Dreamless

pulled a little bronze dagger out of his belt and knelt down next to her. Helen felt a sliding, throbbing heat trace across her neck. With one efficient motion, Ares had slit her throat. “You’ll die, but the cut is shallow enough that you won’t die right away. I’m afraid you won’t be able to speak, though. I can’t let you go sharing the plan with the other two Heirs before they do a little fighting and bleeding of their own, now can I? Don’t want to ruin it.”
    She tried to scream, but instead a thin membrane of blood shot out of her neck and sprayed across Ares’ face. He grinned and licked his lips.
    “Who’s a good girl?” he said in baby talk, making grotesque kissy-faces at her. Then he stood, went to the rock wall, and whispered to it.
    Helen had nearly drowned once when she was a child. Since then she had always feared the water, even though she had grown up on an island perpetually surrounded by it. Now it seemed that after all that fussing and fearing over the water she was going to drown on dry land. As blood frothed in her lungs and burned her inner ears, she thought to herself how similar her salty blood tasted to the salt water of the sea. She could hear the little ocean inside her, throbbing and rushing, ebbing out of her with every beat of her heart. Or were those footfalls pounding across the frozen cave floor?
    “Uncle! Let me through,” Ares hissed more loudly at the rock wall.
    Nothing happened. The look on Ares’ face grew frantic.
    “Helen! No!” Lucas screamed across the yawning cavern. His cry echoed off the walls, filling the dark corners of the caves and multiplying inside of them.
    Ares spun around and put his hand on his knife. As he looked down at Helen, she could tell he was contemplating a hostage scenario.
    The ground heaved up and came slamming back down, making Ares stumble away from Helen and clutch at the wall. “Get away from her,” Orion growled.
    Unable to roll over to look at them, Helen stared at Ares’ petrified face through her one good eye. His eyes were flying back and forth between Orion and Lucas as Ares backed up against the wall of the portal. Orion was right. The god of war was a coward.
    “Hades! You have your orders!” Ares screamed hysterically as he slapped his hand repeatedly against the frozen rock wall. “Let me pass!” The portal sucked him in and Ares was gone. After a brief pause, Helen heard hurried steps behind her.
    “Luke. Oh, no,” Orion groaned.
    “She’s not dead,” Lucas said through gritted teeth. “She can’t be dead.”
    Helen felt both Lucas and Orion kneel down next to her. She felt hands cup her shoulder and her hip to tilt her gently toward them. She squirmed, trying to shrug them away. She would have gotten up and run away from them if she could. Even their delicate touches felt like whips across her skin, but the pain wasn’t the reason she wanted them to stop touching her. She couldn’t let them get her blood on their hands.
    “Easy, easy. It’s okay, Helen,” Lucas said in a high whisper. “I know it hurts, I do, but we have to move you.”
    No. What they had to do was get away from her. She tried to tell them to go, but all that came out of her was a gush of blood from her neck.
    “I have a knife,” Orion said, and Helen felt the bonds on her wrists cut away.
    Lucas scooped her up into his arm and she fought him lamely, struggling to get him to drop her. She wanted to die in the portal, before the blood brother ritual could be completed. But as she flailed and coughed she only made it worse. She was literally spraying blood from her neck, covering Lucas and Orion. Ares might be a coward, Helen thought, but he knew everything there was to know about hurting people. The wound he had given her had made it a sure thing that anyone who came within five feet of Helen got bathed in her blood.
    “I’ll lead the way,” Orion said in an urgent voice.
    Helen felt a vague swaying motion, and saw the bobbing beam of Orion’s flashlight ahead as they began their ascent. She could hear just fine, and her vision wasn’t too bad, but she couldn’t move or speak. She tried to wiggle her toes or move a finger. None of her limbs responded. She told herself to blink, but she couldn’t even close her good eye. Helen was locked inside herself and completely conscious. She knew she would have to watch as the events unfolded and wondered if this was some special torture that Ares had devised for her. Maybe