Jeffrey Lindsay - Dexter is delicious

Deborah struggled, and I could see her lips moving in the right shape for some of her favorite X-rated syllables, but it was no good. We were slowly and inevitably pushed off the dance floor, and as we got close to our original entrance, very strong hands clamped onto our shoulders from behind and pulled us up and out of the room as if we were small children, and set us down in the hallway.

I turned to face our rescuers and saw two exceptionally large guys, one white and one black, both with enormous sculpted muscles bulging out of their sleeveless tuxedo shirts. The black man had a long and gleaming ponytail tied back with what looked like a string of human teeth. The white one had a shaved head and a very large golden skull in one ear, and they both looked like they were perfectly ready to pull off our heads if anybody wanted to see them do it.

And in between them, as they stood at a kind of bored attention, stepped someone who seemed like he might suggest exactly that. If the doorman was Lurch, here was Gomez Addams himself: forty-ish, dark-haired, with the pin-striped suit, blood-red rose pinned to the lapel, and a pencil-thin mustache. But this was a very angry Gomez, and he jabbed a finger at Deborah as he spoke over the din of the music. "You got no right coming in here!" he said. "This is harassment and I will sue your ass!"

He glanced at me and away, and then he looked back again and our eyes locked for just a moment, and suddenly there was a chill in the stale fug of the club's air and a faint leathery huff rattled through me as the Passenger sat up and whispered a warning, and something black and reptilian formed in the air between us and a small piece of a neglected puzzle fluttered up into my brain. I remembered where I had heard of Fang before; it had been in my recently shredded file of potential playmates. And now I knew who this other predator was. "George Kukarov, I presume?" I could see Deborah look at me, startled, but that did not matter; all that mattered was that two Dark Passengers were meeting and exchanging sibilant warnings.

"Who the fuck are you?" Kukarov said.

"I'm with her," I said, and though it sounded mild there was a message in it that only another predator would hear, and the message was, Leave her alone or you will deal with me.

Kukarov stared back and there was a distant, just-below-sound roaring of hidden monsters, and then Deborah said, "Tell this asshole to get his hands off me. I am a police officer!" And the spell was broken as Kukarov jerked his eyes away and back to Debs.

"You've got no fucking right to be here," he hissed, and then he yelled again, just for the effect. "This is a private club and you are not invited!"

Deborah matched his volume and raised his venom. "I have reason to believe a felony was committed on these premises — " she said, but Kukarov cut her off.

"You got due cause?" he snarled. "You got no due cause." And Deborah bit her lip. "I got lawyers who will eat you alive!" he said. The white bouncer thought that was pretty funny, but Kukarov glared at him and he wiped the smirk off his face and went back to staring straight ahead. "Now you get the fuck outta my club!" he said, and he pointed at the door. The two bouncers stepped forward and grabbed Deborah and me by the elbows and half carried us down the short hallway. Lurch held the door open and they threw us out onto the sidewalk. We both managed to avoid falling onto our heads, but it was a near thing.

"Stay the fuck outta my club!" Kukarov shouted, and I turned to look just in time to see Lurch smile brightly and slam the door shut.

"Huh," said my sister, "looks like you were wrong." And she spoke so calmly that I looked at her with very real concern, thinking that she must have hit her head in all the scuffle — because the two things she cared about most in the entire world were the authority of her badge, and not letting anybody push her around, and both of those had just been trampled. And yet here she was standing on the sidewalk and dusting herself off as if nothing at all had happened, and I was so astonished that her words didn't really register for a moment. When they did, they seemed like the wrong words.

"Wrong?" I said, and I felt like I was in the wrong conversation. "What do you mean, I was wrong?"

"Who gets thrown out of a trap?" she said; it took me a second to realize what she meant, and by then she had gone right on. "What kind of red herring has bouncers that toss us onto the sidewalk after two minutes?"

"Well," I said.

"Goddamn it, Dexter!" she said. "Something is going on in there!"

"Quite a lot, actually," I admitted, and she punched my arm, hard. It was nice to see her recovering her spirits, but on the other hand, it really hurt.

"I mean it!" she said. "Either somebody goofed and that token fell in by accident — which is stupid — or else…" She paused, and I understood what she meant. There was definitely an "or else" here — but what was it? I waited politely for her to supply it, and when she didn't, I finally said it.

"Or else… somebody connected with this wants us to take a look at what's going on without anybody else knowing it."

"Right," she said, and she turned back to glare at the glossy black door. The door didn't even flinch. "Which means," she said thoughtfully, "that you are going back in there."

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out except air, and after a moment I had to believe I hadn't really heard her. "I'm sorry?" I said, and I admit it was a bit squeaky.

Debs grabbed both of my arms and shook me. "You are going to go back inside that club," she said, "and find out what they're hiding."

I pulled my arms out of her grasp. "Debs, those two bouncers will kill me. To be honest, it would probably only take one of them."

"That's why you're going in later," she said, almost like she was suggesting something reasonable. "When the club is closed."

"Oh, good," I said. "So I won't just be trespassing and get beaten. I'll be breaking and entering, too, so they can shoot me. Great idea, Deborah."

"Dexter," she said, and she looked at me with more intensity than I could remember seeing from her in quite some time. "Samantha Aldovar is in there. I know it."

"You can't know that."

"But I do," she said. "I can feel it. Goddamn it, you think you're the only one with a voice inside? Samantha Aldovar is in there, and she is out of time. If we back off, they kill her and eat her. And if we take the time to go through channels and go in with SRT and all that, she disappears and she's dead. I know it. She's in there now, Dex. I got such a strong feeling; I've never been more sure about something."

It was all very compelling, but aside from one or two minor problems with her argument — like how she knew it — there was one overwhelming flaw with the whole thing. "Debs," I said. "If you're so sure — why not do it right, get a warrant? Why does it have to be me?"

"No way I get a warrant in time. No probable cause," she said, and I was glad to hear that, since it might mean she wasn't completely insane. "But I can trust you," she said. She patted my chest, and it felt wet. I looked down, and saw that there was a large brownish stain across the front of my shirt, and I remembered the girl who had spilled her drink on me on the dance floor.

"Look," I said, pointing at the stain. "This is that same stuff we found in the Everglades — salvia and ecstasy." And just to show her that two could play, I said, "I know it's the same stuff. And it's illegal — with this sample, you have probable cause, Debs."

But she was already shaking her head. "Illegally obtained," she said. "And by the time we got it argued in front of a judge it'll be too late for Samantha. This is the only way, Dexter."

"Then you do it."

"I can't," she said. "I'd lose my job if I got caught, maybe even do jail time. You'll just get a fine — and I'll pay it."