DOMINION Bentley Little (accelerated reader books .TXT) 📖

on one of the griffins, and with an ear-piercing screech the eagle-headed creature rose into the air and attacked, dive-bombing the centaur, lion’s claws tearing into its horse back.

A green-tinted nymph, watching the scene, smiled wickedly, started rubbing herself.

Penelope grabbed Kevin’s hand, pulled him forward. “Here goes.”

As she’d expected, as she’d hoped, they were not molested. No one hindered their progress, no one got in their way. No one seemed to notice that they were here at all. Dionysus knew, she was sure, but he sent no one after them, made no effort to stop them.

They could have done this days ago, she thought. There was no way the celebrants would have known that they weren’t of them.

They were stupid to have run, stupid to have hidden. Dionysus and the maenads were dangerous, but the rest of them were sheep, mindless zombies, existing only for hedonistic pleasures. She and Kevin and Jack and Holbrook had ascribed far too much sense of purpose to Dionysus’ followers. They had given the bacchantes more credit than they deserved.

Ahead, a homemade sign by the side of the river, written in bright fluorescent colors, read STYX. On the far side of the waterway, the land was barren, blackened. The dead shambled mindlessly amidst the burned trees and charred rubble.

Mother Janine and Mother Margaret, naked and screaming, rushed by, pine cone-tipped spears held aloft and dripping blood. Penelope considered calling out to them but decided against it. She did not want to deal with them.

Where was Dion?

That was the big question. She looked across the field to the trees where his throne had been. Was he there? Somehow she didn’t think so, but that was as good a place to start as any.

She had started to lead Kevin across the open land when Mother Janine jumped in front of her. Her mother was visibly lactating, twin dribbles of runny milk marking her sunburned skin from nipple to navel. “Are you here to join us?”

Penelope tried to make her voice as slurred as possible. “Where is he?”

“You want him?”

She nodded.

Her mother pointed northeast, toward the mountains. “He is on the new Olympus, readying the house of the gods.” Her voice dropped lower, and she grinned slyly. “He’s waiting for you.”

Penelope felt cold.

“You’ve never had a man until you’ve had a god.” She snickered darkly.

“I bled afterward. I’m still bleeding inside.”

Penelope backed away.

Mother Margaret had come up behind her. “He got tired of waiting for you, you know.” Penelope smelled the wine on her mother’s hot breath.

“He’s going to have us repopulate Olympus.”

They were surrounding her. Did they know? Could they tell she was faking it?

“Where’s Mother Felice?” she demanded.

Mother Janine laughed drunkenly. She turned away without answering, hoisting her spear and running after a teenage boy who was dashing across the meadow.

Penelope turned around. “Where is she?”

Mother Margaret grinned. “Ask her.” She pointed toward Dion’s mom, who was standing silently next to her.

She looked from her mother to Dion’s, a growing anxiousness within her.

“Where’s my mother?”

April’s voice was low. “She’s dead.”

“What?”

The shock must have shown on her face. Dion’s mother nodded, and there was real sympathy in her expression. “He used her up. He finished her off. He was done with her.”

Penelope stumbled back, feeling as though she’d just had a heart attack and been punched in the stomach at the same time. Her legs were wobbly.

It seemed nearly impossible to breathe. Kevin took her arm, held her up.

“Where?” she managed to get out.

April was already walking, gesturing for them to follow. Both of her mothers had fled, and Penelope walked through the crowd, across the field, after Dion’s mom, using Kevin as a crutch. She felt empty inside, hollowed out, and everything around her seemed to be happening slowly, as if on a delay, a few seconds behind what should have been.

Her mother was dead.

It was still a fact to her, had not yet been translated into an emotion, and she followed Dion’s mom past a daisy chain of men and nymphs, past a crowd of feasting satyrs, into the trees.

Her mother was lying on the grass in front of the god’s throne.

Penelope knelt down next to her mother. She could not see for the wash of tears, but she took her mother’s dead hand in hers, stroking the cold, soft skin. “We never got to say good-bye,” she said, and the act of speaking started the sobs. “We never…” But she could not finish the sentence.

Kevin watched Penelope crying over the body of her mother and started crying himself. What had happened to his own parents? Were they dead too? He had not had a chance to say good-bye either. Their last contact had been at the house, when they’d come after him and he’d run away.

Was that the last time he’d ever see them?

More than anything else, it was the sight of Penelope clutching her mother’s hand, sobbing, tears and snot flowing unchecked down her face, that brought home to him the personal tragedy of what had happened here.

They’d been so busy running and hiding, planning fights and escapes, that the dead bodies they’d seen had just been horror show props, disgusting background, objects in their way. As frightening as those corpses were, though, they were all relatives of someone: mothers, fathers, children, uncles, cousins. Each body was a loss.

He had not seen it that way before.

He stood above Penelope, wiping his eyes. It was awkward to watch her, uncomfortable to witness such unadulterated grief, but he could not look away. She cried and he cried, and it was a while before he realized that Dion’s mom was crying too.

Dion’s mom.

One of them.

He turned on her. “What are you doing here, huh? Why are you hanging around?”

“I’m here to help you,” she said.

Kevin looked at her coldly. “We’re here to kill your son.”

She hesitated only a second. “I’m here to help you. I’ll take you to him.”

Penelope didn’t know how long she knelt over her mother’s body—too long, she was sure—but she