DOMINION Bentley Little (accelerated reader books .TXT) 📖

that being a god was the pinnacle, the apex, but she did not believe it.

Maybe for her that might be true, but not for Dion.

She wondered if it had something to do with having given birth. She wondered if Felice felt the same way about Penelope. She’d have to ask.

If she ever saw her again.

She had not seen much of the other maenads the past two days. And she wasn’t sure if she wanted to. She’d felt closer to them before the Resurrection, when they’d been just friends who drank together in bars.

She missed that camaraderie, that feeling that she had finally found soul mates, people who understood her, who had the same needs and desires she did.

But now she felt like an outcast. Ostensibly, she was one of them. Born of the same line and all that. But she felt different from them, apart, and she knew that it was because of what they’d done with Dion.

She wished she’d never been Called. She wished they’d never left Arizona.

She had caught Dionysus sleeping yesterday, lying on the grassy ground between the trees, a huddled group of women acting as his pillow, and she had stood there for a while, watching him. In sleep he looked more like Dion. The changes were still there—the size of him, most obviously—but sleep softened his expression, blunted his intensity. His face was by no means innocent, but his features were relaxed, and she could see in the dozing god her son.

She’d left before he’d awakened.

They’d been avoiding each other ever since the Resurrection. She didn’t think Dionysus observed any taboos regarding incest, but the part of him that was Dion most certainly did and was no doubt responsible for maintaining the distance between them. She, for her part, had been purposely staying away from him, although the reasons were complex. As a mother, she was disgusted and repulsed by the thought of having sex with him. But as a maenad, she… She wanted him.

She closed her eyes, feeling in the back of her skull the dull throb of an oncoming headache.

“Are you going with us?”

She opened her eyes, turned her head, saw Margaret and Sheila walking up to her on the left. Both were bruised and bloody. Bath were grinning.

“You want to be in on the raid?” Margaret asked.

April shook her head.

“You haven’t even fucked him yet, have you?” Sheila said.

“I’m not going to.”

“You’re one of us!” Margaret said. “Act like it!”

“I’m his mother!”

Sheila giggled. “Not anymore.”

“Fuck off,” April said. “Both of you.”

“You’re not what we’d hoped,” Margaret said.

“Nothing ever is.”

The two sisters turned away without speaking, walking back through the meadow the way they’d come. April saw a slice of red on Sheila’s right buttock where the skin had been peeled off.

A part of her wanted to join them tonight.

A part of her wanted to kill them.

The man next to her moaned groggily, stirred.

She lay there for a moment, then picked up the bottle, smashed it again against the man’s head. He sank back into unconsciousness.

She climbed back on top of him.

11

Night.

The four of them lay in silent darkness within the back bedroom of the house. The night outside was filled with cacophonous noise: the full-volume blast of private stereos defiantly playing their owners’ favorite music, the wailing of high school band instruments, the electrified amplification of amateur and semiprofessional guitarists, the racing of engines, the shouting of celebrants, the screams of victims.

Penelope imagined pockets of people like themselves, throughout the valley, waiting for the raiding parties that would rape them and kill them and tear their bodies apart. At least the four of them knew what was happening; at least they knew what they were up against. She could not imagine what other people might think.

Jack cleared his throat. “The only good thing about all this,” he said, “is that these bacchanals are very public. It’s not as if they’re sneaking around and we have to worry about where they are and whether they’re going to creep up on us.”

There was a rustling of the sheets on Kevin’s mattress on the floor.

“But it can’t last much longer, can it? I mean, people from outside will find out. They’ll send in troops or something and it’ll all be over.”

Holbrook snorted. “All be over? What are they going to do? Bomb Napa? Shoot Dionysus down like Godzilla? We’re the minority here. Most of the people are with him. Do you know how long people like that can hold out? Look at Bosnia. The siege of Leningrad. Hell, history is riddled with stories of small groups of true believers who were able to outlast the attacks of the majority.”

“What if my mothers find out we’re here?” Penelope asked. “What if they discover where we’re hiding? Where I’m hiding?”

There was a note of grim satisfaction in Holbrook’s voice. “I’ll blow those bitches away.”

“Why wait for them to come here?” Kevin asked. “Why don’t you go out and hunt them down?”

“I’ve been thinking that’s exactly what we should do,” Holbrook said.

They were silent after that, and Penelope heard first Kevin’s, then Jack’s, and finally Holbrook’s breathing shift into the regular rhythms of sleep.

It was a long time before she herself drifted off.

She woke up thirsty. It was still dark out, still night, and the others were dead asleep around her. Her mouth was dry, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and she desperately needed a drink of water.

Carefully, quietly, she drew the covers off her and slipped out of bed, tiptoeing around Holbrook’s sleeping bag and Kevin’s mattress on the floor, using the wall to feel her way out of the room and into the hall.

Still touching the wall, she reached the doorway of the bathroom. She was about to walk in, shut the door, and turn on the light in order to get a drink out of the sink when she heard noises from the front of the house.

Pounding.

And laughing.

People were at the door, trying to get in.

She stopped moving,