DOMINION Bentley Little (accelerated reader books .TXT) 📖

of the fact that her mother was naked, of the fact that the blood on her smelled sweet and fresh and good. “But people have forgotten us. They have forgotten the old gods.”

“No one’s forgotten anything,” Penelope said. “They—”

“They call it mythology.”

Penelope said nothing.

“These are not fairy stories or fantasies. This is not the way primitive people attempted to explain things they did not understand.” Her mother touched a finger to the blood between her breasts, lifted it to her mouth. “This is truth.”

Behind her mother, Dion screamed, a piercing cry somehow metamorphosed into loud, sustained laughter.

“What are you doing to him?” Penelope demanded.

“Restoring Him.” Her mother’s voice was low, worshipful, filled with awe. “Calling Him back.”

Penelope felt cold. “He?”

“Dionysus.”

Again, she was not surprised. She should have been. The idea that her mothers were rubbing blood all over her boyfriend in order to turn him into a Greek god was not: something she could have come up with in a million years. But the events here had taken on a life of their own, and things were flowing together, coalescing, in a way that seemed inevitable, almost natural, and she could only stand by and watch as they unfolded.

“We worshiped Him in the old days,” her mother said. “There were no prophets or ministers then, but we served that function. We praised Him. And He rewarded us.” Again, she touched a finger to the blood, brought it to her mouth. “He gave us wine and sex and violence. He participated in our kills, in our celebrations, and everyone was happy.

“The gods were our contemporaries in those days. It was not like Judaism or Christianity or any of these modern faiths. Our religion wasn’t made up of stories from the distant past. It was a living religion, and we coexisted with our gods. They took an interest in our lives. They came down from Olympus to be with us, to comingle with us.” Her voice faded, and behind her, Penelope heard Dion laughing.

“Then why did your gods disappear?”

“People stopped believing.”

“So?”

Mother Felice smiled gently at Penelope. “Remember when you were little and we took you to San Francisco to see Peter Pan! Remember that part where Tinker Bell was dying and the audience was supposed to shout that they believed in her? You were shouting for all you were worth. You wanted so badly to save her life.”

Penelope nodded. “I remember.”

“Well, gods are like Tinker Bell. They don’t need food for nourishment. They need belief. It’s what feeds them, what gives them power. Without it, they… they fade away.”

It was so strange, Penelope thought. So insane. This rational conversation about the irrational, references to her childhood and popular culture used in an attempt to explain ancient evil.

Ancient evil.

Was that what this was? It was a clichéd phrase, a staple of bad horror novels and worse horror films, conjuring up images of vengeful Indian demons and cursed land. But it applied. The events her mother was talking about had taken place centuries ago. The religion to which her mothers subscribed predated Christianity by a thousand years.

“The gods faded away, but we did not. Our survival, unlike theirs, did not depend on belief. We were flesh and blood. But we were also more than human. He had bestowed upon us a gift of divinity, and we continued our rituals, or celebrations, knowing that He would return to us eventually.

“ ‘The gods will be borne of men,’” she recited. “ ‘As they went so shall they come. To take again their rightful place on mighty Olympus.’”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Mother Felice leaned forward until her face was next to Penelope’s.

“What do you think happened to the old gods, the true gods? Do you think they just died? Do you think they flew off into outer space? No. They were weakened by nonbelief but not killed. And Zeus, in His infinite wisdom, decreed that they should take shelter in the flesh of men.” She smiled, and there was blood on her teeth. Her left breast pressed against Penelope’s arm. “They hid within us. In our genes. In our chromosomes. In our cells. The other gods took refuge in Dionysus. And Dionysus took refuge in us. And we believed and continued to believe and they did not die. Instead, they were passed down from generation to generation, waiting to be born again.”

“But Dion—”

“His mother is a maenad too. She is one of us.”

Penelope shook her head.

Mother Felice grabbed her hand, pulled her toward the altar. Dion was standing now atop the raised rectangle, flanked by Mother Sheila and Mother Janine. He was coated with blood from head to toe, looking like a red statue, only the whites of his eyes and his teeth standing out against the darkness. His erection was huge and quivering and looked bigger than she remembered.

It looked good.

Even coated with blood, it looked good.

Especially coated with blood.

No! She pushed that thought from her mind.

Mother Margeaux passed a flagon to Mother Janine, who poured wine into Dion’s mouth. He spat it out, but she poured it again, and this time he swallowed.

“Dion!” Penelope yelled.

He did not seem to hear her, did not even acknowledge her.

“Ours is the easiest god to resurrect,” Mother Felice explained.

“Dionysus was half man already, the only half-human god, and He will bring back the other gods of Olympus.”

“How come he’s in Dion? I though he was in you.”

“He’s in all of us.”

“At the same time?”

“He’s in you.”

“No.”

“He’s in our genes.” She squeezed Penelope’s hand. “We don’t just call each other ‘sister,’ your other mothers and I. We are sisters. We all had the same father, although our mothers were different. That is the way it has always been. For generations it was believed that He could only be reborn if the son of a maenad mated with a human woman. It was thought He was in the sperm.

“Until Mother Margeaux. She was the one who discovered that He was in the sperm and the egg. He could not I