Page 28 of Art of the Hunt
Hunter snorted. He still didn’t buy into the fantasy, of course, but it was fun carrying on this conversation as if he did.
“So Zeus—er, Z—was annoyed that we’d stopped believing in him…”
Artemis lifted her bottle, which was nearly empty already. “I should probably mention that this all occurred over a batch of Dionysus’s wine. To be fair, it was probably one of the best batches he’s ever made. And we drank all seventy cases that night.”
“Seventy cases? How many of you were there?”
“Twelve, of course.”
He stared at her and then slowly shook his head. “I can see how your view of what was going on in the world might have gotten a little, uh, distorted.”
“You could say that again. In our drunken brilliance, we decided it would be a good idea to destroy Mount Olympus. The original, I mean. Well, we didn’t actually destroy it. We decided to put a hand-written Closed for Business sign over the front door. We destroyed the ambrosia fields though.”
“Doesn’t that stuff give you immortality?”
She touched two fingers to the pendant hanging from a thin chain around her neck. “Oh no, gods are born immortal.” She pointed at him. “If you drank it, it would give you immortality.”
He quirked his lips. “Too bad you razed the fields. Immortality could come in handy. I could start eating burgers and fries again.”
“And drink beer.” She lifted her bottle in salute before draining it. Then she pulled another fifty out of her pocket and placed it on the table.
He reached for his wallet. “I got this.”
She flapped her hand and blew another raspberry. “I’ve seen your apartment. This one is definitely on me.”
He snatched up her fifty, tossed it at her, and dropped two twenties on the table. “My masculinity can take only so much.”
She chuckled and stood, patted his chest while making a very obviously approving visual perusal of his body. The termundress me with your eyescame to mind.
“Trust me, your masculinity has nothing to worry about. Now, let’s get out of here.”
“Where are we going?” he asked, abandoning his barely touched drink to follow her down the sidewalk lining the river. After that look, he was ready to follow her practically anywhere.
She strutted toward the stairs and hurried up to street level, then stepped into the flow of foot traffic heading across the bridge next to a steady stream of motor vehicles.
“Hey!” He chased after her, reaching out and snagging the back of her dress. “What’s your hurry?”
She turned to face him, and he noticed the look of exasperation on her face before her gaze darted to something over his left shoulder. Her eyes widened, and then she dove for him, grabbing him around the waist and lifting him off his feet like he weighed nothing at all.
Holy shit, was this really happening?
And then she dove over the railing, with him in her arms, and fucking A, thiswashappening!
She released him before they broke the surface of the water, and the chill slapped him in the face. He went under, holding his breath and squeezing his eyes shut, and the second his body stopped propelling downward, he opened his eyes and began swimming toward the light, aka the surface. Where oxygen resided.
He came up, gasping, swiping wetness from his eyes while treading water, whipping his head back and forth, searching for Artemis.
There she was, a few feet away, swimming toward him. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“I was a hell of a lot better before you tossed me into the river.”
She glanced up at the bridge, where a row of pedestrians was hanging over the side, gaping down at them. Behind the gawkers, traffic was stopped, and it looked like a van had driven up onto the curb. Hunter heard a siren wailing in the distance.
“Come on,” she said, “let’s get back up there and see who just tried to run us down.”
“What?”
But she’d already started swimming away from him, toward the nearest wall, and, damn, was she ever a fast swimmer. It took him twice as long to reach the wall, and then he was wheezing like he had about 15 percent lung capacity, and she had to drag him up onto the cement platform, where he rolled over onto his back and gasped for breath.
