Dreamless

instead of thoughts. In an ecstasy of hate, she fell down on her knees in front of him and put her right hand under his shirt.
    Sliding her hand along Orion’s belt, Helen felt for the knife she knew he kept strapped to his back. He must have known what she was doing, but he didn’t try to stop her. Helen unsheathed his knife and held the tip of the blade against his chest.
    “I don’t want this,” she said. Her voice shook and her eyes were blurry with tears that gathered, tipped, and then tumbled down her hot cheeks. “But I need it.”
    Orion kept his eyes shut, his hands gripping the cavern wall. In the icy, erratic light of her barely controlled electricity, Helen saw him calm himself, as if he’d done this many times before. The ghost-white limbs and ashy hair of the Furies blinked in and out of the corner of Helen’s eye.
    “I feel it, too. The bloodlust,” he whispered, so softly Helen understood his meaning more than heard his words. “It’s okay. I’m ready now.”
    “Look at me.”
    Orion opened his bright green eyes. The Furies screamed.
    A boyish, surprised expression stole across his face. He began to take labored little breaths and his head fell listlessly toward Helen, inch by inch, until his lips grazed lightly against her own. His mouth was very warm and soft. Like a new flavor she couldn’t quite place but that she wanted to swallow whole, Helen pulled his lower lip into her mouth to take a bigger sip of him. Catching his face in one of her hands so she could tilt his wilting mouth toward hers, she noticed something sticky between her fingers. Helen pulled back and looked down.
    There was blood on her hands.
    Stunned out of her trance, Helen looked down and saw a dark, wet circle expanding across Orion’s shirt. His surprised look. She had stabbed him. And then she kept pushing the tip of the blade into him a tiny bit at a time as they leaned toward each other. And he had allowed her to do it without complaint.
    Seeing what she had done, Helen yanked the blade out of Orion’s chest and sent it clanging against the floor behind her.
    He pitched forward with a small sigh and crumpled up at her knees.
    Horrified, Helen dug her heels into the slippery ground and scrambled away from Orion’s still body, extinguishing her globe of light in the process. Her back hit a stalagmite and she remained motionless, listening for any sound from him. The Furies whispered to her to get up and finish what she had started, but she was too stunned to obey.
    “Orion?” she called across the cavern.
    She would carry him out, she reasoned with herself. The blade hadn’t gone in that deep, so he was just unconscious. Right? Right , she told herself firmly. If he was too far gone to heal himself, she’d bring him to Jason and Ariadne, and they could save him, she knew they could do it. She didn’t care how exhausted she was, how huge he was, or how far she had to carry him. Orion was going to live, no matter what she had to do.
    But the Furies . . . they would make even the compassionate twins want to kill Orion. That is, if Helen could resist the Furies as she brought him back to Nantucket. How could she trust herself with him after what she’d just done to him?
    “Orion, answer me!” Helen cried into the dark. “You can’t die!”
    “Well, someday, I will. But not yet,” he groaned. The Furies’ whispers rose. “You have to get out of here.”
    “I don’t want to leave you. You’re hurt.”
    “I’m nearly healed. Follow the water uphill. It will lead you out.” Orion swallowed painfully. “Please, get away from me!”
    The Furies were talking to Orion now, guiding him toward Helen. She could hear them begging him to kill her. He made a desperate sound and Helen sensed him lunging toward her.
    Narrowly avoiding his tackle, Helen disengaged gravity and soared up into the air. As soon as she was flying she could sense the faintest movement of air, right down to the minute flow around the stalactites that hung from the ceiling. The air currents helped her figure out which way led up and out of the cave.
    She could also feel gusts of air being stirred up by Orion, who was flailing his arms below as he searched for her in the dark. Wounded or not, Helen knew she had to leave him immediately or neither of them would survive the night. She soared out of the cavern and up through the winding passageways until she could see the dim glow of predawn light at the mouth of the cave.
    Helen