Hotter Than Hell(59)

She nodded. “Shush, I know. At least wait until your heart stops beating so hard.”



He smiled; she could feel it against the crown of her head. “That might be hours from now,” he whispered.



That, too, she knew.





“What are we gonna tell the major, Vince?” Donovan glanced around the glen where they’d originally been ambushed as the men gathered into a tight huddle surrounded by beautiful nymphs.



“We were drugged,” Dutch said, nervously glancing around, but a mellow smile cascading across his face as the women from his tent waved coyly at him.



“Yeah, uh, the fight broke out here,” Vincent whispered, indicating with a nod. “A firefight ensued. Several grenades got lobbed…we were running, got hit with arrows that had the hallucinogen, couple of us were caught in the vines…uh, then, we staggered in that direction and found an encampment after freeing our own men. More fire power got unleashed, and the abductors fled. We dropped from the effects of the drug—but the other side had already pulled back—we hit one or two, but they dragged their own to safety. But we got all the hostages that were stashed.”



“I don’t know, brother,” Jermaine said nervously. “Some of us left a lot of DNA evidence back there.”



“Ballistics won’t match up unless we go back through and act it out,” Lou said, glancing around and wiping his palms down his face. “For bigwigs that important, they’ll raze the forest looking for a trail.”



“I know, but what else can we say?” Dutch said, raking his finger through his hair.



“They didn’t kill nobody, didn’t ransom them like they could have,” Jesse said, glancing around the group, “and seriously made up for the inconvenience, if you ask me.”



“That’s the thing, dude,” Lou fussed under his breath, “nobody’s gonna ask you what you think. You’d better get this story tight and right, or all our asses are gonna spend a very long time in the brink.”



“Damned straight,” Vincent said. He looked around. “We go back to the original glen, anything we say we’re gonna do, we do. If we say we blew it up—we gotta blow it up. If we say we sprayed an area—we gotta spray the area. If…” his voice trailed off as he watched a goddess walk toward him.



Artemis sauntered over to the group and the small circle of men opened to allow her in. She touched Vincent’s face with trembling fingers and then lifted up to take his mouth. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “I’m a goddess…it will all work out. Men will see what they need to, the hostages will remember what they should, and you will each be honored for your courage.”



He couldn’t take his eyes off hers, wondering if this very insane woman really did have something supernatural about her. He wanted to tell her he was going to miss her, one very long afternoon with her wasn’t enough. But with his men standing there, each with the same expression on their faces as they stared at their temporary captors, he couldn’t. Contact with her after this would have vast repercussions.



Her sad gaze told him that she understood as she touched his face one last time. “Goodbye, gentle Titan…if you ever want to see me, visit my temple in Crete and call me by name…or simply go to your Olympus and find a meadow beneath the crescent moon…and whisper my name. I will come to you there.”



His ranks splintered, the men in his squad walked over to the respective nymphs trying to get their names, the method to contact them, and all pandemonium broke loose. Artemis shook her head and smiled with a quiet chuckle. Vincent raked his fingers through his locks, hoping all would be well. Then he watched sadly as Artemis began running, her long tresses sweeping her back, and her nymphs waving goodbye.



Somehow going into a tent to collect bound and gagged old men with tears running down their faces seemed completely anticlimactic. But as the squad opened the tents, they backed away in pure horror leaving the flaps flung up. Each tent was tiny, the size it appeared on the outside. What happened to the sumptuous love dens? Where were the bound and gagged hostages they’d been shown?



A buck was bound and gagged in each tent now. The animals had congealed blood on their coats exactly where the original mortal injuries had been. Glassy, dead, animal eyes stared at Vincent and his men. The poor creatures had been dead so long that rigor mortis had set in and each animal was washboard stiff.



“Oh, shit—we got played, partner,” Donovan whispered.



A cold sweat made Vincent’s t-shirt cling to him. The twitching of one deer freaked everybody out.