It's night. There's someone in the house.

I surge out of Dexter's room, and the bullets hit me, one, two, three. I don't even feel them. I spot Officer Hart down the hall and take his gun away. His hand comes with it; I'm distantly unsettled by this, but it's not my problem. But, as I come for him, there's another impact in my chest, and I do feel this one, just like the pen in my neck, and I look down. It's dark polished wood, not quite wrist-thick, between a couple of my left-side ribs.

I look Hart in the eyes. He laughs weakly and pushes me with the hand he has left, and I fall. There's blood all over both of us. He collapses, curled around where his hand used to be. Meena comes out of John's room, shrieks, and runs over to the cop.

Then Tasha follows.

I want to tell her to help me, I know it would be all right if I could just tell her—but I can't, I can't so much as move my eyes to follow her as she joins Meena and the cop. They speak in whispers, but I can hear every one like a fly next to my ear.

"Let me help Abe out," says Tasha. "You've got a job to do."

"You do it."

"I told you, I can't do it," Tasha says, "and now Abe can't either. It has to be you."

"Why can't you?" Meena says, not quite sobbing.

Tasha sighs, then stands up, walks over to the cop's gun, removes it from his hand, and puts her finger on the trigger. Meena's eyes widen. "I'm not going to do anything to you unless you come after me," she says. "So why don't you trust me when I say that we, the four of us, are facing a fork in the road right now. On the right path, we all finish what we all agreed to do and the two of you walk out of this house." I can't see the arch of her eyebrow with my eyes, but I know its path so well that I can practically hear it. "Do I need to give details about the left path?"

There's a pause. Meena breathes once, twice, three times; deep, ragged. "He looks dead," she says. "Isn't the stake supposed to be enough?"

"If you want someone dead," says Tasha, "and you don't know what'll kill him, what do you do: The least you can, or the most?"

"Let's just drag him outside," says Meena. The horror convulses me, or seems to—nothing, somehow, in the butchery they've made of my home can compare to the fear I feel at being watched by the blazing eye of the moon. But, of course, I don't actually convulse. I don't move a millimeter. I don't breathe.

"Be my guest," says Tasha. "But I can't touch him, Abe can't either, and if you dislodge that stake—"

"Jesus," says Meena, in a sort of horrified awe. "You thought of everything, didn't you?"

"Probably not," says Tasha, "but I tried. Is that a problem?"

"Meena," Officer Hart groans.

"All right," she says. "All right."

I hear her move and smell the fumes of Hell coming closer. Meena leans over me. She looks so confused and terrified that for a moment I want to brush her hair back, say some word of comfort. Then she rummages around in a blood-spattered fanny pack and begins to stuff my mouth with something. It tastes like ashes and catshit; my mouth flares up with agony.

Tasha hands her a machete.

"Hold on," Tasha says as Meena hefts the blade. "Let me talk to him." I can tell that she's as repulsed as I am by the filth that Meena's put in my mouth, but she leans in anyway, speaking into my right ear. "I hate to do this to you, Drake," she says. "You're a good man in a bad situation. But, when all's said and done, you had one good eye, and you closed it; one good hand, and you left it idle. That's more than John got, and more than me. You should have done something. I'll see you in Hell." She steps over my body and whispers into the other ear. All I hear is the whisper of her lips against my earlobe; I can't make out the words. But something inside me surges with hate and rage and helplessness.

Tasha stands up, looking at Meena; she's done with me. "Do it," she says to Meena. "I'll help Abe to the car."

Serves you right, I think; the moon will take care of you. It's an insane thought, I realize.

Meena and I are alone. She looks into my eyes. "You can't talk unless I pull the stake out, can you?" she says.

I can't talk in any case, can't move; what can I say?

"Bats," she says. "Wolves. Playing along with my little witch hunt when it was you all along." For a bizarre moment I can't tell who's speaking, her or me. "Parading Tasha in front of me and trusting me not to trust myself to recognize her. She told me you took Jack away from me, you lived with him for weeks until he died. Again. She says you made him like you, and then you killed him." When she says "made him like me" I think of video game marathons, dumb comedies, bickering over household chores. "She says you don't understand any of it. You just do it and make up stories where you did something else. I'm almost glad you make up stories, you know?" She hefts the machete with a strange ease. "It means you don't like what you do either. You want to be free of it, to free the world of it. It's not like killing an animal. Not that sad by half." She raises the machete and looks at me with disgust. "Christ, I don't want to do this."

Even in my paralysis I manage to jerk a little at the pain.

Meena flinches, then relaxes. I hear the air part with a whisper. No blood sprays; the blade bites bone.