Bentley Little - Dominion

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.