Dreamless (Starcrossed 2)

“Yeah, it’s big, Helen. Myrmidons are faster and stronger than Scions, but worse than that, they don’t feel emotions like we do. Having one spying on you is a very big deal. And I never even knew it was there.” He sighed, like this was somehow his fault.

“But how could you have possibly known? We haven’t been anywhere near each other in over a week.”

“Come on,” he said. Lucas began drifting toward the East Coast, brushing off Helen’s last comment. “We need to get back and tell the family.”

She nodded and took the lead. They didn’t hold hands on the way down, but Helen could still feel Lucas near to her, disturbingly warm and solid. She kept telling herself that she was only imagining that they were in sync, but her actions proved her wrong. They touched down in unison, transitioned, and continued on into the house without ever breaking stride with each other.

Lucas walked in the front door loudly, flicked on the lights in the hallway, and began calling out to the rest of the family. Moments later, everyone was in the kitchen, and Helen was repeating everything that had happened to her that night, minus the bit about visiting the outer atmosphere with Lucas.

“This is cause for a Conclave,” Castor said to his brother. “Bringing a Myrmidon into the equation could be considered an act of war within the House.”

“Did you get a good look at the Myrmidon’s face?” Cassandra asked. Helen nodded and tried not to shudder at the thought of how his head had flicked around like something alien.

“It had red eyes,” Helen answered squeamishly.

“Did Hector happen to mention the Myrmidon’s name?” Pallas asked Helen quietly. “It would help if we knew which one we’re dealing with.”

“No. But next time he calls, I can ask,” Helen replied gently, aware that even saying Hector’s name upset Pallas. Helen could tell that Pallas wished for nothing more than to be able to talk to his son directly. It wasn’t right that Hector couldn’t be there, she thought angrily. They needed him.

Cassandra led everyone into the library. She went directly to a book that was so fragile Castor and Pallas had dismantled it and put each individual page in a separate plastic covering. Helen approached Cassandra as she gently leafed through the stack of pages, and noticed that the book was really old—like King Arthur old.

“This is a codex from the time of the Crusades,” Cassandra said, holding up a painted page of a knight in black armor. Like the Myrmidon, he had bulging red eyes and a skeletal face.

“It looks a lot like him,” Helen said as she peered at the page. It was a beautiful work of art, but it was still a painting, not a photo. Helen shrugged. “I can’t tell for sure from this. Do all Myrmidons look about the same?”

“No, some of them had black, faceted eyes, and some had slightly red skin. A few were rumored to have had antennae that they hid under their helmets,” Castor answered pensively. “Helen, are you sure the one you saw had red eyes?”

“Oh, yeah, no doubt about that,” Helen said positively. “They were really shiny, too.”

“Automedon,” Pallas said, looking at Castor. For the first time Helen could remember, Castor used an English curse word, and a foul one at that, as he nodded in agreement with his brother.

“Makes sense,” Cassandra said. “No Scion ever claimed to have killed him.”

“Because no one could.” Lucas looked over at Helen, shaking his head slowly as if he couldn’t believe this was happening. “He’s immortal.”

“Okay, see, that I don’t get,” Helen said nervously. She was looking for a flaw, something logical that would make the situation seem a little less dire. “If Myrmidons are immortal, then why isn’t the world crawling with them?”

“Oh, they can be killed in battle. And most of them were killed at some point in history. But, see, that’s sort of the catch with Automedon,” Ariadne said with wide, apologetic eyes. “There are stories of soldiers literally cutting Automedon’s head off, and he just picked it up, put it back on, and kept fighting.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Helen said with a raised eyebrow. “How can that even be possible? He’s not a god. Wait, is he a god?” she asked Ariadne in a hurried aside, in case she had missed something.

“No, he’s not a god,” Cassandra answered for her. “But he might have shared blood with one. This is just my guess, but if Automedon became blood brothers with one of the immortals thousands of years ago, before they were all locked away on Olympus, then Automedon can’t be killed, not even in battle.”

“Blood brothers? Are you serious?” Helen asked dubiously. She pictured two kids in a tree house pricking their fingers with a safety pin.

“To Scions, becoming blood brothers is a sacred rite, and it’s pretty hard to do outside of combat,” Jason said with a smile, seeming to understand Helen’s misinterpretation. “You have to be willing to die for someone, and that person has to be willing to die for you. Then you have to exchange blood while you are in the process of saving each other’s lives.”

Helen’s eyes darted over to Lucas. She couldn’t help but think of how they had broken out of the Furies’ curse by nearly dying for each other. From the look in Lucas’s eyes, Helen knew he was thinking exactly the same thing. They hadn’t exchanged blood the night they fell, but they had both saved each other’s lives and that had bound them together forever.

“You can’t make it happen or plan it. It’s something that comes out of an extreme situation,” Lucas said directly to Helen. “And if the two brothers live, sometimes they share a few of each other’s Scion powers. Now imagine doing that with a god. Theoretically, it could make you immortal.”

“But you don?

?t know for sure if that’s the case with Automedon,” Helen challenged. “Cassandra said she was just guessing.”

“Yeah, but Cassandra’s guesses are usually pretty close to the mark,” he snapped, his temper rising quickly.

“You’ve been blowing this out of proportion since the second I told you! The more I think about it, the more I doubt I’m in any real danger,” she continued defensively.