'Just tell him ... Hell, just tell him I love him.' She took a deep breath, wiped her nose and eyes. She held out her right hand, palm up. 'Can I just have the fucking keys?'
Penelope nodded, handing over the key ring.
April gestured toward the bottle Penelope held in her hand. 'You going to drink that or what? I could sure use it if you're not.'
'We'll split it.'
They had not thought to bring a corkscrew, but Dion's mom expertly uncorked the bottle with one long-nailed finger and downed half the bottle in a single gulp before passing the bottle to Penelope. She closed her eyes, savoring the flavor. 'That helps.'
Penelope hefted the bottle in her hands, met Kevin's worried gaze, then tilted it to her lips, drinking. The wine was sweet and smooth, filling her instantly with a comfortable warmth.
And a growing heat.
She finished the wine in four long swallows, and she tossed the bottle against the roadblock, where it smashed against the logs. She felt good all of a sudden, energized, filled with an unfamiliar euphoria, and she wondered what it would be like to fuck Kevin and April at the same time, to sit on Kevin's No.
She closed her eyes, reined herself in.
'Are you all right?' Kevin asked.
She nodded, eyes still closed. Gradually she opened them. It was going to be hard, but she had to maintain control, had to keep herself from losing it.
At least until they found Dionysus.
Then she'd let herself go.
'I'm fine,' she said. 'I think we'd better get going.'
April moved forward, grabbed Penelope's shoulders, looked into her eyes, and Penelope felt a connection. An understanding, a sharing, passed between them. 'Hold on to it until you need it,' April said softly. 'Use it, don't let it use you.'
Penelope nodded.
April smiled. 'If I can do it, you can do it.' And Penelope realized for the first time what an effort it had been for Dion's mother to keep herself under control for this long, to force her mind to override her emotions.
'Good luck,' Penelope said.
It was an odd wish, hoping the woman would successfully kill her mothers, but April's response was the same: 'Good luck to you.'
She was wishing them success in killing her son.
Why had it worked out this way? Penelope thought. Why had all this happened?
'Ready?' Kevin said.
Penelope nodded.
April walked around the car to the driver's side, and the two of them slid down the small embankment at the edge of the road. They heard the car engine start, heard the car drive away.
They looked at each other.
And started up the hill.
The other maenads were waiting for her when she arrived back at the meadow.
April staggered toward them across the littered ground, acting drunker than she felt. They knew. They'd somehow discovered her plan and were waiting to kill her. She wished she'd brought some type of weapon. The power was within her, coiled and ready to be unleashed, but it was in them as well, and they outnumbered her.
Where was Margeaux? Janine and Sheila and Margaret were in front of her, standing together, but Margeaux was nowhere in sight. She glanced surreptitiously to her left, to her right. No Margeaux. Sneaking up on her probably, planning to grab her from behind.
She looked warily from Janine's face to Sheila's to Margaret's.
Margaret smiled as she approached. 'You did it,' she said. 'You brought her to Olympus.'
April blinked.
They didn't know!
'Yes,' she said, keeping her voice slow, slurred, calm.
'You're the only one who could've done it,' Sheila said. 'She doesn't trust us anymore.'
Janine grinned lasciviously, rubbed her lactating breasts. 'You deserve to be rewarded.' She dropped to her knees, motioned April forward.
April took a deep breath, sidled next to her, felt the other woman's soft hands caress her thighs.
It was now or never.
She looked down at Janine, ran her hands through the kneeling woman's hair.
And twisted off her head.
The others were too stunned to react, and before! Janine's spurting body had hit the ground, April was al-f ready clawing at Sheila's breasts, ripping through skin,! ripping through flesh, ripping through muscle. Margaret 1 attacked her from behind, but she was already turning to] meet the onslaught, and the three of them went down in| a wailing, slashing frenzy of tooth and nail.
'How could you?' a voice screamed at her. 'We're! your sisters!'
'He's my son!' she cried.
She'd thought it was Margaret screaming at her, but as | she rolled away from the body on top of her, spitting 1 blood, she realized that Margaret was dead. It was herii own voice she'd heard. She'd been screaming at herself, j She was growing weaker by the second, and she usedj all of the strength within her to sit up on her elbows.
There was a hole ripped through her abdomen.
In front of her, Sheila was coughing, still alive, but the coughs were weak, and one of them caught in her throat | and then she was silent.
April fell back onto the grass, looking upward at the| sky.
She closed her eyes, feeling the last of her strength ebb| out of her.
'Dion,' she whispered.
The hike was tougher than she'd expected, the distance farther, and as the midday sun shone down on them and her head started to ache, she wished she'd saved the wine until after they'd reached their destination.
An hour later, as they began following a winding foot path up a fairly steep slope, the vegetation started to change. The trees thinned out, the underbrush grew scarce, and ordinary flora was replaced by wildly colored plants with strangely designed forms: magenta cacti with round umbrella-shaped leaves; Day-Glo yellow ground cover grown into intricate doily patterns; bright orange shrubs with arrowhead-tipped leaves.
'I guess we're on the right track,' Kevin said.
Penelope nodded. She did not feel like talking. Whatever sense of humor she possessed had fled, and she thought of nothing but the grim task before them.
And Mother Felice.
More than anything, she was doing this for her mother.
Halfway up the hill, they heard screaming. Loud, short bursts of what sounded like unbearable agony. A few minutes later, they saw the source of the cries: Father Ibarra, the Catholic priest, was chained to a rock on the hillside. An oversize eagle was perched on the boulder next to him, pecking at his exposed abdomen in even intervals as the priest screamed in agony.
Kevin picked up a rock, threw it at the bird. It hit the boulder just below the eagle's talons. The bird did not flinch. Kevin glanced toward Penelope. 'Should we try to help him?'
Penelope shook her head. 'We can't help. It's the god's punishment.
There's nothing we can do.'
They ignored the screams, continued on.
Twenty minutes later, they reached the top.
They emerged from between two mutated pink pair trees. Penelope walked slowly forward, wiping the swe from her face. This was Olympus? She had expect Greek buildings, green fields, flowers. Instead, there we bodies floating on the lake and, several yards down, cluster of rude huts made from plywood and dead branches.
