Dominion

"So who do you want to play you in the movie?" Jacfclf asked, leaning against the sink.

Penelope nearly choked. "What?"

The policeman grinned. "After this is all over and done' with, you know they're going to make a movie out of it. This is a great story. If we play our cards right, we can! cash in on it."

Penelope laughed. "Go on Donahue and Oprah and5 Geraldot "Hell, no. Let Fox make a quickie TV movie out of our| adventures. It's a lot more interesting than Waco or O. J."\

"TV movies never get top stars," Kevin said. "They'll ' just get some sitcom actors play you two, have the young j stud of the moment play me."

Penelope snorted. "Right."

"They always get actors who are better-looking thanj the people in real life." He grinned. "Maybe they'll even ij find a semi-attractive girl to play you."

"Ha-ha." Penelope looked around the kitchen. "Where's the king?"

Kevin shook his head. "His playroom. Where else? He's probably building a little model of the Parthenon out of matchsticks."

"No, I'm not. But I'm impressed that you knew the';' word Parthenon.

There's hope for you yet." Holbrook walked into the kitchen, dumping the cold contents of his coffee cup into the sink behind Jack. "As a matter of fact, I've been looking through my papers, trying to discover'

weaknesses of Dionysus, of the maenads. Things we could exploit."

"Find anything?"

"Nothing beyond the obvious. But if I had access to my database--"

"That's exactly what I was thinking," Jack said. "If I'd just made hard copies of all of my files, I would've been able to discover some way of taking this god down."

Kevin glared at them. "Didn't you guys ever think that if the gods returned, they might disrupt the power? They might screw up the phone lines? Hell, all you had to do was plan ahead a little. If you'd bought a generator and a CB radio, you could still be communicating."

He stopped, blinked, "Shit." He turned toward Penelope. "I'm as stupid as they are. All we have to do is hit Kmart, Walmart, Target, whatever, and find a generator or a battery or some type of power source--"

"We're all stupid," Penelope said. "All we need to do is find a car with a cellular phone."

"Fuck!" Kevin slammed his palm against the table.

"I would not advise leaving the house," Holbrook said.

"Why?" Kevin said dryly. "You planning to banish Dionysus from the earth by reading in your basement?"

The teacher faced him. "You don't even know what you're dealing with here, you arrogant little shit."

"I do," Penelope said.

"Your family's the one who caused it all."

Penelope stood, not bothering to respond, not even looking at him.

"Let's get out of here," she said. "Let's find us a car phone."

"I'll go with you," Jack said. "Just in case."

"You're only encouraging them."

"They might be on to something," the policeman said. He hurried out of the room. "I'll be back in a sec!" he called back. "I'm just going to get my gun!"

It felt good to be out again, driving.

There was evidence of new destruction--felled trees and still burning piles of furniture that had not been there when they'd driven the road yesterday--but it still felt re assuring to be outdoors rather than cooped up in H

And then they turned onto Monticello and she saw mall.

Whatever hope had been burgeoning within her died ii stantly. The mall was overrun. Huge holes had bees blown in the brown brick walls of the Nordstrom's partment store. The Sears building was little more than three-walled ruin. Revelers streamed in and out of open doorways in the center of the mall, dancing and vorting. Many of them were naked and covered wit blood. Many of them were carrying severed body parts. lathe parking lot, cars were crashed or overturned, then twisted metal forms gaily decorated with flowers andf multicolored streamers.

She was intimidated by the enormity of it all. Therel were only four of them. There were hundreds of people ml the mall alone. How many were there in the entire valley?! How could they hope to combat something of this magni-I tude?

Blood.

And how could they hope to combat something froffij which they were not immune? She was frightened of this I force that had turned all of these ordinary citizens into! amoral hedonists, and she hated what was happening, but! ... but it called to her. She saw these wild, drunken peo- \ pie, and a part of her wanted to join them, wanted to be \ one of them.

Did it tempt the others as well? She glanced surrepti' tiously at Kevin and Jack, but could not tell what they^ were thinking, what they were feeling.

They sped past the mall. On the other side of the street, the supermarket had been looted, all of the front windows s smashed, food thrown into the parking lot, and even; within the car, the heavy smell of bad wine, spoiled milk,:, and rotting vegetables was strong, nearly overpowering. Ahead, on the right, a fire was burning unchecked at the site of a Shell station, foul black smoke billowing up into the air and blending with the cloud cover.

This might be the end of the world, Penelope thought. Or the end of the world as they knew it. And it had not been brought about by nuclear war or a biological agent or a threat from outer space but by the resurgence of an ancient religion.

And it had been instigated by her mothers.

"We'll cruise over to a rich area," Kevin said. "Doctors, lawyers, those guys always have car phones."

Sure enough, they found an upscale neighborhood and, hidden in the locked garage of a mock Tudor mansion, a Lexus with a car phone. Most of the other cars on the street had been overturned and burned, but this one had escaped the revelers. Jack used the butt of his revolver to smash one of the back windows of the house, and while Kevin and Penelope waited outside, he foraged through the residence until he found car keys.

They hurried back into the garage to try the phone.

The line was jammed.

They moved the car out of the garage onto the driveway, tried again.

Still jammed.

On the next block over, they found another car with a phone. A Mercedes.

Jammed as well.

"Shit!" Kevin slammed the car door. "What the fuck are we supposed to do now?"

"It was a long shot to begin with," Penelope told him.

"So let's find a CB," Jack said.

Kevin nodded, although clearly whatever hopes he'd harbored of finding a way to communicate with the outside world were dashed. "All right," he said. "Let's go."

They traded their car in for the Mercedes, which had a double gas tank, both of which were full. A gang of small children threw rocks and bottles at the car as they drove up and down streets looking for a semi or a pickup that might have a CB radio. At one point a group of naked, obviously menstruating women, wielding homemade spears constructed of broom handles and trowels, cha them for nearly two blocks before the car finally out them.

After a several false starts they finally found a roofri company truck with keys still in the ignition that hadl CB.

They turned on the power, turned on the radio.

Every channel was filled with the sound of drunke babbling.

"Hello!" Penelope tried. "Is anybody out there?"

"Is anybody out there?" came the mocking reply.

They sat there for a half hour, taking turns, trying eac| channel, hoping against hope that someone some^j where--a trucker out of the valley and on the road haps--would hear them and answer, but the only responses they received were the jeering and increasingly obscene replies of the bacchantes.

Finally Kevin hung up the microphone and turned off! the CB, discouraged. "It's getting late," he said tiredly^f "Let's hit the road.

We don't want to be caught out her after dark."

"You're right about that," Jack said.

Penelope nodded, starting toward the Mercedes.

How long would tonight last? she wondered. Tell hours? Twenty?

They drove back to Holbrook's in silence.

April smashed the empty wine bottle against the forehead of the man she was riding, and reached her orgasm as she knocked him into unconsciousness. His fluttering eyes closed, blood gushed from the broken skin, but his organ stayed hard, and she pressed herself all the way down on it until the last shudder of ecstasy passed through her body.

She rolled off him, onto the blood-soaked grass.

The others were going to strike tonight.

She knew of their plans, though they had not told her of them, and while she wanted to be involved, wanted to share in the fun, she did not entirely approve. It was her upbringing, she supposed. She was a maenad, she was one of them, but she had been raised apart, in a considerably stricter environment, and while her true nature had eventually won out, there was still a part of her that sat back and judged, that hated what she had become.

Maybe there was more of her mother in her than her father.

Whoever her mother had been.

Or maybe there really was something to be said for environment in that old environment versus genetics debate.

Of course, everything would have been fine if it had involved only her, if she had been on her own. She would have been having the time of her life, and she'd be jumping into all this with both feet, not looking back, not having any regrets.

But there was Dion.

He'd wanted better.

He deserved better.

She tried to tell herself that there was nothing better, that being a god was the pinnacle, the apex, but she not believe it.

Maybe for her that might be true, but nc 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.

Night.

The four of them lay in silent darkness within the back bedroom of the house. The night outside was filled with cacaphonous 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, held her breath. There was no sound from the bedroom, the others were still asleep. She knew she should go back, wake them up, but she thought of Holbrook shooting first, asking questions later, and she decided to take a peek herself first, just in case. Maybe these were people like them, victims.

Then why were they laughing?

Her eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness, and she walked slowly out toward the living room. She knew she was being stupid. This was what she complained about idiot characters doing in horror movies--going off to search for the monster by themselves--and though logically she knew that it was a foolish thing to do, it seeme normal, felt natural.

The laughter was calling to her, she realized, beckoning her. She should be worried about that, but she wasn't. She was scared, she was frightened, but she wasn't worried, j She walked into the living room.

The laughing was! louder here. She could hear the door being pounded uponf by several sets of hands, and the noise chilled her. The! living room was dark, and she could see only the vague? outlines of furniture.

Unthinkingly, almost against her!

conscious will, she walked across the carpeted floor toll the door.

Why weren't the others waking up?

She thought of screaming to get their attention, but she j didn't. She thought of picking up the shotgun next to the! door, but she didn't.

She reached for the first dead bolt.

The laughter was constant, at once feminine and masculine, innocent and knowing, and it remained the same as it traveled from one voice to another. It was like a melody almost, the pounding on the doof like a rhythm.

She opened the door.

She did not even have time to react.

Mother Sheila punched her hard in the stomach as Mother Janine grabbed her by the hair and shoved a hand over her mouth. She was yanked through the doorway and pulled down the front walk to where Mother Margaret waited in front of a brightly painted xvan.

As she was shoved headfirst into the rear of the vehicle, she heard the door to the house slam loudly shut behind her.

Penelope was gone.

Kevin paced the living room as Jack sat silently on the couch. Holbrook remained cross-legged on the floor, cleaning his shotgun.

Where could they have' taken her?

She had been kidnapped. No doubt about that. Holbrook had started to suggest that she had gone with them on her own, that the acorn doesn'f fall far from the tree, but Kevin had threatened to punch him out if he said anything more, and Holbrook had shut up.

It felt weird threatening a teacher, but any ties Holbrook had to respect and educational authority had long since been worn through, and Kevin felt neither guilty nor regretful.

Jack had stayed out of the confrontation entirely.

They were assuming that Penelope's mothers had taken her, or, if they had not done so themselves, that they were behind the people who had. It had been a surgical strike; Penelope had been kidnapped and the rest of them had remained untouched. If it had been a random attack, they all would have been taken. Or killed.

Which meant that Penelope was still alive.

He hoped.

He had no idea where they had taken her, though. That was the most frustrating thing. They could be anywhere "The winery," Jack said.

Kevin stopped pacing, turned toward the policeman. "What?"

"They probably took her home."

Of course. He should have thought of that himself. He stared at Jack.

Had he been thinking aloud?

Or had the policeman just ... known what he was|

thinking? He was being stupid. There was enough to worry about I without reading meaning into coincidence. They had just!

been thinking the same thing at the same time, that's all."

Under the circumstances and given the subject, it wasn't|

unlikely.

"We'll go there," he said. "We'll rescue her."

"How?" Holbrook asked.

Kevin looked down at the teacher. "What?"

"How are you going to rescue her? Walk into that crowd, pass by her mothers, grab her by the arm, and walk out with her?"

"I'll figure out something," Kevin said defensively. "You'd better figure it out ahead of time or they'll rip you to shreds."

"Well, why don't you help then?" Holbrook grinned. "I thought you'd never ask." Kevin faced him. "You have a plan for once?" Holbrook laughed. "That I do," he said. 'That I do."

Penelope awoke on the grass. Her mothers were nowhere to be seen, and she sat up, stood. Her mouth tasted like wine, but, thank God, she was still fully dressed. And there was no blood on her. Whatever had happened, it couldn't have been much.

She smelled sex, though. On the air, in the breeze, on the grass.

And it smelled good.

She turned her head, looking around. She was not in the meadow, in the woods behind the winery, as she would have expected. Her mothers had taken her to the field where the fair had been, leaving her at the perimeter farthest from the road.

She yawned, feeling groggy, dumb, slow. She was not sure what had happened. She could not remember being hypnotized or drugged or knocked out, but her memory of last night seemed to have stopped at the point where her mothers shoved her into the van. She could not recall anything after that.

A leather-clad woman rode past on the back of a nude man fitted with a harness and stirrups. The woman carried in her right hand an assortment of paint brushes, and Penelope watched as she galloped over to a man whose skin had been dyed blue. She handed him the brushes, and he passed them out to a group of children who were helping to paint a monstrous stone phallus that had been embedded in the ground.

Penelope looked around the enormous field, her gaze moving from one grotesque tableau to another. He had organized them. The drunken chaos of the previous days was gone, replaced by an institutionalized insanity, a harnessed altered consciousness. The people she saw were obviously intoxicated, obviously behaving crazily, but there was an overriding rationality behind their individually irrational acts.

And there were thousands of them.

As before, the sheer scope of the situation intimidated her. Not only had the bacchantes ransacked the fair, they had adapted its forms to their uses. A group of drunken clowns staggered by, supporting a nude and tattooed teenager between them. A woman dressed in gypsy garb was passing out baby balloons--dead bodies of infants that had been filled with helium and somehow sealed and circled with string. A couple walked by, each clutching a string, twin distended babies floating above their heads like bloated puffer fish. A plyboard wall that she remembered seeing at the fair painted with the bodies of Merlin and various magicians, with holes cut above the figures' shoulders so that tourists could stick their heads through and have their photos taken, had been inverted and repainted with the forms of classical monsters. Though the holes in the wall protruded erect penises. Girls and women were taking turns kneeling in front of the figures or backing up against them.

At the east end of the field, a crew of inebriated laborers were beginning to erect a mock Greek edifice from bricks and blocks mat apparently had been taken from demolished buildings downtown.

It was as if they had started to build a society around their drunkenness, as though this was now their normal state of being and they were adjusting to it.

But where was Dion ... Dionysus? She scanned the crowd more carefully.

To her right she saw Mrs. Pulkinghorn, the librarian, squatting over the face of Mrs. Jessup, the school nurse, who was lying prone on the ground and being assaulted by a bald old man. The guy who worked at the liquor store by the school was sitting on a folding chair, furiously playing with himself.

There were men with women, men with men, women with women, but no Dionysus.

And everywhere were grapes. The vines had obviously been planted only within the last few days, but they dot ted the field, separated it into sectors. The amazing thing was that bunches of the fruit were already hanging from between the oversize leaves. She followed a line of grape vines that crossed the field diagonally.

Then she saw her mothers.

They were near the river at the west end of the field. Mother Margeaux, Mother Felice, and Mother Margaret were crouched down in a circle by the edge of the bank, doing something she couldn't make out from this far away. Mother Sheila was bent over the battered, unmoving body of a boy, licking the blood from his chest, while Mother Janine crouched behind her, her face buried deep between the cheeks of Mother Sheila's buttocks.

Penelope looked away, disgusted and frightened. These weren't the mothers she knew. These people were totally alien to hen Weren't they?

She started walking through the field, taking the path of least resistance, skirting the most crowded areas. She didn't know why she'd been left alone after being kidnapped in such dramatic fashion, but she knew enough to take advantage of it, and she hurried toward the road.

They'd taken her, no doubt, in order to force her to mate with Dionysus, but they'd either thought she'd stay asleep longer or else they'd been so drunk that they'd forgotten about her, and if she was lucky she'd be able to escape before they even noticed that she'd gone.

She was halfway across the field when she saw it.

The satyr.

She stopped dead in her tracks. "Jesus," she breathed.

The man--the creature--was seven or eight feet tall, with the legs of a goat, the ears of Mr. Spock, and a huge red erection! He galloped toward her across the field, grinning, and there was something so alien in his gait, something so unearthly in his appearance, that Penelope felt an involuntary shiver of fear pass through her. She was hit suddenly by a bolt of objectivity, a perspective that allowed her to see this not as it appeared to her, not as a participant, but as an outsider, all of the myriad adjustments her mind had made to the horrors stripped away, and the sight terrified her so that she was unable to run, unable to move, and she remained rooted to the spot as the monster reared to a stop in front of her.

"He wants you!" the satyr said, leering. Its voice was high and manic, and though she was aware that the sounds it was making were not English, were possibly not even human speech, she had no trouble understanding it.

She tried to determine if there were some way that she could run, get away from it "Either you follow me on your own, or I force you to come with me." The creature grinned, and this close she could see that its teeth were pointed. "If I have to force you, you'll get to ride on my cock." Its red erection bounced up and down.

"I'll come," she said.

"I know you will!" The satyr laughed, galloping off, and Penelope ran to keep up with it.

They passed between groups of men and women performing a variety of violent and sexually deviant acts, past huge eases of wine bottles and caskets of wine. She was out of breath long before they reached the far end of the field, but she refused to allow that horrible ... thing to touch her, and she forced herself to keep going.

She followed the satyr out of the field and into the trees.

To where Dionysus sat on his throne.

She stopped running, though her heart rate accelerated. Several trees had been felled, carved, and made into the elaborately carved woodland chair that the god used as his throne. Over a portion of the trampled ground before Dionysus was a royal red carpet made from human flesh. The surrounding trees were decorated with mounted sexual organs.

The satyr bowed to its god, then galloped away, laughing maniacally.

Dionysus stood, and Penelope felt a stirring within her. Even though she was not drunk, she wanted him. Against her will she wanted him. He stood before her, proudly, gloriously nude. His skin was wet with blood and sweat, and it glistened in a way that made him look magnificent. She wanted to drop to her knees and worship him, to prostrate herself before him and allow him to do what he wanted to her, but somehow she remained standing.

"Penelope," he whispered. It was Dion's voice and yet not Dion's voice, a whisper that was loud enough to drown out the noise behind her.

"Dion?" she asked.

He walked toward her, and she notked for the first time that he carried some sort of wineskin in his left hand, a bladder-shaped receptacle that she hoped was made from an animal. He lifted it high, squirted wine into his mouth, then tossed the object aside.

She was trembling before he reached her. "Dion?" she said again, tentatively, hopefully.

"Dionysus." The god dropped to his knees in front of her so they'd be on the same level. His massive arms snaked around her back, and he pulled her to him. "I've been searching for you for so long. Why have you been hiding from me?"

His touch was powerful yet tender, and although her mind was horrified by what was happening, her body was aroused. He sniffed the air, glanced down at her crotch, and smiled. "Penelope," he said.

There was still something of Dion in his features, in his eyes, but it was less than it had been^ and she knew that when he was drunk even that would disappear. He was hard against her, and she could feel the frightening enormity of his penis against her flesh. "You know you want it," he said. "Just let go. Lose yourself in me."

She remembered when she and Dion had made love in the backseat of the car, and she felt an acute pang of loss. She could smell the god's scent, a strong, musky odor that arose from the gigantic organ pressed against her torso, and she gagged.

"I don't want you," she said. The statement was not forceful, the way she'd intended, but meek, begging, a plea. A tear rolled down her cheek.

He wiped the tear away with a long grape-stained finger, and she saw a flicker of compassion in his eyes. It was there for only a second, a brief flame that flared and was quickly extinguished, but it was enough to tell her that Dion was still alive in there somewhere, struggling to break free.

"You want me!" he bellowed, and the deafening rage of the demand made her jump. The arms wrapped around her did not give, and she realized that he could crush her with ease.

She was crying now, sobbing, the tears streaming down her face, but she nodded. "Yes," she said. "I want you."

"You want me to fill you up!"

"Yes. I want you to fill me up."

He was breathing heavily, and for a moment he said nothing. She expected him to rip her clothes off, to impale her on his oversize erection, but she was not prepared for what came next.

He let go of her, stood. "No, you don't," he said quietly. His voice sounded almost human. "You don't want me at all."

He turned away, started back toward his throne. "Go," he said. "Leave. I

do not want to see you again."

Her mind was filled with conflicting emotions, but she knew enough to act now and sort her feelings out later, and she started running, heading not back toward the field but to her left, through the trees, v/here she knew the road was. Behind her, Dionysus cried out, an anguished sound of wrenching emotional pain, and in front of her there was a flash of bluish-white light, blindingly visible even in the daytime. She didn't know if the blast was aimed at her, but she zigzagged anyway and kept running.

She tripped as she reached the street, her foot catching on an exposed section of rebar protruding from the gravel by the side of the road, but she was quick enough to catch her fall, putting her arms out in front of her and landing on the palms of her hands. Around her, the air shimmered, bristled. A row of ants on the asphalt in front of her suddenly shot up to the size of small dogs. In a matter of seconds, by the time she had jumped to her feet, the ants had twisted, contorted, grown screaming into men.

She ran. She did not look back to see if she was being pursued, she did not stop to analyze which way she should be going, she simply ran. Sweat was dripping down her face, mingling with her tears, stinging her eyes;

her lungs felt as though she'd been breathing fire, and her mouth was so dry she felt like throwing up.

But she kept going.

She did not stop until she reached an Avis Rent-a-Car office six blocks away. She was about ready to drop--she could not move another step--and she fell to the ground, gasping for air. Only then did she turn to see if they were coming after her.

The way behind her was clear. She was not being chased.

Dion had let her go.

It was nearly noon by the time Penelope arrived back at Holbrook's, and the teacher and Kevin were in the driveway, loading the trunk of Holbrook's car with boxes from the garage.

Both stared at her in shock as she drove up the driveway and parked behind Holbrook's Subaru. She got out of the car, grinning wryly. "Hey, guys, how's it going?"

"Where were you?" Kevin said, putting his box on the ground and running over. "What happened? We were just coming over to rescue you."

"Coming over where?"

"Your winery. Didn't your mothers kidnap you?"

"Yeah, but they took me someplace else. Dionysus has moved his base of operations."

Holbrook strode over. "You escaped?"

"Sort of. He let me go."

"Who? Dionysus?"

"Dion."

"What happened?" Kevin asked again.

She shook her head. "Let's go inside. It's a long story, and I need something to drink. Some breakfast would be nice too."

"Lunch," Kevin said.

"Lunch, then." She frowned, looking around. "Where's Jack?" she asked.

Neither Kevin nor Holbrook said anything, and Penelope's gaze moved from one to the other as a sinking feeling grew in the pit of her stomach.

"Where is he?"

Holbrook looked embarrassed. "He got into my wine," he said. "We were downstairs going over the rescue plans, and he went back up to get something to drink. He found the bottles in the kitchen and ... drank them."

"What? ... Why? ..." She shook her head, confused, not yet able to assimilate the information.

"I don't know," Kevin said. "Jack sure didn't seem like a risk." He glanced toward Holbrook. "And I didn't even know about the wine."

"Where is he?"

"We locked him in the bedroom."

Penelope closed her eyes, feeling suddenly exhausted, the events of last night and this morning seeming to catch up with her all at once. Kevin moved behind her, put a hand on her shoulder.

She pulled away.

"Leave her alone," Holbrook said. "She'll get over it."

"Fuck you!" Kevin yelled. "It's your fault anyway!" He touched her back, and this time she didn't pull away.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm just ... It's been a tough day. I didn't mean to take it out on you. It's just ... stress."

"We were just trying to find you--"

"I know."

"--before something happened."

"I know." She reached out, hugged him, and after a brief hesitation he hugged her back. If Holbrook wasn't here, she thought, she'd fuck Kevin.

That would make him feel better. She'd take off his pants "Well, isn't that cute?" Holbrook said.

They pulled apart. "Asshole," Kevin said.

Penelope faced the teacher. "How long has Jack been locked up?"

"A couple hours. He'd taken off all his clothes and was using one of the wine bottles when we found him." The teacher grinned. "He attacked us with the bottle, and it took us a while to subdue him."

"How long before he dries out?"

Holbrook shrugged. "Who knows?"

"I want to talk to him."

"You can't."

Penelope glared at him. "You think you can stop me?"

"No. I mean, you can't. He doesn't listen or he doesn't /

hear. And what he says doesn't make any sense." He picked up Kevin's box, put it in the car, and slammed the trunk. "But I guess you'll have to see for yourself."

She could hear Jack screaming the second they walked into the house. She passed through the living room, went down the hall, following the sound of the policeman's voice. The door to the bedroom at the end of the hallway, the one in which they'd been sleeping, was shut, a newly installed dead bolt keeping it closed.

The knob rattled.

"Jack!" Penelope called.

"Eat me!" the policeman screamed. His voice was hoarse, raspy, and unrecognizable. There was a loud thump as he threw himself against the door. "Lick my cock! Lick my balls! Lick my ass!"

"It's me! Penelope!"

"I want virgin blood!"

"It's going to be a while," Holbrook said.

Penelope nodded. She stood there for a moment, staring at the closed door, then walked tiredly back to the living room, dropped onto the couch.

"So tell us what happened," Kevin said as he and Holbrook followed her into the room.

She started with her nighttime abduction, described waking up in the field, told them of her encounter with Dionysus and the way he'd told her to leave.

"He let you go," Holbrook mused. "You say he wasn't drunk?"

"A little maybe. He'd been drinking out of that skin, and his eyes were a little red, but no, not really."

"You think if he was completely drunk, he would've let you go?"

"No. I think ... I think he's still split. And I think he's closer to Dion when he's had less to drink. I think that's the only reason he let me go."

"And the others left you alone? In the field?"

She nodded, puzzled. "Except for the satyr, yeah. Pretty much."

"It's obvious that they take their cue from him. We suspected as much.

He's not only their leader, their god, but he's the one who calls the emotional shots. If he's happy, they're happy. If he's angry, they're angry. They're automatons, there only to do his bidding. The maenads might be different, but the others ..."

From his seat on the floor, Kevin snorted. "So what do we do? Sober him up and force him to start preaching abstinence?"

Holbrook raised his eyebrows. "Not a bad idea."

"Come on. Be serious."

"I am serious."

"So how do we do that? Capture him and pump him full of black coffee?"

Holbrook thought for a moment. "We could capture and isolate him. But I

think it would be better if we killed him."

"Hey," Kevin said, "why didn't we think of that earlier? You want me to go down there and off him now?"

Holbrook ignored him, faced Penelope. "We could all go over there. We'd wait while you went in. If you could just lure him over to where we were hiding, we could kill him."

"But he let me go."

"He's not Dion."

"Part of him is."

Holbrook looked levelly at her. "You really are your mothers' daughter."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"Just because he has a big dick--"

"Just because you have no dick!"

Kevin raised his hands. "Children, children ..."

"I can't just waltz in there and lure him out," Penelope said. "It doesn't work that way. He's surrounded by his followers and my mothers and satyrs and God knows what else. Besides, he said he doesn't want to see me again. If I went back, he probably would kill me."

"Only if he was drunk," Holbrook said.

"He came after me anyway, even though he wasn't drunk. I mean, he didn't chase me or anything, but it was like he changed his mind after he let me go, like he wanted me back."

"You didn't tell us--"

"You didn't let me finish!"

The teacher took a deep breath. "So finish."

"Like I said, he told me to go, and I started running toward the road.

All of a sudden there was, like, this explosion in front of me. I didn't see where it came from or how it happened, but I figured he'd changed his mind and was ... I don't know, throwing lightning bolts at me.

Anyway, I started zigzagging, running left and right so I'd be a harder target to hit. Nothing else happened, but when I reached the road, I

fell. There was a group of ants in front of me, on the asphalt, and he turned the ants into men, into warriors. Like the Myrmidons."

Holbrook paled. "Myrmidons? But that was Zeus ..."

She nodded. "Yes."

"This is a horse of a different color. I've been basing everything on the premise that he is Dionysus and that he suffers from that god's weaknesses, attributes, and limitations." He grew silent, thinking.

"Maybe ..." he said finally, "maybe because he has all of those others within him, he has their powers too."

"Maybe," Penelope said.

"Only I don't think he knows it. At least not yet. Otherwise, he would have been stretching himself, making use of all of the powers at his disposal."

"Maybe he has only limited powers. Maybe he has a little bit from each god, but not everything."

"Perhaps," Holbrook conceded.

"Maybe I do too."

Kevin shook his head. "What?"

She turned to face him. "Maybe I have power too. I'm the one who's supposed to give birth to these gods. It's half him and half me. I've been bred for the same thing he has. Maybe I have some of that power in me as well."

"But how do we figure out how to use it?"

The two of them looked toward Holbrook.

"I don't think that's something we should count on," the teacher said..

"You haven't exhibited any unusual abilities yet--"

"I can smell things I didn't used to be able to smell," she said. "My sense of smell seems to have doubled in power. Or tripled."

"Hardly a godlike power," Holbrook said dryly. "Be sides, your mothers apparently performed some sort of ritual with Dion. They didn't with you."

She looked down, nodded. "That's true."

"And, to be honest with you, I wouldn't know how to bring about your transformation. Assuming you wanted a transformation. Our knowledge is geared more toward protecting humans from gods, not helping people turn into gods."

"And you're doing a fine job," Kevin said.

Holbrook glared at him. "You're still alive, aren't you?"

"Yeah. And at least I'm not like Jack. Oh, I forgot. He's an Ovidian too, isn't he?"

The teacher's voice was uncharacteristically quiet. "I made a mistake there."

"So what is your plan?" Penelope asked. "How were you planning to rescue me?"

"It was a catch-22," Kevin said. "We'd have to kill Dionysus to get the others to stop partying, and we'd have to kill the others in order to get to Dionysus."

"So what were you going to do?"

"Kill your mothers," Holbrook said.

Penelope shook her head. "No."

"Yes. They're his cheerleaders. Take them out and the others will fall apart."

"But how did you plan to--?"

"We were going to burn your fucking winery."

Penelope was silent.

"They'd try to save it. Luckily for us, those bitches and all their pals are too drunk to think clearly. They're not up to using firearms. We are. We'd hide in the bushes and pick them off one by one."

Penelope tried to imagine her mothers being shot, tried to imagine bullets hitting them ... where? In the head? In the chest? The images in her mind were all too clear. What would happen to them at the last second? What would flash through their brains? Would they think of her?

She wanted them dead, or at least a part of her did, but she did not want them killed. And she particularly did not want them killed by her mythology teacher.

And she wanted Mother Felice spared.

"You can't kill them," she said.

"They might not be human, but they can be killed."

"I don't mean you can't kill them. I mean, I won't let you kill them."

"Then we either join them or die."

"Even if we join them, we might die," Kevin pointed out. "They have no problems with killing their own."

"Maenads do not follow patterns or use reason or act logically. They are completely instinctual, living ids.

They--"

"They're my mothers. They won't kill me."

"But they'll kill us."

"Maybe Kevin's idea would work. Maybe we could sober everyone up."

Holbrook looked at her disdainfully. "And how do you propose we do that?"

"We cut off their supply of wine."

Kevin snorted. "In Napa? Be serious."

"Daneam wine. It's the only wine that matters." She looked at Holbrook.

"Right?"

The teacher nodded reluctantly.

"You guys were going to set fire to the winery anyway. I say we go ahead with it. They can't have been thinking logically enough to set aside a separate supply."

"She has a point," Holbrook admitted.

Kevin stood. "Then what are we waiting for? Let's do it."

"Not so fast," Holbrook said.

"What do you mean 'not so fast'? We were just going to go over there and do exactly the same thing."

"But we were going to take out her mothers."

"This is even better. It's simpler. We set the place on fire, and we don't even have to kill anybody."

"It's after noon. Maybe we should wait until tomorrow."

"There's another thing you should probably know," Penelope said quietly.

"Everything's speeded up. A lot more than we thought. There were vines, new vines that they'd planted, and the grapes looked almost ready to harvest."

"It's only been a few days!" Kevin said.

"Harvest," Holbrook said. "That was the time of a major festival."

"And they'd be able to make more wine," Kevin added.

"I can get in there," Penelope said. "I can light the fuse or whatever it is I have to do. They ... trust me. They seem to think I'm one of them. They leave me alone."

"All of them?"

"I don't know about all of them, but ..." She breathed deeply. "I'm a maenad. They can sense it."

"Didn't you say you thought your mothers drugged you or something when they kidnapped you? They obviously knew you weren't one of them."

"I could take a few sips. Pretend to be drunk. It might fool them."

"I don't know," Holbrook said.

"We have no alternative."

"The grapes grew in two days?"

Penelope looked at the teacher, nodded.

"Then we'd better do it." Holbrook started toward the front door. "Let's finish loading the car."

"Get some food," Kevin said to Penelope as he moved to follow the teacher outside. "Get something to drink."

She smiled wryly. "Got any wine?"

"Not funny," he said, walking out the door.

She hurried into the kitchen. In the suddenly quiet house she could hear Jack screaming in the bedroom. His screams had been there throughout, a muted background babble, but with the other two outside, the noise seemed somehow louder. Penelope could hear Holbrook and Kevin in the garage, talking as they carried boxes to the car, but she was in the house and they weren't and right now the policeman's crazed ranting sounded a lot closer than it should.

And a lot creepier.

She quickly opened the refrigerator, grabbed a can of Coke and a carton of malted milk balls. Sugar. Quick energy.

She had time to notice that Holbrook's refrigerator was filled primarily with sweets and junk food, but then she closed the refrigerator door and hurried outside to get away from the policeman's incessant cries.

"So what's in the boxes?" she asked, walking over ta| the car.

"Gasoline," Kevin said. "And rags."

"And old newspaper," Holbrook added. "Things that'11 j burn."

She'd been expecting something less slapdash, something more professional, and she was disappointed. "I thought you'd have explosives and stuff."

"I'm a teacher, not a terrorist." Holbrook slammed the trunk of the car.

"Come on, get in."

Penelope looked back at the house. "Should I ... you know, lock it?

Jack--"

"Just get in. I want to do this quick."

Kevin opened the passenger door. "Before you lose your nerve?"

"Something like that," Holbrook said. "Get in. Let's go."

The winery was a slaughterhouse.

Even after all Penelope had seen, she was shocked by the extent of the butchery.

They had driven straight to the winery. A few of the streets had been blocked, forcing them to detour, but the blockages had been old. There was no new damage, no new fires, and Napa looked like a ghost town, like a bombed-out city after a war, its inhabitants dead or fled. They'd encountered no problems on the road.

That worried Penelope. They'd seen very few people on the streets in the daytime since Dionysus' rebirth, but the city had always seemed alive in some twisted, perverted way, the playground of destructive children who were napping and had not yet come out to play.

But the feeling now was one of abandonment, and she could not help wondering if they had moved on, up the valley, or out of the valley, or if they were simply massing around their god, in preparation perhaps for their harvest festival. She thought the latter more likely, and she hoped and prayed that Dionysus stayed on the site of the fair and did not return to the winery. They needed all the breaks they could get.

Dionysus.

She was thinking of him now as Dionysus. Dion was still in there somewhere, but after her encounter with the god, she could no longer think of Dionysus as merely Dion in an altered form.

This was a separate entity, a being that had usurped Dion's place and incorporated him within itself.

The road to the winery was strewn with garbage and debris, but it was not until they reached the gates of the winery that they started seeing bodies. At first Penelope did not pay close attention to the immobile forms lining the sides of the drive. She's seen so many bodies the past few days that she was becoming inured to the sight. But even in her peripheral vision the colors jumped out at her: red, green, blue, purple. Something was different here, something was wrong. She looked more carefully at the bodies out the window of the car, and she saw that some of them had been ... altered. There was a man with the body of a frog, a woman with the arms of a lobster, a child with an elephant's trunk and tusks. Many of the bodies were bloody, but an equal number of them weren't, and these lay curled in fetal positions or positioned in odd angles. She could not help thinking that these people had died in the midst of metamorphosis, that they had died because of what they were becoming.

There was something about dying that way that disturbed her more than murder, and she looked away from the bodies, kept her eyes on the road ahead.

In contrast to that first night, there were not hordes of believers milling about the winery entrance, drinking and partying in the driveway. Save for an occasional staggerer, the narrow road was devoid of life.

Ahead, she could see the buildings of the winery, and she wiped her sweaty palms of her jeans. Holbrook's plan was frighteningly simple-minded. She was to distract whomever she had to, however she had to, so that he and Kevin could shove their boxes of combustibles in the main winery building and light it on fire. Holbrook was hoping that the blaze would spread quickly enough that the wine, the alcohol, would ignite and engulf the winery in flames before any of the bacchantes realized what was happening. They'd then run back to the car and take off.

It was a dim-witted plan, she thought, a moronic scheme. But she could not come up with a better alternative, and she said nothing.

She looked out the window to the left. On the grapevine stakes, fluttering above the bare branches of the plants, were nailed the scalps of women and longhaired men. On the wires strung between the stakes were tied gaily colored strips of crepe paper.

The meadow now reached the vineyard. It was six or seven times the size it had been. The altar and the stone statue of Dionysus, which had been at the periphery of the meadow, nearly in the trees, were now squarely in its center and could be seen even from here. The trees had not been chopped down, they had been ... eradicated. It was as if they had never existed. Meadow grass grew from the edge of the vineyard all the way up to the top of the hill, unobstructed by bush or tree.

And then the revelers arrived.

It was as if floodgates had suddenly opened, triggered by the movement of their car up the drive. A wave of men and women flowed into the meadow, from over the hill, from between the trees at the far end. She'd thought there'd been a lot of people at the site of the fair, but that was nothing compared to this. Her heart began pounding at the sight so many individuals, instinctively recoiling before the intimidating size of the oncoming horde.

She'd thought that the revelers had come for them, had been sent by Dionysus or her mothers to tear them apart and protect the winery. But she realized as the human wave slowed, then stopped, that the people did not even know that the three of them were there.

They had come for the festival.

Harvest.

Even the word had resonance within her. They were going to celebrate the fruition of the crop, were going to pick and then crush the grapes. She didn't know how she knew this, but she did, and a part of her wanted to join them.

The car stopped just before the parking lot as Holbrook pulled to the side, executed a three-point turn, and parked the vehicle underneath a tree, facing the street so they'd be able to make a quick exit.

The teacher opened his door, got out. "Let's make this quick," he said.

Outside, she could hear the singing. Thousands of voices blending and harmonizing. She stood next to the car, rooted in place, staring toward the vineyards and the expanded meadow beyond as Holbrook and Kevin began unloading the trunk.

From this vantage point it looked almost like the scene of a rock concert, a massive cross-generational Woodstock. The feeling was like that too, she thought. Thousands of people singing in joyful camaraderie, their happy voices blending beautifully as they sang in union the words to an ancient Greek ode, a song that her mothers had sung to her when she was young. Lines of people, arms around one another's shoulders, swayed to the music.

Only ... Only directly in front of the crowd and off to the sides were small spots of red, the eviscerated bodies of recent kills, bloody carcasses of men, women, children, and pets that had been strewn haphazardly about, forgotten and ignored, as though they were merely the by-products of such a large gathering, like empty paper cups and sandwich wrappers.

On the top of the hill, several silhouetted women were tearing apart what looked to be the remains of a dead horse.

The singing stopped. As one, the crowd was silenced. It was as though they were listening to something, although there was no audible sound.

Holbrook was right, Penelope realized. The people took their cue from Dionysus. His mood determined theirs. They not only worshiped him, they were connected to him in some way, their feelings and emotions an extension of his own.

Movement began again, increasingly frenzied activity that spread outward from the center of the gigantic gathering.

People began moving into the far rows of the vineyard.

"We need some help here," Holbrook said. "Stop staring and grab a box."

He had seen it too. There was fear in his voice, and as she moved to help, she noticed that Kevin was quiet, his face pale.

She wanted to reassure them, to tell them not to worry, to tell them that they would not be torn apart if they were caught, but she knew that was not true. They would be killed.

She would not.

She was one of them.

They left half of the boxes in the open trunk and hurried silently up the last few yards of the drive to the parking lot. She wanted to feel nervous and anxious, wanted some of Holbrook's sense of urgency transferred to her so that she would move as quickly as she needed to, but she felt no tension, no nervousness, and she hurried only because her brain told her to do so, not because her emotions deemed it necessary.

Holbrook stopped at the edge of the parking lot, ducking next to an overhanging tree. Kevin and Penelope followed suit. Ahead, between two of the buildings, next to the warehouse, was a line of four transport trucks. The vehicles were being loaded with cases of Daneam wine, and she found herself thinking of a scene from Invasion of the Body Snatchers where trucks were being loaded with seed pods for distribution to other cities, other states. Was that what was happening here? Were they trying to spread the debauchery elsewhere through the wine? To San Francisco? Los Angeles? Phoenix? Denver? Chicago? New York?

Yes, she thought. It made sense.

She was just surprised that they had been logical enough to think of it and sober enough to do it.

Mother Margeaux, she thought.

"We can go around," she said to Holbrook. "There's a sidewalk around the side of the house that leads to the main building, the one where we produce the wine, and it can't be seen from the warehouse."

"The warehouse? That would be better," Holbrook said. "That's where it's all stored."

"That's where they're loading the trucks. I don't think we can get in there without someone seeing us."

"Then I hope the fire spreads to the warehouse."

"Come on," Penelope said. She led them around the edge of the parking lot, trying to stay behind vehicles, out of sight of the truck loaders.

They passed behind the back of an overturned mini-van, and she stopped.

The box she was carrying was getting heavy, and she put it down for a second.

"What are you doing?" Holbrook hissed.

"My arms are tired."

"Here," Kevin said. "Switch. Maybe mine's a_ little lighter."

"Are you sure this is going to be enough?" Penelope asked as they traded boxes. "It doesn't seem like this'll start much of a fire."

"That's why the warehouse would be better."

"Maybe we should burn the house instead," Kevin suggested.

The house? She had not really considered the fact that the house would be burned too, but of course it would. Truth be told, she had not thought any of this through. She supposed, in the back of her mind, she'd thought that the winery would burn and the fire trucks would show up before the blaze spread to the house.

But there were no fire trucks.

She looked at the house. Her home. All her things were still in there, in her bedroom. Her books, her records, her clothes, her photographs, all of her mementos and personal memorabilia. If the house burned, there would be nothing left. She'd have only the clothes on her back. And if her mothers were killed ... She had to at least save her photo albums.

"There's ho wine in the house," Holbrook told Kevin. "We're here to destroy the wine supply."

Penelope put down the boxes Kevin had handed her. "I have to go in there. I have to get some of my stuff."

"No!" Holbrook ordered. He looked quickly around, lowered his voice.

"No."

"Yes." She didn't want to debate it, didn't want to be bullied into changing her mind, and she ran around a BMW and toward the side door of the house.

"Penelope!" Kevin called after her.

She did not look back but kept running. The door was unlocked, and she opened it, peeking in before stepping inside.

The house was untouched. Of course. This was the home of the maenads, god's right-hand women. No one would dare go in She could run upstairs, grab her photo albums, and out in less than a minute.

She hurried inside, not closing the door behind he running through Mother Margeaux's study, into the hall up the stairs, to her bedroom.

Where Dion's mom was on her bed, having sex wit another woman.

They were lying side by side. The other woman's headfj was buried between Dion's mother's scissored legs, but|j Dion's mom was merely stroking the woman's vagina, and she saw Penelope instantly.

Penelope stood in the doorway, unmoving, the fear ands tension she'd been unable to muster until now blooming! fully formed within her.

Obviously sensing that something was wrong, the other woman withdrew her face from between Dion's mother's! legs and looked lazily toward the doorway. She saw Penelope and sat up. "It's her!" she cried excitedly, pointing. "It's--"

Dion's mother broke her neck.

It happened instantly, easily. She grabbed the woman's head and twisted it. There was a loud crack, and the woman's body went limp, falling across the bed.

Penelope stared for a moment at the dead woman before meeting the eyes of Dion's mom. "I just came to get my photo albums," she explained timidly.

Dion's mother nodded numbly. She appeared dazed, drunk, but she seemed to know what was going on. "Get out of here," she said. "Take your books and go. I won't tell them you were here." Penelope wanted to ask why, wanted to know more, but she knew how capricious maenads were, and she quickly went over to her desk, opened the bottom drawer, and withdrew her photo albums.

Should she warn Dion's mother? Penelope wondered. Dion's mom had helped her. Should she return the favor?

She turned as she reached the doorway. "Get out of the house," she said.

"Quickly."

Dion's mother nodded tiredly, not asking for or needing more information, and Penelope raced downstairs, through the house, and out the side door where she'd come in. She nearly ran into Holbrook and Kevin, struggling with both her boxes and their own as they approached the side of the house.

"Got 'em," she said, holding up her photo albums.

"We thought you might get into trouble," Kevin said. "You didn't see anyone inside?"

She shook her head. "No." She took a box from Kevin, a box from the teacher, placing her photo albums on top of them.

"We're wasting time," Holbrook said pointedly.

"This way." She led them down the walkway that curved around Mother Sheila's garden in the back of the house and to the rear of the winery buildings.

The back door of the main building was open, hanging half off its hinges, and an enormous puddle of dried blood covered the slab of concrete in front of it. She hesitated for a second before going in. The open door worried her. But she did not feel comfortable staying outside when just around the corner of the building bacchantes were loading trucks with cases from the warehouse.

Holbrook shoved his way past her into the building.

She looked toward Kevin and their gazed locked for a second. Then Kevin shifted the boxes in his hand and followed Holbrook through the doorway.

Penelope went in after him.

The inside of the building was filled with bodies.

The extent of the carnage took her breath away. Despite what she'd seen the past few days, despite even the scene outside in the meadow, she had started to become inured to the bodies, had begun to view them as casualties of war, a natural effect of the current situation in the valley.

But there was nothing natural about this.

The long corridor had been carpeted with viscera, wallpapered with wet skin. What remained of the bodies after their skinning and evisceration had been hung up and strung up, attached to the ceiling with the heavy wire used to tie grapevines. They were hung low and high, positioned at regular intervals, forming makeshift dividers, creating narrow walkway that zigzagged through the wide corridor|

The thing that truly sickened her was that she recognized some of the faces on the wall. Eyeless and toothless,! they were stretched tight, widened and lengthened, distorted. Yet she saw familiar features, individual attributes! in the forcibly misshapen faces. There was Tony Veltri'sf big nose. Here was Marty Robert's close-set eyebrows.

The stench in the corridor was horrible--rot and decay; 1 blood, bile, and excrement--and Penelope held her: breath, trying to breathe through her mouth.

Only ... it wasn't quite as horrible as it should havef been. The shit was bad. And the rot. But the scent of the I blood was pleasant, alluring, and below it all she could 1 make out the sweet smell of wine, and she felt a familiarff tingling between her legs.

She tried to breathe in through her mouth, out through | her nose, tried not to smell the odors, tried not to think, about them.

Next to her, Kevin vomited loudly, bending over and| facing to the left so he wouldn't throw up on the boxes inj his hands.

Holbrook was already navigating the corridor, blithely! shouldering aside the bloody corpses as he walked for| ward. "How far to the wine?"

he asked.

Turning back toward the open door and taking a deepij| breath, Penelope followed after him, her feet sinking intof the squishy organs and tissue that covered the floor. "Sec-1 and door on He right should have some vats," she said.1

Behind her, still gagging, she heard Kevin literally following in her footsteps, his shoes making loud, squelch-Jf ing sounds.

The door must have been locked, because Holbrooki had put down his boxes and was kicking it when shelf caught up to him. He kicked, slipped, fell into the grue on J| the floor, then got up and did it again. On the fifth try the door gave a little, and on the sixth it swung open.

Inside, the pressing room was clean. No bodies, no gore**! no blood.

Holbrook let his boxes drop to the floor He"! looked around the room at the huge steel vats and various Jf pieces of machinery. He turned toward Penelope, pointing;

at a red-valved pipe protruding from the closest wall. "The power here," he asked. "Is it electricity or gas?"

"Both," Penelope said.

The teacher grinned. "Gas," he said. "This may work after all.".

Kevin straggled into the room, lurching past Holbrook, trying to get as far away from the door as possible before putting down-his boxes and loudly exhaling.

"Uh-oh," Holbrook said, frowning and patting his pockets. "Did anybody bring a matchbook?"

Penelope's heart leaped in her chest.

"What--" Kevin began.

Holbrook grinned. "Just joking." He opened one of his boxes. "Hurry up.

Let's get to work."

Under the teacher's supervision, they soaked the rags and newspapers in gasoline, piling them in strategic locations. Penelope showed Holbrook where the runoff valves were, and he opened three of them to a trickle.

It was becoming hard to breathe due to the fumes, and even Kevin was taking gulps of air from outside the doorway.

"Isn't this going to explode when you put a match to it?" Kevin asked.

"How are we going to get out in time before it blows?"

Holbrook was emptying the last drops of gasoline in a trail leading from one pile of rags to another. He tossed the can aside, walked over, and grinned. "I'm not completely dense." He reached into his pocket and withdrew a folded envelope. He opened it. Inside was a bluish white crystalline powder. "Chlorine," he said.

Kevin frowned. "Yeah?"

The teacher reached into his box, withdrew a plastic container of transmission fluid. "Mix these two together, and they'll start a fire."

"So will a match. What's the point?"

"There's a delayed reaction. It'll take a minute or so to start. I'll put it next to some paper that hasn't been doused with gas. It'll have to burn through that first. Then it'll start the rags on fire. Then the fire will spread. By the time this place goes up, we'll be long gone."

"I hope it works," Kevin said.

"It will."

They finished placing the newspapers, rags, and boxes around the room.

"Okay," Holbrook said. "It's time." He poured some transmission fluid into the envelope and heaved the still mostly full container at the wall. He shook up the contents of the envelope to mix them, then twisted the envelope and placed it next to a long length of rolled newspaper.

"Haul ass," he said.

They ran. Penelope nearly slipped in the corridor, slamming into one of the bodies, a sticky chest cavity hitting her in the face, but she kept going, and the three of them emerged outside seconds later.

In front of them, the house was surrounded by young girls dressed in white and holding hands.

"What's that?" Kevin asked. "What are they doing?"

"They're virgins," the teacher said.

"Vestal virgins," Penelope said. "Or Hestial virgins. They are to be consecrated to the goddess of the hearth."

"Consecrated? What the hell does that mean? Sacrificed?"

"No. They'll merely become the goddess's servants or hand maidens.

Priestesses, as it were. They will devote their lives to her. They will be killed only if they break their vows."

"Jesus," Kevin breathed.

"The virgins are probably sober," Holbrook said.

"That means--"

"We have no choice," Holbrook said. "We'll just have to make a run for it." He looked at Penelope. She nodded.

They dashed between the two buildings, running toward the parking lot.

They were probably spotted, probably seen, but there were not wild screams, no hot pursuit. The virgins remained in place, holding hands, and the other bacchantes continued their revelry and their harvest festival.

They made it back to the car with no problem.

They were on the road, nearly back in town, when the building blew.

JITON Mel Scott looked around at the mounted heads on the wall, at the bodies of the doctor and the nurses on the floor. Flies had gotten hi somehow and were everywhere, buzzing, constantly buz/ing, alighting on the stinking heads and corpses, then flying annoyingly back into the air again.

Paradise wasn't supposed to be like this.

His head hurt. It had been hurting all day, like a hangover, though he had remained consistently drunk enough that he should not be suffering from a hangover. The DT's perhaps, but not a hangover.

Barbara was dead.

He had tried to fuck her back to life, had taken her first in the pussy, then up the ass, then in the mouth, but she had remained cold. He had prayed to his new god, but his god seemed to have forsaken him.

And now he was running out of wine.

The room stank and he was running out of wine.

Paradise wasn't supposed to be like this.

There were people in the church again.

Praying.

To God.

Pastor Robens peeked out through the crack in the door. They had abandoned God, all of them, had forsaken Him for mat drunken diety from Greece, and now they were back.

It was too late, though.

They had abandoned God, and now God had abandoned them.

He listened to the frantic prayers, the desperate voices, and silently closed the door, locked it. He walked back to his desk and the bottle of wine. They'd been right the first time. It was the wine god whom they should be worshiping, not the Judeo-Christian deity.

He was merely the contractor who'd put up this building.

The new god was the landlord.

And rent was due.

Nick Nicholson felt himself die.

He took a couple of them with him, the assholes who wouldn't believe that there was no more Daneam, but there were twenty of them and only one of him, and they had taken him out in the end.

The moment of death itself was not painful, but it was not pleasurable either. It was not a release or a transformation. It was merely a continuation. Different. Neither worse nor better. They killed him, beat him to death, then carried him across the river to the underworld.

He stood, walked away.

There were other dead men here--and dead women and dead dogs and dead children--but he did not talk to them. He could not talk to them.

Something was wrong. He didn't know what it was, but he could sense it.

This was not where he was supposed to be. This was not the real underworld. This was a shadow of the real thing, an amateur version of a professional show.

It would not last, though. He sensed that too. It would not hold together. This would only be temporary.

He walked into a woman who had had her arms ripped off. They smacked foreheads, hard, and he wanted to apologize to her, but he could not.

He backed up, moved to the right, kept walking.

The streets were deserted, and they made it back to Holbrook's with no problem. Kevin did not know how big the explosion had been or whether the fire had spread to the warehouse, but he knew that no fire trucks had gone rushing to the scene and he considered that a good sign.

But where would they go from here? Even if they had succeeded in destroying all bottles of Daneam wine-- which he doubted--why couldn't the bacchantes just get wine from another vineyard? Hell, there were some eighty five wineries in the valley at last count. It wouldn't be that hard.

Even if that wasn't possible, even if their access to alcohol had been completely denied, that didn't mean that they'd automatically die or disappear.

They would probably just be pissed off.

And he didn't want to be here when that happened.

Holbrook parked the car in the driveway, and Kevin turned to look at the teacher. He had never much liked Holbrook, and he liked him even less now. He'd been so smug and superior when he'd lectured them about Dionysus and the maenads, when he'd bragged about belonging to his secret society, but the only plan he'd come up with had been to burn down some buildings--and he couldn't have pulled that off without Penelope.

Besides, he wanted to get into Penelope's pants.

Holbrook looked back at him, and Kevin turned away. He didn't know how he knew that, but he did. The teacher might pretend to be asexual and all business, totally above pretty concerns, but Kevin had seen the way he'd looked at Penelope back at the winery, and he knew what that look meant.

Maybe it wasn't Penelope herself. Maybe he jus wanted to know what it was like to fuck a maenad.

Either way, Kevin didn't like it.

He got out of the car. "So was that the Ovarians' plan? he said.

"Burning down the winery?"

"Ovidians," Holbrook said. "And no, that was my ov idea."

"So what do we do now?"

"I have an idea."

"What is it?"

"You'll see." They walked into the house, and Holbrook started down the hallway toward his basement|f "I'll be back in a minute!" he called.

Kevin looked at Penelope. "You think we accomplished! anything?"

"I don't know."

"There were a hell of a lot of people there. I don't seel how we even made a dent."

"It's not just Dionysus--Dion--that's making them this! way. It's the wine. Our wine. That's why they were shipping it out."

"What's so special about your wine?"

"I don't know," Penelope admitted.

They moved over to the couch, sat down. They did notl sit down next to each other, but they did not purposely sitf at opposite ends of the couch either, and Kevin was i acutely aware of the fact that their hands, resting on thej cushion, were almost touching.

He wanted to get into her pants too.

Yes, he had to admit it. He was attracted to Penelope, I and there was probably a bit of jealousy tied up with his j feelings about Holbrook.

He felt guilty about wanting hen She was Dion's; girlfriend, and even though Dion had turned into a monster god, he still owed it to his friend not to steal his] girlfriend.

Not that he could steal her. She was obviously still in love with Dion.

He looked toward Penelope, then glanced down the hallway, frowning.

Something was wrong. He didn't;

know what it was, but he could sense it, and he suddenly felt uneasy.

"Jack," Penelope said, as if reading his mind.

That was it.

The policeman had stopped screaming.

He stood up. It could be coincidence. Jack could be sleeping it off, getting over it. But Holbrook had been downstairs a hell of a lot longer than the promised minute, and Kevin had the feeling there was something seriously amiss.

He turned toward Penelope, who was also standing. "Where are the keys?"

he asked. "The keys to our car, the Mercedes?"

"In my pocket." She met his gaze.

"Be ready," he said.

They started toward the hallway, walking quietly, listening. There were no sounds at all, and that frightened him. He had been planning to ask Penelope to go outside and start the car, to be ready to take off instantly if something had happened to Holbrook if something else was down there --but he was not brave enough to go into the basement alone, and he did not object to her coming along.

They reached the door to the basement.

The lights were off downstairs.

"Holbrook!" he called.

No answer.

He looked to his left, toward the end of the hall, and noticed for the first time that while the door to the back bedroom appeared to be closed, it was not There was a crack of orangish late afternoon sunlight between the door and the doorjamb.

Jack had escaped.

"Jack!" he called.

No answer.

"Let's get out of here," Penelope whispered.

Kevin reached around the doorframe to turn on the basement light. The switch was already up.

"Enough proof for me," he said. "Let's bail."

Downstairs, someone moaned.

They looked at each other. "One of them's hurt or it'jj a trap," Kevin said. "There's only two choices here."

"What do you want to do? You call it."

He looked down into the darkness, took a deep breath| "Start the car,"

he said. "Be ready to roll."

She nodded. "Don't wait. If there's something wrong get out."

He smiled at her. "I have no problem with that."

Penelope sped down the hall, and Kevin gathered his courage and started down the steps. "Holbrook!" he called. "Jack!"

The moan came again.

He hurried down the stairs, stopping at the bottom. Inj the darkness at the opposite end of the basement he saw| trolls: short, hairy creatures clutching pine cone-tipp spears.-He squinted into the dimness and saw that the fig-j ures were not trolls after all.

They were Penelope's mothers.

As one the naked woman rose from their collective;! crouch. They were filthy, covered with mud and bloody grime and wine. Their ratted, uncombed hair stuck outj wildly in all directions, and it was this that in the darkness had given them that hairy, inhuman look.

He would have known better how to react had they not! been human, had they really been monsters. But somehowj this revelation was even more frightening, and he found himself unable to act, rooted in place by shock.

On the floor behind them was a pulpy red mess that had| to be either Jack or Holbrook.

Or both.

The women laughed, jabbering in some foreign language.

He went through his options quickly: he could try tol find a weapon, he could try to fight them, he could run.|

He ran.

He took the steps three at a time and sped down the hallway with the sound of the maenads screaming in back of him. He ran outside, slamming the front door behind him, and rushed to where Penelope was waiting in the idlj ing car. "Go!" he screamed.

They took off.

They sped down the street, Penelope accelerating so fast that he was thrown back into the seat before he could get his safety belt on. "Where to?" she asked.

He was still breathing heavily, his heart pounding, and he could not speak. He shook his head.

"Don't worry," she said. "We'll find something."

Penelope lay in the darkness, staring upward.

They were holed up in a small apartment at the north end of the city, in the last unit of a single-story complex that faced away from the street.

Kevin's screwdriver had still been in the car, but everything else had been left behind at Holbrook's and they'd been unable to find any other weapons save a couple of butter knives and a pair of scissors.

"Do you think we're down to the last days?" Kevin had asked as they'd driven around, looking for an easily defensible place to spend the night. "Do you think we're going to make it?"

"Of course we'll make it," she said. But it was the phrase "last days"

that stayed with her, and despite her outward optimism she was not at all sure that they would survive.

Which was why she'd considered raping him.

She hadn't done it, hadn't been able to go through with it. It would not even have been rape because he so obviously wanted her--she could see the bulge of a permanent erection in his pants--but it hadn't felt right to her. Part of her wanted to reward him for the past few days, to let him experience sex at least once in his life, in case they did not make it through all this alive, but something kept her from acting on the impulse.

Strange, she thought, how one person's perceptions of another could change so completely over such a short period of time. She'd known Kevin Harte almost her entire life. He'd been in her first-grade class. She'd never much liked him, had always considered him something of a screw-up, but she now felt closer to him than anyone else alive. She trusted him totally.

Maybe life was more like a movie than she'd thought.

On the radio, they heard a reference to Napa. A news report on an AM

talk station out of San Francisco, reporter said that there'd been an accident involving radioactive waste on Highway 29 and that all roads leading into the Napa Valley were closed until further noticejf Radioactive waste?

She looked over at Kevin.

He shook his head. "It's probably their standard st when they don't know what's going on. No one wants come and gawk at radioactive waste. It keeps the! lookeeloos away." '

"How are they going to explain what really happened?""jj Kevin shrugged.

"Biological agents, I suppose. They'ltl say it was something carried on the wind, something half lucinogenic that caused mass hysteria."

"You think that'll work? Dionysus'11 shoot chopper*! out of the sky with lightning bolts if they come to invest tigate. How are they going to explain that?"

"Don't worry," Kevin said. "They will."

They drove in silence after that, looking for a place spend the night, finally ending up here, at this apartment Now she lay alone in the bed, staring up at the dark-|f ened ceiling.

She wondered what would have happene" with her and Dion if none of this had occurred. SI wasn't naive. She knew that most high school romance did not last long past graduation. And she realized that she and Dion had not known each other that long, did nc know. each other that well.

But the love they'd felt fo each other was strong and real, and she could see then remaining together, going to college together. They we both smart, both good academically, and there was no reason to believe that they couldn't have gone to the same university.

The only thing that bothered her was the thought thatl their mutual attraction, their feelings for each other, had| been bred into them, genetically engineered, planned. Shel did not know if that made their feelings any less real, buff it tainted them, and gave her the unsettling feeling of have""" ing no control over her Me, having no free will.

Dion would have understood this, though, if she been able to talk to him about it, and maybe the fact thatl they were both aware of the situation would have enabled!

them to bypass the pitfalls and maneuver around the barriers that had been placed in their path.

She found herself thinking of the way he'd looked when she'd first seen him in that cafeteria line. Awkward and nervous, but appealingly so.

Attractive. She remembered how frightened she'd been when he passed out at the fair, the feeling of panic that had shot through her as he'd collapsed, and the way she'd wanted to tend to him and care for him when he'd been lying helplessly there on the ground. She thought of the way his voice had sounded, the way his skin had felt.

She began to cry.

She tried to steer her mind toward something else, but she thought of her home, the place she had been born and raised, now burned to the ground, and she cried even more.

There was movement in the darkness, and then a hand was stroking her forehead, Kevin's soft voice was whispering in her ear. "It's all right," he said."It's okay. Don't cry." , She rolled over, reached out, and put her arms around him, hugging him, and he was there for her, hugging her back, letting her cry into his shoulder.

"It's all right," he said. "It's all right."

They remained like that for a while, until her tears had died and then after. They were still holding each other when she fell asleep.

In her dream, she was in the meadow, on her back in front of Dionysus, legs spread in the air. He was enormous, and she felt as though she was being ripped apart as he entered her, but it felt good too, and she bucked against him, trying to force him deeper inside her.

His orgasm was a violent explosion of molten semen that burned inside her like acid.

A half-human ant creature burst forth from her stomach.

She awoke screaming.

He needed Zeus.

He had never thought it would be difficult to rule. He had often chafed under Zeus' rules and restrictions, had often suffered as a result of Hera's caprices, and more than once he had wished that he was in charge of Olympus, that he was the one calling the shots and making the decisions.

But he didn't have a head for organization or administration. Olympus had always been a loose confederation of free individuals, but he could not seem to abide order to even that extent. He was constitutionally unable to act rationally or logically, to behave responsibly. It was simply not in him.

The strain was starting to show. He felt tired, and the I headaches would not go away. He had killed anything that moved, had fucked everything that walked, had consumed enough wine to poison an army, but nothing had made him feel any better. The responsibility of ruling still \ hung heavily over his head. And now his stash of wine had been destroyed.

The maenads would make more wine, but that would; take a while. For now they were out of the nectar. Other | wine had been brought in, and he had downed a casket of I it, but it was not his wine and it was not the same. It did I not give him the same kick, it did not possess the same^

power.

He needed to bring the others back.

Yes, that was at the heart of the matter. He had tried to I make a go of it on his own and had failed. Zeus would' probably punish him for that, Hera would probably bitch-J about it for eternity and forever sabotage his romantic entanglements, but it would be worth it to have them back.

And the other gods as well.

But how was he to resurrect them? Penelope? Penelope didn't want him.

She had wanted him Before. He had had her Before. But that was when he had not yet been himself. Now she hated him, was afraid of him, wanted to kill him.

He could force her. He could take her and rape her, fill her up with godsperm until she was overflowing. But he did not want to do that.

He was filled with a deep and aching sense of loss.

This wasn't what was supposed to happen. This was not the way it was supposed to work out.

He looked up into the sky. Dionysus in love? It wasn't possible. For thousands of years he had not formed an emotional attachment to any of the women he had had.

But this attachment was not his.

It was his.

He looked down. A woman was parading herself before him. When she saw that she had his attention, she bent over and offered herself to him.

He took her, grabbing her shoulders and forcing her onto him.

He began thrusting.

And the woman started to change.

He reveled in what he was doing, he savored every scream, every tortured nuance of her transformation, but he was at the same time horrified by his own cruelty, by his complete lack of feeling for the woman. She was a goat by the time he was through, and he yanked her off him and split her open, letting the hot blood rain down on his hair and course over his forehead and cheeks.

But try as he might, he could not fully enjoy it. Even blood didn't make him feel any better.

In the morning she felt ... better.

It was an odd sensation, but the bleak pessimism of the! night before had fled, replaced by a cautious optimism. It j was as if the tears of last night had washed away her| doubts and fears.

And had brought new insight.

Penelope sat up. Kevin was still asleep, having crawled| back to his own bed sometime during the night, and she;; crept out of bed an dover to the window, where she liftedj one of the blinds and peeked outside. The morning clear, sunny, a rare occurrence, and that made her fe even better.

Throughout everything, she had tried to forget the fa that she was a maenad, had tried to deny and suppres$| that aspect of herself.

But, she realized now, that was exactly what might save them.

It was the maenads who, each fall, tore Dionysus apart 1 in a frenzy of blood lust.

She stared out at the blue sky.

She knew what she had to do.

Kevin awoke an hour or so later.

Penelope turned away from the window, watched him climb out of bed. "You know," she said, "I never used to like you."

Kevin recoiled, mock offended. "Moi?"

She smiled. "You seemed so ... I don't know. So^ tough."

"Tough?" Kevin laughed. The sound was loud, natural, and seemed depressingly out of place in these circum-J

stances. "What, you thought I was some type of gang banger?"

"Not exactly that. You just seemed ... I don't know."

"You think I'm tough now?"

She shook her head, grinned. "You're a pussy."

He laughed again, pulled on his shirt. "So it's back down to the two of us. What now?"

"We have to kill him."

He stared at her. "I thought you said he was still Dion, that we can't kill him, you wouldn't let us."

"It's the only way." She took a deep breath. "Dion's not coming back."

"But--"

"I think he'd want us to do this."

Kevin thought for a moment. "How could we do it? How could we even get close to him?"

"I think," she said slowly, "that I need to get drunk."

"No!"

"Maybe not drunk," she conceded. "But I think I need to have some wine.

It's the only way I can tap into ... whatever it is."

"You'll be--"

"Just like them?" She shook her head. "I don't think so. I won't drink so much that I'll be out of control. I'll just drink enough to alter my perceptions a little."

"But what will that do?"

"It'll help me be what I'm supposed to be."

"A maenad?"

"A maenad."

"And what then?"

"I'll tear him apart."

The silence hung between them. Kevin cleared his throat, started to speak, then lapsed into silence.

"I didn't ask to be born this way," Penelope said softly. "But it's what I am. I can fight it, I can ignore it. Or I can use it to our advantage." She walked over to the bed, sat down next to him. "I've been thinking long and hard about this, and it's the only way. It's our only chance. It's what's supposed to happen anyway. I'm just ... speeding things up."

He managed a small smile. "You've been thinking 'long and hard,' huh?

I bet you liked that."

She punched him lightly on the shoulder. "Come on -Let's scrounge up some breakfast. We're going to the our energy."

They'd found an unopened bottle of wine in the back o| one of the kitchen cupboards. The renter of the apartment was obviously no drinker, but someone had apparently given him or her a bottle of wine as a housewarming present, and the bottle, still wrapped with a red ribbon was waiting for them behind a sack of flour.

Penelope pulled it out, read the label. "Gallo," she said smiling. "Not Daneam, but I suppose it'll do."

She had not partaken yet, not trusting herself, wanting to wait until the last minute, until she was ready to use it and it was on the car seat between them as Kevin drove.!

Wine.

She kept glancing at the bottle, feeling anxious, expeclj tant, wanting to open it and drink it all in one swallowjjf That worried her.

She hoped she was doing the right thing.

Their clothes were filthy and smelly from the past sev*j eral days, but clothes at all were unusual here, and she'f made Kevin take off his shirt, had used the scissors turn his jeans into cutoffs. She'd felt him through pants as she'd cut, her fingers instinctively curling around the outline of his erection, and there was a moment whe she considered taking it out and putting it in her mouth,| a moment when he had obviously wanted her to do jus that. But then she had finished with the pant leg and stc up.

She'd ripped her own clothes to make them even more raggedy than they already were, but she still wasn't satis-f fied that she looked the part. She considered saying some thing light and humorous, turning it into a joke, buf instead turned to Kevin and said simply, "When we gel there, I'm going to take my top off."

He obviously thought about saying something joking in reply, but he merely nodded, saying nothing.

The street in front of the field was blocked with wreck!

age and debris, garbage and rotting animal corpses, and they parked close to the Avis office where she'd ended up last time. Penelope got out of the car, took a deep breath, then pulled off her shirt. The sun was warm on her skin, but she felt cold and more naked, more exposed than she ever had in her life. She looked down at her breasts, saw that the nipples were erect, and she wanted Kevin to look, wanted him to see her, but he kept his eyes purposely averted, trying not to glance at her at all, looking only at her face when he could not avoid it.

She took the bottle of wine out of the car.

They walked.

The air felt good on her body, the bottle felt good in her hand, and she realized that she was enjoying this. She was having fun. For the first time since Dion had ... changed, she felt happy.

God, she hoped she wasn't going to screw this up.

They reached the edge of the field. It was, if possible, even more crowded than before. In addition to the celebrants, there were satyrs and nymphs, centaurs and griffins, and though such a scene might have looked delightfully pastoral in a painting or a Beethoven-scored segment of Fantasia, the reality was something else. The creatures before them were not only base and dirty, they were threatening, frightening, scary not only for the wildness of their demeanor and the anger of their expressions but for the unnaturalness of their existence.

A centaur stomped on one of the griffins, and with an ear-piercing screech the eagle-headed creature rose into the air and attacked, dive-bombing the centaur, lion's claws tearing into its horse back.

A green-tinted nymph, watching the scene, smiled wickedly, started rubbing herself.

Penelope grabbed Kevin's hand, pulled him forward. "Here goes."

As she'd expected, as she'd hoped, they were not molested. No one hindered their progress, no one got in their way. No one seemed to notice that they were here at all. Dionysus knew, she was sure, but he sent no one after them, made no effort to stop them.

They could have done this days ago, she thought. There was no way the celebrants would have known that they weren't of them.

They were stupid to have run, stupid to have hidden. Dionysus and the maenads were dangerous, but the rest of them were sheep, mindless zombies, existing only for hedonistic pleasures. She and Kevin and Jack and Holbrook had ascribed far too much sense of purpose to Dionysus'

followers. They had given the bacchantes more credit than they deserved.

Ahead, a homemade sign by the side of the river, written in bright fluorescent colors, read styx. On the far side of the waterway, the land was barren, blackened. The dead shambled mindlessly amidst the burned trees and charred rubble.

Mother Janine and Mother Margaret, naked and screaming, rushed by, pine cone-tipped spears held aloft and dripping blood. Penelope considered calling out to them but decided against it. She did not want to deal with them.

Where was Dion?

That was the big question. She looked across the field to the trees where his throne had been. Was he there? Somehow she didn't think so, but that was as good a place to start as any.

She had started to lead Kevin across the open land when Mother Janine jumped in front of her. Her mother was visibly lactating, twin dribbles of runny milk marking her sunburned skin from nipple to navel. "Are you here to join us?"

Penelope tried to make her voice as slurred as possible. "Where is he?"

"You want him?"

She nodded.

Her mother pointed northeast, toward the mountains. "He is on the new Olympus, readying the house of the gods." Her voice dropped lower, and she grinned slyly. "He's waiting for you."

Penelope felt cold.

"You've never had a man until you've had a god." She snickered darkly.

"I bled afterward. I'm still bleeding inside."

Penelope backed away.

Mother Margaret had come up behind her. "He got tired of waiting for you, you know." Penelope smelled the wine on her mother's hot breath.

"He's going to have us repopulate Olympus."

They were surrounding her. Did they know? Could they tell she was faking it?

"Where's Mother Felice?" she demanded.

Mother Janine laughed drunkenly. She turned away without answering, hoisting her spear and running after a teenage boy who was dashing across the meadow.

Penelope turned around. "Where is she?"

Mother Margaret grinned. "Ask her." She pointed toward Dion's mom, who was standing silently next to her.

She looked from her mother to Dion's, a growing anxiousness within her.

"Where's my mother?"

April's voice was low. "She's dead."

"What?"

The shock must have shown on her face. Dion's mother nodded, and there was real sympathy in her expression. "He used her up. He finished her off. He was done with her."

Penelope stumbled back, feeling as though she'd just had a heart attack and been punched in the stomach at the same time. Her legs were wobbly.

It seemed nearly impossible to breathe. Kevin took her arm, held her up.

"Where?" she managed to get out.

April was already walking, gesturing for them to follow. Both of her mothers had fled, and Penelope walked through the crowd, across the field, after Dion's mom, using Kevin as a crutch. She felt empty inside, hollowed out, and everything around her seemed to be happening slowly, as if on a delay, a few seconds behind what should have been.

Her mother was dead.

It was still a fact to her, had not yet been translated into an emotion, and she followed Dion's mom past a daisy chain of men and nymphs, past a crowd of feasting satyrs, into the trees.

Her mother was lying on the grass in front of the god's throne.

Penelope knelt down next to her mother. She could not see for the wash of tears, but she took her mother's dead hand in hers, stroking the cold, soft skin. "We never got to say good-bye," she said, and the act of speaking started the sobs. "We never ..." But she could not finish the sentence.

Kevin watched Penelope crying over the body of her mother and started crying himself. What had happened to his own parents? Were they dead too? He had not had a chance to say good-bye either. Their last contact had been at the house, when they'd come after him and he'd run away.

Was that the last time he'd ever see them?

More than anything else, it was the sight of Penelope clutching her mother's hand, sobbing, tears and snot flowing unchecked down her face, that brought home to him the personal tragedy of what had happened here.

They'd been so busy running and hiding, planning fights and escapes, that the dead bodies they'd seen had just been horror show props, disgusting background, objects in their way. As frightening as those corpses were, though, they were all relatives of someone: mothers, fathers, children, uncles, cousins. Each body was a loss.

He had not seen it that way before.

He stood above Penelope, wiping his eyes. It was awkward to watch her, uncomfortable to witness such unadulterated grief, but he could not look away. She cried and he cried, and it was a while before he realized that Dion's mom was crying too.

Dion's mom.

One of them.

He turned on her. "What are you doing here, huh? Why are you hanging around?"

"I'm here to help you," she said.

Kevin looked at her coldly. "We're here to kill your son."

She hesitated only a second. "I'm here to help you. I'll take you to him."

Penelope didn't know how long she knelt over her mother's body--too long, she was sure--but she could not seem to pull herself away. For a brief second she considered taking her mother across the river--Styx--and into the land of the dead, but she knew that her mother was gone and nothing could bring her back--especially not that travesty of afterlife.

But she could not tear herself away. It was as if her mother was not completely dead as long as Penelope sat by her, and she held her mother and cried until she had no tears left.

Finally she stood, her back hurting, her legs cramping. She wiped the last vestiges of tears from her eyes. "Let's go," she said, and the resolve was evident in her voice. "Let's kill the motherfucker."

She met April's gaze.

"I'll take you to Olympus," April said.

They drove up the highway toward Rutherford, taking small side road detours wherever the highway was blocked.

The wineries along the way had been raided and razed, drunken celebrants perched atop casks and crates as the buildings burned behind them.

Inglenook had collapsed it on itself, the old winery building now looking like a bombed crater, chunks of stone wall and strands of ivy protruding from the caved-in earth. Mondavi had been flattened into nothingness by Caterpillars and steam rollers that were still having some sort of demolition derby atop the winery's remains.

Penelope was driving. Kevin had said that he still did not completely trust Dion's mom, and although she had offered to drive them, he had insisted that Penelope take the wheel instead. His right hand had been on the screwdriver tucked in his waistband as he made this demand, but April had not argued, and the two of them had gotten into the backseat, leaving Penelope alone in the front.

"Just in case," Kevin said.

They reached Rutherford, and April told Penelope to head east on Highway 128.

"I don't want to burst your bubble," Kevin said, "but we've been here, we've tried this. The road's blocked."

"Not until the last mile."

She was right. The ambush they'd encountered before was gone, and though the road was damaged and heavily rutted, they were able to drive past Lake Hennessey and into Chiles Valley before a wall of felled trees festooned with ribbons and garlands and dead Christmas lights effectively ended the highway. Penelope braked to a stop.

"You'll have to hike it from here on in." April leaned over the front seat, pointed toward the high hill before them. "It's up there."

Penelope's gaze followed her finger. "Olympus?"

"At a lake." She tried to think of the name.

"Berryessa."

"That's it."

Kevin leaned forward, looked through the windshield. "Somehow," he said dryly, "I'd imagined mighty Mount Olympus, home of the great Greek gods, as being a wee bit taller."

"Be thankful it's not," Penelope said.

They got out of the car, slamming the doors. "I want the keys," April said.

"What for?" Kevin demanded. "So you can take off? How are we supposed to get back?"

"You won't need to get back. You'll either fail or succeed. Either way it'll be over."

Penelope looked at her. "What are you going to--?"

"I'm going to go back and kill your mothers."

Penelope nodded. She felt nothing. No anger, no hurt, no pain, no regret.

"Then I'll kill myself. And that'll be it." She looked away, turned toward the hill, was silent for a moment. "But I want you to tell Dion ..." Her voice broke. "Tell him I'm sorry. And tell him that I would have done things differently if I'd known. I wanted him ..." She trailed off, wiped her nose. She turned back toward Penelope, trying to smile.

Her cheeks were wet with tears. "What am I talking about? He's not Dion anymore. Dion's gone."

"But if he's not," Penelope prodded gently, "what do you want me to say?"

"Just tell him ... Hell, just tell him I love him." She took a deep breath, wiped her nose and eyes. She held out her right hand, palm up. "Can I just have the fucking keys?"

Penelope nodded, handing over the key ring.

April gestured toward the bottle Penelope held in her hand. "You going to drink that or what? I could sure use it if you're not."

"We'll split it."

They had not thought to bring a corkscrew, but Dion's mom expertly uncorked the bottle with one long-nailed finger and downed half the bottle in a single gulp before passing the bottle to Penelope. She closed her eyes, savoring the flavor. 'That helps."

Penelope hefted the bottle in her hands, met Kevin's worried gaze, then tilted it to her lips, drinking. The wine was sweet and smooth, filling her instantly with a comfortable warmth.

And a growing heat.

She finished the wine in four long swallows, and she tossed the bottle against the roadblock, where it smashed against the logs. She felt good all of a sudden, energized, filled with an unfamiliar euphoria, and she wondered what it would be like to fuck Kevin and April at the same time, to sit on Kevin's No.

She closed her eyes, reined herself in.

"Are you all right?" Kevin asked.

She nodded, eyes still closed. Gradually she opened them. It was going to be hard, but she had to maintain control, had to keep herself from losing it.

At least until they found Dionysus.

Then she'd let herself go.

"I'm fine," she said. "I think we'd better get going."

April moved forward, grabbed Penelope's shoulders, looked into her eyes, and Penelope felt a connection. An understanding, a sharing, passed between them. "Hold on to it until you need it," April said softly. "Use it, don't let it use you."

Penelope nodded.

April smiled. "If I can do it, you can do it." And Penelope realized for the first time what an effort it had been for Dion's mother to keep herself under control for this long, to force her mind to override her emotions.

"Good luck," Penelope said.

It was an odd wish, hoping the woman would successfully kill her mothers, but April's response was the same: "Good luck to you."

She was wishing them success in killing her son.

Why had it worked out this way? Penelope thought. Why had all this happened?

"Ready?" Kevin said.

Penelope nodded.

April walked around the car to the driver's side, and the two of them slid down the small embankment at the edge of the road. They heard the car engine start, heard the car drive away.

They looked at each other.

And started up the hill.

The other maenads were waiting for her when she arrived back at the meadow.

April staggered toward them across the littered ground, acting drunker than she felt. They knew. They'd somehow discovered her plan and were waiting to kill her. She wished she'd brought some type of weapon. The power was within her, coiled and ready to be unleashed, but it was in them as well, and they outnumbered her.

Where was Margeaux? Janine and Sheila and Margaret were in front of her, standing together, but Margeaux was nowhere in sight. She glanced surreptitiously to her left, to her right. No Margeaux. Sneaking up on her probably, planning to grab her from behind.

She looked warily from Janine's face to Sheila's to Margaret's.

Margaret smiled as she approached. "You did it," she said. "You brought her to Olympus."

April blinked.

They didn't know!

"Yes," she said, keeping her voice slow, slurred, calm.

"You're the only one who could've done it," Sheila said. "She doesn't trust us anymore."

Janine grinned lasciviously, rubbed her lactating breasts. "You deserve to be rewarded." She dropped to her knees, motioned April forward.

April took a deep breath, sidled next to her, felt the other woman's soft hands caress her thighs.

It was now or never.

She looked down at Janine, ran her hands through the kneeling woman's hair.

And twisted off her head.

The others were too stunned to react, and before! Janine's spurting body had hit the ground, April was al-f ready clawing at Sheila's breasts, ripping through skin,! ripping through flesh, ripping through muscle. Margaret 1 attacked her from behind, but she was already turning to] meet the onslaught, and the three of them went down in| a wailing, slashing frenzy of tooth and nail.

"How could you?" a voice screamed at her. "We're! your sisters!"

"He's my son!" she cried.

She'd thought it was Margaret screaming at her, but as | she rolled away from the body on top of her, spitting 1 blood, she realized that Margaret was dead. It was herii own voice she'd heard. She'd been screaming at herself, j She was growing weaker by the second, and she usedj all of the strength within her to sit up on her elbows.

There was a hole ripped through her abdomen.

In front of her, Sheila was coughing, still alive, but the coughs were weak, and one of them caught in her throat | and then she was silent.

April fell back onto the grass, looking upward at the| sky.

She closed her eyes, feeling the last of her strength ebb| out of her.

"Dion," she whispered.

The hike was tougher than she'd expected, the distance farther, and as the midday sun shone down on them and her head started to ache, she wished she'd saved the wine until after they'd reached their destination.

An hour later, as they began following a winding foot path up a fairly steep slope, the vegetation started to change. The trees thinned out, the underbrush grew scarce, and ordinary flora was replaced by wildly colored plants with strangely designed forms: magenta cacti with round umbrella-shaped leaves; Day-Glo yellow ground cover grown into intricate doily patterns; bright orange shrubs with arrowhead-tipped leaves.

"I guess we're on the right track," Kevin said.

Penelope nodded. She did not feel like talking. Whatever sense of humor she possessed had fled, and she thought of nothing but the grim task before them.

And Mother Felice.

More than anything, she was doing this for her mother.

Halfway up the hill, they heard screaming. Loud, short bursts of what sounded like unbearable agony. A few minutes later, they saw the source of the cries: Father Ibarra, the Catholic priest, was chained to a rock on the hillside. An oversize eagle was perched on the boulder next to him, pecking at his exposed abdomen in even intervals as the priest screamed in agony.

Kevin picked up a rock, threw it at the bird. It hit the boulder just below the eagle's talons. The bird did not flinch. Kevin glanced toward Penelope. "Should we try to help him?"

Penelope shook her head. "We can't help. It's the god's punishment.

There's nothing we can do."

They ignored the screams, continued on.

Twenty minutes later, they reached the top.

They emerged from between two mutated pink pair trees. Penelope walked slowly forward, wiping the swe from her face. This was Olympus? She had expect Greek buildings, green fields, flowers. Instead, there we bodies floating on the lake and, several yards down, cluster of rude huts made from plywood and dead branches.

Dionysus was nowhere in sight.

"What do we do now?" Kevin asked. "Wait for him show?"

"We find him," Penelope said.

They started walking along the shore of the lake towa the huts. The water was dirty, brown, polluted not oalji with bodies but with the wreckage of boats. The mi smelled of sewage.

Kevin gagged, plugged his nose.

The plants were no longer as brightly spectacular they had been on the climb up. They were still strange! but the colors seemed off, the bold designs closer to mutations than miracles. It was as if the closer they came the center of the wheel, the closer they got to the god, more things seemed as though they were beginning to unravel.

They trudged silently through the sludge until thej reached the small assemblage of makeshift structures! Here, bodies were not only floating in the water, the^ were buried in the mud, stiffened arms acting as post' supporting the bottoms of plywood walls. The stagna air seemed unusually heavy, the atmosphere forbidding*!

What had happened? It had not been like this whe she'd seen Dionysus before. Then the atmosphere been festive, seductively hedonistic, the opposite of dour oppressiveness. Was he spreading himself too Was he losing his power because of some inner strugj gle? Was he simply too drunk and dissipated to functie properly?

Or had he intended his new Olympus to look like this? No, she didn't think so. She walked forward slowl^f The huts were all small, six feet high at the most, the of storage sheds. One of them had a facade that looked like a smaller version of the Parthenon--the plywood and . tree branches metamorphosed into white marble--but the attempt was halfhearted, and there had been no similar effort made with the other structures.

Penelope stepped around a naked leg protruding from the mud and looked inside the open entrance of the first hut.

Mother Margeaux lay naked in the mud on the floor of the darkened shack.

Penelope stepped back, startled. But she did not look away, and she instantly moved forward again, stepping into the small structure.

Mother Margeaux lay curled in a modified fetal position, her face contorted in agony. Her body was bloated, nearly bursting, the filthy skin stretched taut over a fat face, overstuffed arms, enormous legs, grossly distended abdomen. She screamed, straightened, thrusting bloody hips into the air, then slumped back, the scream turning into manic laughter.

"Mother?" Penelope whispered.

Mother Margeaux stopped laughing. She looked up, smiled slyly, knowingly. "It's Zeus. He's growing inside me."

Penelope froze, cold washing over her. She knew instantly what had happened. She had not been willing to mate with Dionysus and give birth to the other gods--so her mother had offered herself to Dionysus instead.

But Penelope could tell by looking at her mother that it had not worked.

Mother Margeaux was pregnant, but she would not give birth to a god. She was not able to.

And the pregnancy was killing her.

Her mother laughed again, wildly. She reached behind her, into the shadows, and drew out a wineskin, holding it above her face and letting the red liquid squirt into her mouth. "God, what a cock he has!"

Penelope took another step into the room. Her head was buzzing, although she didn't know if it was from the wine or the stress. A ray of sunlight streamed in as she moved out of the doorframe, and for the first time she saw why her mother's thighs were bloody.

There was a huge hole torn between her legs.

She'd been split open.

Inside the hole something white and slimy moved| squirmed.

Kevin pushed past her, screwdriver raised, but Penelf ope held him back.

"Don't," she said.

"But she's--"

"She's dying."

"She's giving birth!"

Penelope's head was pounding. She smelled bloody tasted wine, and she wanted to fuck, wanted to kill. She imagined jumping on her mother, digging her nails her mother's skin, biting her flesh, ripping out her he She closed her eyes. No. She couldn't give in. She ha to save it for Dionysus.

"I had him before you did!" Mother Margeaux cackle "Even if you fuck him, I had him first! And I'm carrying his baby! I'm carrying his father! I'm carrying Zeus!"

Penelope held on to Kevin's arm, pulled him out of I hut. "Leave her."

"I'll kill her if you can't."

"She'll die anyway."

"She might not."

He was right, she realized. As uncaring as she want to be, as dispassionate as she'd been about April's pron ise to kill her mothers, as sick and empty as she felt about Mother Felice, she could not bear to see Mother Ma geaux die. As an idea, as a concept, she could deal witi it, but seeing her mother here, she felt her pain. She stij retained feelings for her, and that was why she was equ" vocating, rationalizing, stalling.

Silently, she let go of Kevin's arm.

She stared at the ground as he walked back into the ha part of her thought that her mother would rip him ap No matter how sick and hurt she was, she was a nad. He was a high school kid. But Penelope would go in there, would not help him. Whatever happened pened. It was out of her hands.

Then she heard her mother screaming. There was laughter this time, only pain, and there was another low sound, a deep, wet gurgling.

Zeus?

A moment later, a hand touched her shoulder, a bloody hand that felt warm and sticky on her skin, and she saw Kevin. His face was white, blanched. He had left his screwdriver behind.

She said nothing, he said nothing, but the two of them walked through the circle of huts, peeking inside the other structures, seeing only mud and blood and bones. The other structures were empty.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, tried to stop the pounding in her skull.

It hadn't worked.

That's what struck her most about it all. It hadn't worked. Dionysus had returned, but he wasn't Dionysus anymore. He was this ... half god. He was there, in that body, but Dion was too. The old gods might have planned to be resurrected, but they had not been able to see into the future and had not foreseen what this world would be like.

Their plan had failed.

And Holbrook and his fellow keepers of the flame had turned out to be little more than glorified pen pals, not the guardians of the earth they obviously aspired to be. They might have been the first to understand what was going on, but they'd had no idea how to stop it.

Wasn't that always the way of it, though? So-called experts planned for emergencies and convinced themselves and everyone else that they were prepared for any contingency, yet when something happened, they were inevitably shoved into the background by some nobody who rose to the occasion.

Like her.

Although she wasn't exactly a nobody. She was involved. A minor player perhaps, but a player nonetheless.

And now it was up to her to finish this off.

She opened her eyes, glanced around. Where was Dionysus? He didn't seem to be here. Had he gone back down to the valley? Her eyes searched the perimeter of the lake.

Nothing.

She moved forward, past the last hut.

And there he was.

He lay passed out on the ground, nearly hidden in trees that bordered the shoreline, his feet protruding tween two bushes that were half normal and half alter their transformation obviously halted in midstream.

She glanced over at Kevin. Could it be this easyf Could they really have gotten this lucky? After ever thing they'd been through, after all of the difficultie they'd faced, was the ending going to be this simple? Wa Dionysus going to be handed to them on a silver platterl It felt almost anticlimactic.

And then he stirred.

They stopped walking, stood unmoving. There was roar, a yawn, and the big feet shifted.

The god stood. He saw them.

He stared at Penelope. She stared back.

He was starting to fall apart, and it wrenched her hea to see him. The flesh on his expanded frame was beginning to wrinkle and droop;

capillaries had burst in bi| skin, leaving flowery tendrils behind. His face nov looked like neither Dion's nor Dionysus'. It was more an unsuccessful hybrid of the two, closer to the boy on moment, closer to the god the next.

Her reaction to him must have been obvious, becaus he backed a few steps into the trees, trying to hide in shadows. "The timing's off," he said, and though hi^ voice was loud, it was no longer as commanding as it ha been. There was something puzzled and vulnerable in it| "Everything is ... happening ... quicker than it should. f Penelope nodded.

"I was supposed to have a year."

She cleared her throat. "I know."

"The season's over already."

He was dying too. They were right. His coming thrown off and speeded up the seasons. But though was the cause of it, he was not in control of it. He was victim of it.

"I know why you're here," he told her. He glanced ward Kevin. "Both of you."

Kevin's voice was quiet, the certainty gone. "Dion?" |

"Not anymore." He reached into the tree next to bin withdrew an oversize wineskin. "Fuck, I need a drink." He held the pouch to his face, ripped it open. Wine gushed into his mouth, spilling down his chin and onto his chest. He sighed heavily, satisfied, and emerged from the trees, stepped onto the shore. He grimaced, concentrating, and there was a ripple in the air, a shimmering. His skin smoothed, his muscles flattened, the burst blood vessels faded.

He walked toward them. His penis was hard, and he was stroking himself, staring at Penelope's breasts. Despite everything, she wanted him. She knew she couldn't have him, knew she had to kill him, but she wanted to lay down before him and have him mount her. She wanted to be ripped open like Mother Margeaux. She wanted to be impregnated with his seed.

He smiled as if he knew what she was thinking. "Yes," he said.

She shook her head weakly. "No."

He smiled at Kevin. "Both of you. I'll love both of you."

Kevin spat. "I always had my doubts about you, Dion."

A frown passed over the god's face. And something else. A human expression. A look that seemed defiantly out of place on the oversize features. His lips started to speak--a retort--but then the impulse was squashed, the face smoothed out.

Penelope felt sick. Dion was still in there.

"We can break the cycle," the god said. "It's a new world. The old rules don't apply." He smiled lustily. "You can give birth to me, and I'll never die."

She shook her head.

"I'll fuck you--"

"It won't work."

He had reached them. He touched her, picked her up. She did not struggle. He held her, licked her breasts with his enormous tongue.

Despite her desire, it did not feel good, as she'd expected. It felt coarse and at the same time slimy.

That gave her the strength to twist out of his grasp.

He was surprised, as much by the attempt as by her strength, and she fell to the mud in front of him, quickly scrambling away.

"I'd give birth to the other gods, to Zeus and Hermes and ... whoever. I

can't give birth to you."

"Yes, you can," he said excitedly. "I can do it."

"I won't do it."

"You'll have to do it." His face was a frightening amalgam of rage and resolve and lust. "I'll make you do it."

Dionysus, she understood, was like a child. A spoiled, petulant child.

His needs were simple, his actions obvious. There was no subtlety to his behavior. He was easily predictable.

Holbrook had been right. These creatures weren't gods. Monsters, maybe.

But not gods.

But had his power waned enough for her to fight him? She didn't think so.

She wished she'd drunk the entire bottle of wine. The maenads were supposed to tear apart Dionysus. As a strong maenad against a weak god, she might have had a chance.

Could she have enlisted the help of her mothers?

Would they have done it on their own anyway?

Either way, it was too late to do anything about it. Hindsight was always 20/20, and though she'd do things differently if she'd known then what she knew now, at this point she could only move forward.

She closed her eyes, let herself go, letting rage fill her. She held nothing back, took off all of the emotional restraints she'd been carefully trying to maintain. She was a maenad. It was about time she started acting like one.

She leaped at his crotch.

She acted instinctively, her rational mind now at the mercy of the wildness within her. Her nails touched flesh, and she dug in, clawing crazily, feeling the invigorating heat of blood, hearing the delicious sounds of pain. She squeezed a giant testicle with both hands, and then she was thrown by an astonishing bolt of power that threw her back into one of the huts. She lay there stunned as the mud surrounding her melted and blackened into glass.

Dionysus rushed her. There was lust in his eyes, an unfathomable anger in his countenance. And then ... it was gone.

He reached her, picked her up, and his touch was surprisingly gentle.

"Are you all right?" he asked. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

His voice was Dion's.

She started crying. It was too much. She didn't know what to do, she didn't know how to react, she didn't know ... anything. One moment he was letting her go, the next moment he was trying to kill her. She knew Dionysus was a divided, schizophrenic god--the result of the wine--but she hadn't realized that it would throw her so off balance.

No, it wasn't anything to do with Dionysus. It was Dion. If this had been anyone else, she wouldn't be so confused. She wouldn't feel so ...

conflicted.

He kissed her gently on the top of the head. "I love you," he said.

She blinked away the tears. "I love you too," she admitted.

He turned his head. "I'm sorry!" he called to Kevin.

She looked over and saw that Kevin that been thrown into the water of the lake and was furiously paddling between two dead bodies, trying to reach the shore.

They'd gotten a break. Anger, fear, love--something had allowed Dion to maintain control of the god's form for a lot longer than ever before.

She knew it could disappear at any second, so she quickly took his huge face in her hands and said, "I have to kill you."

"I know." He looked into her eyes, and she saw an echo of his old self.

She recognized the way he blinked his eyes, the way his eyebrows moved.

She started to cry again, and he used a finger to wipe her tears. "I was going to ask you to kill me. I won't fight."

There was so much she wanted to ask, so much she wanted to say, but there was no time. His tentative hold could slip at any second, and then they'd be dead.

"Your mother loves you too," she said.

And she tore him apart.

As promised, he did not put up a fight She let loose, and even she was shocked by the power within her, by the extent of the wildness, by the violence of which she was capable. Like a cartoon character, like a whirlwind, she burrowed into him, through him, rending flesh, breaking bone, slashing organs. She kept moving--kicking, clawing, grabbing, digging--and she was screaming and crying at the same time, the saltiness of his blood mingling with the saltiness of her own tears, and she continued on, unable to stop, tearing apart not Dion but the thing that had stolen Dion, the thing that had taken him from her.

She collapsed, exhausted. Her vocal cords were hurt from screaming, but the tears were still streaming down her blood-soaked face. There was nothing left of Dionysus. There was no head, no hand, no foot, no finger. Nothing even remotely recognizable. There were only bits of bone and flesh, scattered over an amazingly long section of shore. And blood.

A lot of blood.

Kevin stood staring at her, still in the water. There was fear on his face, fear of her, and though she wanted to reassure him that everything was okay, everything was all right, she did not.

She had killed Dion.

She had loved him.

And she had killed him.

Already she felt different. Tired. She wondered what was happening down in the valley. Were the people still drinking, still partying, still celebrating? Or with the god's influence gone, were they shaking their heads and coming to, as if awakening from a bad dream, wondering where they were and what had happened? She looked up. The trees and bushes had not changed back. The ones he had transformed were still in the shapes he had made them.

What had happened to the satyrs and the centaurs and the nymphs?

God, she felt tired. She leaned back, her head resting on soft, cooling flesh.

Kevin walked over, stood next to her. He looked down at her form, but there was nothing sexual in his gaze, only 1 worry. She realized that she did not feel anything sexual ^ either.

Not even when she thought of Dion.

"What's to stop him from coming back?" Kevin asked finally.

"There are no maenads left. Only me."

"But he's a cyclical god, right? He dies each year and is reborn?"

"He never brought the others back. There's no one to bring him back. He was a god of flesh, and his flesh is no more."

"That's all then? That's it?"

She nodded tiredly. "Yeah," she said. "I guess it is."

She lay there for a while, Kevin still standing next to her. She closed her eyes for a few seconds--she thought. But when she opened them, it was dark, it was night. Kevin was still standing above her, watching her with concern.

She sat up, her head thumping.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yeah," she said, and surprisingly, she did feel better. "I

guess I am." She stood, walked slowly over to the edge of the lake, where she stripped off her pants. She looked at Kevin, smiled, then jumped into the cold, refreshing water to wash off the blood.

Both the state and federal government stuck by their radioactive-waste story, sending in hundreds of troops and agents dressed in white contamination suits, quarantining the area and debriefing the residents with an elaborate series of physical tests and psychological examinations that Penelope assumed were supposed to brainwash the muddled, hungover citizens into thinking that what had happened had not happened.

She and Kevin knew better.

They were close after that, nearly inseparable. Kevin's parents survived and he went back to live with them. Since lier mothers were all dead and she was too old to be adopted or become a ward of the state, she had herself declared an emancipated teenager by the court and moved into a small apartment near school. She received an allowance from her mothers'

estate, although the amount of;; the estate and its assets were still being determined by lawyers and accountants and she would probably not inherit what was left of the winery or its proceeds for several years.

Somewhere toward the end of the school year, she and| Kevin officially became a couple. He moved in with her* after graduation, but that did not last the summer, and she;; went off alone to Berkeley in. the fall.

They'd shared a lot, but perhaps they'd shared too much. Seeing each other, they were constantly reminded of what had happened, and j the wounds that should have healed into scars seemed to; be perpetually kept open.

And Dion was always between them.

But if the experience they'd gone through had tornl them apart, it also permanently linked them together Nol one else had gone through what they had and that was a bond that could not be broken. Two years later, after living lives apart, after adjusting to the post-Dionysus world in their own ways, they met again.

Penelope had transferred to UCLA, and Kevin called her up, asking if they could get together.

She agreed.

Two years later, they were married.

A year later, she became pregnant.

Penelope sat in the window seat of what was going to be the baby's room and stared out the glass at the children playing in the street. She'd recently gotten her mothers' money, and they both had good jobs, so the baby would not be a financial hardship. And, she supposed, she was happy. Kevin was a good husband, and she loved him.

But ... But sometimes she wondered what her life would have been like if Dion had lived, if she had married him and was now carrying his baby.

She loved Kevin.

But she'd trade him for Dion in a second.

Why couldn't it have been the other way around?

Downstairs, she heard the front door open, heard Kevin toss the mail onto the hall tree. "I'm home!" he announced.

"Up here!" she called.

She waited for him, smiled as he entered the room. He hurried across the carpet toward her. "How are you today?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Fine."

He sat down on the window seat next to her, untied his tie. He looked at the box of sesame-cheese crackers and the empty container of yogurt by her feet. "Cravings again?"

She laughed. "Yeah."

He put a hand on her distended stomach. "Is there anything else I can get you? Pickles and ice cream? Anchovies and orange juice?"

She started to say something, then looked away, shaking her head. "No."

"Come on."

END.