Jeffry Lindsay - Dexter in the Dark

The Watcher moved a little closer, to study the other, perhaps see some sign as to how he was reacting so far. Interesting to bring those children with him. They didn’t seem particularly disturbed by the sight of the two heads. Perhaps they were used to such things, or-

No. It was not possible.

Moving with the greatest possible care, he edged closer, still trying to work his way near with the natural ebb and flow of the onlookers, until he got to the yellow tape at a point as close to the children as he could get.

And when the boy looked up and their eyes met, there was no longer any possibility of mistake.

For a moment their gaze locked and all sense of time was lost in the whir of shadowy wings. The boy simply stood there and stared at him with recognition-not of who he was but of what, and his small dark wings fluttered in panicked fury. The Watcher could not help himself; he moved closer, allowing the boy to see him and the nimbus of dark power he carried. The boy showed no fear-simply looked back at him and showed his own power. Then the boy turned away and took his sister’s hand, and the two of them trotted over to the other.

Time to leave. The children would certainly point him out, and he did not want his face seen, not yet. He hurried back to the car and drove away, but not with anything like worry. Not at all. If anything, he was more pleased than he had a right to be.

It was the children, of course. Not just that they would tell the other, and move him a few small steps further into the necessary fear. But also because he really liked children. They were wonderful to work with, they broadcast emotions that were so very powerful, and raised the whole energy of the event to a higher plane.

Children-wonderful.

This was actually starting to be enjoyable.

For a while, it was enough to ride in the monkey-things and help them kill. But even this grew dull with the simple repetition, and every now and then IT felt again that there had to be something more. There was that tantalizing twitch of something indefinable at the moment of the kill, the sense that something stirred toward waking and then settled back down again, and IT wanted to know what that was.

But no matter how many times, no matter how many different monkey-things, IT could never get any closer to that feeling, never push in far enough to find out what it was. And that made IT want to know all the more.

A great deal of time went by, and IT began to turn sour again. The monkey-things were just too simple, and whatever IT did with them was not enough. IT began to resent their stupid, pointless, endlessly repeating existence. IT lashed out at them once or twice, wanting to punish them for their dumb, unimaginative suffering, and IT drove IT’s host to kill entire families, whole tribes of the things. And as they all died, that wonderful hint of something else would hang there just out of reach and then settle back down again into slumber.

It was furiously frustrating; there had to be a way to break through, find out what that elusive something was and pull it into existence.

And then at last, the monkey-things began to change. It was very slow at first, so slow that IT didn’t even realize what was happening until the process was well under way. And one wonderful day, when IT went into a new host, the thing stood up on its back legs and, as IT still wondered what was happening, the thing said, “Who are you?”

The extreme shock of this moment was followed by an even more extreme pleasure.

IT was no longer alone.

THE RIDE TO THE DETENTION CENTER WENT SMOOTHLY, but with Deborah driving that merely meant that no one was severely injured. She was in a hurry, and she was first and foremost a Miami cop who had learned to drive from Miami cops. And that meant she believed that traffic was fluid in nature and she sliced through it like a hot iron in butter, sliding into gaps that weren’t really there, and making it clear to the other drivers that it was either move or die.

Cody and Astor were very pleased, of course, from their securely seat-belted position in the backseat. They sat as straight as possible, craning upward to see out. And rarest of all, Cody actually smiled briefly when we narrowly missed smashing into a 350-pound man on a small motorcycle.

“Put on the siren,” Astor demanded.

“This isn’t a goddamned game,” Deborah snarled.

“Does it have to be a goddamned game for the siren?” Astor said, and Deborah turned bright red and yanked the wheel hard to bring us off U.S. 1, just barely missing a battered Honda riding on four doughnut tires.

“Astor,” I said, “don’t say that word.”

“She says it all the time,” Astor said.

“When you are her age, you can say it, too, if you want to,” I said. “But not when you’re ten years old.”

“That’s stupid,” she said. “If it’s a bad word it doesn’t matter how old you are.”

“That’s very true,” I said. “But I can’t tell Sergeant Deborah what to say.”

“That’s stupid,” Astor repeated, and then switched directions by adding, “Is she really a sergeant? Is that better than a policeman?”

“It means she’s the boss policeman,” I said.

“She can tell the ones in the blue suits what to do?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And she gets to have a gun, too?”

“Yes.”

Astor leaned forward as far as the seat belt would let her, and stared at Deborah with something approaching respect, which was not an expression I saw on her face very often. “I didn’t know girls could have a gun and be the boss policeman,” she said.

“Girls can do any god-anything boys can do,” Deborah snapped. “Usually better.”

Astor looked at Cody, and then at me. “Anything?” she said.

“Almost anything,” I said. “Professional football is probably out.”

“Do you shoot people?” Astor asked Deborah.

“For Christ’s sake, Dexter,” Deborah said.

“She shoots people sometimes,” I told Astor, “but she doesn’t like to talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“Shooting somebody is a very private thing,” I said, “and I think she feels that it isn’t anybody else’s business.”

“Stop talking about me like I’m a lamp, for Christ’s sake,” Deborah snapped. “I’m sitting right here.”

“I know that,” Astor said. “Will you tell us about who you shot?”

For an answer, Deborah squealed the car through a sharp turn, into the parking lot, and rocked to a stop in front of the center. “We’re here,” she said, and jumped out as if she was escaping a nest of fire ants. She hurried into the building and as soon as I got Cody and Astor unbuckled, we followed at a more leisurely pace.

Deborah was still speaking with the sergeant on duty at the desk, and I steered Cody and Astor to a pair of battered chairs. “Wait here,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Just wait ?” Astor said, with outrage quivering in her voice.

“Yes,” I said. “I have to go talk to a bad guy.”

“Why can’t we go?” she demanded.

“It’s against the law,” I said. “Now wait here like I said. Please.”

They didn’t look terribly enthusiastic, but at least they didn’t leap off the chairs and charge down the hallway screaming. I took advantage of their cooperation and joined Deborah.

“Come on,” she said, and we headed to one of the interview rooms down the hall. In a few minutes a guard brought Halpern in. He was handcuffed, and he looked even worse than he had when we brought him in. He hadn’t shaved and his hair was a rat’s nest, and there was a look in his eyes that I can only describe as haunted, no matter how clichéd that sounds. He sat in the chair where the guard nudged him, perching on the edge of the seat and staring at his hands as they lay before him on the table.