Лорел Гамильтон - The Harlequin

«I agree we've got a ticking clock, but you have to explain Peter being here. I can't just let him go hunting vampires with us, Edward. He's sixteen years old, for God's sake.»

«It was the phone call when you talked to him. He knew you were in trouble. Short version, he wanted to return the favor. You rescued him, he wanted to help rescue you.»

«I don't need rescuing. I need people to help me kill other people. I don't want Peter to get better at killing people. I watched him kill the woman who raped him. I watched him blow her face to red sauce.» I shook my head and started pacing the room again. «How could you do this to him, Edward?»

«If I had left him home he just would have followed me. He knew where I was going. This way I can keep an eye on him.»

«No, you can't. We can't do this job and babysit at the same time. They almost killed all three of us: Richard, Jean-Claude, and me. We're kind of hard to kill, Edward. These guys are good, dangerous good. Do you really want Peter's first real job to be against something this scary?»

«No,» Edward said, «but he was coming. I had the choice of bringing him with me, or letting him find his own way.»

«He's sixteen, Edward. You're his father. You say no, and you make it stick.»

«I'm not married to his mother yet, Anita. I'm not his official step-anything.»

«He sees you as his dad.»

«Not when he doesn't want to.»

«What does that mean?»

«It means that I don't have the authority that a real dad would have over him sometimes. It means that I'll always wonder if he'd been mine from the beginning if he'd be different, or if we'd have ended up here anyway.»

«He's out there in the hallway, armed. He's carrying more than one gun, and at least one knife. He's carrying them like he's done it before. What the hell have you been teaching him, Edward?»

«What any father teaches his son.»

«Which is?»

«What he knows.»

I just stared at him, knowing my face held a soft, growing horror. «Edward, you can't make him into a little you.»

«He was scared all the time, Anita, after the attack. His therapist thought that martial arts training, training him to take care of himself, would help. It did. He stopped having the nightmares after a while.»

«Training him to take care of himself is different from what's standing out in that hallway. There's a loss of innocence in his eyes. A… oh, hell, I don't know what is missing, or what's there that shouldn't be, but I know it when I see it.»

«It's the look that you have in your eyes, Anita. It's the look that I have in mine.»

«He is not like us,» I said.

«He's killed twice.»

«He killed the wereanimal that killed his father and would have slaughtered them all. He killed the woman who raped him.»

«It's pretty to think that it matters why you take a life. I guess it does, but what the taking of a life does to you inside doesn't care why you did it. You either can kill and sleep nights, or you can't. Peter isn't bothered by the killing, Anita. He's bothered by what the bitch did to him. He's bothered by the fact that he couldn't protect his sister.»

«No one sexually abused Becca,» I said.

«No, thank God, but her hand is still stiff sometimes. She has to do hand-strengthening exercises. The hand works, but it's not a hundred percent.»

«And the man who tortured her is dead,» I said.

Edward gave me those cold blue eyes. «You killed him for me.»

«You were a little busy,» I said.

«Yeah, dying.»

«You didn't die,» I said.

«I came as close as I've ever come. But I knew you'd save the kids. I knew that you would see it right.»

«Edward, don't do this to me.»

«Don't do what?» he asked.

«Don't make me part of taking Peter's childhood away from him.»

«He's not a child, Anita.»

«He's not a grown-up either,» I said.

«And how do you grow up if no one shows you how?»

«Edward, we're going up against some of the most dangerous vampires that you and I have ever faced. Peter can't be that good yet. He can't be up to that skill level, no matter how much you've taught him. If you want to get him killed, fine, he's your kid, but I will not be a part of it. I will not help you get him killed in some macho bullshit initiation thing. I won't do it. Do you understand me? I won't allow it. Maybe you can't send him home, but I can.»

«How?» he asked.

«What do you mean, how? I tell him to go the fuck home before he gets himself killed.»

«He won't go.»

«I can demonstrate that he's out of his depth, Edward.»

«Don't humiliate him, Anita, please.»

It was the please that got me. «You'd rather he die than get humiliated?»

Edward swallowed hard enough that I heard it. He turned away so I couldn't see his face. Not a good sign. «When I was sixteen, I'd rather have died than have a woman I loved humiliate me. He's sixteen and male, don't do that to him.»

«Wait, what did you say?»

«I said, he's sixteen and male, don't humiliate him.»

I went to him, walked around so that he had to meet my eyes. «Not that part.»

Edward looked at me, and there was real anguish in his eyes. «Jesus, Edward, what is it?»

«His therapist says that an event like what happened to him just as his sexuality was awakening can be a defining event.»

«What does that mean?» I asked.

«It means that his view of sex and violence is all mixed up together.»

«Okay, what does that mean, exactly?»

«It means he's had two girlfriends in the last year. The first one was perfect. She was quiet, respectful, pretty. They were sweet together.»

«What happened?» I asked.

«Her parents called one night and asked what kind of monster our son was, that he'd hurt their daughter.»

«Hurt her how?»

«The usual. She was a virgin and they didn't do enough foreplay.»

«It happens,» I said.

«But the girl claimed that when she told him it hurt, he didn't stop.»

«Sounds like buyer's remorse to me, Edward.»

«I thought so, too, until the second girl. She was rough trade, Anita. As bad as the first girl had been good. She slept around, and everyone knew it. She broke up with Peter, said he was a freak. This girl was a freak, Anita. She was all leather and spikes and piercings, and it wasn't just for show. She said he hurt her.»

«What did Peter say?»

«He said he didn't do anything she didn't ask him to do.»

«What does that mean?»

«I wish I knew.»

«He won't tell you?» I asked.

«No,» Edward said.

«Why not?»

«I think it's rough sex. I think he's embarrassed to talk about it, or what they did was bad enough that he thinks I will think he's a freak, too. He doesn't want me to think that.»

I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing. Sometimes silence is the best you can do. Then I thought of something worth saying. «Liking rough sex doesn't make you a freak.»

He looked at me.

«It doesn't,» I said, and I felt myself begin to blush.

«It's not my thing, Anita. It just doesn't move me.»

«Everyone has things that do it for them, Edward.»

«Rough does it for you?»

«Sometimes.»

«When a kid is abused, they can react a lot of different ways; two of the choices are that they identify with the abuser and become abusers, or they embrace the role of victim. He didn't embrace the role of victim, Anita.»

«What are you saying, Edward?»

«I don't know yet. But his therapist says that he's also identified with his savior, you. He has another option besides just victim or abuser; he has you.»

«What does that mean, he has me?»

«You saved him, Anita. You took off the ropes, the blindfold. He'd just had the first sex of his life, and he looks up and sees you.»