Goddess of Light (Goddess Summoning #3)(64)

"I thought you said she was smart," Artemis scoffed.

Pamela's gaze took in the beautiful young woman who looked so much like her lover, and she felt some of the numb horror that had overwhelmed her thaw. Through that thaw she began to become pissed off.

"You don't have to be so rude," Pamela said.

"Rude?" Artemis' eyes narrowed. "You call me rude when you deny my existence? Yet you're standing in the middle of a structure built because ancient people honored me and the other eleven like me so well that I have been remembered for thousands of years. Does that sound particularly intelligent to you?"

"It doesn't sound smart or dumb. It just sounds incredible. This whole thing is incredible. It can't be true."

Apollo took her other elbow and turned her to face him. Tried to ignore how she continued to pull away from him. He spoke in a quiet, calm voice. "You know the truth, Pamela. You've experienced it. All you have to do is accept it."

She looked at him - really looked at him. He was the same tall, handsome man he had been the night before. Yet he wasn't. There was something... missing about him. He was still unusually attractive, but the spectacular blue of his eyes had dimmed to a more... she gulped... a more human shade. And there was something else, too. He had less presence. That was the only way she could describe it. Technically he looked the same; yet he didn't. The specifics hadn't changed. His shoulders weren't any less broad, and his chest wasn't any less muscular - as she could easily see because he was wearing no shirt. Yet he was changed... altered... less.

And Artemis had been right; Pamela did remember. Little things, like the fact that Phoebus could lie in the desert sun all afternoon and not even sweat. Big things, like the fact that he had turned into flame last night as they were making love. And then there was the undeniable fact that she had stepped through a glowing door and been turned into something that definitely was not human...

It couldn't be. It wasn't possible. But in her gut she knew they were telling the truth. They were gods.

"What was that thing in the closet?" she whispered.

"It was a portal Zeus opened from Mount Olympus into the Kingdom of Las Vegas," Apollo said.

"Why?"

Apollo shrugged and attempted a half-smile. "Who knows the mind of the Supreme Ruler of Olympus?"

"If I remember correctly, he said something about wanting us to observe and delight in your world," Artemis said.

Pamela's eyes snapped to hers. "You mean a kind of experiment? Like a sick Star Trek episode?"

"Do you know what she means?" Artemis asked her brother.

"No, but I do know that, again, you are not helping!" he said through gritted teeth.

Pamela stared at him. "What happened to me when I went back through that portal? Something happened to my body - something terrible. What did you do to me?"

"No! It wasn't me. You can't believe I would do anything to hurt you."

Pamela turned her face away from him. "You already have."

"It was that toad Bacchus. He must have bespelled the portal." Artemis paused as she thought about what had been happening to Pamela. "You were changing into a flower."

"A jasmine flower, as her name suggests," Apollo said. "The sweetest of all flowers."

Artemis snorted. "Very romantic, and what it tells us is that Bacchus bespelled the portal so that if she came through without you, she'd revert to the most basic form of her name."

Pamela's heart felt like it had gone numb. "It's just like in the myths. You use humans, and when you discard them, you turn them into something... something not human."

"I wouldn't say that's quite accurate." Artemis looked offended.

Apollo turned his back to his sister. "Let me explain," he told Pamela. "It isn't like that at all with you and me."

"No. I'm done being experimented on," she sent Artemis a disgusted look. "And I don't want you to explain. I just want you to go back to where you came from and leave me alone."

"We would like nothing more, but it appears we are stuck here until your weekend comes around again," Artemis said.

Apollo shook his head. "No, she would like nothing more. I want nothing more than to be with you - to explain to you."

"I'm not interested in - " she began, trying again to pull her arms from Apollo's strong grasp, but a sharp voice interrupted her.

"Is there a problem here?"

A blue-uniformed security guard was standing in the entrance to the hallway. He was short and chubby, but he had a badge and a gun and an expression that said that he took his job very seriously.

"Oh, begone," Artemis said, automatically flicking her fingers in his direction. Then her disdainful expression turned blank as she remembered she was powerless.

"What did you say?" the guard said, narrowing his eyes at the beautiful woman dressed in a short toga-like tunic.

Apollo dropped Pamela's arms and stepped in front of her and his sister. Pamela looked at the darkening expression on his face and realized that with or without immortal powers he had the potential to be a very dangerous man.

"There's no problem here, Officer," Pamela said quickly, stepping up beside Apollo. "It's just that my" - she paused, glanced at Apollo's naked chest and discarded trite words like boyfriend and date, which she was sure would make her sound like a candidate for the Jerry Springer Show - "my fiance and I had a lover's tiff, and, well..." She shrugged and smiled sheepishly. But the man was not looking at her or the half-naked man beside her; he was staring at Artemis.