Dreamless

different river.”
    “And what if she didn’t?” Orion asked, frustration cracking his voice. “What if this is our best hope at helping them?”
    Helen stared up into his bright green eyes and shook her head mutely. She didn’t know what to do next. The littlest one poked her head out from somewhere deep in the shadows.
    “Thank you,” she whispered before ducking back into the extreme dark on the other side of the tree trunk.
    “We have to help them,” he said urgently. “We can’t let them suffer like this forever!”
    “We won’t! And I swear to you, we’ll keep trying until we get the right river!” Helen’s eyes suddenly went out of focus, and she grabbed a handful of Orion’s shirt to keep herself from falling over.
    “What’s happening?” Orion asked, bracing himself. The landscape blurred and Helen felt the world slow, like she was about to wake up.
    “I think they’re making us leave,” she told him. She wrapped her arms around Orion’s neck and held on tight. . . .
    Matt and Claire ditched the car when they discovered that the traffic was stopped dead for the night, and instead started running down the post-sunset dark of the deserted street, toward the center of town.
    Technically, they weren’t supposed to be doing this, but neither of them was willing to sit safely at the Delos compound while the Scions went out to fight. Matt was more than a little insulted that Ariadne had begged him to stay behind, like he was a child who couldn’t defend himself. He’d tried to argue, but Ariadne, Lucas, and Jason had simply run away so fast Matt could barely see them move, let alone get a word in edgewise. It really annoyed him when they did that.
    Cassandra warned them not to go. Common sense had told her it would most likely tick everyone off. Matt much preferred it when Cassandra used her unusually deep wellspring of common sense, as opposed to her talent as an Oracle, to suss out the future. He couldn’t even force himself to watch anymore when the Fates pushed their way out of her, like they were digging their way up from under her skin.
    It was one of the many things that made Matt question the value of Scion “gifts” and the so-called gods that gave them to the Scions to begin with. What good were the Fates if they only used people like cups to be filled and then emptied, and eventually tossed away? As much as Matt abhorred violence, the thought of what the Fates did to Scions made him want do something athletic, preferably while wearing a pair of brass knuckles.
    As he and Claire neared the town center, they could hear shouting and more than a few screams, but the voices were disconnected. In one spot, there were shrieks of fear, and in others there were shouts of rowdy enjoyment. It sounded as if different parts of the crowd were watching different movies.
    “Hold up, Claire,” Matt said as they rounded a poorly lit corner. “The streetlights are out down that way.”
    “But the News Store is that way,” she protested.
    “I know, but let’s circle around back and go in through the alley. I want to get an idea of what’s going on before we go charging down the middle of the street.”
    Claire agreed, and she and Matt slipped around the back of the News Store. It was quiet in the back alley, although they could both hear the raised voices of the crowd, like sneaking down the side hallway of a stadium while a rock band performed. They got the sense that something big was happening close by, but they felt strangely separated from it.
    “My God, it’s dark,” Claire said, her voice wavering with fear.
    “Yeah, and it’s not a normal darkness, either,” Matt murmured nervously as they went in the back entrance to the News Store.
    “I think I’ve seen this before,” Claire whispered as she rubbed her arms in either cold or fear. “When Hector was attacked by Automedon and the Hundred at my track meet, this same menacing blackness covered everything. I think it means a Shadowmaster has been here.”
    Inside, the store was a mess. Tables were overturned, crystal jars of candy had broken on the floor, and everything was covered in a layer of flour that must have been deliberately flung out of several torn bags. Matt and Claire picked their way through to the front, looking for injured people who might have been left unconscious, hoping like crazy that they wouldn’t find Jerry or Kate. Thankfully, the News Store was entirely empty.
    The darkness seemed to be