Hotter Than Hell (18 page)

“Stop playing games, lady.” He fingered the trigger, but was disturbed by her unusual, almost otherworldly calm. “If you return them alive, all you and your environmental terrorist organization face are kidnapping charges and federal property damage, and if you tell us who’s behind all of this, you might even get close to a plea bargain. But if you take this bull too far, you’re going down and might get the chair. So, don’t lie—where—”

“I never lie,” she said, taken aback by the charge. “See for yourself!” Unafraid of his weapon, she brushed past him, still clutching her bow, and walked into the glen where the firefight had erupted.

He stood there, mouth agape, watching his men bobbing upside down from vines that had ensnared them. But the thing that paralyzed him was the sheer terror on their faces as they looked from each beautiful maiden to the huge, blond-coat, twelve-point buck that snorted and pranced, seeming bewildered and trapped between the women that had arrows trained on it.

Something very crazy, extremely implausible slithered through Vince as he stared into the eyes of the trapped animal…it had Dutch’s eyes, but that was impossible!

“Where’s my soldier?” Vince shouted, beginning to panic, too.

Female laughter filled the glen.

He locked gazes with Donovan, who had tears sliding down his nose…Donovan? Oh, shit. If he had broken this fast, after dealing with all the madness they’d seen in Miami and in South America, what had the man witnessed? Jermaine’s eyes were closed and his mouth was moving as though he was praying. Lou and Jesse wouldn’t take their eyes off the buck, and stared at it wide-eyed, upside down, not blinking.

“Cut one of them down and show him where his soldier is,” the woman who was clearly the leader said.

Jesse swung a punch that missed as a tall, lithe maiden with flaxen hair approached him and nicked his cheek with an arrow tip. Instantly, Vince reached out and grabbed the leader’s arm, pressing the nine millimeter to her skull. “If he dies, you die. What’d you do, poison him? What kind?”

She coolly regarded Vince as his man began to convulse. “Cut him down before he hurts himself. He’ll be a magnificent creature like the other one, I’m sure.”

Vince’s vocal cords seized as he watched them carefully lie Jesse down on the forest floor. How his clothes began burning, he didn’t know—but the way they burned was from a weird, cobalt blue flame that didn’t seem to harm his skin. The other men were shouting, and the huge, trapped stag was rearing on his hind legs. But Vince could barely hold his gun as he watched a man slowly, painfully, change shape, his bones snapping and body elongating as a wail ripped from his throat.

The sound of Jesse’s skull cracking to bear antlers cut through the forest with a horrifying echo. Red hair from Jesse’s head and beard turned into a thick coat that swallowed his skin, and the sound of a whimper fled his lips when his nose became a snout. As though growing out from his elbows and knees, his limbs extended and fingers fused together. Vince backed away as he watched his squad sniper roll over and struggle to stand like a newborn fawn.

“What the hell is this,” he whispered, blinking hard and touching the place where an arrow had grazed him. He knew there were all sorts of psychotropic drugs out there, but he’d never known of one that could produce an effect like this.

A red stag pranced hysterically in the clearing, making the blond one become even more skittish. Vince looked around. They were outnumbered three terrorists to one. They’d all obviously been drugged somehow…his face was hot, and he felt like he was moving forward against his own will.

“Can we keep these?” one of the terrorists asked, her gaze pleading with the leader. She walked up to the massive blond stag and tried to gentle the frightened creature. Oddly, it bobbed its head, stopped its agitated prancing and nuzzled her as she stroked it. The half-nude women looked back at their commander. “Please, Artemis,” she whispered. “I don’t think they were with the others.”

Another joined the willowy brunette that had spoken, pushing her long onyx braids over her shoulder. “He’s magnificent,” she murmured, going to the animal to lay her cheek against his neck.

“He’s not old like the generals, yes?” a wheat-haired captor said, producing an apple from thin air and feeding it to the animal with a flat palm.

Then three more female warriors moved forward, slowly approached the other large stag, attending to it gently and staring at their leader.

“It’s been thousands of years, Artemis,” the tallest one among the women gathered beside the red stag said, her voice strained and her expressive brown eyes seeming to beseech reason from their leader. “We all took the vow with you…but…in this new era the things we’ve—”

“It does not matter what temptations you’ve seen or felt in this new era! I care not. You will all keep your vow, as will I—a vow that I made when I was three years old.” The beautiful warrior folded her arms over her ample breasts and glared at her warriors.

Vince watched the one they called Artemis straighten her back as the female expressions became crestfallen. He blinked hard trying to get past the drugs they had obviously given him just so he could see straight. Something in his system was making him short of breath, making him stagger forward, had made his hand too heavy to hold a weapon. He was weaving where he stood, beginning to sweat. It was as though heat radiated off the leader and even though it went against all of his training, he stepped away from her to keep from passing out.

Regardless, during their standoff he was beginning to figure out their strange coded language—if it was a thousand-year-old vow, or so, then it had to be a Middle Eastern group, since that was the only reference point in his quickly fogging mind which had disputes that lasted that long…Greek or thereabouts in the Mediterranean, was close enough. Maybe leaders of each cell were called Artemis, a fake name, likely to denote who was in control of a specific engagement. That was plausible.

His mind scrambled for a rational explanation as an eerie silence folded over the glen. It was almost as though they’d become sealed away in a soundless envelope. It had to be the drugs, whatever was on the tip of the arrows—but what they didn’t know was that he and his men were the tip of the spear! Be strong. Maybe all this talk about the environment was bullshit, and fearing reprisal, the men behind some of the deadliest terrorist activity in the world had sent females out front to do their bidding…that would make sense, given the way the U.S. had been leaning on their resources. They’d abducted millionaires and billionaires, a ransom demand would have to come soon—who would waste such an opportunity. Dead stags his ass!

Obviously it was some grudge that went back before anyone could remember, and loyalists of the group were beginning to mutiny—not having the stomach, maybe, to kill off a bunch of military for whatever environmental cause they had. No. But it wasn’t an environmental cause. Vince shook his head, trying to clear it, feeling woozy, and hating the calm, smug expression on the one called Artemis’s face. Somewhere between them, one of the members of the group had to have figured out they were in deep shit and perhaps wanted a way out. But drugged, outgunned, outnumbered or not, his mission was clear; bring back the hostages alive, if possible, and find out the source of this terrorist cell to take it down.

“You don’t care about the environment,” he said, slurring his words, and trying to continue standing upright. “You blow up cars and innocent women and children, so stop the charade and tell us how much money you want for the CEOs.”

“Are you mad, barbarian?” she said with a gasp that cut through his skeleton.

On the verge of passing out, he slapped his chest, needing something to fracture the group, something to cause dissention to buy them time, searching for anything that would give him more information while the drugs wore off.

“I am Owiqwidicciat! My mother’s people are from the Makah Nation—what gives you the right to invade my forest, my trees, destroy my land? Huh? We walked here for thousands of years, and you come with death and destruction talking about peace? That’s bull! You’re no different to me than the first wave of invaders!”

The leader recoiled from his charges and suddenly he could breathe, his mind felt clear, and he straightened.

“Your forest?” she said as the women with her covered their hearts with their hands.

“That’s right, lady, you heard me! My people are from the Olympic Peninsula, as far north as you can go. This is our country, not yours!”

Discernable murmurs filtered through the trees.

“You are from Olympus?” Pure shock entered the one called Artemis’s eyes.

“Damned straight I am!”

She opened her mouth and closed it, her eyes raking him for the truth. “Your weapons—you stole them from—”

“We stole nothing, unlike you!”

“I stole nothing; we took back what was ours by rights.”

“Zeus gave them the thunder bolts and lightning rods?” one woman whispered.

“I must know who sent you,” Artemis demanded.

“I want the same information, so I guess that makes it a standoff. I wanna know who’s poaching on my land.” Vincent walked away and touched a badly damaged tree with clear disgust. “How many years would it take to replace just one? After all the wildfires,” he added, shaking his head and looking at the blaze that had been started from the grenade.

He watched the female leader cover her heart with her hand, briefly close her eyes, and the blaze quieted. Vince rubbed his eyes with his fist.

“Cut my men down before they pass out. Tie ’em up if you have to, but get ’em right side up.”

He’d said it just to see how far they’d go, not expecting them to comply, and he was shocked when she nodded and wrists got tied then vines got hacked. His men fell into female arms and the stags reared. He couldn’t tell what was happening as the women gathered behind the two animals.

“Oh, all right! But you do not break your vow unless I break mine. Bring their belongings and weapons. Extract what we must know without harming them, if possible,” their leader yelled, and then she raised her bow, withdrew two arrows from her quiver, and threaded and released them both before Vince’s hand could rise with a gun. Her arrows found their marks and the great stags dropped to their knees. “Come,” she ordered. “Your men will befall no harm. That is no longer the objective of my nymphs, it seems. The ones transformed will return to the human forms. We should speak freely in my tent. I have much to ask you about this new world, Titan.”

THEY HIKED HARD FOR WHAT FELT LIKE CLOSE TO
an hour, going further into heavily forested terrain until they reached a grouping of nearly inconspicuous tents. The semi-circle of crude dwellings surrounded a small charred plot of ground where a campfire had recently been.

Vince kept his senses keened, looking for signs of more terrorists, looking for the males, and each man exchanged a glance as they were separated off from one another and forced into a tent with several female captors. Oddly, though, he noted, Jesse and Dutch still looked dazed, if not drugged. But he was counting on Lou, of any of them, to be able to get away. Lou was so damned flexible and double jointed, he could escape from almost anywhere like Houdini. He didn’t need his hands free to kill you, just had to get close enough.

Then Vince looked at the gun in his hand. Bizarre. They hadn’t bound him or stripped his weapon. And although Artemis’s female soldiers had an indefinable but palpable sense of anticipation sweeping their group, their leader trudged ahead of him unconcerned. There was almost a weary resignation about her, a sadness that worried him, despite the fact that he was still armed…and all the chick had on her was a bow and poisoned arrows. After what he’d seen so far, he’d come to the conclusion that that was enough.

It was all surreal, but he was sure that he was drugged once he stepped inside the leader’s tent. Firstly, it took him a moment to orient himself to the size. Outside it seemed about the height and width of a small military pop, but when he stepped inside, it loomed frighteningly large as though he’d walked into a forty-by-sixty palace chamber. Everything was draped in white satin and sheer gauze interspersed with finely woven Moroccan rugs, ornately decorated Mediterranean urns, and lama hides. Vince pushed the heel of his hand against his eyes to recapture reality.

“Wine or water?” Artemis said on a weary exhale, and then dropped her weapon against a white alpaca fleece by the far tent wall. When he didn’t answer, she turned to stare at him. “If you are not thirsty, barbarian, then I offer grapes…olives, goat cheese, bread? Surely by this point you do not think my goal is to poison you?”

She ignored him as she briefly lifted her hair off her lovely neck and stretched, and then helped herself to the bounty that graced her table. She settled herself in one lithe move and continued her solitary meal unfazed.

“I have many questions, many things I do not understand that I must know if I am to be the protectress of the wilderness. Sit, Titan, and talk genuinely, or draw my wrath…I grow weary of rage, so let us find an accord.” She popped a grape into her mouth and cocked an eyebrow. “Why do your people behave as they do—don’t they realize that if you hurt the beloved forest, you will also starve?”

He watched her eat and take a careful sip of dark mulberry-hued wine, and despite the incomprehensible circumstances, found himself drawn to the stain it left on her mouth. Tentatively he approached her table and sat on an ornately carved wooden stool across from her. As though reading his mind, she handed him her challis, and then poured wine into the empty one that he didn’t remember being there earlier. Yes, he’d drink only what she drank and eat only what she’d eaten, breaking bread with the enemy to better understand, but would not subject himself to be drugged or poisoned again.

“My people used everything the bounty of the wilderness offered,” he said quietly, taking a sip of wine and studying her eyes very carefully. “We wasted nothing, never hunted more than we could use. We respected the wilderness.”