DOMINION Bentley Little (accelerated reader books .TXT) 📖

a rare occurrence, and that made her feel even better.

Throughout everything, she had tried to forget the fact that she was a maenad, had tried to deny and suppress that aspect of herself.

But, she realized now, that was exactly what might save them.

It was the maenads who, each fall, tore Dionysus apart in a frenzy of blood lust.

She stared out at the blue sky.

She knew what she had to do.

Kevin awoke an hour or so later.

Penelope turned away from the window, watched him climb out of bed. “You know,” she said, “I never used to like you.”

Kevin recoiled, mock offended. “Moi?”

She smiled. “You seemed so… I don’t know. So tough.”

“Tough?” Kevin laughed. The sound was loud, natural, and seemed depressingly out of place in these circumstances. “What, you thought I was some type of gangbanger?”

“Not exactly that. You just seemed… I don’t know.”

“You think I’m tough now?”

She shook her head, grinned. “You’re a pussy.”

He laughed again, pulled on his shirt. “So it’s back down to the two of us. What now?”

“We have to kill him.”

He stared at her. “I thought you said he was still Dion, that we can’t kill him, you wouldn’t let us.”

“It’s the only way.” She took a deep breath. “Dion’s not coming back.”

“But—”

“I think he’d want us to do this.”

Kevin thought for a moment. “How could we do it? How could we even get close to him?”

“I think,” she said slowly, “that I need to get drunk.”

“No!”

“Maybe not drunk,” she conceded. “But I think I need to have some wine. It’s the only way I can tap into… whatever it is.”

“You’ll be—”

“Just like them?” She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I won’t drink so much that I’ll be out of control. I’ll just drink enough to alter my perceptions a little.”

“But what will that do?”

“It’ll help me be what I’m supposed to be.”

“A maenad?”

“A maenad.”

“And what then?”

“I’ll tear him apart.”

The silence hung between them. Kevin cleared his throat, started to speak, then lapsed into silence.

“I didn’t ask to be born this way,” Penelope said softly. “But it’s what I am. I can fight it, I can ignore it. Or I can use it to our advantage.” She walked over to the bed, sat down next to him. “I’ve been thinking long and hard about this, and it’s the only way. It’s our only chance. It’s what’s supposed to happen anyway. I’m just… speeding things up.”

He managed a small smile. “You’ve been thinking ‘long and hard,’ huh? I bet you liked that.”

She punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s scrounge up some breakfast. We’re going to the our energy.”

They’d found an unopened bottle of wine in the back of one of the kitchen cupboards. The renter of the apartment was obviously no drinker, but someone had apparently given him or her a bottle of wine as a housewarming present, and the bottle, still wrapped with a red ribbon, was waiting for them behind a sack of flour.

Penelope pulled it out, read the label. “Gallo,” she said smiling. “Not Daneam, but I suppose it’ll do.”

She had not partaken yet, not trusting herself, wanting to wait until the last minute, until she was ready to use it and it was on the car seat between them as Kevin drove.

Wine.

She kept glancing at the bottle, feeling anxious, expectant, wanting to open it and drink it all in one swallow. That worried her.

She hoped she was doing the right thing.

Their clothes were filthy and smelly from the past several days, but clothes at all were unusual here, and she’d made Kevin take off his shirt, had used the scissors turn his jeans into cutoffs. She’d felt him through pants as she’d cut, her fingers instinctively curling around the outline of his erection, and there was a moment when she considered taking it out and putting it in her mouth, a moment when he had obviously wanted her to do just that. But then she had finished with the pant leg and stood up.

She’d ripped her own clothes to make them even more raggedy than they already were, but she still wasn’t satisfied that she looked the part. She considered saying something light and humorous, turning it into a joke, but instead turned to Kevin and said simply, “When we get there, I’m going to take my top off.”

He obviously thought about saying something joking in reply, but he merely nodded, saying nothing.

The street in front of the field was blocked with wreckage and debris, garbage and rotting animal corpses, and they parked close to the Avis office where she’d ended up last time. Penelope got out of the car, took a deep breath, then pulled off her shirt. The sun was warm on her skin, but she felt cold and more naked, more exposed than she ever had in her life. She looked down at her breasts, saw that the nipples were erect, and she wanted Kevin to look, wanted him to see her, but he kept his eyes purposely averted, trying not to glance at her at all, looking only at her face when he could not avoid it.

She took the bottle of wine out of the car.

They walked.

The air felt good on her body, the bottle felt good in her hand, and she realized that she was enjoying this. She was having fun. For the first time since Dion had… changed, she felt happy.

God, she hoped she wasn’t going to screw this up.

They reached the edge of the field. It was, if possible, even more crowded than before. In addition to the celebrants, there were satyrs and nymphs, centaurs and griffins, and though such a scene might have looked delightfully pastoral in a painting or a Beethoven-scored segment of Fantasia, the reality was something else. The creatures before them were not only base and dirty, they were threatening, frightening, scary not only for the wildness of their demeanor and the anger of their expressions but for the unnaturalness of their existence.

A centaur stomped