populated area by the town center, and she had to either fly up high to avoid being seen or touch down and run the rest of the way. She decided to land while she still knew she could do so without being spotted. She started to trot toward the ferry, looking and listening as she went. As she passed India Street, she heard the slaps and thuds of what sounded like a massive hand-to-hand fight. Her feet pounded against the pavement as she ran up the middle of the road toward the sounds, already knowing where she was going, where the Fates would have arranged this. The Nantucket Atheneum.
Helen rounded a corner and saw that a dark pall erased the entire end of the street. Even in a dark room it’s possible to sense other things around you, but Creon’s shadows were so complete they robbed Helen of more than just her vision; they uprooted her, tilting all of her other senses off balance as well. Looking at the thing he created, Helen understood why Creon was called a Shadowmaster. He did more than simply take away the light; he made that same thing that lurks under the basement stairs or at the back of the closet—that full darkness that your brain believes is stuffed with serial killers and monsters. Helen had to swallow down a scream just looking at it.
Somewhere inside that terrifying black hole, she could hear Creon and Hector hammering away at each other in a blind rage. Helen was at a loss. She was so scared of the disorienting nothingness that Creon had created she couldn’t force her feet to run into it. She screamed Hector’s name and scrunched her fists up in frustration, and as she did so her hands began to glow with the stark blue-white glow of electricity. Then something occurred to her.
When she was fighting for her life against Creon in her foyer, her spark had thrown back the gloom so she could see him. Even though he could control other kinds of light, her lightning had to be different somehow. Acting immediately, Helen held out her hands and summoned a bright spark to dance between her palms. She lit up the whole scene in front of her.
Hector was on his back and Creon was over him, beating his head repeatedly into the marble steps of the library. The blue glow snapped and hummed with increasing intensity around Helen’s hands, and Hector turned his swollen eyes toward her bright light. He smiled. Freed from Creon’s disorienting shadows, Hector was able to struggle out from under his cousin’s grip and he stood to face him.
They came at each other before Helen could take another step. Clashing together, Creon and Hector ground each other’s faces into the marble steps. They threw each other into the Doric columns, and yanked at each other’s skin and bones, each trying to pull the other apart. Helen began running, yelling at them to stop, but she was too late. While she was still half a block away, Hector managed to get behind Creon. With one cracking yank, he broke Creon’s neck.
Helen stopped running and froze in the middle of the street, her mouth hanging open as Creon’s lifeless body tumbled down the steps. Hector looked down at the body, and then up at Helen, momentarily free of the Furies and in complete possession of his own passion. For a split second, Helen knew that Hector understood what he had done, and that what he had done was unthinkable. He had killed his own cousin.
A dark comet fell out of the sky and plowed into Hector’s distracted body, knocking him through three columns and cracking the very foundation of the faux temple.
“Lucas, stop!” Helen screamed, her voice breaking painfully as she cried out with all of her strength.
Lucas couldn’t hear her. The Furies had him. All he could hear were their commands to kill the kin-killer. Lucas hit Hector over and over, trying to beat him to death.
Helen half flew the last few strides to the battling pair. She threw herself up into the air and then came crashing back down on top of them with as much gravity as she could muster. Pushing the two boys back into the cracked rubble of the library steps, Helen threw her arms up in a V over her head and summoned matching bolts for each hand. Before either of them could block her, she brought her bolts down onto the heads