Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Jeff Lindsay

Doubleday

NEW YORK • LONDON • TORONTO • SYDNEY • AUCKLAND

Darkly dreaming Dexter : a novel by Jeffry Lindsay.—1st ed.

www.randomhouse.com/vintage

v1.0

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T HIS BOOK WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE without the generous technical and spiritual help of Einstein and the Deacon. They represent what is best about Miami cops, and they taught me some of what it means to do this very tough job in a tougher place.

I would also like to thank a number of people who made some very helpful suggestions, especially my wife, the Barclays, Julio S., Dr. and Mrs. A. L. Freundlich, Pookie, Bear, and Tinky.

I am deeply indebted to Jason Kaufman for his wisdom and insight in shaping the book.

Thanks also to Doris, the Lady of the Last Laugh.

And very special thanks to Nick Ellison, who is everything an agent is supposed to be but almost never is.

For Hilary
who is everything to me

CHAPTER 1

M OON. GLORIOUS MOON. FULL, FAT, REDDISH moon, the night as light as day, the moonlight flooding down across the land and bringing joy, joy, joy. Bringing too the full-throated call of the tropical night, the soft and wild voice of the wind roaring through the hairs on your arm, the hollow wail of starlight, the teeth-grinding bellow of the moonlight off the water.

All calling to the Need. Oh, the symphonic shriek of the thousand hiding voices, the cry of the Need inside, the entity, the silent watcher, the cold quiet thing, the one that laughs, the Moondancer. The me that was not-me, the thing that mocked and laughed and came calling with its hunger. With the Need. And the Need was very strong now, very careful cold coiled creeping crackly cocked and ready, very strong, very much ready now—and still it waited and watched, and it made me wait and watch.

I had been waiting and watching the priest for five weeks now. The Need had been prickling and teasing and prodding at me to find one, find the next, find this priest. For three weeks I had known he was it, he was next, we belonged to the Dark Passenger, he and I together. And that three weeks I had spent fighting the pressure, the growing Need, rising in me like a great wave that roars up and over the beach and does not recede, only swells more with every tick of the bright night's clock.

But it was careful time, too, time spent making sure. Not making sure of the priest, no, I was long sure of him. Time spent to be certain that it could be done right, made neat, all the corners folded, all squared away. I could not be caught, not now. I had worked too hard, too long, to make this work for me, to protect my happy little life.