Kim Harrison - Hotter Than Hell

“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.”

An eerie tingling began in his chest and fanned out to slowly consume his body as she stared at him. Then she nodded.

“I believe you,” she said quietly. “My search of your soul agrees with your words. Continue…worthy warrior. Know that in all my years of battle, you are the only one I have allowed to enter my tent.”

Her bizarre statement was accompanied by a rosy flush on her high, regal cheeks, and she looked away as though somehow embarrassed. He couldn’t fathom why or what had happened and he glanced into his challis for answers. Albeit he knew his people worked with some pretty potent hallucinogens, but whatever these chicks were plying— man . He just wondered what she’d spiked the arrow with because not only was he seeing strange things but he also had the irrational urge to tell this woman the truth…not that such a thing was allowed. But if telling her beliefs from his people could give her something to identify with, and maybe save a hostage’s life, make her drop her guard, then it was a tactic he’d employ.

He searched her gorgeous face, trying not to become hypnotized by the subtle beauty of her eyes or the strange innocence that seemed to hide just beneath the surface of her placid expression. Her sad, philosophical tone washed through him, reminiscent of the elders he’d listened to as a boy on the reservation when they’d orally recite the history of lands lost and treaties broken.

“You can’t win this fight,” he murmured, not meaning to allow his voice to drop the way it had. “At least not through these methods.”

He watched tears rise and shimmer in her luminous dark eyes. “I know,” she whispered. “My nymphs do not yet understand that, however. I have seen the new weapons of this era…the suns that explode against the ground and burn all that is alive for eons.”

“Nuclear bombs, daisy-cutters, napalm,” he said flatly, for some reason wanting to reach across the table and hold her hands so badly his ached. Every fiber in him knew this tone of defeat; he’d heard it all his life spoken on the reservation, spoken in French by his Haitian father, spoken by people whose history would be distorted by the conquerors.

The tears in her eyes fell. “Yes,” she said nodding. “I am not the enemy.”

“Then who is?” he asked quietly, unable to forebear reaching across the table to clasp her hands. He set his gun aside and stared at her. But it was impossible to touch her satin hands and stare into her eyes at the same time without feeling her thread throughout his system.

“You do not believe in the cause you fight, do you?” she whispered. “You know they are wrong. You know who desecrates the land.”

He nodded. “But I can’t let you execute them. There are courts, other ways…laws…”

“The words are hollow even to your own ears,” she said, squeezing his hands. “Your people heard those words and laws, too, and were betrayed by failed treaties.”

He looked away, but could not remain out of the gravitational pull of her dark irises except briefly. “Who are you?” His voice came out as a hoarse, broken whisper. The tingle that began in his chest and spread throughout his body had become a dull ache centered in his groin.

“I am Artemis,” she said, her gaze rambling over his face. “Goddess…and I have never in my existence wanted to break my vow so thoroughly. Therefore, the true question that besets me is who are you, Titan? Of what hidden Olympus do you herald? I have never felt honor as pure as yours enter my ethereal body and lay siege to it.”

He couldn’t answer that—not because his actual hometown was classified data, which it was, but simply because as she touched his jaw and allowed her fingers to gingerly explore his lips, his voice failed. “You are definitely a goddess,” he finally managed. “And I wish the world was different…wished they understood your heartbreak and mine, but they don’t.”

“Are you displaced, too?” she asked, leaning forward. “A being greater than mere mortal trapped by the disbelief of the era?”

Her question made him smile. “I am trapped by the disbelief of this era, yes, and therefore, I guess displaced.”

She sat back quickly and laid her hand over her heart, gaping at him for a moment. “I felt the earth people in your aura. I felt the reverence of the trees toward you as you passed them—the forest welcomes you, and you understand it…honor it. That is why I didn’t…” Her words trailed off as her gaze slid away. “That is why you are still standing.”

Her admission snapped him out of the haze. He had to remember that she was an adversary. Was he crazy! But, damn , she’d turned him on. “You felt the trees, too?” he asked, unable to hold back the question. “They hold the spirits of the ancestors, you know.”

“Yes…” She closed her eyes and he almost leaned across the table to take her mouth, but thought better of it.

“I honor the wilderness. It’s a part of me, how I was raised. Artemis, I…”

“You never looked at me like the others long ago,” she added, her voice both sad and filled with wonder. “You saw me as a hunter, an equal. You didn’t try to molest me—why not?”

“Because you had a bow and arrow, a serious squad, and obviously we’re evenly matched in a firefight. But, that wasn’t why I came here, anyway. We came for the hostages.” He had to wrest his mind back to the mission!

She nodded, her exotic eyes smoldering with something he didn’t want to acknowledge. “Your words again ring true. You saw me as an equal…none of the others did before, that is why they sealed their own fates—but that was a very long and bitter time ago.”

He stared at this beauty, a black widow that could most assuredly take lives, wondering how a gorgeous woman like this ended up as an assassin. “How many bodies?”

“If I ask you the same, could you answer?” she said evenly, no apology or defensiveness in her tone.

“Touché. We’re both soldiers.”

“Warriors,” she corrected. “To be a soldier is to take orders, hence why I rarely execute soldiers. They are only doing the bidding of those who control them. A warrior, however, is under his or her own command.”

He nodded but looked away for a moment, wishing that the times were different and that he could be a warrior.

“You may be conscripted into service by them, but you still have the presence of a warrior,” she said quietly. “I did not mean to offend.”

“No offense taken. You spoke the truth.” Again his gaze searched her face. There was something magnetic about her, something almost supernatural, like she claimed. “And you are definitely a goddess with a sound mind and decent heart…you know that no good end will come of this if you persist. Why don’t you let the hostages go or tell me your demands for them? Give us a chance to work something out before you have blood on your hands and a murder rap you can’t shake.”

She sighed. “Their bodies will return and they will not be dead. In this era of disbelief nothing I do holds together for long. The temples are now for tourists, true believers are too few against the world gone awry with carnal distractions. I just wanted them to feel the terror of being hunted for no purpose. That will stay with them forever, even as all else fades. My goal was to humble, that was all.”

The melancholy tone of her voice, the new shimmer of tears in her eyes, and the way her fingers traced his open palms was mesmerizing. Relief also wafted through him—she’d promised not to kill the hostages. Progress…even though she’d given him ridiculous wood.