Dreamless Read online

  DREAMLESS

  A STARCROSSED NOVEL

  JOSEPHINE ANGELINI

  Dedication

  For my husband, with all of my love

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  On Monday morning, school was canceled. Power still hadn’t been restored to certain parts of the island, and several streets in the center of town were impassable due to damage done by the storm.

  Yeah, right, Zach thought, as he walked out his front door. It was the “storm” that demolished half the town, not the freaky new family that can outrun cars.

  He jogged for a few blocks, just to put some distance between himself and his dad. He couldn’t bear to stay at home and listen to his father complain about the team missing football practice when all he was really complaining about was spending another day separated from his three star athletes—the amazing Delos boys.

  Zach went down to India Street to look at the ruined Atheneum steps along with dozens of other gawkers. Everyone was saying that an electrical wire had shorted out in the middle of the street the night before and that it had gotten so hot it melted the pavement. Zach saw the hole in the ground and he saw the downed power wires, but he knew the wires hadn’t caused all that damage.

  Just like he knew the exit sign over the door by the girls’ locker room hadn’t burned a huge patch of grass fifteen feet away from it.

  Why was everyone so stupid? Were they so blinded by the Delos kids that they were willing to overlook the fact that the marble steps of the library couldn’t possibly have been cracked by the frigging wind? Didn’t anyone else see there was something more going on? It was so obvious to Zach. He’d tried to warn Helen, but she was too wrapped up in Lucas to see straight. Zach knew she was similar to them somehow, but he’d tried, anyway. She was like the whole island was about them, just like his dad was, too. Blinded.

  Zach was walking through town, glowering at all the fools milling around, oohing and aahing over the melted asphalt, when Matt saw him and waved him over.

  “Check it out,” Matt said when Zach joined him by the edge of the police tape. “They’re saying it must have been the main line to the island that did that. Pretty incredible, huh?”

  “Wow. A hole. How incredible,” Zach said sarcastically.

  “You don’t think it’s interesting?” Matt asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “I just don’t think a downed power wire did all that.”

  “What else could it’ve been?” Matt asked in his usual, analytical way, gesturing to the scene of destruction in front of them.

  Zach smiled cautiously. Matt was smarter than most people gave him credit for. He was handsome, he wore all the right clothes, he captained the all-state golf team, and he was from an old and respected family. On top of that, he knew how to play it cool around people who mattered and talk about interesting things, like sports. In fact, Zach always suspected that Matt could have been one of the most popular kids in school if he wanted, but for some reason, Matt had given up his spot on the popular team and chosen to be the Geek King instead. It had to have something to do with Helen.

  Zach still hadn’t figured out why Helen chose to hang out with geeks herself, considering she was more beautiful than any movie star or supermodel he had ever seen. Her decision to be the wallflower was another part of her mystery, and her attraction. She was the kind of woman that men did things for. Things like sacrifice their social standing, or steal for, or even fight for . . .

  “I wasn’t here,” Zach replied, finally answering Matt’s question. “But it looks to me like somebody did this on purpose. Like they thought they could get away with it.”

  “You think someone . . . What? Smashed the library, ripped down a ten-thousand-volt power line with their bare hands, and then melted a four-foot hole in the street . . . as a prank?” Matt asked evenly. He narrowed his eyes and gave Zach a small, closed-lipped smile.

  “I don’t know,” Zach finally answered. Then a thought occurred to him. “But maybe you do. You’ve been hanging out with Ariadne a lot lately.”

  “Yeah, and?” Matt said calmly. “I don’t see your point.”

  Did Matt know? Had the Delos kids told him what was going on while they left Zach out of it? Zach studied Matt for a moment and decided he was probably just sticking up for the Delos family like everyone else did whenever Zach mentioned how odd they were.

  “Who says I have to have a point? I’m just saying that I’ve never seen a downed power line do that before. Have you?”

  “So the police, water and power, all the people that are trained to deal with natural disasters, they’re wrong and you’re right?”

  The way Matt put it made Zach feel a little silly. He couldn’t come right out and say that a family of supermen was trying to take over his island. That would sound crazy. Feigning disinterest, Zach looked out across the street to the demolished steps of the Atheneum and shrugged.

  That’s when he noticed someone, someone special, like Helen—like those frigging Delos kids. Only this guy was different. There was something inhuman about him. When this guy moved he sort of looked like an insect.

  “Whatever. I don’t really care what happened,” Zach said, acting like he was bored. “Have fun staring down that hole.”

  He walked away, not wanting to waste any more time on someone so obviously on the Deloses’ side. He wanted to see where that freak was going, and maybe figure out what they were all hiding from him.

  He followed the stranger down to the docks, and spotted a beautiful yacht. It was something right out of a storybook. Tall masts, teak deck, fiberglass hull, and red sails. Zach walked toward it with his mouth open. The yacht was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, except for one face. . . . Her face.

  Zach felt someone tap him on the back of his shoulder and, as he turned around, the world went dark.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Red blood bloomed from underneath Helen’s torn fingernails, pooled in the crescents of her cuticles, and trailed down her knuckles in little rivers. Despite the pain, she gripped the ledge more tightly with her left hand so she could try to slide her right hand forward. There was grit and blood under her fingers, making her slip, and her hands were cramping so badly that the center of her palm was starting to spasm. She reached with her right, but didn’t have the strength to pull herself any farther forward.

  Helen slid back with a gasp until she was dangling from her rigid fingertips. Six stories beneath her kicking feet was a dead flowerbed, littered with moldy bricks and slates that had slid off the roof of the dilapidated mansion and broken into bits. She didn’t have to look down to know that the same would happen to her if she lost her grasp on the crumbling window ledge. She tried again to swing a leg up and catch it on the windowsill, but the more she kicked the less secure her grip became.

  A sob escaped from between her bitten lips. She had been hanging from this ledge since she descended into the Underworld that night. It felt to her like h
ours, maybe days had passed, and her endurance was flagging. Helen cried out in frustration. She had to get off this ledge and go find the Furies. She was the Descender—this was her task. Find the Furies in the Underworld, defeat them somehow, and free the Scions from the Furies’ influence. She was supposed to be ending the cycle of vengeance that compelled Scions to kill each other off, but instead here she was, hanging from a ledge.

  She didn’t want to fall, but she knew that she would get no closer to finding the Furies if she went on clinging here for an eternity. And in the Underworld, every night lasted forever. She knew she needed to end this night and start the next anew, in some other, hopefully more productive, infinity. If she couldn’t pull herself up, that left only one option.

  The fingers of Helen’s left hand began twitching and her grip gave way. She tried to tell herself not to fight it, that it would be better to fall because at least it would be over. But still she clung to the ledge with every bit of strength remaining in her right hand. Helen was too afraid to let herself go. She bit down on her bloody lip in concentration, but the fingers of her right hand slid across the grit and finally came away from the edge. She couldn’t hold on.

  When she hit the ground she heard her left leg snap.

  Helen slapped a hand over her mouth to keep the scream from erupting across her quiet Nantucket bedroom. She could taste the flinty grit of the Underworld on her cramped fingers. In the pewter-blue light of predawn, she listened intently to the sound down the hall of her father getting ready for the day. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to hear anything out of the ordinary, and he went downstairs to start cooking breakfast as if nothing were wrong.

  Lying in bed, trembling with the pain of her broken leg and her pulled muscles, Helen waited for her body to heal itself. Tears slid down either side of her face, leaving hot tracks across her chilled skin. It was icy cold in her bedroom.

  Helen knew she had to eat to heal properly, but she couldn’t go downstairs with a broken leg. She told herself to stay calm and wait. In time, her body would be strong enough to move, then stand, and then walk. She would lie and say she’d overslept. She’d hide her sore leg from her father as best as she could, smiling and making small talk as they ate. Then, with a little food in her, she would heal the rest of the way.

  She would feel better soon, she told herself, crying as quietly as she could. She just had to hold on.

  Someone was waving a hand in Helen’s face.

  “What?” she asked, startled. She turned to look at Matt, who was signaling her back to earth.

  “I’m sorry, Lennie, but I still don’t get it. What’s a Rogue Scion?” he asked, his brow wrinkled with worry.

  “I’m a Rogue,” she answered a bit too loudly. She’d faded for a second there, and still hadn’t caught up to the conversation.

  Helen straightened her slumped shoulders and looked around at the rest of the room to find that everyone was staring at her. Everyone except Lucas. He was studying his hands in his lap, his mouth tight.

  Helen, Lucas, Ariadne, and Jason were sitting around the Delos kitchen table after school, trying to catch Matt and Claire up on all things demigod. Matt and Claire were Helen’s best mortal friends, and they were both incredibly smart, but some things about Helen and her past were too complicated to be taken for granted. After everything they’d gone through, Matt and Claire deserved answers. They’d put their lives on the line to help Helen and the rest of the Delos family seven days ago.

  Seven days, Helen thought, counting on her fingers to make sure. All that time in the Underworld makes it feel like seven weeks. Maybe it has been seven weeks for me.

  “It sounds confusing, but it’s not,” Ariadne said when she realized that Helen wasn’t going to continue. “There are Four Houses, and all Four Houses owe each other a blood debt from the Trojan War. That’s why the Furies make us want to kill someone from another House. Vengeance.”

  “A billion years ago someone from the House of Atreus killed someone from the House of Thebes and you are expected to pay that blood debt?” Matt asked dubiously.

  “Pretty much, except it was a lot more than just one death. We’re talking about the Trojan War, here. A lot of people died, both demigod Scions and full mortals like you,” Ariadne said with an apologetic grimace.

  “I know a lot of people died, but how does this blood-for-blood thing get you anywhere?” Matt persisted. “It never ends. It’s insane.”

  Lucas laughed mirthlessly and lifted his eyes from his lap to meet Matt’s. “You’re right. The Furies drive us mad, Matt,” he said quietly, patiently. “They haunt us until we break.”

  Helen remembered that tone. She thought of it as Lucas’s professor voice. She could listen to it all day, except she knew she shouldn’t want to.

  “They make us want to kill each other in order to fulfill some twisted sort of justice,” Lucas continued in his measured tone. “Someone from another House kills a person in our House. We kill one from theirs in retaliation, and on it goes for three and a half thousand years. And if a Scion kills someone from his own House, he becomes an Outcast.”

  “Like Hector,” Matt said tentatively. Even saying the name of their brother and cousin set off the Furies’ curse, angering the Delos clan. Matt only risked it now for the sake of being clear. “He killed your cousin Creon because Creon killed your aunt Pandora, and now you all feel an irresistible urge to kill him, even though you still love him. I’m sorry. I’m still not seeing how that’s even remotely like justice.”

  Helen looked around and saw Ariadne, Jason, and Lucas gritting their teeth. Jason was the first to calm himself.

  “That’s why what Helen is doing is so important,” he replied. “She’s in the Underworld to defeat the Furies, and stop all this senseless killing.”

  Matt gave up reluctantly. It was hard for him to accept the Furies, but he could see that no one at the table was any happier about their existence than he was. Claire still seemed like she needed to clarify a few things.

  “Okay. That’s an Outcast. But Rogues like Lennie are Scions who have parents from two different Houses, but only one House can claim them, right? So they still owe a blood debt to the other House,” Claire spoke carefully, like she knew what she was saying was difficult for Helen to hear but she had to say it, anyway. “You were claimed by your mother, Daphne. Or by her House, rather.”

  “The House of Atreus,” Helen said dully, remembering how her long-lost mother had returned to ruin her life nine days ago with some very unwelcome news.

  “But your real father—not Jerry—even though, Lennie, I have to say, Jerry will always be your real dad to me,” Claire amended passionately before getting back on track. “Your biological father, who you never knew and who died before you were born . . .”

  “Was from the House of Thebes.” For a moment Helen met Lucas’s eyes, then quickly looked away. “Ajax Delos.”

  “Our uncle,” Jason said, including Ariadne and Lucas in his glance.

  “Right,” Claire said uncomfortably. She looked between Helen and Lucas who refused to meet her eyes. “And since you were both claimed by enemy Houses you two wanted each other dead at first. Until you . . .” She trailed off.

  “Before Helen and I paid our blood debts to each other’s Houses by nearly dying for each other,” Lucas finished in a leaden tone, daring anyone to comment on the bond he and Helen shared.

  Helen wanted to dig a hole straight down through the tiled floor of the Delos kitchen and disappear. She could feel the weight of everyone’s unasked questions.

  They were all wondering: How far did Helen and Lucas go with each other before they found out they were first cousins? Was it just a little kissing, or did it get “scarred for life” serious?

  And: Do they still want to with each other, even though they know they’re cousins?

  And: I wonder if they still do it sometimes. It wouldn’t be hard for them because they can both fly. Maybe they sneak off every night and . . .
/>   “Helen? We need to get back to work,” Cassandra said with bossy edge in her voice. She stood in the kitchen doorway with a fist planted on her slim, boyish hip.

  As Helen stood up from the table, Lucas caught her eyes and gave her the tiniest of smiles, encouraging her. Smiling back ever so slightly, Helen followed Cassandra down to the Delos library feeling calmer, more self-assured. Cassandra shut the door, and the two girls continued their search for some bit of knowledge that might help Helen in her quest.

  Helen turned the corner and saw that the way was blocked by a rainbow of rust. A skyscraper had been bent across the street as if a giant hand had pressed it down like a stalk of corn.

  Helen wiped the itchy sweat off her brow and tried to find the safest route over the cracked concrete and twisted iron. It would be hard to climb over, but most of the buildings in this abandoned city were crumbling into dust as the desert around it encroached. There was no point going another way. One obstruction or another blocked all the streets, and besides, Helen didn’t know which way she was supposed to go in the first place. The only thing she could do was to keep moving forward.

  Scrambling over a jagged lattice, surrounded by the tangy smell of decaying metal, Helen heard a deep, mournful groaning. A bolt shook loose from its joint, and a girder above her broke free in a shower of rust and sand. Instinctively, Helen held her hands up and tried to deflect it, but down here in the Underworld, her arms didn’t have Scion strength. She slammed painfully on her back, stretched out over the crisscrossing bars beneath her. The heavy girder lay across her stomach, pinning her down across her middle.