He snaps his eyes to mine as quickly as I drop mine to Megan.
Her chest is still.
She’s not moving at all.
“Megan…”
I kick her again. My whack is harder than intended, but I need to make sure she’s aware now is not the time for games.
“Now, Megan!” I shout, conscious she could be playing the ruse we practiced over and over again three nights ago. If my father got to her first, he wouldn’t have stopped until he believed she was dead, then he would have revived her.
It was during the revival process she was meant to strike.
“Megan!” This shout is desperate. Fully unhinged. “Wake the fuck up.”
“She’s—”
“No!” I shout, refusing to hear the words Charles said to my father when he took it one step too far with my mother. “She’s… she’s… she’s…” With words eluding me and my mind swamped by a psychosis so dark I doubt I will ever find my way out of it, I shift on my feet to face Nick. “You…” Realizing there’s only one way for him to fully understand how much he hurt Megan, I swallow my words and pick up my pace instead.
Halfway across the room, my gun is loaded, and my fists are ready to maim, then out of nowhere, a woman with hair as dark as my mother’s and eyes just as molten pops out from behind Isaac. She screams for me to stop, warns me that she will gun me down if I don’t, but with my smarts gobbled up by a mental condition no number of apologies could smother, I continue storming for Nick.
I have him by the scruff of his shirt. My fist is careening toward his face, then my campaign is upended by three large bangs.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
I sail back with a grunt. My collision with the floor is as brutal as the one Megan took only moments ago. Hot lava spills through me as the coppery taste of blood gurgles in my windpipe, but I don’t fight the blackness endeavoring to choke me.
I’ll let it take me. I’ve just got one matter to take care of first.
As pain rips through me, I slant my head, lock my eyes with Megan, then stretch out my arm. Her eyes are open, exposed, and utterly breathtaking but as lifeless as death.
After closing her eyes with the slightest slide of my fingertips, I use some of the blood dripping from a bullet wound in my stomach to mark her forehead with a cross. It’s not as aligned as the one my father placed on my mother’s head, but surely, it will have the same result.
“Remember that you are dust, and to the dust, you shall return,” I garble out between my lungs’ gasps for air.
Megan killed for me.
She killed for herself.
But that’s all it takes, right?
Two little words and a pledge to do better, and all the bad you’ve done is washed away and forgotten.
Confident that is the case, I whisper, “Fuck you,” between shallow, jaded breaths. “Fuck. You.”
They’re not the words that will get me into heaven, but that’s okay. Hell can’t be worse than where I’ve lived for the past twenty-eight years, and it’s most likely empty anyway since all devils are walking the earth alongside me.
epilogue
DEXTER
TEN MONTHS LATER…
What the fuck is that?
