Free Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini Page A

involvement to the police, but
    after that she was determined to hate him from as far a distance as
    she could without falling into the ocean.
    Helen had to concentrate to see through the fog. In the dim predawn
    light, way the heck out on private property, she wasn’t sure
    where the turn onto the long driveway started. She pulled the car
    over and got out, heading on foot toward the sound of the ocean.
    She had only seen this particular compound from the beach, and
    she was trying to scour her memory for any landmark she could recognize
    from the opposite direction. Then she heard a stumbling,
    thudding sound behind her. She spun on her heel and saw Lucas
    walking steadily toward her with long, forceful strides.
    “What are you doing here?” he half barked, half whispered.
    Helen took a couple of steps back and then made herself stop and
    hold her ground. In the gray light she could see the white bodies of
    the three sisters dragging themselves through the sandy grass,
    crawling up the soft rises, shivering with sobs.
    “How did you get behind me? Were you following me?” she asked
    in an accusing voice.
    “Yeah, I was,” he spat out, still coming toward her. “What the hell
    are you doing on my family’s land?”
    Too late Helen realized that by coming to his house she had
    crossed some line. Where there had been hatred, Helen could now
    see violence. It distorted his features and added menace to his
    stance. He was still graceful, but almost too cruel to look at. Good,
    she thought. Let’s do this.
    She lowered her shoulder and closed the distance between them,
    barreling into his chest and tumbling onto the ground with him
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    under her. She reared up to drive her fist into his face, but he
    grabbed her arms. She was on top and should have had the upper
    hand, but she had never hit anything and she could tell from the
    way he never wasted a movement that he had been fighting his entire
    life. Helen felt him do something with his hips and then he was
    on top. Her arms were pinned above her head and her heels were
    left to scrape uselessly at the ground. She tried to bite his face, but
    he jerked his head away.
    “Lie still or I will kill you,” Lucas warned through gritted teeth.
    He was panting, not because he was winded, but because he was
    trying to control himself.
    “Why did you come here?” he asked, almost begging.
    Helen stopped struggling and looked into his infuriating face. He
    had his eyes closed. He was trying the trick she had used in the alley,
    she realized. She shut her eyes as well, and felt a tiny bit better.
    “I lied to the police. I didn’t tell them you were there tonight,”
    Helen grunted, the unbelievable weight of him pressing the air out
    of her. “You’re crushing me!”
    “Good,” he said, but he shifted his weight, seeming to get lighter
    somehow so she could fill her lungs. “Do you have your eyes
    closed, too?” he asked, sounding more curious than angry.
    “Yeah. It helps a little,” she replied quietly. “You see them, too,
    don’t you? The three women?”
    “Of course I do,” he replied in a baffled voice.
    “What are they?”
    “The Erinyes. The Furies. You really don’t understand. . . .” He
    stopped abruptly when a woman’s voice called his name from what
    Helen assumed was his house. “Damn it. They can’t find you here
    or you’re dead. Go!” he ordered. He rolled off of her and jumped
    up into a run.
    As soon as she was free, Helen bolted and didn’t look back. She
    could almost feel the three sisters reaching out with their clammy
    white arms and bloody fingertips to touch the back of her neck. She
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    ran in a panic for Kate’s car, dove behind the wheel, and drove
    away as fast as she dared.
    After half a mile she had to pull over and take a few deep breaths,
    and as she did, she noticed that she could smell Lucas on her
    clothes. Disgusted, she took her shirt off and drove home in her
    bra. No one would see her, and if they did they would just think
    she was out for a