“Son of a bitch!” Orion swore at the top of his voice as he ducked instinctively and stumbled to the side. “When you descend, you just appear out of thin air?”
They were standing on some blah part of the salt flats that rimmed a sea Helen had never been able to get to, and therefore suspected didn’t really exist. Just another charming aspect of hell—it promised landscape that it never delivered. Helen looked at
Orion’s panicky face and realized that she had practically materialized in his back pocket.
“I’m sorry!” she exclaimed sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to come in so close.”
“That is really unnerving! Is there any way to warn me first?” Orion was still clutching his chest, but he had also started to laugh a bit as well, and the sound was infectious.
“I don’t think so,” Helen chuckled through her words. It was a nervous chuckle, and Helen tried to ignore that fact. She had been really worried he wouldn’t show, and a bit happier than she would have anticipated that he had.
“Hey, I may have scared the crap out of you, but at least I remembered to bring your jacket.” She shrugged her shoulders out from under the collar, tilting her face down to hide an overexcited blush.
“Yeah? And what are you going to wear?” he asked, eyeing her bare arms skeptically. Helen paused in midmotion. She’d forgotten to put her own jacket on under his, and she was only wearing a T-shirt.
“Um . . . Whoops?”
“Just keep it for now,” he said, shaking his head like he had expected this. “Better give me my wallet, though.”
“I’ll give you your jacket back at the end of the night,” she promised, handing over his wallet.
“Sure you will.”
“I will!”
“Look, do you really want to argue all night about whether or not girls ever return clothes they borrow from guys? Because from what I’ve noticed, one night can be an actual eternity down here.”
Helen grinned. She had to remind herself that she didn’t know much of anything about this guy because she was starting to feel like they had been hanging out for years.
“Who are you?” she asked, trying not to sound too overawed. She’d never met anyone like Orion before. He was obviously just as tough as the Delos boys, but Orion was so different. Sometimes the Delos boys acted a little full of themselves, but Orion was down-to-earth, even humble. “Where’d you come from?”
Orion groaned. “We’re going to need that eternity after all. Originally? I’m from Newfoundland. Look, my life story is really complicated, so first we’d better head toward some cover before something ugly finds us.”
“About that,” Helen interjected as they turned their backs on the nonexistent sea and made their way to a thick patch of raggedy marsh grass. “Why is it that every time we’re together you’re getting chewed on by some horrendous monster?”
“The Bough of Aeneas,” he said, and pointed to the bright golden cuff around his wrist. “It was made by one of my ancestors from a very magical tree that grows at the edge of the Underworld, and unfortunately for me, monsters are drawn to it like insects to a barbecue.”
“Then why don’t you take it off?” Helen asked, like that was a no-brainer.
“Because you, Your Chosen Oneness, can come and go down here as you please.” He held apart some tall reeds for her to step between. Helen was about to argue that point, but she didn’t get the chance. “I need the Bough to open the gates between the worlds. If I didn’t have it with me, I’d just be wandering around inside a cave system in Massachusetts right now. Totally lost.”
“Cave?” Helen asked as she remembered Orion mentioning this before. “The gate to the Underworld is in a cave in Massachusetts?” she asked incredulously. Orion smiled at her and explained.
“There are hundreds, maybe thousands of gates to the Underworld scattered all over the world. Most of them are in these really cold spots at the bottom of caves. They’re ‘in between’ places that don’t become gates to the Underworld without some kind of key. As far as I know, the Bough is the only relic left that can do it, and because I’m Aeneas’s Heir, I’m pretty much the only person who can use it.”
That made sense to Helen. She wore the cestus, an ancient relic from the goddess Aphrodite, and only women born to the House of Atreus could wield it.
“But I thought magic didn’t work down here,” Helen said as she automatically touched her heart necklace. She knew the magic of the cestus didn’t work in the Underworld or she wouldn’t have ever been injured down here, and she got injured almost every time she descended.
“Only Underworld magic works in the Underworld,” Orion replied. “This is a different universe from ours, and it has its own rules. You must have noticed it. We don’t even have our Scion powers down here.”
“Yeah, that I’ve noticed,” Helen said. Intrigued by her leading inflection, Orion looked over at her as he stamped down the high vegetation to make a path. He paused in thought, and then laughed when he figured out what Helen meant.
“The hellhound! You just stood there with your eyes crossed!”
Helen’s shoulders started shaking with embarrassed laughter. “I didn’t know what to do! I don’t know how to fight without my lightning!”
“You froze up like you were having an asthma attack or something,” he chuckled. “For a second I thought I needed to have a chat with Daphne about whether I should carry a spare inhaler. . . .”