DOMINION Bentley Little (accelerated reader books .TXT) 📖

they were locked, but he didn’t have time, and he kept running, following the hallway as it turned and turned again.

Ahead, the corridor ended at a door. He prayed that it was not locked, that it led outside, but then he saw that he didn’t have to pray. There was a window in the metal, and through the window he saw the deep purplish orange of twilight.

He’d made it.

He reached the door, turned the handle, and it opened.

He stopped and looked behind him, pointing his revolver. He had no qualms about shooting the women. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he did not have enough bullets for all of them.

But there weren’t that many. He saw only three women running after him.

Hadn’t there been more?

Yes.

They grabbed him from behind. They’d split up, some chasing after him, the others sneaking around the outside of the building to trap him, and he’d been so fucking stupid that he hadn’t thought ahead, he’d walked right into it.

He deserved to be caught, he thought.

But as the first fingernails sliced into his flesh, as the broken wine bottle cut open his throat, he thought: no, he didn’t.

39

They stood next to the fence, looking into the woods.

The woods.

Even the word seemed ominous, and Dion suddenly wished that they had not come out here alone, that they had brought Kevin and Vella with them.

Or, better still, that they had waited until morning.

For it was night now. The sun had set quickly, brightening an already extant moon, and the woods were dark, the trees silhouettes and shadows, the hills black background. Behind them, on the other side of the high hills walling in the opposite edge of the valley, the world was yellow and orange, a prolonged sunset fading slowly into the Pacific. But here there was only gloom and the pale bluish light of the moon.

He was afraid of the woods, and it had nothing to do with Penelope or her mothers or anything that he had seen or heard or imagined. It was an instinctive reaction to the sight before him, a physical sensation in response to something within the trees that seemed to be calling to him on some subliminal level.

Something within the trees.

He did think there was something within the trees, although he was not sure where, why, or how he had come up with that idea. And it was calling to him. He was afraid of it, but at the same time he felt attracted to it, pulled toward it.

God, he wished he could have a drink right now.

“Dion?”

He looked toward Penelope. She was pale, and he knew it wasn’t only the light of the moon that made her appear that way. “Yeah?” he said.

He expected her to say something serious and profound, something that would articulate and explain the complex conflicting emotions he was feeling—that they were both feeling—but when she spoke, her words were disappointingly, disconcertingly mundane: “We should have brought flashlights.”

He found himself nodding. “Yeah,” he said. “We should’ve.”

They crawled under the fence without speaking—he holding up the barbed wire so she could sneak beneath it—and he grabbed her hand as they started to walk into the woods. Penelope’s hand was warm to his touch, her palm sweaty, and he liked that. Her fear excited him somehow, and he felt a stirring in his crotch.

He tried not to think about his feelings, tried not to acknowledge them, but they were as frightening to him as the woods around them. He should tell Penelope, talk to her, let her know that something was wrong not just with this place but with him, but he said nothing, held her hand, continued walking.

The world was silent. Car noises, city noises, did not reach here, did not penetrate, and the woods generated no sounds of their own: no crickets, no birds, no animals. There was only their own breathing, the snap-crackle-pop of their tennis shoes on twigs and gravel. There was something familiar about this lack of sound, Dion thought, something he couldn’t quite place.

Penelope’s hand stiffened in his. She stopped walking, and he turned to look at her. The woods were dark, the ceiling of trees effectively blocking out the over bright moon. Here and there, individual shafts of moonlight illuminated small sections of ground, but Penelope was in shadow, her pale face barely visible in the murk. “What?” he asked.

“Maybe we should go back.”

“I thought you wanted to—”

“I’m afraid.”

He pulled her close, put his arms around her. He knew that she could feel his erection, and he pressed forward, pushing it against her.

“There’s nothing out here,” he said. He didn’t believe it and didn’t know why he had said it, but he repeated it again. “There’s nothing here but us.”

“I’m afraid,” she said again.

He wished they’d brought some wine with them. A flagon of that stuff in the vat. A few swallows of that and she wouldn’t be afraid anymore.

Hell, a few swallows of that and she’d be out of her panties and on her fucking hands and knees, begging for it—

He pushed away from her, took a deep breath. “Maybe we should go back,” he said.

“You feel it too.”

He nodded, then realized that she couldn’t see his face. “Yeah,” he admitted.

She reached for him, took his hand again. “Let’s—” she began, then sucked in her breath, squeezed his hand. “Look,” she said.

“What?”

“Over there.” She pulled him to the left, and he saw for the first time what looked like a clearing between the trunks of the trees. A meadow.

He didn’t want to go to that meadow, wanted instead to turn back, return the way they’d come, but he allowed himself to be pulled along, and they passed between the trees, reached the edge of the clearing, and stopped.

“Oh, my God,” Penelope said. She was breathing heavily, in hiccupping spurts. “Oh, my God.”

Dion felt suddenly cold.

The clearing was littered with shattered wine bottles, moonlight sparkling on the tiny pieces of broken glass. Here and there, busted kegs emerged