Goddess of Light (27 page)

She felt a funny, tickly sensation like feathers brushing over her skin, and the light changed from the closet's single yellow bulb to a soft, rose-colored luminescence. But she didn't enter the fabulous restaurant she half remembered. Instead, she seemed to have stepped into the middle of a magnificent ballroom. The impression she got was of enormous size and incredible beauty. The huge room was empty, except for two people who were shouting at each other. As she emerged from the entrance, they turned toward her. Phoebus, minus a shirt, stared at her with blank-eyed shock. His sister at first looked enraged, and then her expressed changed as—

Pain sliced through Pamela. She opened her mouth to scream, but as change rippled down her body, the scream had to echo through her mind because she had no mouth left with which to give it voice. Helplessly, she reached toward Phoebus as her body folded, then morphed into something not human. At the same instant, the pain dissipated the fog in her mind, and her memories came rushing back. Phoebus. His skin glowing with an unearthly passion. Taking her in his arms. Making her his own. He wasn't human. No human man could be made of fire. What had he done to her? What was he doing to her now? She remembered his fire licking her and stroking her and . . . Another scream ripped through her mind.

Apollo's back had been to the portal. He had been chastising his sister for being an interfering, meddlesome—

His barrage had been sliced in two when he felt his soul mate enter Olympus. The moment her mortal feet passed through the portal, her body began to change. Helplessly, Apollo watched as his Pamela faded, melted, and then re-formed as a beautiful, fragrant jasmine flower.

“Get her back through before the sun rises!” his sister shouted. “When the portal closes, the spell will fade.”

Then she would be Pamela once more. Her words worked on him like a prod. He lunged forward, feeling Artemis close behind him. Grabbing the delicate jasmine flower, he pulled it from where it had already begun embedding its roots along the marble floor. Whispering a broken apology, Apollo leapt through the portal with Pamela's changed body clasped tightly in his hands.

Artemis hesitated in front of the portal, glancing quickly over her shoulder at the floor-to-ceiling windows that showed dawn beginning to lighten the already blush-tinged sky.

“No, fool!” she yelled into the madly swirling disk. “You weren't supposed to go through with her!” The goddess leaned forward, trying to see within the glowing passageway.

From the shadows Bacchus moved swiftly on silent feet. With one decisive motion, he rammed his shoulder into the center of the Huntress's back. Artemis shrieked and fell into the disk just seconds before the portal went dark, slamming firmly shut as dawn broke over Mount Olympus.

Bacchus' laughter was filled with terrible triumph.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

PAMELA was on her hands and knees. Her breath came in ragged sobs, and her teeth chattered in time with her body's trembling.
Her
body! Frantically, she felt her arms and face. She'd turned into something—something green and growing and decidedly not normal. But now she was normal again. Human again.

“All is well now, my sweet,” Apollo said, reaching out to her.

She flinched away from his touch. “You!” she gasped, but before she could say anything else, Phoebus' sister fell headfirst into the small room just before the swirling pearl-colored disk disappeared.

Artemis sputtered a foreign curse as she picked herself up from the floor. Her brother stared slack-jawed at her. “I will make Bacchus sorry Zeus saved him when his foolish human mother—” Her tirade broke off as she realized the portal was closed. “No,” she breathed the word. “We can not be trapped here.”

“What the hell are you?”
the words exploded from Pamela.

Apollo and Artemis turned to the little mortal who crouched on the floor. Pamela had scuttled backward until she was pressed against the closed door. Her eyes were huge and looked impossibly dark against the whiteness of her face.

“Pamela,” Apollo spoke in a soothing tone, holding his hand out to her again. “You know who I am.”

“No!” she said sharply, recoiling from his touch. “I didn't ask
who
you are. I asked
what
you are.”

“You're going to have to make her forget,” Artemis said, completely ignoring Pamela. “She has seen too much. Look at her—she remembers.” The goddess raised her slender hand. “Oh, I'll do it for you; I know you've become entirely too attached to her. Sleep and forget,” she flicked her fingers at Pamela, who automatically flinched back.

“Stop!” Apollo shouted. “I don't want you to tamper with her.”

“What in the hell is going on?” Pamela's legs worked just well enough for her to stand up, but there she stayed with her back to the door, pressing her hands flat against solid wood to stop their trembling.

“Why isn't she sleeping?” Artemis asked her brother. She shook her hand and studied her fingers.

“The portal is closed,” Apollo said.

His sister scowled at him. “I can see that.”

Apollo simply kept gazing at her. Then his sister's eyes widened. “When the portal closed . . .” Her words faded.

“When the portal closed, it severed us from our powers,” Apollo finished for her.

Artemis' hand flew to cover her mouth as she gasped in horror.

“Okay. That's it. I'm leaving.” Pamela jerked open the closet door and left the room on legs that felt like rubber.

“Look what you've done now,” Apollo growled at his sister before he hurried after Pamela.

“Me?” Artemis sniffed indignantly. Reluctantly, she followed her brother. She didn't want to. She wanted the portal to reopen. She wanted to return to Olympus and have a long soak in her mineral spring. She wanted her immortal powers returned to her and . . . She sighed and stepped into the hall.

Apollo had caught Pamela by the elbow just a few feet from the closet door. She was trying to pull her arm from his grasp as he murmured reassurances to her. Artemis shook her head. How the mighty had fallen. She marched up to the two of them.

“Be still, mortal,” she said in disgust. “It is really very simple.” She pointed at her brother. “His true name is Phoebus Apollo, God of Light, Music and Healing. My name is Diana, but only if you are of ancient Roman descent. Otherwise I prefer to be called Artemis, the Huntress Goddess. I also have an affinity for the moon, just as my brother is allied with the sun, but I certainly wouldn't want to give you so much information that I confuse you,” she finished sarcastically.

“You're gods?” Pamela hoped fervently that she would wake up very soon.

“Yes. Immortals. Or at least we were until the portal trapped us in this wretched world. Now I suspect we are just extremely attractive mortals,” she said dryly.

“Apollo and Artemis,” Pamela looked from brother to sister.

“I told you it was simple.”

“You're fucking crazy!” she said.

“I didn't want you to find out like this,” Apollo said. “But you know Artemis is telling you the truth.” He frowned at his sister. “Even if she is doing a poor job of it.”

“What?” Artemis said. “If you wanted soft music and the scent of flowers, I'm sorry, but I won't be able to oblige you—at least until the portal reopens.”

“You're not helping,” Apollo told his sister.

“But there's no such thing as the gods. It's just mythology,” Pamela said.

“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 asked, 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 fiancé 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.

“Wait!” the officer said, his small eyes glittering. “Don't I recognize you as one of the stars of
Zumanity
?”

Pamela held her breath while Artemis raised one slender eyebrow.

“I am
the
star of
Zumanity
,” she said.