Starcrossed

an impossible speed. She knew Lucas could simply step up into the air and start flying, but so far that approach hadn’t worked for her. Maybe she needed to be running to get airborne, kind of like an airplane. Here was a chance to test that theory.
    As Helen struck out off the trail and through the marshy land surrounding Miacomet Pond, she began to sense the lightness she associated with flight. There was a fluttery feeling in her stomach, a barely contained wildness that she assumed was an expression of Scion power. She felt static energy running over her skin. It was as if she had rubbed a balloon over her entire body and then held it just far enough away so that her whole surface felt the outward tug of an electrical field.
    Taking an experimental leap, Helen soared up into the air. At first she thought she had done it, that she was flying, but she soon felt herself reach the top of a very large arc and begin to descend. She had merely jumped higher than ever before—too high—and her brain was still hardwired to believe that when she hit the ground she would go splat and die.
    She tried to grab at the air, and although there was a part of her that knew how to make it hold her, she was either too scared or not scared enough to do the trick in time. She hit the ground at an angle and went into a skid, her feet digging up two loamy troughs in the mud.
    She was fine, of course, but still deeply shaken. Her knees were wobbly and she had to laugh to let out the crazy feeling flapping around inside her chest. After she had calmed down a bit she hauled herself up off her butt. She pulled her feet out of the mud and started to walk back toward the school, feeling like a jackass. She was covered in smelly muck up to her waist, and in her head she pictured how she must have looked as she came down from her leap, her arms pinwheeling frantically like a cartoon character falling off a cliff.
    She glanced around to make sure no one had spotted her in her moment of foolishness, just out of habit, but she wasn’t expecting anyone to be near. Her heart turned over when she saw a dark smudge turn into a man’s shape. Then he suddenly stopped and changed direction just over the next rise. He had seen her get up and walk away laughing after falling from fifty feet high. Worse than that, Helen could see there was something wrong with the way he moved. He was going much too fast to be human.
    Her entire body tensed instinctively. Without even thinking about it she took off after the dark shape. Whoever he was, he was headed back toward the high school—back toward Claire, who was probably huffing and puffing along, slow and small and human. The image of Kate lying unconscious on the ground flashed through her head and spurred Helen to run faster. She skipped over massive swaths of landscape, bounding recklessly over hillocks and cranberry bogs, unable to think of anything but catching him.
    She noticed that she was having a hard time finding him in the strange shadowy light, but as she got closer, the darkness that seemed to swath itself around him abated a little and she was able to pinpoint his location. It looked like he was sucking light out of the air. There was something creepy about the way the dark shadows radiated out from him like a sinister halo—he was definitely controlling the light. That meant he was another descendant of Apollo—one of the Hundred Cousins from the House of Thebes, and therefore a threat.
    From what she could see, the shadowy man was a few years older than she was, but still barely out of his teens. When she was only a few paces behind him she could see that he had fair hair and skin. With a fresh burst of speed she reached out, trying to grab on to him, and ripped off his shirt. Finally, he allowed the last of the darkness clinging to him to be swept away by the sun glowing on his huge, bare shoulders. Up close, he looked so similar to Hector in both coloring and build that they could have been twins, except for their faces. There was a hollow look to this man, a cragginess that made him seem sickly.
    A horrendous cramp crumpled up her torso like origami, and Helen tumbled to the ground with a scream. She curled up on the ground in the fetal position, unable to move or even take a breath. Through the long blades of grass that partially obscured her vision she could see the blond, shirtless Cousin trot back toward her with an inquisitive look on his face.
    “Interesting,” he said with a