Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [83]
He raised his own hand up and touched his mouth. “It’s healed,” he said.
I nodded, and it was as if I was mesmerized by him. Was it mind tricks, or had more than just the damage healed? I couldn’t tell, and I wasn’t sure whether Nathaniel was a better judge than I was. “Micah, can you look at him?”
Micah came to stand at the end of the island closest to us. The look on his face was enough, before he said, “Wow.”
But was it mind tricks? That’s what I wanted to know. I reached up to touch his face, and he didn’t lean away from me, as he had Nathaniel. I’d seen part of his memory of what had happened to him at the hands of other men, men that she-who-made-him had given him to, so she could feed off his pain and fear. So I understood some of the homophobia, but Nathaniel wasn’t a threat to him, not in that way. In other ways, he was a threat to everyone who saw him. Oh, well.
I touched Damian’s cheek, and it was solid. But it was all solid. Nathaniel was right, it was like a really good face-lift; there wasn’t that much difference. What was it about his face that was different? What had kept Damian’s face from being this heart-stopping before? I’d never made a study of his face, I wasn’t sure I knew him well enough to know what had changed. Maybe my confusion showed on my face, because Nathaniel said, “His mouth, his lips were too thin for his face, now they’re full and . . . they match.”
Now that Nathaniel had said it, I could remember Damian’s mouth, and this wasn’t it. Was it just mind glamour? It had to be, didn’t it? I closed my eyes and touched his mouth, but I’d never run my fingers over his lips. I didn’t remember them. I kept my eyes closed and used my hands to guide me. I kissed him, soft but firm. I’d kissed this mouth less than two hours ago, and it wasn’t the same mouth. The lips were fuller, as if he’d gotten a collagen injection while we weren’t looking. I drew back just enough to see his face clearly. There was a slight up-tilt to his eyes, and they were bigger, not much, but just a little, or was it that his eyebrows had a wider arch to them? Were his lashes thicker, darker? Shit.
“What’s wrong?” Damian asked again, and this time there was a thread of fear in his voice.
“I’ll get a mirror,” Micah said, and turned and went for one.
“This isn’t possible,” I said.
“Is there anything I can do?” Dr. Lillian was at the far end of the island. Damian looked up at her, and she said, “Oh, my.”
“What?” he asked, and his voice was frantic.
I patted his hand. “You’re fine, in fact you’re . . . beautiful.”
The fear spread from his voice to his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
Micah came back in with a hand mirror. He simply held it out toward me. I took it, but Damian shut his eyes tight, as if he were afraid to look. “It’s okay, Damian, I promise, you look wonderful.” But I sort of understood the fear, because even if it was an improvement, how weird would it be for the face you’ve had for a thousand years to suddenly change. I’d have had trouble with changes to the face I’d only had for part of a lifetime.
He was shaking his head over and over again.
“Please, Damian, just look. It’s good, not bad. I promise.”
He opened his eyes a little at a time, but once he saw enough, his eyes went wide, and he took the mirror from me. He moved it around so he could see his eyes, his mouth, and there was some change to his nose that he could see and I couldn’t. Like I said, I hadn’t made a study of his face, but he had.
He touched his face tentatively, as if he expected it to feel different than it looked. He dropped the mirror, and Nathaniel caught it before it hit the floor. “What is happening to me?”
I opened my mouth to say, I don’t know, but Micah said, “I think we need to call Jean-Claude. We know he’s up.”
Good idea, I thought. “Yeah, I think so.”
I actually got up to go for the phone, but Richard was at the end of the island, across from the phone, and I suddenly didn’t want to be that close to the phone. His right arm was taped