DOMINION by Bentley Little (interesting books to read .TXT) 📗

“Why?” Kevin asked.

“He was always something of an outcast on Olympus. The other gods loved order and symmetry. Dionysus loved chaos. He might not be so willing to bring the others back.” He typed something on his keyboard. “Dion’s mother is a maenad too, right?”

Penelope nodded.

“Same parents as your mothers?”

“Same father. Different mothers.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Father. That’s new. You wouldn’t happen to know this name, would you?”

“My mother told me, but I… I can’t remember.”

“Think.”

“She said…” Penelope thought for a moment. “Harris,” she said finally. “Harris. Son of Elsmere. Whatever that means.”

“Harris,” Holbrook repeated, typing. “Elsmere.” He pushed a series of keys, then leaned back to wait. There was a moment of clicking and humming before a full page of text appeared on the screen. “Harris Naxos,” he read, scanning the display. “He was found murdered in his town house in New York, torn apart, along with the bodies of four women who’d been drowned in his basement. The women had been chained up and had all recently given birth, although none of the infants were found. Harris’ mother, Elsmere, was a known maenad. Emigrated from Greece. We knew about her, apparently, but since she’d given birth to a son, not a daughter, we concentrated our efforts at that time on keeping track of the maenad Ariadne and her children in Athens.”

Holbrook looked up from the screen. “If we’d known all this then, we could have killed Harris. And the babies too.”

Kevin was chilled. He glanced at Penelope. Her face was pale. “You would have killed the babies?”

“Maenads, as we have always advocated, need to be eradicated. Only then will the threat of the gods’ return be ended. We haven’t always been able to manage it, of course, but when we can…” His attention returned to the screen. “We got Ariadne. And her children when they grew up.”

“What about me?” Penelope demanded angrily. “Do I need to be ‘eradicated’ too?” She grabbed the back of his chair, swung it around until he was facing her.

He shook his head. “Of course not. You’re more us than them. And as long as you don’t procreate—”

She backed away from him.

“No, no. I’m not saying that we would automatically have to kill your child—”

“Shut up,” Kevin told him. “Just shut your fucking mouth.” He put an arm around Penelope, drew her close to him. Her body was stiff, her muscles tense, but she allowed herself to be maneuvered.

They were silent for a while, Holbrook reading the information on his computer screen, Kevin holding Penelope.

“So what about your buddies?” Kevin asked. “Are they flying in to help us?”

“No.”

“No? I thought you said—”

“They don’t know anything’s wrong. I didn’t have time to warn them before communications were cut off. They may figure it out on their own, but it might take a while.” He paused. “It might be too late then.”

“Are there any Ovidians in Napa?” Kevin asked. “You guys are spread out all over the world, but is there anybody here in the valley besides you?”

“Of course. This is one of the locations we’ve been monitoring.”

“Then what are we doing here? Get off your lazy ass and find them.”

“They’re dead.”

“How do you know?”

“We were supposed to meet here if anything happened. It’s been two days. No one’s showed.”

“They might’ve—”

“They’re dead.”

The flat certainty of the statement cut off Kevin in mid-sentence, hanging heavily in the air between them.

“So what’s your plan?” Kevin asked finally. “What are we going to do now? How are we going to get out of this?”

“We’ll have to think of something.”

“You’ll have to think of something?” Penelope said, her voice rising.

Kevin glared at him. “You mean to tell me that your little group’s been around for centuries and your sole purpose is to put a stop to this—and you never came up with a plan?”

“We have ideas—”

“Ideas? Shit! You should have plan A, B, C, D, all the way to fucking Z! You’ve certainly had enough time to think about it. Did you think that just knowing it was going to happen was enough? You’d just wing it from there?”

Holbrook was not on the defensive. “Actually, we had planned to prevent the resurrection from occurring.”

“Well, you totally failed at that. Did you think that asking Penelope for a bottle of wine was an attempt to stop it?”

“You’re right. I should’ve killed her mothers years ago, when I first found out.”

Penelope sucked in her breath.

“I should have killed Dion the first day of class.”

Penelope whirled around, strode out of the basement, stomped up the stairs. Kevin hurried after her, only a second or two behind.

Downstairs, at his desk, Holbrook laughed.

The two of them stopped in the living room, unsure of where to go or what to do.

“I always knew Holbrook was an asshole,” Kevin said. “But I never knew he was so…”

“Weird?” Penelope said.

“Crazy.”

She nodded. “You don’t think about what teachers are like in their real lives, what they do at home, on the weekends, with their families.”

Kevin gestured back toward the basement. “Now we know.”

Penelope shivered. “I think we should leave. I think we’d be better off on our own.”

Kevin nodded toward the shotgun, still leaning against the wall next to the door. “He’s better armed than we are.”

“That won’t mean shit.”

“Then what do you suggest we do?”

“I don’t know.”

“He knows more than we do,” Kevin said. “Maybe he can figure something out.”

Penelope snorted. “Yeah.”

“The basement’s a good hiding place.”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand…”

“What don’t I understand?” Kevin said.

She sighed. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I think we should stay here. At least for now. Until we figure out a plan. It’s better than being out there on the streets.”

Penelope sat down heavily on the couch. “Whatever,” she said.

The earth rumbled beneath their feet, a low, sustained vibration that was more than a sonic boom but less than an earthquake. Downstairs, Holbrook cried out as something crashed.

“What was that?” Kevin asked, frightened.

“Power.” Penelope’s mouth was set in a thin, grim line. “The power of the gods.”

8

He dreamed of Penelope.

They