Alien Vengeance Read Online Free PDF Page A

with a little grimace as she fiddled with the controls of the shower.
    But water there was in abundance, and at just the right temperature, she realised with satisfaction, revelling in the sensation as it cascaded through her hair and down her body. It was wonderful to feel the tension seeping out of her, she thought, turning off the water and languidly wringing the excess moisture out of her thick rope of blonde hair. She took one of the towels and wrapped it round herself, sarong-style, anchoring the free end securely. She couldn’t use her hand-drier, but she could dry her hair just as well in the sun, and the little terrace at the end of the passage was sufficiently secluded to preclude her needing to get dressed again just yet. If there was nothing else to do, she could always work on her suntan.
    She collected one of the paperback novels from her case that she hadn’t even started on so far, and padded along to the terrace.
    The view from here was fantastic too, the rocky peaks around and above her gleaming white and silver in the sun, but shimmering into a blue and violet haze in the distance. Away down to the right in the valley, she could see the muted sheen of olive groves, interspersed with terraced areas of cultivation, and the harsher green of cypress and scrub. It was a bleak landscape in many ways, but dazzling too.
    Everywhere on Crete you were aware of the mountains. The God Zeus had been born in them, although there was some dispute about the actual location. Each peak, each cave had its own myth, its own mystery, and closer to her own times, Gemma recalled, the mountains had provided shelter not only for newborn gods from murderous fathers, but for ordinary mortals—Cretan partisans and their British comrades-in-arms in the last war.
    Gemma had hoped to climb up to the cave on Dicte where Zeus was said to have been suckled by the goat Capricorn. She’d thought Mike might take her there. He wouldn’t be interested in the myths, but he could look for dittany and other herbs while she looked at the cave, or so she’d reasoned, but she hadn’t bargained for the fact that he was living in such a remote place.
    She would come back, she knew suddenly, probably next year, and explore all the places she hadn’t yet seen. Crete was in her blood already, as she’d somehow always expected it could be. Given a few days, she supposed she might even get to love this uncharacteristic, unfriendly little village. Perhaps its very remoteness had made the inhabitants suspicious of outsiders—and yet, and yet all the stories she’d heard other tourists tell suggested just the opposite. One couple at the hotel in Heraklion had got lost on a moped trip, ending up in a village that seemed at the back of beyond and further. The villagers had feasted them royally, and driven them ceremoniously, moped and all in someone’s truck, back to the nearest main road, refusing all offers of payment with smiling dignity.
    She sighed. It made the attitude of the inhabitants at Loussenas all the more difficult to understand. But perhaps her imagination was playing tricks again. Maybe those houses had been empty after all, and all the villagers had gone off to market or somewhere, on the one bus a week Mike had mentioned. He would explain when he arrived, she told herself drowsily.
    Even in the shade, the terrace was blissfully hot, and the lounger she was occupying the most comfortable place in the world. Every time she looked at the printed page of her book, the words seemed to dance oddly, and it was much easier to let it drop to the floor beside her, and think of nothing except how warm she felt, how relaxed ...
    Too warm, and too relaxed to be struggling up this rocky path which got steeper and more difficult with every step she took, but at the top was the cave she was searching for, the pinnacle of all her dreams in some mysterious way, so she had to keep going.
    The cave entrance reared up in front of her, as high and wide