Starcrossed (22 page)

Lucas and Hector do most of the fighting, obviously.”

“They don’t get along, do they?”

“Yes and no,” Ariadne began carefully. “Hector is really proud in

general, but he’s especially proud of our ancestry and our family.

He doesn’t like that we’ve fractured the House of Thebes. Don’t get

me wrong—he doesn’t believe all that crap that the Hundred Cousins

do, but he hates to see our House divided. And Lucas feels like

it’s his responsibility to keep Hector in line because, well, he’s the

only one that can.”

“It must be really difficult being separated from the rest of your

family,” Helen sympathized.

“We don’t have a choice,” Ariadne said with a tight smile.

“Is it because of the cult?” Helen asked delicately. “Lucas never

got a chance to explain . . .”

“Tantalus and the Hundred Cousins believe that if only one

House exists, then they can raise Atlantis,” Ariadne said. “That’s

why our family has always lived right on the water. Boston, Nantucket,

Cádiz . . . They’re all near the Atlantic Ocean and we all

want front row seats.”

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“That’s insane!” Helen blurted out before she realized that Ariadne

was serious. “I mean, Atlantis is a myth, right?” The thought

of a city existing somewhere, deep under the dark, smothering

waves made Helen shudder involuntarily. She took a sip of her

juice box to cover her violent reaction and waited for Ariadne to

continue.

“Is Mount Olympus a myth? Or heaven? It all depends on what

you believe, and most Scions believe that Atlantis is real, but the

problem is that we can’t get there until we accomplish a few things

first. See, right after the Trojan War ended, there was a great

prophecy made by Cassandra of Troy. She said that if only one

Scion House remains, then we can raise Atlantis and claim it as our

own land forever. The Hundred Cousins interpret that prophecy to

mean that if we demigods earn our entrance into Atlantis then we

will become immortal, just like the gods of Olympus.”

“Wow,” Helen murmured. “Why wouldn’t you want that?”

“Tempting, isn’t it? Except the problem is that if all four Houses

unite, or if there is only one unified House left, then we would be

breaking the Truce.”

“What truce?”

“The Truce that ended the Trojan War.”

“I thought the Greeks won. Didn’t they kill all the Trojans and

burn Troy to the ground?”

“They certainly did.”

“Then if the Greeks won, who’d they make the Truce with?”

“The gods.”

Ariadne explained that the Trojan War was the most destructive

war the ancients had ever seen. It wiped out most of the Western

world, nearly ending civilization as we know it, and it was just as

destructive to the gods of Olympus as it was to the humans. Right

from the start, the gods were invested in the war. They chose sides,

either with their half-human children or with heroes who had particularly

pleased them. Some of the gods even came down from

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Olympus to fight in the war. Apollo rode in Hector’s chariot,

Athena fought with Achilles, and Poseidon fought on both sides of

the war, changing his mind as often as the tide. Even Aphrodite,

the goddess of love, flew down to the battlefield on one occasion to

protect Paris, and as she scooped him up to fly him away from certain

death, her hand was cut by a Greek blade.

“When her father, Zeus, saw Aphrodite’s injury, he forbade her to

return to Troy. She disobeyed him, of course, and that enraged

Zeus, but not enough to get involved. It wasn’t until his daughter

Athena and his son Ares nearly sent each other to Tartarus, a

hellish place of no return for immortals, that Zeus knew he had to

act. The human war was tearing his family apart, and it was threatening

his rule over the heavens.

“Zeus’s involvement was nearly too late. Ten years had passed

since the war began, and all the Olympians were so invested that

the only way Zeus could get the gods to stop fighting was to get the

Scions to stop fighting. Zeus had to bargain with the mortals, offering

them something they wanted. After ten years of the gods meddling

in their affairs, ten years of the gods dragging the war out and

making it worse, the only thing that both the Greeks and the Trojans

wanted was to be left alone. The mortals, the Scions, wanted

the gods to go back to Olympus and stay there, and in exchange

they agreed to end the war.

“Zeus agreed as well. If the Scions ended the war, he swore on the

River Styx that the gods would retreat to Olympus and leave the

world alone. But before he sealed his vow he wanted some assurance

that such a terrible war would never threaten Olympus again.

As he saw it, the Greeks’ unification of the Scion Houses in order to

fight the Trojans nearly tore Olympus apart. Zeus wanted to make

sure that such total involvement never happened again. As he set

his seal on the Truce and made his unbreakable vow that the

Olympians would leave the earth to the mortals, he also swore to

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return to earth and finish the war if the Scion Houses ever united

again.”

“It sounds like what happened at the end of World War II when

the Allies divided Germany,” Helen remarked. “They broke the

country up, hoping to avoid World War Three.”

“It’s very much like that,” Ariadne agreed. “The Fates are obsessed

with cycles, and they repeat the same patterns over and over

all around the world—especially when it comes to the Big

Three—war, love, and family.” Ariadne trailed off for a moment,

thinking some dark thought, before she finished the story. “Anyway,

Troy was betrayed by one of their own and burned to the

ground, and after a few months of confusion and tricks and payback—

most of which is described in the Odyssey—the Olympians

finally left the earth. Zeus swore that if the Houses ever united

again, he would come back and the Trojan War would pretty much

pick up where it left off.”

“And it left off somewhere just short of the total destruction of

civilization,” Helen said, trying to imagine what “the end of civilization”

would mean now. “If the Trojan War was so destructive with

only swords and arrows, what would happen if it was fought with

today’s weapons?”

“Yeah. That crossed our minds,” Ariadne broke eye contact and

looked at her lap. “That’s why my family—my father, uncle Castor,

and aunt Pandora—separated themselves from the rest of the

House of Thebes. Even if Tantalus is right, even if unification is the

key to immortality, we didn’t think it was worth the total destruction

of the earth.”

“That’s a lot to give up. I mean, it’s the right thing to do, obviously,

but immortality . . .” Helen shook her head at the thought.

“And Tantalus and the Hundred Cousins just let you go?” she

asked incredulously.

“What choice did they have? They can’t kill us because we’re all

family, but lately they were starting to threaten us, trying to bully

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us back to the fold, and some of us—okay, Hector—were starting to

fight back. He was looking for fights, taking the bait when they

called him a coward for not wanting to fight the gods. In our tradition,

to kill your own kin is the worst sin imaginable, and he came

so close, Helen. My family left Spain because Hector got into a terrible

fight and nearly got killed, but worse, he nearly killed

someone of his own blood. There is no forgiveness for a kin-killer,”

Ariadne said in a hushed voice.

“But yours isn’t the last House. Mine is,” Helen said, the whole

truth beginning to dawn on her.

“No one knew about you. About two decades ago there was this

‘Final Confrontation’ between the Houses. All Four Houses attacked

one another, each of them trying to eliminate the others.

The House of Thebes won, and it was thought that the other three,

The House of Atreus, the House of Athens, and the House of

Rome, were wiped out entirely. But even though everyone else was

supposed to be dead, Atlantis wasn’t raised and the gods did not

return. My father, aunt, and uncle thought that we were the ones

that were keeping the war at bay by refusing to join Tantalus and

his cult. We thought it had to be us because no one else was supposed

to be left.” Ariadne took a deep breath and looked at Helen.

“But it was you all along. Somehow your mother hid you here, preserved

your House, whichever one it is, and kept the war from

starting. She—you—also kept Tantalus from attaining Atlantis.”

Helen sat in silence for a moment, realizing how many incredibly

strong demigods wanted her dead. The Hundred Cousins believed

that if the House of Thebes was unified and the only Scion House

left on earth that they would become like gods, and Helen’s life was

the only thing standing in the way. Her life was also the only thing

keeping the Olympians from coming back to earth and starting

World War Whatever. So the Delos family had to protect her even

if they all died doing it. And here she was refusing to learn how to

fight. No wonder Hector hated her.

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“I’m sorry,” Helen finally said, so overwhelmed by her own

selfishness that she had almost no emotion in her voice. “Your

family is siding with me against your own kin.”

“Your burden is heavier,” Ariadne said, taking Helen’s hand. She

was going to say something else, but she was interrupted by Pandora

who burst into the locker room, looking for them.

“Hey! Am I going to have to take someone to the hospital?” she

asked, only half joking. “There’s a whole lot of blood out there.”

“No, she’s okay,” Ariadne answered back with a laugh as she

stood up.

Something was still bothering Helen. There was a hole in the

story Ariadne had just told her.

“Who was it?” Helen asked suddenly, looking up at Ariadne’s

puzzled face. “The way we were taught the story, Odysseus tricked

the Trojans with a giant wooden horse. Everyone knows about the

Trojan horse. But you said someone betrayed Troy, and I don’t

think it was by mistake.”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t pick that up,” Ariadne said, looking

like she was mentally kicking herself. “There was no wooden horse.

It’s a nice fairytale, but that’s all it is. Odysseus was involved, that’s

true, but all he did was convince Helen to use her beauty to charm

the guards into opening the gates at night. That’s really all it took.

It’s why we Scions never name our children after her. For us, naming

your daughter Helen is like a Christian naming their child

Judas.”

Helen ran past her dad and upstairs when she got home, claiming

she wanted to turn in early. She did her homework and then made

herself lie down, but she couldn’t sleep. Her brain kept sifting

through everything Ariadne had told her that afternoon, focusing

mostly on the cult of the Hundred Cousins. To distract herself from

thinking about just how many people would want her dead so that

they could live forever, she got out of bed and attempted to fly.

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She tried to think lighter, then higher. She even tried to sneak up

on it by pretending to trip, but all she succeeding in doing was

jumping up and down until her father yelled up the stairs for her to

stop clowning around.

Hoping a little ancient history would put her to sleep, she picked

up the copy of the Iliad that Cassandra had given her and read as

much as she could. It seemed like every page was filled with the

gods meddling in the world of men. Helen could see why her ancestors

had eventually decided that praying for divine intervention

wasn’t such a good idea.

She was up to the part where Achilles, who struck Helen as the

world’s most celebrated psychopath, started sulking in his tent

over a girl when she heard a definite footstep overhead. And then

another. Relying on the extrasensory hearing she’d always known

she had, but only recently begun to let herself use, she zeroed in on

her father, listening to his rib cage moving against his chair as he

breathed in and out. He was watching the late news on the TV

downstairs and he sounded perfectly normal to Helen. The widow’s

walk above her, however, was now suspiciously silent.

Helen slipped out of bed and grabbed the old baseball bat she

kept in her closet. Holding her slugger at the ready she walked

sideways, foot over foot, out her bedroom door and to the steps

that led to the widow’s walk. She paused for a moment on the landing

between the stairs that led down to the first floor and the stairs

that led up to the roof, listening again for her father. After a few

moments of tense indecision, she heard him cluck his tongue at the

antics of some camera-greedy congresswoman on TV and she relaxed.

He was still okay, so she knew that whatever she had heard

had not made it downstairs yet. With the intention of keeping it

that way, she ascended the stairs to the widow’s walk.

As soon as she stepped outside, Helen felt the cool fall air soak