DOMINION Bentley Little (accelerated reader books .TXT) 📖

be brought back by the son of a maenad mating with a normal woman. He could be reborn only through a maenad born of that son mating with a normal man.”

Penelope was lost. Too much was happening too fast, and her mother’s crazy explanation sounded suspiciously like a convoluted math problem.

What was she saying? That she and Dion were related?

Incest. No. They couldn’t be. She could handle anything but that.

Monsters and old gods. Blood sacrifices and intergenerational breeding plans. All of it was acceptable.

But she could not be related to Dion.

“How old do you think I am?” Mother Felice asked.

Penelope shook her head.

“I was born in 1920.” She smiled. “We all were. Daughters of Harris, son of Elsmere.”

“But you can’t all be my mother.”

“No,” Mother Felice admitted. “I’m your real mother. I carried you. I gave birth to you.”

“I knew it—”

“But you have the genes of all of us. You’re a maenad too. You might look human, you might act human, but you’re not.”

“I am!”

Mother Felice smiled slyly. “You like blood, don’t you? You like the smell of it, the way it makes you feel. You like wine. When we gave you that taste, you wanted more…”

It was true and she knew it was true, but she shook her head anyway.

They had reached the altar, and the smell of the blood and the wine was intoxicating. At her feet, in front of the eviscerated bodies of the policemen, she saw the bones.

Mother Sheila saw the direction of her gaze. She laughed drunkenly. “Old parties,” she said. “Old celebrations.”

The fear was returning. “Who were they?”

Mother Felice shrugged. “Strangers. Drifters, mostly. There used to be a lot more coming through than there are today. Lonely, dirty, hungry young men looking for work or a handout or both. We tried not to celebrate with locals.”

“But it wasn’t always under our control,” Mother Janine chimed in. She smiled. “When the spirit gets a hold of you…”

“They’re not all people,” Mother Felice said. “There weren’t always people in the celebrations. Sometimes there were dogs or cats. Or wild animals.”

“Wild animals are the best,” Mother Janine said. “They put up a good fight.”

Penelope shrugged off Mother Felice’s hand. She wanted to punch her right now, punch her hard in the gut and shove her to the ground. Even though she was her favorite mother, Penelope hated her at this moment.

She hated all of them. But fighting would not work. That was not the way to go. She might have the element of surprise on her side, might actually be able to knock her mother down, but she was still no match for Mother Janine. And all of her other mothers would be on her in a second.

No, she had to play this cool, try to find some other way out of this.

She caught Dion’s eye. She saw fear there, and horror, but also… what? Complicity? That made no sense. Dion wasn’t the reincarnation of a god. She didn’t believe her mothers’ story—

But she did.

Yes, she realized, she did. She believed it. She bought it all.

And the fresh blood on Dion’s erection did look pretty damn enticing.

She turned forcefully away, was grabbed by Mother Sheila. “We need you.”

“You’re one of us,” Mother Felice said. “We want you to join us.”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Run!” Dion yelled.

Mother Janine looked up from Dion’s feet. “We want you to fuck him.”

Penelope’s refusal died in her throat. What? What was this? What were they asking? She glanced from one mother to another, saw no sign that any of them thought this even the slightest bit unusual, saw only support and encouragement.

“We can bring Him back,” Mother Felice said. “But only you can bring back the others. He must mate with you.”

“Your union will bring forth gods,” Mother Margeaux announced.

“Fuck him!” Mother Sheila ordered.

Penelope started crying, unable to stop herself. “No.”

Mother Janine grinned. “Look how big his cock is. Don’t you want to feel it inside you?”

She did, and they knew she did, and that was the worst part of it all.

She was what they were, and they knew it.

Maenads.

“No!” she shouted.

“No!” Dion echoed. But when she looked at him, she saw a lust in his face that mirrored her own.

She turned toward her real mother, Mother Felice. “You can’t force me to do what you want.”

“No, it’s your decision,” Mother Felice admitted, and there was a softness in her voice, an understanding that wasn’t there in the words or tones of the rest of her mothers. “You don’t have to go through with it if you don’t want to. There are others waiting for the return of Zeus and Artemis and Aphrodite and the others, but we don’t care if they come back or not. We have our god. So it’s up to you. Whatever you want to do, we’ll stand by you.”

Penelope looked over at Mother Margeaux for confirmation. Mother Margeaux nodded.

“You’ll want to when you see Him,” Mother Margaret promised.

“We’ll all want to,” Mother Sheila said, and the others laughed.

There was an edge to the laughter that Penelope did not like, that frightened her. She was one of them, yet she was not one of them, and she did not know what was going to happen, how things were going to turn out.

She did not know what she was going to do, and that’s what frightened her most of all. Intellectually, she still thought that the best thing was to run and get help, go to the police. Her mothers would let her go.

They would not kill her, would probably not even try to stop her.

But she could not do it. She could not renounce her family, no matter what they had done. And she could not leave Dion here with them alone. Besides, chances were that even if she did try to get help, she wouldn’t be back in time to save him. She wouldn’t be back before he changed.

Before he changed.

It was going to happen. She didn’t just believe it, she knew it.

They were chanting now,