Starcrossed

felt made her forget for a moment that both she and her mother were protected by their borrowed shapes.
    “Mom! Stop!” she screamed instinctively, reaching out to pull Daphne back into the hotel.
    Creon made eye contact with Helen as she shouted. Then he saw his cousin Lucas stride up and grab the strange girl frantically. Creon looked from the cute brunette to Lucas, noticing how they held each other so protectively. Then he looked back at the tacky woman with the expensive luggage and smiled. He ran across the street, his head lowered and his shoulders rounded like a bull.
    “Daphne! He knows!” Lucas shouted, throwing Helen behind him and moving impossibly fast to intercept Creon.
    The cousins collided in the middle of the street, both of them using their momentum to put power into their first punches. But Lucas could do something Creon wasn’t expecting. At the last moment he made gravity pull harder on him, and in his massive-state he pushed his stunned opponent back into the asphalt with so much force he fractured the surface of the street.
    A split second later Lucas glanced up and saw Matt’s terrified face through the windshield of his car as he slammed on his brakes. Matt tried to stop, but it was too late. He hit the two figures that had appeared out of thin air in the middle of the street and his car crumpled in on itself as if it had run into a brick wall.
    “Lucas!” Helen screamed as she tried to run past her mother.
    Daphne grabbed Helen and restrained her just as Hector’s big SUV screeched to a halt in front of them, blocking Helen’s way to the accident. Ariadne jumped out of the passenger side before Hector had even come to a full stop and sprinted to the wreck.
    “Get in the truck!” Hector bellowed at Daphne as he came around from the driver’s side and stomped to the smoking front end of Matt’s car.
    Helen struggled, unable to see what was going on. She was still calling Lucas’s name as Jason and Daphne bundled her into the back of the SUV.
    “Luke’s fine!” Jason said to her through gritted teeth as he wrestled with her. “Helen, please! We’re attracting enough attention as it is.”
    Reminded of where she was, Helen forced herself to calm down and get into the backseat. She slid over to one of the tinted windows, and sighed with relief when she saw Lucas standing up in front of Matt’s destroyed car. He was uninjured and holding on to Hector to keep him from running off somewhere. Creon was gone, so Helen assumed that Hector was trying to follow him. For a moment, it looked like Lucas was going to hit Hector, but then he whispered something that seemed to convince his stubborn cousin, and all at once Hector calmed down and nodded.
    “He looks just like Ajax,” Daphne whispered behind her, her eyes glued to Hector.
    Helen glanced briefly at her mother, then turned her attention back to the wreck. Ariadne was helping Matt out of his car, holding him up. He was reeling and bleeding from the head, ash-white and owl-eyed with astonishment, but he didn’t seem to be badly hurt.
    “We should get you to a hospital,” Ariadne insisted as she studied Matt’s uneven pupils.
    “No,” Matt said vehemently. “There’s no way to explain this. Normal people don’t get up and walk away after you run them over with a car.”
    They all knew he was right. Even concussed, Matt was a quick thinker.
    “You hit your head,” Jason warned as the Scions shot each other uncertain looks.
    “And I still know what I saw. Look, don’t worry about me, I’d never rat out a friend, but we have to go now,” Matt insisted. “Before the police come.”
    “Ari?” Jason asked as he met his twin’s eyes in an honest exchange. “Is it life threatening?”
    Ariadne ran her hands just over Matt’s skull, a faint glow coming out of her palms. “He’ll be just fine,” she said after a brief moment. She started to lead Matt toward Hector’s truck, but Matt giggled and stopped dead.
    “Wow. What did you do to me?” He gave her a goofy smile.
    “I healed you. That’s my gift,” she answered as she smiled back at him, suddenly looking exhausted.
    “Thanks,” Matt said. He allowed himself to be moved toward Hector’s truck. “Wait. Where’s Claire?”
    Helen was out of the truck and barreling down on Matt before her mother could even hold out an arm to stop her.
    “What do you mean ‘where’s Claire’?” Helen demanded, balling her fists so hard her arms started shaking.