arms around her frantic mother and soared into the air, carrying both of them away from the danger of the trampling army.
"You can carry me?" Daphne asked, stunned. "Ajax couldn"t carry me when he flew." Daphne smiled, thrilling in the sensation of flight, despite the desperate situation.
"My father could fly?" Helen asked, curious that no one had mentioned this to her before.
"Oh yes, he could fly."
Daphne"s voice chimed out of tune in Helen"s ear.
"My father can fly?" Helen asked again, making them soar higher above the ma.s.sing armies on the beach.
"Yes," Daphne repeated distractedly, still laughing at the uplifting sensation of weightlessness that Helen gave her.
Helen cringed at the lie, and Daphne"s smile fell.
"You"re a Falsefinder now, aren"t you?" Daphne asked resignedly, like she knew she"d already lost.
"Yes," Helen whispered.
The cottony middle of a new cloud misted the cheeks of the embracing mother and daughter. Dappled sunlight made its way through the dense thunderheads that Zeus had conjured, making the dew in Helen"s and Daphne"s identical blonde hair fracture into tiny rainbows. Two pairs of amber eyes locked, but the blue bolt in Helen"s scarred right iris sparkled when she spoke.
"Is Ajax my father?" Helen asked in a dangerous monotone, already knowing the answer-it had been right in front of her for a week now, but she"d only just put the pieces together in her mind.
Ajax looked like Hector-they were the same character in the Fates" big play, separated by a generation. And Orion had told Helen that the main characters from Troy got replaced with a new baby when they died. Hector had replaced Ajax when Ajax died. But Hector was a year older than Helen, so Ajax had to have been dead for a year before Helen was conceived.
"Answer me," Helen threatened, needing to hear it from Daphne.
"No," Daphne replied, her voice hollow. "Jerry"s your father."
Helen wondered if she dropped her mother from this height, would she survive? Daphne looked down, as if she knew what Helen was thinking. Her breathing sped up with panic.
"Is that why you drugged him? To keep him from waking up and telling me the truth?"
"It wouldn"t take you long to figure out that I lied if you talked with him. I knew it wasn"t a permanent solution, but I only needed a couple more days," Daphne answered unapologetically.
They drifted for a few moments, Daphne"s words running around in Helen"s head like they were too big and too awful to stop and sink in anywhere.
"Tell me why I shouldn"t kill you." Helen"s voice was completely steady.
"Because I didn"t kill Jerry, and I could have," Daphne replied immediately. "You owe me for that."
"Why?" Helen"s voice faltered, and they swooped dangerously in the sky. "Why did you lie?"
"Helen . . . we should go down now," Daphne said anxiously as she clutched Helen closer. "It doesn"t benefit you to kill me. Think clearly."
"I am thinking clearly. You"ve never done anything but hurt me. Why should I let you live?"
"I sent you Orion."
"And why did you do that?" Helen asked suspiciously. "I"m sure you had a reason that served your purposes and not mine."
Daphne opened her mouth to answer and shut it again.
"Did you just remember that you can"t lie to me anymore and decide to hold your tongue?" Helen scoffed.
"That"s right," Daphne replied, her eyes hard. "And if you really want answers from me you"re going to have to land. If you kill me now, you"ll never know. I"m not going to say another word until you bring me back to Castor"s house."
"All right," Helen said, her lips tight with hatred. "But don"t think you"re any safer on the ground than you are up here."
Helen flew them at an uncomfortably fast pace to the Delos house and felt Daphne squirm in her arms with fear. When they were still twenty feet up, Helen dumped Daphne and let her crash down onto the lawn. As she watched her mother do a shoulder roll to avoid breaking a leg, Helen realized that she"d landed on that same spot the first time Lucas took her flying.
Lucas. Not her cousin. Everything they"d gone through together, the way they"d tortured each other and pushed each other away, was based on a lie.
Helen pounded into the gra.s.s bare inches away from Daphne, knocking a great ditch into Noel"s backyard and showering Daphne with dirt. Helen had only felt this kind of hatred for one other being, and she"d sent him to Tartarus. While Daphne floundered over the uneven ground, trying to get away from her livid daughter, Helen grabbed her by the back of her jacket and hauled her up like she was handling a doll, and then tossed her onto more even ground.
"Start talking," Helen ordered as she stalked toward her mother, who was scrambling away from her on hands and knees. "I want to know everything."
"Helen!" Castor shouted, and a second later he was holding her arms and trying to pull her back. "What happened?" he asked, breathless with the effort to control her.