The sun was going down and she was grateful to be numb enough to experience something beautiful without her depressing thoughts barging in and ruining it. Looking around, she saw a familiar lighthouse. She glanced down at the sand under her feet and wondered if it was the same sand that had cradled her and Lucas when they were in so much pain. When they had died for a moment, she realized.
As soon as the thought occurred to her, she knew it was true. They had done more than just suffer terrible injury that night, they had started to cross over. Or at least Lucas had. And she had followed him down to stop him. And there was a river . . . Wait, what river?
“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Hector shouted.
He was furious. He stalked up the beach, his legs eating up far more distance than a human’s could as he came toward her.
“How did you find me?” Helen sputtered.
“Your moves aren’t so hard to anticipate,” he sneered. “Now get your ass to my house.”
“I don’t want to practice anymore. It’s pointless,” Helen called over her shoulder as she turned on her heel to walk away. “I just want to be left alone.”
“You want to be left alone, huh, Princess? Sorry, it doesn’t work that way,” he said as he grabbed her shoulders and spun her around. That did it for her. She gave one hysterical laugh—it was either that or start crying—and shoved Hector away from her. Hard.
“What are you going to do? What? Are you going to beat me to death? You can’t! You’re not strong enough,” Helen said as she hit him repeatedly on the shoulders, trying to instigate a fight. “So go get a sword. Go ahead. Oh, wait, I forgot. That doesn’t hurt me, either. So what are you going to do, you big bully? What do you have to teach me?”
“Humility,” he said quietly. He moved fast, but he was also bending the light funny the way Lucas did. While she was still trying to focus her eyes, pissed that she hadn’t even considered that Hector could have this talent as well, Hector grabbed her, threw her over his shoulder, and started walking toward the water.
Enraged, Helen used her full strength against him for the first time. She didn’t care how much she hurt him. She pushed until she unlocked herself from Hector’s grip. She heard his arm break as she physically separated herself from him. Then she changed states to fly away. As she summoned a wind to take her away, he grabbed her with his other hand. His more dominant hand. Helen realized, a bit too late, that Hector had allowed her to break his left arm so that she would chose weightlessness—weightlessness and momentary weakness. Before she could digest what he was doing and shift back to the gravity-state to get enough purchase to push him off, he dragged her easily into the water where her weight mattered not at all.
Hector walked right into the water and trudged down, down, down until they were both completely submerged under what seemed to Helen like fathoms of dark water. She struggled uselessly. This was Hector’s element and he had complete control. He could even speak and be heard underwater.
“You aren’t the only one with talents, Princess,” he said.
There were no bubbles streaming out of his mouth, just clear speech. He could breathe, he could talk, he could walk on the seabed as if he was walking on firm ground. Helen finally understood why Hector terrified her so much. He was an ocean creature, and she was deathly afraid of the ocean.
Ever since she’d almost drowned as a child, Helen had suspected that the ocean had it in for her, but she’d never told anyone that because she was pretty sure they would think she was crazy. Now, almost a decade later, as she looked into Hector’s blank blue eyes, she knew she had been right. Helen bucked and squirmed under Hector’s relentless grip. Great gouts of bubbles flew from her mouth as she screamed in soundless panic. She scratched at his face and kicked her feet, but there was nothing she could do to make him let her go. She was going to drown.
Acid fizzed in her veins and the edges of her vision smudged as she started to black out. As her eyes closed, she felt him tug on her legs