Dexter in the Dark | Page 9

bit of personal space, if not the
reasons for it, and she had sacrificed her sewing room, turning it into
something she called Dexter’s study. Eventu ally this would house my computer and
my few books and CDs and, I suppose, my little rosewood box of slides. But how
could I possibly leave it in here? I could explain it to Cody and Astor \
easily
enough—but what to tell Rita? Should I try to hide it? Build a secret passage
behind a fake bookcase leading down a winding stairway to my dark lair? Put the
box in the bottom of a fake can of shaving cream, perhaps? It was something of a
problem.
So far I had avoided needing to find a so lution by hanging on to my apartment.
But I still kept a few simple things in my study, like my fillet knives and duct
tape, which could readily be explained away by my love for fishing and \
air-conditioning. The solution could come later. Right now I felt icy fingers
prodding and tickling at my spine, and I had an urgent need to keep an
appointment with a spoiled young man.

And so into my study I went, in search of a navy blue nylon gym bag I had been
saving for a formal occasion, to hold my knife and tape. I pulled it from the
closet, a sharp taste of anticipation building on my tongue, and put in my party
toys: a new roll of duct tape, a fillet knife, gloves, my silk mask, and a coil
of nylon rope for emergencies. All set. I could feel my veins gleaming with
steely excitement, the wild music rising in my inner ears, the roaring of the
Passenger’s pulse urging me on, out, into it. I turned to go—
And ran into a matched pair of solemn children, staring up at me with
expectation.
“He wants to go,” Astor said, and Cody nodded, looking at me with \
large
unblinking eyes.
I honestly believe that those who know me would say I have a glib tongue and a
ready wit, but as I mentally played back what Astor had said and tried again to
find a way to make it mean something else, all I could manage was a very human
sound, something like, “He muh whu hoo?”
“With you,” Astor said patiently, as if speaking to a mentally challenged
chambermaid. “Cody wants to go with you tonight.”
In retrospect, it’s easy to see that this problem would come up sooner or later.
And to be perfectly fair to me, which I th ink is very important, I had expected
it—but later. Not now. Not on the edge of my Night of Need. Not when every hair
on my neck was standing straight up and screeching with the pure and urgent
compulsion to slither into the night in cold, stainless-steel fury—
The situation clearly called for some seri ous pondering, but all my nerves were
clamoring for me to leap out the window an d be off into the night—but there they
were, and so somehow I took a deep breath and pondered the two of them.
The sharp and shiny tin soul of Dexter the Avenger was forged from a chi\
ldhood
trauma so violent that I had blocked it out completely. It had made me what I
am, and I am sure I would sniffle and feel unhappy about that if I was able to
feel at all. And these two, Cody and Astor, had been scarred the same way,
beaten and savaged by a violent drug-addicted father until they, too, were
turned forever away from sunlight and lol lipops. As my wise foster father had
known in raising me, there was no way to take that away, no way to put the
serpent back in the egg.
But it could be trained. Harry had trained me, shaped me into something that
hunted only the other dark predators, th e other monsters and ghouls who dressed
in human skin and prowled the game trails of the city. I had the indelible urge
to kill, unchangeable and forever, but Harry had taught me to find and dispose
of only those who, by his rigorous cop standards, truly needed it.
When I discovered that Cody was the same way, I had promised myself that I would
carry on the Harry Way, pass on what I had learned to the boy, raise him up in
Dark Righteousness. But this was an