Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [1085]
The lid went back in that halfway position that coffin lids do. Nothing moved. There was just Jason standing there in his cutoff jean shorts, bare back to the room. Gretchen didn’t come bounding out and eat anybody, and I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.
Jason stayed there, gazing down, unmoving, hands frozen on the lid. He finally turned towards the rest of us, and there was a look on his face that I’d never seen. It was a mixture of horror and pity. His spring blue eyes were wide, and there was a glitter of tears, I thought. Jason and Gretchen hadn’t been close. The reaction couldn’t be personal. What was in that coffin to put that look on Jason’s face?
I was moving forward without realizing it. “Ma petite, do not go closer.”
I looked at him. “What’s the matter with her? Why does Jason look so . . . stricken?”
Jason answered, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
I had to see now, I had to. I kept walking towards the coffin. Jean-Claude met me, blocked my path. “Please, ma petite, do not go closer.”
“I’m supposed to watch the process, right? I’m going to have to see what she looks like sooner or later, Jean-Claude. Might as well be sooner.”
He studied my face, as if he’d memorize it. “I did not anticipate that she would be so . . .” He shook his head. “You will not be happy with me after you see her.”
“You don’t know what she looks like either,” I said.
“No, but Jason’s reaction tells me many things I do not wish to know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He just stepped aside. “Gaze upon her, ma petite, and when you have forgiven me, come back to me.”
Forgiven him? I did not like the phrasing. I’d been scared of Gretchen pouncing out and trying to kill me; now I was more frightened of looking at her, of what horror awaited me inside that coffin. My pulse was trying to climb out my throat, and I couldn’t breathe past it. Jason’s face, Jean-Claude’s sorrow, and the utter stillness from the coffin had left me so scared my mouth was dry.
Jason moved to one side, turning away from the coffin, leaning his butt against it, arms hugging his sides. He looked pale and ill. I wondered if he’d changed his mind about letting Gretchen touch him.
I stood just far enough back that I couldn’t see into the coffin. I didn’t want to see something so horrible that it made Jason pale. I didn’t want to see it, but I had to.
I stepped up to the coffin, like stepping up to the plate, knowing that the ball coming at you is going a hundred-plus miles an hour and you have no chance to swing. My eyes couldn’t make sense of what I saw at first. My mind simply refused to understand. It’s a safety feature that we all have. If something is too horrendous, sometimes our brain just says, nope, not going to see this, not going to record this, nope, it would break us. But if you stare long enough, the mind says, well damn, we’re not turning away, and finally, finally, you’ll see it, and once you see it, you’ll never be able to unsee it.
It lay against white satin so that the dry, brown color was very stark, painfully outlined. It looked like a wizened mummy, one of those bodies they find every once in a while in the desert, where the dryness makes natural mummies. The brown skin had molded to the bones, there was no muscle under it, just bones and skin. The mouth was open wide, as if the jaw hinge had broken. The fangs were dry, but white like a skull. The entire head had dried down to just the skull covered by a light coating of brown skin. Patches of bright blond hair clung to that skull, and the bright color made it worse, more obscene somehow. The eyes opened. I jumped, but