Goddess (Starcrossed 3)

“I know,” Helen said as she stood and brushed herself off. “I just need some time to sort through it all first.”

Helen knew that Orion could see the confusion swirling around inside of her, but he didn’t push her to confide in him. Instead, he dressed and then turned to her with his arms out.

“Can I get a lift?” he asked with a cheeky smile. Helen wrapped her arms around him and got them airborne, chuckling as she did so. Encouraged by her laughter, Orion kept joking. “Captain? Are there drinks on this flight? I think I have a fake ID here somewhere.”

“A fake ID? Why would I serve you if you just admitted you were underage?”

“So there are drinks,” he persisted in a mock-serious tone. “I’m not surprised. Look at all the pockets you conjured up for yourself.” He started frisking Helen, humorously cramming his hands into her cargo pants and digging around in her jacket like the nation’s security depended on it. “Of all the getups in the world you could have imagined for yourself and you pick something I’d go hunting in. Never knew you had an L.L.Bean fetish.”

“I was cold!” she said, nearly shouting with laughter.

“Cold, and apparently predisposed to pick flannel over fur.”

“What can I say? I’m from New England. We like flannel.”

By this point, they were hovering over the Delos backyard, and Helen had to force herself to stop giggling so she could concentrate on landing. Serious again, she swung her feet under them.

“Ooo. Rubber boots. Very sexy,” Orion said. Helen lost it again at the last second, and they tumbled to the ground in a goofy heap.

“Are you okay?” Matt shouted in a worried voice.

“No, it’s fine. We’re good,” Helen shouted back to Matt, who was standing up behind the door of his new car, the engine and headlights still on, like he had jumped out of the driver’s seat a second ago.

Helen tried to untangle herself from Orion and look presentable, but he kept grabbing her by the knees and ankles so she couldn’t stand.

“So that’s what happened to the in-flight drinks,” Orion said musingly as he tipped Helen over for the third time. “The captain drank them all. What a lush you are, Hamilton.”

Helen tried to plead her innocence, but since she couldn’t catch her breath she never got a coherent sentence out in her own defense.

“Are you two finished yet?” Matt asked. “What are you, nine?”

Helen and Orion stopped goofing around and settled down. “Did Ariadne call you?” Helen asked Matt.

“Hector did,” he replied, helping Helen to her feet.

“Where’s Claire?” she asked.

“Locked in her room. Her grandma wouldn’t let her out of the house at this hour,” he replied with a chuckle. “Any idea what Cassandra foresaw?”

“She asked for Orion. That’s all we know,” Helen said. The three of them made their way to the garage and the side door that led into the kitchen.

“Huh,” Matt said, looking over at Orion with a creased forehead. “Hector mentioned something about the Tyrant.”

Helen felt Orion stiffen and glanced over at his chest, trying to read his feelings. He was rolling them over too quickly for Helen to make any sense out of what she saw, but she could tell by the way he pinched his lips together that he was steeling himself for some kind of fight.

Helen made up her mind right then that if anyone tried to say anything negative about Orion, she would walk out. His whole life he’d been treated like a bad omen, and he’d never done anything to deserve it. The words born to bitterness welled up in Helen’s mind as she recalled some of the criteria for the Tyrant. After what she’d seen in Newfoundland, Helen knew how well that description fit, but it still didn’t make Orion the Tyrant.

Orion’s only mistake had been being born to the wrong parents with the wrong talent. But apparently, that was enough to make everyone shun him. And over what? Another misleading prophecy, just like the one about Atlantis? There was no way Orion was this Tyrant monster, and Helen intended to say so.

Before they even got inside, Helen could hear the haunting, multivoiced chorus of the Fates speaking through Cassandra. As she walked through the kitchen door a horrible screaming started. Three voices were tangled together into one, and Matt, Helen, and Orion ran toward the source of it—the library where Castor and Pallas had their joint office. In half a second, all three of them were at the door.

“Nemesis sends her vessel to blind us! Darkness comes!” wailed the chorus of the Fates, their voices filled with fear. “He must be killed, or everything will be destroyed!”

Orion, Matt, and Helen burst through the door to find the Delos family assembled and staring up. Cassandra hung in midair, glowing bright purple, green, and blue with the tri-part aura of the Three Fates. She was thrashing and howling with pain as the Fates pushed their way through her and forced her to be their messenger. Cassandra, her face wrinkled with extreme age, raised a clawlike hand and pointed directly at Orion.

“Kill him!” one of the Fates shrieked through Cassandra’s mouth.

“He will ruin everything!” another voice said as Cassandra’s face bubbled and rearranged itself into another old woman’s.