He didn’t seem terribly concerned about the pistol aimed at his navel, which to me seemed like pushing the envelope of self-confidence. He even had a large wicked-looking knife on one hip, but he made no move to touch it.
“The children are no longer your concern,” he said. “They belong to Moloch now. Moloch likes the taste of children.”
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“Where are they?” I said.
He waved his hand dismissively. “They’re right here on Toro Key, but you’re too late to stop the ritual.”
Toro Key was far from the mainland and completely private.
But in spite of the fact that it’s generally a great pleasure to learn where you are, this time it raised a number of very sticky questions—like, where were Cody and Astor, and how would I prevent life as I knew it from ending momentarily?
“If you don’t mind,” I said, and I wiggled the pistol, just so he would get the point, “I think I’ll collect them and go home.”
He didn’t move. He just looked at me, and from his eyes I could very nearly see enormous black wings beating out and into the room, and before I could squeeze the trigger, breathe, or blink, the drums began to swell, insisting on the beat that was embedded in me already, and the horns rose with the rhythm, leading the chorus of voices up and into happiness, and I stopped dead in my tracks.
My vision seemed normal, and my other senses were unim-paired, but I could not hear anything but the music, and I could not do anything except what the music told me to do. And it told me that just outside this room true happiness was waiting. It told me to come and scoop it up, fill my hands and heart with bliss everlasting, joy to the end of all things, and I saw myself turning toward the door, my feet leading me to my happy destiny.
The door swung open as I approached it, and Professor Wilkins came in. He was carrying a gun, too, and he barely glanced at me.
Instead, he nodded at the old man and said, “We’re ready.” I could barely hear him through the wild flush of feeling and sound welling up, and I moved eagerly toward the door.
Somewhere deep beneath all this was the tiny shrill voice of Dexter, screaming that things were not as they should be and demanding a change in direction. But it was such a small voice, and the music was so large, bigger than everything else in this endlessly wonderful world, and there was never any real question about what I was going to do.
I stepped toward the door in rhythm to the ubiquitous music, dimly aware that the old man was moving with me, but not really DEXTER IN THE DARK
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interested in that fact or any other. I still had the gun in my hand—they didn’t bother to take it from me, and it didn’t occur to me to use it. Nothing mattered but following the music.
The old man stepped around me and opened the door, and the wind blew hot in my face as I stepped out and saw the god, the thing itself, the source of the music, the source of everything, the great and wonderful bull-horned fountain of ecstasy there ahead of me. It towered above everything else, its great bronze head twenty-five feet high, its powerful arms held out to me, a wonderful hot glow burning in its open belly. My heart swelled and I moved toward it, not really seeing the handful of people standing there watching, even though one of those people was Astor. Her eyes got big when she saw me, and her mouth moved, but I could not hear what she said.
And tiny Dexter deep inside me screamed louder, but only just loud enough to be heard, and not even close to loud enough to be obeyed. I walked on toward the god, seeing the glow from the fire inside it, watching the flames in its belly flicker and jump with the wind that whipped around us. And when I was as close as I could get, standing right beside the open furnace of its belly, I stopped and waited. I did not know what I was waiting for, but I knew that it was coming and it would take me away to wonderful forever, so I waited.
Starzak came into view, and he was holding Cody by the hand, dragging him along to stand near us, and Astor was struggling to get away from the guard beside her. It didn’t matter, though, because the god was there and its arms were moving down now, out-spread and reaching to embrace me and clasp me in its warm, beautiful grip. I quivered with the joy of it, no longer hearing the shrill, pointless voice of protest from Dexter, hearing nothing at all but the voice of the god calling from the music.
The wind whipped the fire into life, and Astor thumped against me, bumping me into the side of the statue and the great heat coming from the god’s belly. I straightened up with only a moment of annoyance and once more watched the miracle of the god’s arms coming down, the guard moving Astor forward to share the bronze 296
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embrace, and then there was the smell of something burning and a blaze of pain along my legs and I looked down to see that my pants were on fire.
The pain of the fire on my legs jolted through me with the shriek of a hundred thousand outraged neurons, and the cobwebs were instantly cleared away. Suddenly the music was just noise from a loudspeaker, and this was Cody and Astor here beside me in very great danger. It was as if a hole had opened up in a dam and Dexter came pouring back in through it. I turned to the guard and yanked him away from Astor. He gave me a look of blank surprise and pitched over, grabbing my arm as he fell and pulling me down onto the ground with him. But at least he fell away from Astor, and the ground jarred the knife out of his hand. It bounced along to me and I picked it up and holstered it snugly in the guard’s solar plexus.
Then the pain in my legs went up a notch and I quickly concentrated on extinguishing my smoldering pants, rolling and slapping at them until they were no longer burning. And while it was a very good thing not to be on fire anymore, it was also several seconds of time that allowed Starzak and Wilkins to come charging toward me.
I grabbed the pistol from the ground and lurched to my feet to face them.
A long time ago, Harry had taught me to shoot. I could almost hear his voice now as I moved into my firing stance, breathed out, and calmly squeezed the trigger. Aim for the center and shoot twice. Starzak goes down. Move your aim to Wilkins, repeat. And then there were bodies on the ground, and a terrible scramble of the remaining onlookers running for safety, and I was standing beside the god, alone in a place that was suddenly very quiet except for the wind. I turned to see why.
The old man had grabbed Astor and was holding her by the neck, with a grip much more powerful than seemed possible with his frail body. He pushed her close to the open furnace. “Drop the gun,” he said, “or she burns.”
I saw no reason to doubt that he would do as he said, and I saw no sign of any way to stop him, either. Everyone living had scattered, except for us.
DEXTER IN THE DARK