He actually smiled, but it was humorless and didn’t make me feel any better. “I did not go in person, no. It was the Watchers.”

“So—you mean, it can leave you?”

“Of course,” he said. “Moloch can move between us as he wishes. He’s not one person, and he’s not in one person. He’s a god.

He goes out of me and into some of the others for special errands.

To watch.”

“Well, it’s wonderful to have a hobby,” I said. I wasn’t really sure where our conversation was going, or if my precious life was about to skid to a halt, so I asked the first question that sprung to mind. “Then why did you leave the bodies at the university?”

“We wanted to find you, naturally.” The old man’s words froze me to the spot.

“You had come to our attention, Dexter,” he continued, “but we had

to be sure. We needed to observe you to see if you would recognize our ritual or respond to our Watcher. And, of course, it was convenient to lead the police to concentrate on Halpern,” he said.

I didn’t know where to begin. “He’s not one of you?” I said.

“Oh, no,” the old man said pleasantly. “As soon as he’s released from police custody he’ll be over there, with the others.” He nodded toward the trophy case, filled with ceramic bulls’ heads.

“Then he really didn’t kill the girls.”

“Yes, he did,” he said. “While he was being persuaded from the inside by one of the Children of Moloch.” He cocked his head to one side. “I’m sure you of all people can understand that, can’t you?”

I could, of course. But it didn’t answer any of the main questions. “Can we please go back to where you said I had ‘come to your attention’?” I asked politely, thinking of all the hard work I put into keeping a low profile.

The man looked at me as though I had an exceptionally thick head. “You killed Alexander Macauley,” he said.

Now the tumblers fell into the weakened steel lock that was Dexter’s brain. “Zander was one of you?”

He shook his head slightly. “A minor helper. He supplied mate-rial for our rites.”

“He brought you the winos, and you killed them,” I said.

DEXTER IN THE DARK

293

He shrugged. “We practice sacrifice, Dexter, not killing. In any case, when you took Zander, we followed you and discovered what you are.”

“What am I?” I blurted, finding it slightly exhilarating to think that I stood face-to-face with someone who could answer the question I had pondered for most of my slash-happy life. But then my mouth went dry, and as I awaited his answer a sensation bloomed inside me that felt an awful lot like real fear.

The old man’s glare turned sharp. “You’re an aberration,” he said. “Something that shouldn’t exist.”

I will admit that there have been times when I would agree with that thought, but right now was not one of them. “I don’t want to seem rude,” I said, “but I like existing.”

“That is no longer your choice,” he said. “You have something inside you that represents a threat to us. We plan to get rid of it, and you.”

“Actually,” I said, sure he was talking about my Dark Passenger, “that thing is not there anymore.”

“I know that,” he said, a little irritably, “but it originally came to you because of great traumatic suffering. It is attuned to you. But it is also a bastard child of Moloch, and that attunes you to us.” He waved a finger at me. “That’s how you were able to hear the music.

Through the connection made by your Watcher. And when we cause you sufficient agony in a very short time, it will come back to you, like a moth to a flame.”

I really didn’t like the sound of that, and I could see that our conversation was sliding rapidly out of my control, but just in time I remembered that I did, after all, have a gun. I pointed it at the old man and drew myself up to my full quivering height.

“I want my children,” I said.

Tags: Jeff Lindsay Dexter Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net