Bentley Little - Dominion

"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?"