Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(10)

“What do you mean?” Asher asked.

“Anita had to tell me about Kane before we came to St. Louis for this trip, because she wanted Peter and me to know that he was potentially dangerous. I think Kane held up a mirror to your own obsessive jealousy. You finally saw in him what everyone else had seen in you, and you didn’t want to be like that anymore.”

“I knew you were a deadly foe, but I did not know that you were also a wise friend,” Asher said.

“I’m not your friend, I’m Anita’s friend.”

“You don’t like me.”

“You haven’t given me a reason to like you.”

“That is fair.” Asher turned back to me. “Perhaps your friend is correct, and I needed Kane to show me the error of my ways.”

“If that’s true then I’m grateful for that, but that still leaves us with Kane.”

“What happens if you kill him?” Edward asked.

“His death could kill Asher.”

“I thought Asher lived through the death of his human servant once.”

“He did.” I didn’t elaborate on one of the most painful moments in Asher’s or Jean-Claude’s lives.

The bare facts and move on.

“Then why can’t he live through the death of his animal to call?”

“I am still in love with Kane,” Asher said.

“I saw your reaction when Peter knocked him cold; that was not the reaction of a man in love.”

“I love him,” Asher insisted.

“But you’re not in love with him anymore, are you?” Edward asked.

Asher hesitated and then said, “I don’t know.”

“Yeah you do, you just don’t want to admit it.”

“Just to be clear, Ted, you can’t kill Kane unless he tries to kill you or Peter, or somebody else.

He is not just a problem to be solved, not yet.”

Edward shrugged. “If you say so.”

“We can’t just kill Kane because he might hurt someone, can we?” Peter asked.

“You can’t,” Edward said.

“No one can,” I said.

“You mean that Peter cannot kill Kane in cold blood, but that you could,” Asher said.

“It would be a solution.”

“It could kill me.”

“It would still be a solution,” Edward said. I realized in that moment just how much he didn’t like Asher. He hadn’t even been around him that much, but he’d heard my stories and seen some of the damage Asher had caused; for Edward that would be enough.

I said, “No, it would not be a solution.”

Peter said, “Ted, no.”

“Then keep Kane away from me and Peter while we’re here. If he hurts Anita in front of me, I will not hesitate.”

“If he hurts Anita, that’s different,” Peter said.

Edward looked at his son, his eyes gone cold and distant like winter skies before the storm rolls down and buries you under a blizzard. “You’ve made Kane your enemy, Peter. He’s a wereanimal; that means he’s faster and stronger than you are, even now. What will you do if he attacks you?”

“I’ll defend myself.”

“Will you kill him?”

“If he tries to kill me.”

Edward shook his head. “You can’t wait that long, Peter, not with shapeshifters.”

“I can’t just shoot him on sight.”

“I can.”

“I can’t,” I said.

“I will do my best to see that Kane stays away from Peter,” Asher said.

Edward ignored him and looked at his son. “The biggest difference between Anita and me is that I can, and she won’t. It’s not that she isn’t capable of shooting and killing, Kane. It’s that she will wait until he does something that she feels justifies it, but by then someone else will be hurt or dead. If Anita weren’t here to tell me no, I would kill Kane before he hurts someone else.”

“And it wouldn’t bother you?” Peter asked.

“No.”

“Why tell me all that, Ted?”

“I want you to start thinking now about what you will and will not do, what you are willing to do, where you draw your line.”

“I am thinking about that,” Peter said.

“Good, because if you go into the family business you’re going to need to decide what your rules are, so that you won’t waste time wondering when it’s time to act. Hesitation will get you killed if you’re up against vampires and shapeshifters, Peter.”

Peter looked at me, maybe for confirmation or maybe for my opinion. I nodded, and said, “If you decide ahead of time what you’ll do in a given scenario, then if that happens you’ll just act. You won’t waste time debating your options.”

“But you can’t think of every scenario ahead of time,” Peter said.

“No, but you can think of the ones most likely to happen next, like what will you do if Kane jumps you when you’re alone?” I asked.

“Kill him if I can.”

“Good,” Edward and I said together.

“But surely you don’t have to kill him. Could you not incapacitate him as you did just now?”