DOMINION Bentley Little (accelerated reader books .TXT) 📖

And there were thousands of them.

As before, the sheer scope of the situation intimidated her. Not only had the bacchantes ransacked the fair, they had adapted its forms to their uses. A group of drunken clowns staggered by, supporting a nude and tattooed teenager between them. A woman dressed in gypsy garb was passing out baby balloons—dead bodies of infants that had been filled with helium and somehow sealed and circled with string. A couple walked by, each clutching a string, twin distended babies floating above their heads like bloated puffer fish. A plyboard wall that she remembered seeing at the fair painted with the bodies of Merlin and various magicians, with holes cut above the figures’ shoulders so that tourists could stick their heads through and have their photos taken, had been inverted and repainted with the forms of classical monsters. Though the holes in the wall protruded erect penises. Girls and women were taking turns kneeling in front of the figures or backing up against them.

At the east end of the field, a crew of inebriated laborers were beginning to erect a mock Greek edifice from bricks and blocks that apparently had been taken from demolished buildings downtown.

It was as if they had started to build a society around their drunkenness, as though this was now their normal state of being and they were adjusting to it.

But where was Dion… Dionysus? She scanned the crowd more carefully.

To her right she saw Mrs. Pulkinghorn, the librarian, squatting over the face of Mrs. Jessup, the school nurse, who was lying prone on the ground and being assaulted by a bald old man. The guy who worked at the liquor store by the school was sitting on a folding chair, furiously playing with himself.

There were men with women, men with men, women with women, but no Dionysus.

And everywhere were grapes. The vines had obviously been planted only within the last few days, but they dotted the field, separated it into sectors. The amazing thing was that bunches of the fruit were already hanging from between the oversize leaves. She followed a line of grape vines that crossed the field diagonally.

Then she saw her mothers.

They were near the river at the west end of the field. Mother Margeaux, Mother Felice, and Mother Margaret were crouched down in a circle by the edge of the bank, doing something she couldn’t make out from this far away. Mother Sheila was bent over the battered, unmoving body of a boy, licking the blood from his chest, while Mother Janine crouched behind her, her face buried deep between the cheeks of Mother Sheila’s buttocks.

Penelope looked away, disgusted and frightened. These weren’t the mothers she knew. These people were totally alien to her, weren’t they?

She started walking through the field, taking the path of least resistance, skirting the most crowded areas. She didn’t know why she’d been left alone after being kidnapped in such dramatic fashion, but she knew enough to take advantage of it, and she hurried toward the road.

They’d taken her, no doubt, in order to force her to mate with Dionysus, but they’d either thought she’d stay asleep longer or else they’d been so drunk that they’d forgotten about her, and if she was lucky she’d be able to escape before they even noticed that she’d gone.

She was halfway across the field when she saw it.

The satyr.

She stopped dead in her tracks. “Jesus,” she breathed.

The man—the creature—was seven or eight feet tall, with the legs of a goat, the ears of Mr. Spock, and a huge red erection! He galloped toward her across the field, grinning, and there was something so alien in his gait, something so unearthly in his appearance, that Penelope felt an involuntary shiver of fear pass through her. She was hit suddenly by a bolt of objectivity, a perspective that allowed her to see this not as it appeared to her, not as a participant, but as an outsider, all of the myriad adjustments her mind had made to the horrors stripped away, and the sight terrified her so that she was unable to run, unable to move, and she remained rooted to the spot as the monster reared to a stop in front of her.

“He wants you!” the satyr said, leering. Its voice was high and manic, and though she was aware that the sounds it was making were not English, were possibly not even human speech, she had no trouble understanding it.

She tried to determine if there were some way that she could run, get away from it—

“Either you follow me on your own, or I force you to come with me.” The creature grinned, and this close she could see that its teeth were pointed. “If I have to force you, you’ll get to ride on my cock.” Its red erection bounced up and down.

“I’ll come,” she said.

“I know you will!” The satyr laughed, galloping off, and Penelope ran to keep up with it.

They passed between groups of men and women performing a variety of violent and sexually deviant acts, past huge cases of wine bottles and caskets of wine. She was out of breath long before they reached the far end of the field, but she refused to allow that horrible… thing to touch her, and she forced herself to keep going.

She followed the satyr out of the field and into the trees.

To where Dionysus sat on his throne.

She stopped running, though her heart rate accelerated. Several trees had been felled, carved, and made into the elaborately carved woodland chair that the god used as his throne. Over a portion of the trampled ground before Dionysus was a royal red carpet made from human flesh. The surrounding trees were decorated with mounted sexual organs.

The satyr bowed to its god, then galloped away, laughing maniacally.

Dionysus stood, and Penelope felt a stirring within her. Even though she was not drunk, she wanted him. Against her will she wanted him. He stood before her, proudly, gloriously nude. His skin