Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [933]
I had a sudden memory of lying in a different bed in a huge dark room surrounded by dozens of candles until the shadows moved and rippled with every small breath of air, every movement of a pale arm. I lay in that trembling golden darkness in the embrace of a pale, dark-haired woman. I gazed up at her, and her face was like something carved of alabaster, with lips red and perfect, hair like the darkness of night made into furred silk, falling around her nude perfection like a veil. Her eyes were pale brown, like dark honey. I knew it was Belle Morte, as if I’d always known her face.
The door opened, and Asher entered, wearing a robe more elaborate, heavier than the one he wore now. But still he huddled in it, held it around his body, afraid. I saw the scars on his face—fresh, raw—and it was . . . painful. My chest went tight with the sight of his ruin. I went to my knees, reaching out to him, moving a body that I’d never been inside. Jean-Claude reaching out to Asher all those centuries ago. But she lay there nude and perfect showing every curve, every secret place to the candlelight, and turned him away. I couldn’t remember the words she used, only the look on her face, the utter arrogance, the distaste. The look on Asher’s face as he turned from her to Jean-Claude, to me. The look of pain, and he let that glorious hair fall forward, hiding his face, and it was the first time we’d seen him do that, hide from us.
I felt her hands on our body as she turned back to us, as if Asher were no longer there, but we remembered the look on his face, the line of his body as he left that room. I blinked and was back in Jean-Claude’s bedroom, watching Asher in his brown silk robe walking towards the door. And the line of his shoulders, the way he held himself, made my chest tight, closed my throat, made my eyes hot with things unsaid and unshed.
“Don’t go.” I heard myself say it, and I glanced up at Jean-Claude. His face was careful, unreadable, but for just a moment I saw his eyes, and the pain I was feeling was only an echo of what filled his eyes.
Asher stopped at the door and turned, his hair falling over his face, the robe covering everything else. He said nothing, just looked back at me, at us.
I repeated, “Don’t go, Asher, don’t go.”
“Why not?” he asked, his voice as careful and neutral as he could make it.
I couldn’t tell him about the shared memory. It would sound like pity, and it wasn’t that—not exactly. I couldn’t think of a good lie. But this wasn’t really the time for lies, anyway. Only truth would heal this. “I can’t stand to watch you walk away like this.”
He moved his gaze from me to Jean-Claude, and there was anger in him now. “You had no right to share that memory with her.”
“I do not choose what ma petite knows and what she does not.”
“Very well,” Asher said. “Now you know how she cast me out of her bed. How she cast me out of his bed.”
“That was your choice,” Jean-Claude said.
“How could you bear to touch me? I couldn’t bear to touch me.” He stayed near the door with his head turned to one side, so all you could see was a wave of golden hair. His voice held bitterness the way it could sometimes hold joy—a bitterness that was hard to swallow, like choking on broken glass. Asher’s voice and laugh weren’t as good as Jean-Claude’s, but he seemed better at sharing sorrow and regret than Jean-Claude.
“Why?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Why what?”
“Why did she cast you out?”
Jean-Claude moved beside me, and I realized two things. One, he was shielding from me, from all of us, so I couldn’t sense him, and two, his body movement alone let me know he wasn’t happy.
Asher grabbed his hair, forced it back from his face, showed the scars to the light. “This, this. Our mistress was a collector of beauty, and I am no longer beautiful. It pained her visibly to see me.”
“You are beautiful, Asher. That she couldn’t see that isn’t your fault.”
He let his hair fall back.