Darkly dreaming Dexter

he wrote the Code of Harry that I would be faced with a choice like this; to side with Deborah—not my real sister —or to join my authentic 100 percent real live brother in a game that I so very much wanted to play. And Harry could not have conceived that when he set me on my path.

Harry had never known that I had a brother who would-But wait a moment. Hold the phone, please. Harry did know—Harry had been there when it happened, hadn't he? And he had kept it to himself, never told me I had a brother. All those lonely empty years when I thought I was the only me there was—and he knew I was not, knew and had not told me. The most important single fact about me—I was not alone—and he had kept it from me. What did I really owe Harry now, after this fantastic betrayal?

And more to the immediate point, what did I owe this squirming lump of animal flesh quivering beneath me, this creature masquerading as my sibling? What could I possibly owe her in comparison to my bond with Brian, my own flesh, my brother, a living replication of my selfsame precious DNA?

A drop of sweat rolled across Deborah's forehead and into her eye. She blinked at it frantically, making ugly squinting faces in an effort to keep watching me and clear the sweat out of her eye at the same time. She really looked somewhat pathetic, helplessly taped and struggling like a dumb animal; a dumb, human animal. Not at all like me, like my brother; not at all clever clean no-mess bloodless razor-sharp Moondancer snicker-snee Dexter and his very own brother.

“Well?” he said, and I heard impatience, judgment, the beginning of disappointment.

I closed my eyes. The room dove around me, got darker, and I could not move. There was Mommy watching me, unblinking. I opened my eyes. My brother stood so close behind me I could feel his breath on my neck. My sister looked up at me, her eyes as wide and unblinking as Mommy's. And the look she gave me held me, as Mommy's had held me. I closed my eyes; Mommy. I opened my eyes; Deborah.

I took the knife.

There was a small noise and a rush of warm wind came into the cool air of the box. I spun around.

LaGuerta stood in the doorway, a nasty little automatic pistol in her hand.

“I knew you'd try this,” she said. “I should shoot you both. Maybe all three,” she said, glancing at Deborah, then back at me. “Hah,” she said, looking at the blade in my hand. “Sergeant Doakes should see this. He was right about you.” And she pointed the gun toward me, just for half a second.

It was long enough. Brian moved fast, faster than I would have thought possible. Still, LaGuerta got off one shot and Brian stumbled slightly as he slid the blade into LaGuerta's midsection. For a moment they stood like that, and then both of them were on the floor, unmoving.

A small pool of blood began to spread across the floor, the mingled blood of them both, Brian and LaGuerta. It was not deep, it did not spread far, but I shrank away from it, the horrible stuff, with something very near to panic. I only took two backward steps and then I bumped into something that made muffled sounds to match my own panic.

Deborah. I ripped the duct tape off her mouth.

“Jesus Christ that hurt,” she said. “For God's sake let me out of this shit and quit acting like a fucking lunatic.”

I looked down at Deborah. The tape had left a ring of blood around the outside of her lips, awful red blood that drove me back behind my eyes and into the yesterday box with Mommy. And she lay there—just like Mommy. Just like last time with the cool air of the box lifting the hair on my neck and the dark shadows chattering around us. Just exactly like last time in the way she lay there all taped and staring and waiting like some kind of-“Goddamn it,” she said. “Come on, Dex. Snap out of it.”

And yet this time I had a knife, and she was still helpless, and I could change everything now, I could-“Dexter?” said Mommy.

I mean, Deborah. Of course that's what I meant. Not Mommy at all who had left us here in this same place just like this, left us in this place where it began and now might finally finish, with a burning absolutely must-do-it already on its large dark horse and galloping along under the wonderful moon and the one thousand intimate voices whispering, Do it—do it now—do it and everything can change—the way it should be—back with- “Mommy?” someone said.

“Dexter, come on,” said Mommy. I mean Deborah. But the knife was moving. “Dexter, for Christ's sake, cut the shit! It's me! Debbie!”

I shook my head and of course it was Deborah, but I could not stop the knife. “I know, Deb. I'm really very sorry.” The knife crept higher. I could only watch it, couldn't stop it now for anything. One small spiderweb touch of Harry still whipped at me, demanding that I pay attention and get squared away, but it was so small and weak, and the need was big, strong, stronger than it had ever been before, because this was everything, the beginning and the end, and it lifted me up and out of myself and sent me washing away down the tunnel between the boy in the blood and the last chance to make it right.

This would change everything, would pay back Mommy, would show her what she had done. Because Mommy should have saved us, and this time had to be different. Even Deb had to see that.

“Put the knife down, Dexter.” Her voice was a little calmer now, but those other voices were so much louder that I could barely hear her. I tried to put the knife down, really I did, but I only managed to lower it a few inches.

“I'm sorry, Deb, I just can't,” I said, fighting to speak at all with the rising howl around me of the storm that had built for twenty-five years—and now with my brother and me brought together like thunderheads on a dark and moony night-“Dexter!” said wicked Mommy, who wanted to leave us here alone in the awful cold blood, and the voice of my brother inside hissed out with mine, “Bitch!” and the knife went all the way back up-A noise came from the floor. LaGuerta? I couldn't tell, and it didn't matter. I had to finish, had to do this, had to let this happen now.

“Dexter,” Debbie said. “I'm your sister. You don't want to do this to me. What would Daddy say?”

And that hurt, I'll admit it, but— “Put down the knife, Dexter.”

Another sound behind me, and a small gurgle. The knife in my hand went up.

“Dexter, look out!” Deborah said and I turned.

Detective LaGuerta was on one knee, gasping, straining to raise her suddenly very heavy weapon. Up came the barrel, slowly, slowly—pointed at my foot, my knee-But did it matter? Because this was going to happen now no matter what and even though I could see LaGuerta's finger tighten on the trigger the knife in my hand did not even slow down.

“She's going to shoot you, Dex!” Deb called, sounding somewhat frantic now. And the gun was pointed at my navel, LaGuerta's face was screwing itself into a frown of tremendous concentration and effort and she really was going to shoot me. I half turned toward LaGuerta but my knife was still fighting its way down toward-“Dexter!” said Mommy/Deborah on the table, but the Dark Passenger called louder and moved forward, grabbing my hand and guiding the knife down-“Dex—!”

“You're a good kid, Dex,” whispered Harry from behind in his feather-hard ghost voice, just enough to twitch the knife so very little up again.

“I can't help it,” I whispered back, so very much growing into the handle of the quivering blade.

“Choose what . . . or WHO . . . you kill,” he said with the hard and endless blue of his eyes now watching me from Deborah's same eyes, watching now loud enough to push the knife a full half inch away. “There are plenty of people who deserve it,” said Harry so softly above the rising angry yammer of the stampede inside.

The tip of the knife winked and froze in place. The Dark Passenger could not send it down. Harry could not pull it away. And there we were.

Behind me I heard a rasping sound, a heavy thump, and then a moan so very full of emptiness that it crawled across my shoulders like a silk scarf on spider legs. I turned.

LaGuerta lay with her gun hand stretched out, pinned to the floor by Brian's knife, her lower lip trapped between her teeth and her eyes alive with pain. Brian crouched beside her, watching the fear scamper across her face. He was breathing hard through a dark smile.

“Shall we clean up, brother?” he said.

“I . . . can't,” I said.

My brother lurched to his feet and stood in front of me, weaving slightly from side to side. “Can't?” he said. “I don't think I know that word.” He pried the knife from my fingers and I could not stop him and I could not help