'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
