Alien Vengeance Read Online Free Page A

mild, incurious gaze as she walked past. Further on, goats were tethered, and bee skeps droned sleepily on a wide ledge.
    The village road was now a track, its stones cutting uncomfortably through the thin soles of her sandals. It was little wonder so many Cretans wore boots, she thought ironically.
    She put down her case and looked about her, flexing her tired hand. All she could see were village houses, many of them single-roomed by the look of them, and hardly likely to qualify as villas. The doorways were dark, and the window shutters closed, like so many blank eyes staring at her, she thought with a little shiver.
    And there was no one about. The place was deserted. There was a tiny kafeneion, but there were no men sitting at its tables in the shade, drinking coffee, and arguing about politics. Each house had its own verandah, but there were no women gathered in groups to chatter and weave the rugs and linens for which Cretans were famous.
    Many of the villages they’d passed through had stalls beside the road, displaying their weaving and embroidery, but presumably Loussenas attracted too few tourists to bother.
    The Villa Ione couldn’t be far away in any direction, but Gemma wished there could be just one friendly face to ask, if only to dispel this growing sense of uneasy isolation which was pressing down on her.
    The Cretans were among the most hospitable people on earth. Love for the stranger in their midst was bred into them. She remembered Takis warning them all that if they were offered food and drink anywhere, they should accept, even if they suspected it was all the host possessed. To refuse, he said, was hurtful, and damaging to Cretan pride.
    The villagers of Loussenas, Gemma thought wryly, must be the exceptions to that rule. There were people in the houses, she was sure. She could sense movement in the shadowy interiors, but it was clear no one intended to welcome her, or offer as much as a drink of water, even though the well was there, at the end of the street, and a stone’s throw from the bright blue door of the little church.
    There was nothing for it, but to go on.
    Again, she had the feeling that she was being watched. She groaned inwardly. Why had she had to come all the way to Crete simply to discover she was paranoid?
    Beyond the church was the priest’s house, and beyond that again the ground rose, and through a clump of straggling trees, she saw a high white wall.
    Standing in its own grounds, she thought, this desirable residence must be the Villa lone.
    There was a narrow gate in the wall, and a copper bell hanging beside it. The sound was sweet and pure as she rang it, and it echoed endlessly into the stillness, but at last there was nothing left but silence.
    Gemma sighed. ‘ “ ‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller”,’ she muttered, and tried the gate. It opened with a faint squeak to the first pressure of her hand, and she stepped inside.
    The garden was quite small, but it was well-tended and bright with flowers. The house itself was a good size, the living quarters built over what Gemma assumed had once been a byre and would now be a garage, with a flight of steep steps leading up the side of the building to the terraced entrance. The steps were worn, but in good order, and the whole house looked as if it had just been freshly painted white. Gemma, looking up, saw solar heating panels in the roof. Loussenas might be a backwater, but one of its residents knew about modern technology, it seemed.
    There were some Greek letters carved into the stonework at the bottom of the steps, and she peered at them, wishing she’d taken the trouble to learn the alphabet before she came. They looked as if they might spell ‘Ione’ she decided, and started up the steps.
    The little terrace was tiled in a warm terracotta shade, and tubs and urns of geraniums and cyclamen had been arranged round its edge. Splashes on the tiles indicated that someone had been busy with a watering can