By the light of the moon

Becky's house
to pick up her luggage. Maybe they intended to kill her family,
too.
    Whether or not their plan subsequent to this snafu would prove
successful, right now they had Dylan in a pincer play. They were
well positioned to dispatch him quickly.
    Kenny held a knife with a twelve-inch blade and two wickedly
sharp cutting edges. The rubber-coated, looped handle featured a
finger-formed grip that appeared to be user-friendly and difficult
to dislodge from a determined hand.
    Less designed for war than for the kitchen, Becky's weapon would
nevertheless chop a man as effectively as it might have been used
to dismember a chicken for a stew pot.
    Considerably longer than either blade, the baseball bat provided
Dylan with the advantage of reach. And he knew from experience that
his size warned off punks and drunks who might otherwise have taken
a whack at him; most aggressive types assumed that only a brute
could reside within the physique of a brute, when in fact he had
the heart of a lamb.
    Perhaps Kenny hesitated also because he didn't understand the
situation any longer, and worried about murdering a stranger
without knowing how many others might also be in the house. The
homicidal meanness in those eely eyes was tempered by a cunning
akin to that of the serpent in Eden.
    Dylan considered trying to pass himself off as a police officer
and claiming that backup was on the way, but even if the lack of a
uniform could be explained, the use of a baseball bat instead of a
handgun made the cop story a hard sell.
    Whether or not a drop of prudence seasoned the drug-polluted
pool of Kenny's mind, Becky was all intense animal need and demon
glee, certain not to be dissuaded for long by the reach of the bat
or by her adversary's size.
    With one foot, Dylan feinted toward Kenny, but then spun more
directly toward the girl and swung the bat at the hand in which she
held the knife.
    Becky was perhaps a high-school gymnast or one of the legions of
ballerina wannabes on whom multitudes of loving American parents
had squandered countless millions with the certainty that they were
nurturing the next Margot Fonteyn. Although not talented enough for
Olympic competition or for the professional dance theater, she
proved to be quick, limber, and more coordinated than she had
appeared to be when she'd flung herself off the bed. She fell back,
avoiding the bat with a cry of premature triumph – 'Ha!' – and at once sprang to her right to get out of
the way of the backswing, half crouching to contract her leg
muscles, the better to move with power when she decided how to move.
    Under no illusions that Kenny's better judgment would ensure his
continued hesitancy if an ideal opening appeared, Dylan borrowed
some moves from Becky, though he probably looked less like a failed
ballerina than like a dancing bear. He rounded on the embroidered
cowboy just as Kenny came in for the kill.
    The kid's moray eyes revealed not the feral ferocity of Becky,
but the calculation of a sneak and the incomplete commitment of a
coward who was bravest with a weak adversary. He was a monster, but
not the savage equal of his blue-eyed squeeze, and he made the
mistake of slipping in for the kill instead of lunging full-out. By
the time Dylan turned toward him, the bat arcing high, Kenny should
have been rushing forward with enough momentum to duck under the
bat and drive the blade home. Instead, he flinched, juked back, and
fell victim to his lack of nerve.
    With a Babe Ruth crack , the bat broke Kenny's right
forearm. In spite of the looped handle and formed grip, the knife
flew out of his hand. Kenny seemed almost to lift off his feet, as
though he were a two-base hit if not an out-of-the-park home
run.
    As the screaming kid failed to take flight and instead dropped
like a bunt, Dylan could sense Becky coming at his back and knew
that a dancing bear could never outmaneuver a psychotic
ballerina.
    * * *
    As she reached the next-to-the-last step, Jilly heard someone
shout 'Kenny!' She halted short of the upstairs hall, unsettled
that the cry had come neither from Dylan nor from a
thirteen-year-old boy. Urgent and shrill, the voice had been
female.
    She heard other noises, then a man's voice, likewise not Dylan's
and not that of a boy, though she couldn't discern what he
said.
    Having come to warn Dylan that young Travis was up here with
Kenny, but also having followed to help him if he needed help, she
couldn't freeze on these steps and yet retain her