New 'Dexter' Season 7 Promo: Dexter Vs. Deb, Head-To-Head

(WARNING! The following contains guaranteed spoilers for both the conclusion of the sixth season and portions of the seventh season of "Dexter.")

It's been a cruel, cruel summer of waiting, but this September, the conflict Dexter Morgan has never wanted and always feared can't be avoided.

Showtime's "Dexter" its seventh, penultimate season Sept. 30, and as Dexter's endgame draws nigh, the magnetic, complicated killer of killers stares very, very literally down the barrel of his sister's stopping power.

Dexter (Michael C. Hall) has protected his sibling-by-adoption Deb (Jennifer Carpenter) from the wake of his Dark Passenger's destruction that's drowned many a thing he's held dear. As the season - and E! Online's newly released promo from Showtime - begins where the sixth season ended, there's precious little to now protect Dexter.

Gun trained on him, his sister is presented with the choice her brother hoped she'd never make: her brother or justice? As the promo plays out to the perfectly apropos chorus of the Deftones' "Change (In The House of Flies)", it's abundantly clear that neither run much further. Unsettling Miami Metro P.D. lab tech Louis (Josh Cooke) has caught Dexter's scent. LaGuerta (Lauren Vélez) can no longer suspend her lingering gut doubts that the late Sgt. Doakes was the "Bay Harbor Butcher."

There's also "Rome" and "The Punisher: War Zone" alum Ray Stevenson confirmed for a multi-episode arc as a violent Russian strip club owner.

And it's all simply moving the pieces into place for the 2013-2014 eighth season, confirmed to all but certainly be the series' last.