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