DOMINION Bentley Little (accelerated reader books .TXT) 📖

Margaret’s blood pulsing just below her skin, and she wanted to rip that skin open and I let the blood wash over her.

Margaret pulled away, smiling. “Almost time.”

April looked toward the altar, toward where the other women were smearing the fat of the policemen on the body of her son, and her excitement faded. Dion was struggling against the hard hands that held him, grunting with exertion and pain.

She felt queasy and a little sick. Part of her, the deep part that had always guided her actions but of which she had only recently been made aware, longed for the conclusion of the ritual, craved the freedom that the transformation would bring. But another part of her, an equally strong part, the part that had borne and raised and cared for her son, wanted only for Dion to escape.

Dion.

Her son.

She knew now that she had become pregnant, had deliberately tried to get pregnant, so that this could occur. She had had a child specifically to bring about His return, and on some level she had always known that. But she had also loved her son, loved him as a mother, any mother, would. She had wanted him to grow up and go to college, fall in love and marry, be successful. The normal things.

Dion stiffened, froze.

“No!” she cried. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, and she angrily wiped them away.

Wine always made her so sentimental.

The meadow was becoming crowded. People were arriving by the carload, by the van load, running, staggering, crawling across the grass toward the altar. She too heard the voice within her son—His voice—calling out to her, and she understood why everyone was here, but she could not help wishing that she and Dion were alone, that she could help him through this, explain to him what was happening.

She looked over at him, saw the pain in his eyes, looked away.

She took another long drink of wine from the bottle, felt a hand on her buttocks. She turned, saw Margaret.

“It is time,” Margaret said. “He is here.”

44

She saw him change.

It was the most horrifying thing she had ever witnessed, and Penelope wanted to run, wanted to turn and flee, but she was rooted to the spot, unable even to look away, wishing with all her might that it would stop, reverse, knowing that it would not.

And he started to grow.

It began with his penis, his erection expanding immediately to more than twice its natural length, the rest of his body a step behind that accelerated pace, his arms, legs, torso, and head only belatedly catching up to the first conspicuous spurt of growth. The skin didn’t rip as he grew. It should have. She had touched his skin, had felt it, had rubbed it, and it was normal, average, everyday human skin. But now it was stretching impossibly, like rubber, expanding with the elongating bones, the developing muscles.

There was no sound accompanying the change. Dion’s mouth was open in a scream, but his voice was silent and the only noise in the meadow was the chanting of her mothers and the drunken babbling and overloud footfalls of the arriving inebriates.

It was a terrifying thing to see, and Penelope felt the down on her arms bristle as she watched his head flop unnaturally back and forth on his strangely extended neck, watched his metamorphosing hands twitch as spurts of growth shot through them, watched his legs buckle and dance as biologically created rhythms contorted them.

It was frightening, but the most frightening thing of all was the change in his face. It was not his features exactly, though they grew and broadened in such a way that the elements of his appearance, while remaining recognizably his, distorted the original to such an extent that he looked like a different person entirely. No, it was his expression, the way that his screaming mouth straightened into a lustful grin, the way his panicked gaze grew blank, then shifted suddenly into slyness. It was power and a knowledge of that power that settled over him, settled into him. Dion, if he was still extant within that form, was squashed down, and she watched in fear and heart-wrenching agony as he shrunk and shriveled and disappeared, lost within the ever expanding body.

He was now seven feet tall.

Now eight.

Now ten.

There was a ripple in the air, a solid wave of intensified humidity that passed over her and through her, a visibly shimmering undulation that for a second distorted not only the space directly before her, but the ground, the trees, the moon, the stars.

And he spoke: “I AM HERE.”

The words rumbled through the woods, echoed across the hillsides, low and clear and loud enough to be heard even in the center of town. Around her, the gathered people dropped to their knees, weeping and laughing, screaming and praying. Her mothers had taken up spears and were dancing around the altar, around Dion, chanting madly.

Dion?

No, he wasn’t Dion anymore.

With one quick, frighteningly well-coordinated lunge, he leapt from the altar and grabbed Mother Margeaux around the waist. He spun her around, then took her bottle, downed it in a single swallow, and tossed both her and the bottle aside. Mother Janine knelt before him, buttocks up, baring herself in orgiastic ecstasy, and he impaled her with his enormous erection. The look of expectant lust on her face turned to pain as he entered her, and she screamed in agony, trying to get away, but he grabbed a handful of her hair, jerked her head back, and thrust.

Penelope felt sickened.

Things were turning ugly, getting out of control. A dog bounded across the meadow, and three women she did not recognize pounced on it, tearing at its face and fur with their fingernails. To her left, a boy from her math class hit an old lady in the face, then kicked her in the stomach as she slumped to the ground before him.

Everywhere were bottles of wine.

Daneam wine.

Where had they gotten it? she wondered. Where had