“But you can’t all be my mother.”
“No,” Mother Felice admitted. “I’m your real mother. I carried you. I
gave birth to you.”
“I knew it—”
“But you have the genes of all of us. You’re a maenad too. You might look human, you might act human, but you’re not.”
“I am!”
Mother Felice smiled slyly. “You like blood, don’t you? You like the smell of it, the way it makes you feel. You like wine. When we gave you that taste, you wanted more …”
It was true and she knew it was true, but she shook her head anyway.
They had reached the altar, and the smell of the blood and the wine was intoxicating. At her feet, in front of the eviscerated bodies of the policemen, she saw the bones.
Mother Sheila saw the direction of her gaze. She laughed drunkenly. “Old parties,” she said. “Old celebrations.”
The fear was returning. “Who were they?”
Mother Felice shrugged. “Strangers. Drifters, mostly. There used to be a lot more coming through than there are today. Lonely, dirty, hungry young men looking for work or a handout or both. We tried not to celebrate with locals.”
“But it wasn’t always under our control,” Mother Janine chimed in. She smiled. “When the spirit gets a’ hold of you …”
“They’re not all people,” Mother Felice said. “There weren’t always people in the celebrations. Sometimes there were dogs or cats. Or wild animals.”
“Wild animals are the best,” Mother Janine said. “They put up a good fight.”
Penelope shrugged off Mother Felice’s hand. She wanted to punch her right now, punch her hard in the gut and shove her to the ground. Even though she was her favorite mother, Penelope hated her at this moment.
She hated all of them. But fighting would not work. That was not the way to go. She might have the element of surprise on her side, might actually be able to knock her mother down, but she was still no match for Mother Janine. And all of her other mothers would be on her in a second.
No, she had to play this cool, try to find some other way out of this.
She caught Dion’s eye. She saw fear there, and horror, but also …
what? Complicity? That made no sense. Dion wasn’t the reincarnation of a god. She didn’t believe her mothers’ story But she did.
Yes, she realized, she did. She believed it. She bought it all.
And the fresh blood on Dion’s erection did look pretty damn enticing.
She turned forcefully away, was grabbed by Mother Sheila. “We need you.”
“You’re one of us,” Mother Felice said. “We want you to join us.”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Run!” Dion yelled.
Mother Janine looked up from Dion’s feet. “We want you to fuck him.”
Penelope’s. refusal died in her throat. What? What was this? What were they asking? She glanced from one mother to another, saw no sign that any of them thought this even the slightest bit unusual, saw only support and encouragement.
“We can bring Him back,” Mother Felice said. “But only you can bring back the others. He must mate with you.”
“Your union will bring forth gods,” Mother Margeaux announced.
“Fuck him!” Mother Sheila ordered.
Penelope started crying, unable to stop herself. “No.”
Mother Janine grinned. “Look how big his cock is. Don’t you want to feel it inside you?
She did, and they knew she did, and that was the worst part of it all.
She was what they were, and they knew it..
Maenads.
“No!” she shouted.
“No!” Dion echoed. But when she looked at him, she saw a lust in his face that mirrored her own.
She turned toward her real mother, Mother Felice. “You can’t force me to do what you want.”
“No, it’s your decision,” Mother Felice admitted, and there was a softness in her voice, an understanding that wasn’t there in the words or tones of the rest of her mothers. “You don’t have to go through with it if you don’t want to. There are others waiting for the return of Zeus and Artemis and Aphrodite and the others, but we don’t care if they come back or not. We have our god. So it’s up to you. Whatever you want to do, we’ll stand by you.”
Penelope looked over at Mother Margeaux for confirmation. Mother Margeaux nodded.
“You’ll want to when you see Him,” Mother Margaret promised.
“We’ll all want to,” Mother Sheila said, and the others laughed.
There was an edge to the laughter that Penelope did not like, that frightened her. She was one of them, yet she was not one of them, and she did not know what was going to happen, how things were going to turn out.
She did not know what she was going to do, and that’s what frightened her most of all. Intellectually, she still thought that the best thing was to run and get help, go to the police. Her mothers would let her go.
They would not kill her, would probably not even try to stop her.
But she could not do it. She could not renounce her family, no matter what they had done. And she could not leave Dion here with them alone. Besides, chances werdl that even if she did try to get help, she wouldn’t be bacfcl in time to save him. She wouldn’t be back before he* changed.
Before he changed.
It was going to happen. She didn’t just believe it, she knew it.
They were chanting now, repeating what sounded like the words of a ritual in a language she could not understand. Bottles of wine had appeared from somewhere to supplement the flagons and were being passed indiscriminately from one mother to another. Mother Margaret stumbled over the eviscerated body of one of the policemen, fell to her knees, stood up laughing. Dion, still being held, twisted in the arms of Mother Janine and Mother Margaret as if he were in pain.
Mother Felice took a swig from one of the bottles and handed it to Penelope. The wine smelled good, but Penelope threw the bottle behind her, into the meadow, where it landed on the grass, its contents spilling onto the ground.
“Hey,” her mother said. “What’d you do that for?” Her speech was becoming slurred, and she looked at Penelope with a hostility that made Penelope realize that maybe she wasn’t as safe from her mothers as she’d originally thought.
She backed up, away from the altar, and glanced quickly around the meadow to determine which way she should run if it came down to that.
It was then that she noticed the others.
Dion still wasn’t sure what was going on.
He was on top of the altar. He knew that. And he was naked. And Penelope’s mothers were holding his arms and legs and … doing stuff to him. He tried to call out to Penelope, but his head was forced back and one mother held his mouth open with strong, sinewy fingers while another poured wine down his throat. He felt the hands of the others anointing his body with the blood. He gulped down the sweet, intoxicating liquid, swallowing it so he could breathe. Fingers grasped his penis, stroked it, and against his will he felt himself growing, becoming hard. From somewhere he heard the sound of Penelope yelling.
His head was let go, and he opened his eyes, looked down. His erection was huge, quivering, and covered with blood.
He wished he could shove it in Penelope’s mouth and down her throat to gag her and stop all that infernal racket.
No, he didn’t.
Yes, he did.
He turned his head around and looked into the trees at the carved god with his face.
What the hell was happening?
More wine was poured into his mouth. That was one thing that was happening: they were trying to get him drunk. He tried to spit out the wine, but it only dribbled down his chin.
God, it tasted good.
They were chanting, the mothers, singing, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. The words were all Greek to him. He giggled. Greek to him. Oh, God, he was already getting drunk. He
’d never be able td| get out of here if he didn’t concentrate on keeping ” wits about him and trying to stay sober His mouth was jerked open again, more wine poured down his throat He gagged, tried to swallow, almost choked, but the warm liquid went down smoothly and he was filled with a pleasant lightness.
He understood some of die words the mothers were! saying now. Not all of them, but some of them. They were foreign, but he’d heard them before somewhere. In dreams, perhaps.
He realized that they were praying.
To him.
This wasn’t right. This shouldn’t be happening. He struggled against the mothers’ hold, but they were stronger than he was, their fingers and wrists like iron.
They gave him more wine.
He looked out across the meadow. Others were gathering, appearing at the periphery of the field, emerging from between the bushes and the trees.
They were pale, slack-jawed, and nearly all appeared to be drunk. They were walking like remote-controlled zombies, men and women, some with flashlights, some with knives, some with dead cats or dogs, some only with bottles of liquor.
They saw him, waved to him, called to him.
He was communicating with these people, he realized, acting like some sort of homing beacon. He saw in his mind’s eye all of the intoxicated men and women of the valley suddenly cocking their heads to hear an invisible sound, like pod people in a monster movie, suddenly dropping what they were doing to come here, to this meadow, to him.
The mothers let go of him, but he couldn’t move. He was like a statue, frozen in place. They’d done something to him, put some sort of spell on him, trapped him here in his body. Mother Janine was still rubbing blood on his toes, but he couldn’t feel it. He wanted to kick her, to lash out and smash her face in with his foot, but he was unable to move. Tears of rage and frustration slid down his immobile face.
He tried to scream, but no sound would come out He saw his own mother off to the left. She was naked and obviously wasted, rubbing sensuously against Penelope’s Mother Margaret. He wanted to call out to her, to run to her, but he could do neither, and he watched as she stared at him, glassy-eyed, then turned away.
From somewhere deep within him came a rumbling, a low, vibrating seismic sound that echoed in his brain and rose to a roar, he was not sure if it was only within him or could be heard outside as well, but it was the loudest thing he had ever heard, and it overpowered his senses and pushed everything else aside.
The sound became words. His words and yet not his words. His thoughts and yet not his thoughts. An announcement of triumph and an admission of defeat:
I AM HERE
April could feel the desire building, the need increasir_
She was not drunk, but she soon would be, and already! she could smell the blood. It hung thick in the air, lent as the wine, and she was starting to get antsy, ious, wanting only for events to accelerate so she couldff satisfy her lust.
Margaret gave her a long kiss on the mouth, pressing^ her body against April’s, and April felt the delicious softness of touching nipples, the wiry scratchiness of rubbed j pubic hair. She could sense Margaret’s blood pulsing just| below her skin, and she wanted to rip (hat skin open and’-1 let the blood wash over her.
Margaret pulled away, smiling. “Almost time.”
April looked toward the altar, toward where the otherf women were smearing the fat of the policemen on the! body of her son, and her excitement faded. Dion was| struggling against the hard hands that held him, grunting with exertion and pain.
She felt queasy and a little sick. Part of her, the deep part that had always guided her actions but of which she had only recently been made aware, longed for the con- . elusion of the ritual, craved the freedom that the transformation would bring. But another part of her, an equally strong part, the part that had borne and raised and cared for her son, wanted only for Dion to escape.
Dion.
Her son.
She knew now that she had become pregnant, had deliberately tried to get pregnant, so that this could occur. She had had a child specifically to bring about His return, and on some level she had always known that. But she had also loved her son, loved him as a mother, any mother, would. She had wanted him to grow up and go to college, fall in love and marry, be successful. The normal things.
Dion stiffened, froze.
“No!” she cried. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, and she angrily wiped them away.
Wine always made her so sentimental.
The meadow was becoming crowded. People were arriving by the carload, by the van load, running, staggering, crawling across the grass toward the altar. She too heard the voice within her son—His voice—calling out to her, and she understood why everyone was here, but she could not help wishing that she and Dion were alone, that she could help him through this, explain to him what was happening.
She looked over at him, saw the pain in his eyes, looked away.
She took another long drink of wine from the bottle, felt a hand on her buttocks. She turned, saw Margaret.
“It is time,” Margaret said. “He is here.”
She saw him change.
It was the most horrifying thing she had ever witnessed, and Penelope wanted to run, wanted to turn and flee, but she was rooted to the spot, unable even to look away, wishing with all her might that it would stop, reverse, knowing that it would not.
And he started to grow.
It began with his penis, his erection expanding immediately to more than twice its natural length, the rest of his body a step behind that accelerated pace, his arms, legs, torso, and head only belatedly catching up to the first conspicuous spurt of growth. The skin didn’t rip as he grew. It should have. She had touched his skin, had felt it, had rubbed it, and it was normal, average, everyday human skin. But now it was stretching impossibly, like rub^ her , expanding with the elongating bones, the developing muscles.
There was no sound accompanying the change. Dion’s mouth was open in a scream, but his voice was silent and the only noise in the meadow was the chanting of her mothers and the drunken babbling and overloud footfalls of the arriving inebriates.
It was a terrifying thing to see, and Penelope felt the down on her arms bristle as she watched his head flop unnaturally back and forth on his strangely extended neck, watched his metamorphosing hands twitch as spurts of growth shot through diem, watched his legs buckle and dance as biologically created rhythms contorted them.
It was frightening, but the most frightening thing of all was the change in his face. It was not his features exactly, though they grew and broadened in such a way that the elements of his appearance, while remaining recognizably his, distorted the original to such an extent that he looked like a different person entirely. No, it was his expression, the way that his screaming mouth straightened into a lustful grin, the way his panicked gaze grew blank, then shifted suddenly into slyness. It was power and a knowledge of that power that settled over him, settled into him. Dion, if he was still extant within that form, was squashed down, and she watched in fear and heart-wrenching agony as he shrunk and shriveled and disappeared, lost within the ever expanding body.
He was now seven feet tall.
Now eight.
Now ten.
There was a ripple in the air, a solid wave of intensified humidity that passed over her and through her, a visibly shimmering undulation that for a second distorted not only the space directly before her, but the ground, the trees, the moon, the stars.
And he spoke: “/ AM HERE.”
The words rumbled through the woods, echoed across the hillsides, low and clear and loud enough to be heard even in the center of town. Around her, the gathered people dropped to their knees, weeping and laughing, screaming and praying. Her mothers had taken up spears and were dancing around the altar, around Dion, chanting madly.
Dion?
No, he wasn’t Dion anymore.
With one quick, frighteningly well-coordinated lunge, he leap
t from the altar and grabbed Mother Margeaux around the waist. He spun her around, then took her bottle, downed it in a single swallow, and tossed both her and the bottle aside. Mother Janine knelt before him, buttocks up, baring herself in orgiastic ecstasy, and he impaled her with his enormous erection. The look of expectant lust on her face turned to pain as he entered her, and she screamed hi agony, trying to get away, but he grabbed a handful of her hair, jerked her head back, and thrust.
Penelope felt sickened.
Things were turning ugly, getting out of control. A do^ bounded across the meadow, and three women she did not’! recognize pounced on it, tearing at its face and fur with their fingernails. To her left, a boy from her math class hit an old lady in the face, then kicked her in the stomach as she slumped to the ground before him.
Everywhere were bottles of wine.
Daneam wine.
Where had they gotten it? she wondered. Where had it come from?
It was time to get the hell out of here. Family or no family, mothers or no mothers, she did not belong here. Dion had metamorphosed into a monster, her mothers were drunk and completely crazy, and the only thing she could do was run, escape, try to save herself before something happened to her.
Mother Janine’s screech was earsplitting as Dion Dionysus —pulled out, still spurting. In two amazingly long strides he reached another woman, a younger woman, and picked her up and ripped off her top and laughingly kissed her oversize breasts.
Suddenly Penelope was grabbed from behind. She felt the tip of a stiff erection press against her buttocks and whirled to see Dr. Jones, her old pediatrician, standing there with his pants around his ankles, a look of drunken lust in his eyes. She punched him hard in the stomach and ran, trying to get through the rapidly growing crowd. Many of the men were pulling down their pants, she saw, many of the women taking off their skirts. Still more were ripping off one another’s clothes:
snapping bras, tearing panties, yanking briefs.
She had to get out of here. She had to get back to the house.
She pushed through a group of teenagers, skirted a crowd of biker-looking men. From behind her, she heard Dion yell. It was a bellow of lust and triumph, but buried within it was a sound of hurt, confused frustration. She heard the pain in that cry, and it wrenched at her insides, caused her vision to be blurred by tears, but she kept running, hitting the line of trees and continuing on. Vaguely, filtered through leaves and branches off to her right, she saw a line of cars on the road, their headlights visible through the foliage and distance.
Dominion Page 25
