She's quiet until we get home but there's something I need to ask. It's not going to be an easy question either and it feels strange, the boot is on the other foot. I pull into the parking lot and wind down the window a little, listening to the waves crashing on the shore opposite the apartments. I put my head back on the head rest and sigh. I can feel Lumen looking at me.
"Does Tina DiMarco deserve to die?" I just say it, as simply as I can, because I need to hear her answer. She pauses in her regular breathing and I open my eyes and turn my head. She's biting her lip. She nods, it's a quick gesture, like she's afraid to admit to it, own the positive response to my query. "How?" I whisper, "She didn't kill anyone. That's not the Code."
"Was Liddy in the Code?" Lumen sounds quiet, but sharp. She's looking right at me; this is one of those conversations, like sharing parts of your soul.
"Yes, he was. The first rule of the Code is 'don't get caught'. Liddy caused problems in that area. He had those films. Tina DiMarco isn't a threat to me, to us." Lumen closes her eyes now and immediately I feel excluded from her thoughts. I don't like it, I have to bridge that gap, bring her back. I put out my hand and touch her cheek, her eyelids flicker open but she's not looking at me.
"She's a mother, Dexter, she was a mother and she let that man beat her child to death. I can't see how that is anything but deserving. Can you?" That last question hangs between us. Once upon a time, in the land of Dexter the Monster, I would have answered that question by explaining that I didn't have any feelings and so trying to understand maternal instinct, some kind of biologically driven need to protect your kids, was just a fruitless exercise. Miguel tried the same tack when he tried to convince me to kill Ellen Wolf, show me how she'd hurt people, families. It didn't change my mind.
But I'm not that man anymore. Rita, Cody and Astor, Deb have all changed me. I've been warped and refashioned in the fire of the events which have happened to me since I opened up to them. And now there's Lumen, the biggest change of all.
I study her high cheekbones, the finely sculpted lips, the arch of her eyebrows. The moonlight plays silver over them, shadowing her face so that she looks sharper than ever, a human blade. I try to imagine Rita killing Harrison, letting me kill Harrison, and the thought, the images it presents are so abhorrent that I shut my eyes tightly. When I open them again Lumen is looking at me, frowning. I realise she's misinterpreted the expression for disagreement. I shake my head, unable to speak while these new feelings crush my chest. She waits for me, opens the car door.
"We have to be sure they'd do it again." She looks at me and I can see her thinking that she has the wrong man here, didn't I admit last night that I liked killing people? "It's the Code." I say again, but this time it feels weak.
"What if Tina gets pregnant again? Don't you think Greco would do something?" She says it quietly, leaving me alone to make my decision. He'd be an idiot to do it, after going to court last time the judge would have to take that prior accusation into account. But I've met Greco now, he's wily. He won't get caught. I look at Lumen and think about someone hurting Harrison the way they hurt that little boy.
"You're right. They both deserve it, deserve us. Let's do it soon." She nods and steps out of the car into the moonlight. I follow her up the stairs to the apartment.
As I unlock the door she puts her arms about me, snaking them up my chest and then down. I feel her, pressed against my back and my body starts to burn.
All the tension of the night, the adrenaline of the hunt, the fear of being caught, floods out of me as I pull her towards me and kiss her. The door opens behind us and we stumble backwards into the dark of the apartment.
She kicks the door shut with her foot and pushes me back so that I twist and lie on the floor. She lies over me, covering my mouth with hers. She tastes of beer and the ghost of lipstick. She grinds her pelvis against me, my blood is pounding in my ears and I can't breathe. I gulp down air as she pulls back; her face is grim and full of desire. I roll her over, lying between her legs, the jean shorts and my thin jogging pants not hiding the evidence of excitement. She moans and I rock my hips against her.
"When?" she says, panting out the words as she pushes the shirt off my shoulders and sits up to kiss my chest, up to my left nipple where she flicks her tongue and I arch back and let my head rest on the muscles over my shoulder blades. Her slim fingers rub at the right nipple, pinching until my hips are bucking forward of their own accord. I can't think. "When?" she says again, her tone dark.
"The weekend?" I push her back onto the floor and untie the man's shirt where it knots over her navel. Her skin is pale against the black lace bra. The swirls and curls of the material tease me with a glimpse of dark, hard nipples. I bite my lip and trace a finger idly over her scars, following them into the cup of her bra, then pulling the strap from her shoulder and dipping my head to taste her salty skin. She moans my name and pulls my hair, I growl into her flesh.
"Yes, the weekend," she whispers, and takes my other hand and presses it against her unattended breast. The action of control turns me on, more than I expected, and I pinch and tease while she writhes underneath me. I press down with my hips and she moves up towards me.
"Take them off," I tell her, as I sit back and watch her unpeel the tight denim from her hips. She isn't wearing panties and part of me is grateful that I didn't know this before. How would I have ever concentrated? She catches my expression and smiles, her mouth quirking in one corner.
She lies there, open to me. Her shirt splayed out around her like the wings of an angel and her face written over with lust. Her hands come up and tug at the waistband of my trousers, the elastic gives easily and she sits up to pull them down over my hips. I look down, watching her as she takes off my clothes, exposing how hard I am for her. When she sees me like that, raw, uncovered, wanting her, she makes a sound. An inhalation which ends in a groan. It inflames me and I let go of control.
I push her back onto the floor and run my hand between her legs. She cries out and arches her back. I slick my hard cock with her arousal and she looks down at our bodies as I enter her. Her mouth is open, her eyes wide and her breath comes in sharp bursts. She is so tight, so wet and inviting. Once again I have the feeling that I am being possessed by her. It's a powerful reversal of how I've felt fucking other women. Lumen owns me, as much as I own her.
She brings up her hands to my face, holding my cheeks and watching me intently.
"I want to kill Greco. Will you let me do it?" Each word is a thrust upwards of her hips, tipping me all the way in, unravelling any sense of myself I ever had. I nod, unable to speak, my face an expression of the intense feelings running through me, into her. She smiles; it's predatory, wide and white. I teeter on the edge.
She pushes her hand between us and I move so she can reach down. I feel her fingers working over her body as I move inside her. My hand on the small of her back, I sit onto my haunches, so that she is sitting over me. Her fingers stroke and flutter, her breathing becomes ragged, her head falls back and the pony tail bounces as I thrust. I hold her tight with one hand and touch her breasts with the other, nipping and pulling on her nipples more fiercely and she says my name between her teeth, like a curse.
I lean forward, the movement drives me deeper into her and I kiss her neck, telling her that she is all mine, that I love her, she is beautiful. She starts to come. She quivers over me, shuddering under my touch and against my sensitive flesh buried inside her. Her muscles contract and the pressure in my lower stomach builds until there is nothing but the feel of her around me. All that I am centres on the part of me held in that satin grasp. I come hard.
The next morning I drive to work feeling much happier. Happier, that I have got something to look forward to at last and happier, that I get to share it with Lumen. The sun is still shining down even though there's heavy rain forecast for the weekend.
The station's pretty deserted at this time, but I want to get in early so I can use the police database to find out where Greco is staying. It'll be much better to meet him at home when we decide to pay him his final visit. One of the cleaners nods to me as he pushes his mop and bucket into the lift I have just exited.
"It's dead out there, Dex," he grins, as he presses the button to go to the next floor. "All our friends in blue are sleeping in." I smile and nod.
"Just us, Ricky, just us holding the fort." He chuckles in reply as the doors close.
I flick on the lights in the lab, put my bag over the back of the chair and notice that the Mac has stopped the search of the symbols database I started before I left work yesterday. Now on the screen, next to my photograph of the top hat tattoo, is some kind of oriental symbol. A lot more stylised and obscure but it's definitely the same thing, it even has the curve of what I thought was a feather but which now seems to be part of the symbol itself.
I click on the blue link under the symbol and it takes me to a website which shows me three symbols, my hat and feather are in the centre. The top symbol seems to me like two 'R's, one much smaller than the other and floating in the air to the left of the other, bigger 'R'. It looks familiar but, before I can think where I've seen it before, I read the word at the top of the webpage and everything clicks into place. It says 'Vampire'.
The blood flowing away, washed away by water, the decapitation, the crucifixes, surely these are all linked? But where have I seen this symbol before? I print the page and the photo from the second victim's wrist and then sit back in my seat, swinging slightly from side to side as I try to dredge my mind for the other symbol.
I twirl the chair to the files on the metal trolley behind me, selecting a yellow folder from the pile. It's the jacket on the murder in the nightclub. I flick through the pictures, putting them one by one under the bright desk lamp to study the more clearly, something is bothering me.
"Dex, you're in early? Trouble in paradise?" Masuka opens the door and puts his head close to mine. He looks at what I am studying so intently and then swivels his eyes to me.
"See this Vince?" I jab the Mac screen with a finger, he looks, his eyes go wide and he nods. "It's Japanese isn't it? These three symbols make the word..."
"Vampire," he says, falling into the chair beside me which wobbles alarmingly. I didn't even know he could read Japanese.
"Come on Vince, you don't believe in this shit do you? You're a scientist!" I lean past him and grab the printed sheets; he flinches as my hand passes him.
Ignoring his weird mood, I look back to the photos of Takahashi, the nightclub victim. Nothing, I flick to the next picture, nothing, nothing, nothing. On the fourth there is a blur at the joint where the wrist meets the hand. Could this be a tattoo? Vince is still sitting silently, spinning the chair from side to side like he's in a trance. I wake the Mac again and scroll to the pictures I took at the South Beach crime scene. Finding the right shot, I zoom in to the wrist. The blurring gets worse so I sharpen the picture, playing with the slide tool to get it just right. Sure enough, it comes up clear enough for me to see those weird stylised 'R' symbols. I press print and get out of my chair, grabbing the new sheet as it feeds out of the machine.
Deb's at her desk, still wearing her shades and holding a huge, take out, cup of coffee. She's booting up her PC and flicking through a magazine while the system loads, but she's not reading it. Her eyes are crunched up and she keeps rubbing her neck. I slide into the chair beside her desk and she looks up, startled.
"Jesus, brother. Ninja much?" She glares at me and then winces, holding her head.
"What's up?" I ask her, frowning at her obvious discomfort.
"Got a cocksucker of a headache, is what's up," she growls. "Fucker will not go away." I stand up and walk behind her chair. I put my hands on her neck and begin to knead the muscles. Rita always said I was good at this. One of the benefits of having advanced anatomical training is knowing which nerves paralyse and which ones relax when manipulated. Useful in all sorts of ways. Deb's head flops back and I rub my fingers lightly over her forehead.
"Ahhh, god Dexter, that is good. You're a fucking genius, you know that?"
"I do actually, but it's nice to hear it anyway," I say, continuing to smooth over her skin. "Is it the air pressure again?" She nods a little, but then winces again.
"Yeah, the sooner that fucking rain everyone keeps forecasting gets its ass over here, the sooner someone can stop driving burning nails into my head," she says in a low voice. We stay like this for a moment, me rubbing and kneading, her making appreciative noises. I notice Masuka watching us through the window, his mouth open. I don't know whether he's still freaking out about the vampire thing or imagining something dreadful about me and Deb. I look back to Deb, her eyes are closed and she looks more peaceful now.
"I've got something else that might make you feel better too," I tell her, she opens one eye and then closes it again.
"Is this about the headless bastards we keep finding, because LaGuerta's already sent me an ass fucking via email this morning about my complete lack of leads."
"It is, I know what that tattoo means..." I hardly get chance to finish my sentence before she spins her chair around to face me.
"What? What the fuck, Dex? Tell all, now!" she demands, her eyes still slitted though the headache. I spin the chair back and continue the shoulder rub.
"I put that strange top hat symbol into the database last night, it was a long shot, but I thought something might come up. This morning it's matched it to a Japanese symbol." I see Deb's chest rise and fall as her heart starts to beat faster, adrenaline might beat this headache faster than my hands will but it'll be back like a bitch afterwards.
"Ok, Japanese and..."
"And there were two other symbols with it on the webpage, I searched the shots of the first victim and he's got one of the other symbols, tattooed on his wrist." Deb's eyes are wide, but she's not looking at me.
"Gangs? Clans? What the fuck is it?"
"They're both part of the Japanese word for vampire..." I don't get to finish because she focuses on me.
"The blood! The beheading!" She pulls the crucifix from the neck of her shirt. "Oh my god, this is like fucking Twilight 'round here! Any sparkly fuckers been spotted about the place? Do I get to arrest Stephanie fucking Meyer? The bitch needs it!" She laughs a short bark of a laugh. I have no idea what she's talking about and she must see this on my face because she sighs and shakes her head. "Go on, anything else?"
"Well, yes. There's one symbol missing, the word's made up of three symbols and we've found the first two..."
"In the right order?" She's out of the chair, rummaging in her bag for painkillers.
"I don't know." I watch her down the pills, grimace and look about. I pass her the bottle of water which was hidden behind her monitor. She grins and takes it from me. After three long gulps of water she looks at me again.
"There's someone else out there with the last symbol isn't there? And they're the next victim of this vampire slaying fucker. Jesus, you don't think Masuka's ex thinks she's the Slayer do you?" she shakes her head and chuckles; "I wouldn't be fucking surprised would you?" I still have no idea what she's talking about so I shrug. She takes two steps towards me and kisses me quickly on the cheek.
"Bro, you are a genius!" She strides off to LaGuerta's office, checks herself, comes back and takes the printed sheets I left on her desk. She waves them at me and goes back to LaGuerta's door. I hear her knocking and see LaGuerta look up from some paperwork. I go back to my desk.
Vince is looking at the screen; he seems to have pulled himself together a little more now. I'm relieved, it doesn't matter how much I change, I'll never be too keen on emotional scenes.
"So, still think this is Su Lin?" I ask him, sitting down in my chair and looking at the three symbols on the screen again. The third symbol is more complicated than the other two, kind of like a high heeled shoe. The tattoos were all simplified versions of the other characters so maybe this one is too. I look back at Vince. "Do you?"
He looks at me and his face is a sickly yellow. He shakes his head slowly. I frown, what the hell is wrong with him? I'm fed up with his theatrics for the day.
"What? You think these people are real vampires Vince? Man..." I begin, but I am silenced when Vince scoots nearer to me, his arm outstretched. He pushes his watch strap up his wrist and there it is. A black tattoo of a blocky, high heeled shoe.
Not so many reviews now. Has this gone off the boil? I'm a bit worried. I'm going to finish this season but it'd be good to know if you're still out there. Thanks so much to you guys who always review. Love to VB for being an ace beta! Cx