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 differe
nt, 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
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