"Christopher Pike - The Immortal" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pike Christopher)

THE IMMORTAL

clothes here. Mykonos is always warm this time of year."

"I have many of your father's things in my bags," Silk said to us, annoyed at the hired help questioning
what she'd brought.

"Do our rooms have ocean views?" Helen asked Mr. Politopulos.

"One of the rooms does," he replied.

Helen flashed a glance my way and we shrugged in unison. We both knew which room would be ours,
and that was fine. Helen's parents had paid for her plane ticket, but my father was shouldering the hotel
bills. Helen's trip was a present from my father to me.

We boarded Mr. Politopulos's van and headed for the hotel. Mykonos was not big, only ten miles
across, and soon we were bouncing our way along the outskirts of Hora--the main city on the island.
Mr. Politopulos explained the colorful history of Hora. Egyptians, Phoenicians, Cretans, and Ionians had
all lived on the island in the b.c.s. Turks and an endless train of pirates had run the place later--the
population would explode, then become almost extinct depending on which way the winds of war were
blowing. It wasn't until the 1950s that tourism took hold and island life began to resemble what it was
today. At that Mr. Politopulos laughed, saying that Mykonos was basically a big party island. He had
been born on Mykonos and had lived his whole life there.

We never entered Hora, however, but turned south away from the city for the remainder of the ride to
our
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CHRISTOPHER PIKE

hotel. It was only then I got my first good look at the sea, and I was in love. The water was a jewel blue
the California coast would never know, the sand clean and uncluttered, lazily draped with brown bodies
of enviable shape and elusive covering. Already I could see several pairs of male buns and knew I would
have a crick in my neck long before the vacation was over.

Helen pointed to an island out at sea, perhaps five miles away. "That's Delos," she said. "The most sacred
island in the Aegean Sea."

"Why is it so sacred?" I asked.

"Because Apollo and his sister Artemis were born there," she said.

The sun flashed in my eyes as I stared at the island. I had to close them briefly, and once more I had that
same sense of coming home that I had had on the plane. I felt I had been to this place before.

"I want to go there soon," I whispered.

"We'll go there tomorrow," Helen said, watching me.

Our hotel was simple, with whitewashed walls built to withstand the heat and sun. It was well situated
beside a beach, but close enough to town so that we could walk in at night for the party life. Mr.