They stopped walking, stood unmoving. There was roar, a yawn, and the big feet shifted.
The god stood. He saw them.
He stared at Penelope. She stared back.
He was starting to fall apart, and it wrenched her hea to see him. The flesh on his expanded frame was beginning to wrinkle and droop;
capillaries had burst in bi| skin, leaving flowery tendrils behind. His face nov looked like neither Dion's nor Dionysus'. It was more an unsuccessful hybrid of the two, closer to the boy on moment, closer to the god the next.
Her reaction to him must have been obvious, becaus he backed a few steps into the trees, trying to hide in shadows. "The timing's off," he said, and though hi^ voice was loud, it was no longer as commanding as it ha been. There was something puzzled and vulnerable in it| "Everything is ... happening ... quicker than it should. f Penelope nodded.
"I was supposed to have a year."
She cleared her throat. "I know."
"The season's over already."
He was dying too. They were right. His coming thrown off and speeded up the seasons. But though was the cause of it, he was not in control of it. He was victim of it.
"I know why you're here," he told her. He glanced ward Kevin. "Both of you."
Kevin's voice was quiet, the certainty gone. "Dion?" |
"Not anymore." He reached into the tree next to bin withdrew an oversize wineskin. "Fuck, I need a drink." He held the pouch to his face, ripped it open. Wine gushed into his mouth, spilling down his chin and onto his chest. He sighed heavily, satisfied, and emerged from the trees, stepped onto the shore. He grimaced, concentrating, and there was a ripple in the air, a shimmering. His skin smoothed, his muscles flattened, the burst blood vessels faded.
He walked toward them. His penis was hard, and he was stroking himself, staring at Penelope's breasts. Despite everything, she wanted him. She knew she couldn't have him, knew she had to kill him, but she wanted to lay down before him and have him mount her. She wanted to be ripped open like Mother Margeaux. She wanted to be impregnated with his seed.
He smiled as if he knew what she was thinking. "Yes," he said.
She shook her head weakly. "No."
He smiled at Kevin. "Both of you. I'll love both of you."
Kevin spat. "I always had my doubts about you, Dion."
A frown passed over the god's face. And something else. A human expression. A look that seemed defiantly out of place on the oversize features. His lips started to speak--a retort--but then the impulse was squashed, the face smoothed out.
Penelope felt sick. Dion was still in there.
"We can break the cycle," the god said. "It's a new world. The old rules don't apply." He smiled lustily. "You can give birth to me, and I'll never die."
She shook her head.
"I'll fuck you--"
"It won't work."
He had reached them. He touched her, picked her up. She did not struggle. He held her, licked her breasts with his enormous tongue.
Despite her desire, it did not feel good, as she'd expected. It felt coarse and at the same time slimy.
That gave her the strength to twist out of his grasp.
He was surprised, as much by the attempt as by her strength, and she fell to the mud in front of him, quickly scrambling away.
"I'd give birth to the other gods, to Zeus and Hermes and ... whoever. I
can't give birth to you."
"Yes, you can," he said excitedly. "I can do it."
"I won't do it."
"You'll have to do it." His face was a frightening amalgam of rage and resolve and lust. "I'll make you do it."
Dionysus, she understood, was like a child. A spoiled, petulant child.
His needs were simple, his actions obvious. There was no subtlety to his behavior. He was easily predictable.
Holbrook had been right. These creatures weren't gods. Monsters, maybe.
But not gods.
But had his power waned enough for her to fight him? She didn't think so.
She wished she'd drunk the entire bottle of wine. The maenads were supposed to tear apart Dionysus. As a strong maenad against a weak god, she might have had a chance.
Could she have enlisted the help of her mothers?
Would they have done it on their own anyway?
Either way, it was too late to do anything about it. Hindsight was always 20/20, and though she'd do things differently if she'd known then what she knew now, at this point she could only move forward.
She closed her eyes, let herself go, letting rage fill her. She held nothing back, took off all of the emotional restraints she'd been carefully trying to maintain. She was a maenad. It was about time she started acting like one.
She leaped at his crotch.
She acted instinctively, her rational mind now at the mercy of the wildness within her. Her nails touched flesh, and she dug in, clawing crazily, feeling the invigorating heat of blood, hearing the delicious sounds of pain. She squeezed a giant testicle with both hands, and then she was thrown by an astonishing bolt of power that threw her back into one of the huts. She lay there stunned as the mud surrounding her melted and blackened into glass.
Dionysus rushed her. There was lust in his eyes, an unfathomable anger in his countenance. And then ... it was gone.
He reached her, picked her up, and his touch was surprisingly gentle.
"Are you all right?" he asked. "I didn't mean to hurt you."
His voice was Dion's.
She started crying. It was too much. She didn't know what to do, she didn't know how to react, she didn't know ... anything. One moment he was letting her go, the next moment he was trying to kill her. She knew Dionysus was a divided, schizophrenic god--the result of the wine--but she hadn't realized that it would throw her so off balance.
No, it wasn't anything to do with Dionysus. It was Dion. If this had been anyone else, she wouldn't be so confused. She wouldn't feel so ...
conflicted.
He kissed her gently on the top of the head. "I love you," he said.
She blinked away the tears. "I love you too," she admitted.
He turned his head. "I'm sorry!" he called to Kevin.
She looked over and saw that Kevin that been thrown into the water of the lake and was furiously paddling between two dead bodies, trying to reach the shore.
They'd gotten a break. Anger, fear, love--something had allowed Dion to maintain control of the god's form for a lot longer than ever before.
She knew it could disappear at any second, so she quickly took his huge face in her hands and said, "I have to kill you."
"I know." He looked into her eyes, and she saw an echo of his old self.
She recognized the way he blinked his eyes, the way his eyebrows moved.
She started to cry again, and he used a finger to wipe her tears. "I was going to ask you to kill me. I won't fight."
There was so much she wanted to ask, so much she wanted to say, but there was no time. His tentative hold could slip at any second, and then they'd be dead.
"Your mother loves you too," she said.
And she tore him apart.
As promised, he did not put up a fight She let loose, and even she was shocked by the power within her, by the extent of the wildness, by the violence of which she was capable. Like a cartoon character, like a whirlwind, she burrowed into him, through him, rending flesh, breaking bone, slashing organs. She kept moving--kicking, clawing, grabbing, digging--and she was screaming and crying at the same time, the saltiness of his blood mingling with the saltiness of her own tears, and she continued on, unable to stop, tearing apart not Dion but the thing that had stolen Dion, the thing that had taken him from her.
She collapsed, exhausted. Her vocal cords were hurt from screaming, but the tears were still streaming down her blood-soaked face. There was nothing left of Dionysus. There was no head, no hand, no foot, no finger. Nothing even remotely recognizable. There were only bits of bone and flesh, scattered over an amazingly long section of shore. And blood.