Helen and Daphne assumed their disguises and the three of them went down to the lobby. Lucas asked them to wait a moment when they got to the front door. He pulled out his phone and called Hector, telling him to bring the car around to the entrance of the hotel.
“Stay here,” he said, firmly. “Let me check the street before you go out there. Hector said that Creon was headed our way.”
“That’s not necessary, Lucas. As long as you keep your distance from us, we’re well hidden,” Daphne said confidently as she stepped out onto the sidewalk, rolling her fancy leather suitcase behind her.
As Helen watched her mother walk out the door, she happened to glance across the street. Creon was standing on the other side, staring up at the hotel windows with his reflection-defying vision. His eyes dropped down when he saw Daphne.
As soon as she saw Creon, Helen’s senses rewound to her last encounter with him. She could still feel his humid breath on her neck as he whispered preciosa in her ear right before he stabbed her. Most of all, she remembered the suffocating darkness that had left her feeling like she was lost in space and utterly helpless. The terror-echo she 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.