HE BUILDING WAS ABOUT THE SIZE OF A LARGE MIAMI Beach house. I prowled cautiously through a long hallway that ended at a door similar to the one I had just played bull-in-the-ring with. I tiptoed up and put my ear against it. I didn’t hear anything at all, but the door was so thick that this meant almost nothing.

I put my hand on the knob and turned it very slowly. It wasn’t locked, and I pushed the door open.

I peeked carefully around the edge of the door and saw nothing that ought to cause alarm other than some furniture that looked like real leather—I made a mental note to report it to PETA. It was quite an elegant room, and as I opened the door farther I saw a very nice mahogany bar in the far corner.

But much more interesting was the trophy case beside the bar. It stretched along the wall for twenty feet, and behind the glass, just visible, I could see row after row of what seemed to be assorted ceramic bulls’ heads. Each piece shone under its own mini-spotlight. I did not count, but there had to be more than a hundred of them. And before I could move into the room I heard a voice, as cold and dry as it could be and still be human.

“Trophies,” and I jumped, turning the gun toward the sound. “A memorial wall dedicated to the god. Each represents a soul we have sent to him.” An old man sat there, simply looking at me, but seeing him was almost a physical blow. “We create a new one for each sacrifice,” he said. “Come in, Dexter.”

The old man didn’t seem very menacing. In fact, he was nearly invisible, sitting back as he was in one of the large leather chairs. He got up slowly, with an old man’s care, and turned a face on me that was as cold and smooth as river rock.

“We have been waiting for you,” he said, although as far as I could tell he was alone in the room, except for the furniture. “Come in.”

I really don’t know if it was what he said, or the way he said it—or something else entirely. In any case, when he looked directly at me I suddenly felt like there was not enough air in the room. All the mad dash of my escape seemed to bleed out of me and puddle around my ankles, and a great clattering emptiness tore through me, as though there was nothing in the world but pointless pain, and he was its master.

“You’ve caused us a great deal of trouble,” he said quietly.

“That’s some consolation,” I said. It was very hard to say, and sounded feeble even to me, but at least it made the old man look a little bit annoyed. He took a step toward me, and I found myself trying to shrink away. “By the way,” I said, hoping to appear nonchalant about the fact that I felt like I was melting, “who are us?”

He cocked his head to one side. “I think you know,” he said. “You’ve certainly been looking at us long enough.” He took another step forward and my knees wobbled slightly. “But for the sake of a pleasant conversation,” he said, “we are the followers of Moloch. The heirs of King Solomon. For three thousand years, we have kept the god’s worship alive and guarded his traditions, and his power.”

“You keep saying ‘we,’” I said.

He nodded, and the movement hurt me. “There are others here,” he said. “But the we is, as I am sure you are aware, Moloch. He exists inside me.”

“So you killed those girls? And followed me around?” I said, and I admit I was surprised to think of this elderly man doing all that.

He actually smiled, but it was humorless and didn’t make me feel any better. “I did not go in person, no. It was the Watchers.”

“So—you mean, it can leave you?”

“Of course,” he said. “Moloch can move between us as he wishes. He’s not one person, and he’s not in one person. He’s a god. He goes out of me and into some of the others for special errands. To watch.”

“Well, it’s wonderful to have a hobby,” I said. I wasn’t really sure where our conversation was going, or if my precious life was about to skid to a halt, so I asked the first question that sprung to mind. “Then why did you leave the bodies at the university?”

“We wanted to find you, naturally.” The old man’s words froze me to the spot.

“You had come to our attention, Dexter,” he continued, “but we had to be sure. We needed to observe you to see if you would recognize our ritual or respond to our Watcher. And, of course, it was convenient to lead the police to concentrate on Halpern,” he said.

I didn’t know where to begin. “He’s not one of you?” I said.

“Oh, no,” the old man said pleasantly. “As soon as he’s released from police custody he’ll be over there, with the others.” He nodded toward the trophy case, filled with ceramic bulls’ heads.

“Then he really didn’t kill the girls.”

“Yes, he did,” he said. “While he was being persuaded from the inside by one of the Children of Moloch.” He cocked his head to one side. “I’m sure you of all people can understand that, can’t you?”

I could, of course. But it didn’t answer any of the main questions. “Can we please go back to where you said I had ‘come to your attention’?” I asked politely, thinking of all the hard work I put into keeping a low profile.

The man looked at me as though I had an exceptionally thick head. “You killed Alexander Macauley,” he said.

Now the tumblers fell into the weakened steel lock that was Dexter’s brain. “Zander was one of you?”

He shook his head slightly. “A minor helper. He supplied material for our rites.”

“He brought you the winos, and you killed them,” I said.

He shrugged. “We practice sacrifice, Dexter, not killing. In any case, when you took Zander, we followed you and discovered what you are.”

“What am I?” I blurted, finding it slightly exhilarating to think that I stood face-to-face with someone who could answer the question I had pondered for most of my slash-happy life. But then my mouth went dry, and as I awaited his answer a sensation bloomed inside me that felt an awful lot like real fear.

The old man’s glare turned sharp. “You’re an aberration,” he said. “Something that shouldn’t exist.”

I will admit that there have been times when I would agree with that thought, but right now was not one of them. “I don’t want to seem rude,” I said, “but I like existing.”

“That is no longer your choice,” he said. “You have something inside you that represents a threat to us. We plan to get rid of it, and you.”

“Actually,” I said, sure he was talking about my Dark Passenger, “that thing is not there anymore.”

“I know that,” he said, a little irritably, “but it originally came to you because of great traumatic suffering. It is attuned to you. But it is also a bastard child of Moloch, and that attunes you to us.” He waved a finger at me. “That’s how you were able to hear the music. Through the connection made by your Watcher. And when we cause you sufficient agony in a very short time, it will come back to you, like a moth to a flame.”

I really didn’t like the sound of that, and I could see that our conversation was sliding rapidly out of my control, but just in time I remembered that I did, after all, have a gun. I pointed it at the old man and drew myself up to my full quivering height.

“I want my children,” I said.

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.”

“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 unimpaired, 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 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, outspread 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 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.

“If I drop the gun,” I said, and I hoped I sounded reasonable, “how do I know you won’t put her in the fire anyway.”

He snarled at me, and it still caused a twinge of agony. “I’m not a murderer,” he said. “It has to be done right or it’s just killing.”

“I’m not sure I can see a difference,” I said.

“You wouldn’t. You’re an aberration,” he said.

“How do I know you won’t kill us all anyway?” I said.

“You’re the one I need to feed to the fire,” he said. “Drop the gun and you can save this girl.”

“Not terribly convincing,” I said, stalling for time, hoping for that time to bring something.

“I don’t need to be,” he said. “This isn’t a stalemate—there are other people on this island, and they’ll be back out here soon. You can’t shoot them all. And the god is still here. But since you obviously need convincing, how about if I slice your girl a few times and let the blood flow persuade you?” He reached down to his hip, found nothing, and frowned. “My knife,” he said, and then his expression of puzzlement blossomed into one of great astonishment. He gaped at me without saying a thing, simply holding his mouth wide open as if he was about to sing an aria.

And then he dropped to his knees, frowned, and pitched forward onto his face, revealing a knife blade protruding from his back—and also revealing Cody, standing behind him, smiling slightly as he watched the old man fall, and then looking up at me.

“Told you I was ready,” he said.