Midnight 01 - Luisa's Desire

to perform."
     
    He was sorry to leave her despite his words. Her warmth had kept his anxiety at bay. Yes, his teacher had expected him to share the act of coition with their guest. He could not, however, have expected Martin to turn upyr.
     
    Hands fisted determinedly at his sides, he strode through the lower hall. He stopped when two monks shrank in horror from his path. Only then did he realize how swiftly he had been moving, huge inhuman bounds that ate the distance.
     
    "I am practicing a new power," he growled at the wide-eyed monks.
     
    The men exchanged a wary look. Obviously this feat was more than they expected even from Shisharovar's best naljorpa.
     
    I shall have to go, he thought. I do not fit in here now.
     
    The knowledge hurt but not as much as he feared. Even if Luisa had lived close, he would have been ready to leave. The wider world was calling. Perhaps it had been all along.
     
    He closed his eyes and let the new awareness find a home. When he opened them, his teacher stood before him. The glow that lit his aura told Martin he had come from the midnight prayer.
     
    "Rinpoche," he said, bringing his hands together for his bow.
     
    "Martin," responded the abbot, "I see you have achieved all that I hoped."
     
    Martin gaped at him. The abbot's eyes crinkled in amusement.
     
    "Come." He took Martin's arm. "I think this calls for a cup of tea."
     
    He led him to a small reception chamber, the same room in which Luisa had been chained. A pot waited on a table with two brown cushions pulled to its side. When his teacher poured a cup of pure gold Indian brew, Martin knew he had seen the truth. Luisa could not drink Tibetan tea, and neither now could he.
     
    "How could you know?" he demanded. "And why are you not upset?"
     
    "You have your gifts," said the abbot, "and I have mine."
     
    "But—"
     
    "I saw it," he said, "in a vision the day she came. You were gleaming in the moonlight white as stone. 'She is mine,' you said. 'She is the one for whom I have blindly waited all these years.' Oh, I knew my vision of the future was a chance and not a surety, and that it would be wrong to push, but I hoped…"
     
    "You hoped!" Twice now his teacher had used that word. Martin was so flustered he had to put down his cup. "Rinpoche, I know I have come to view what happened as a blessing, but how could you hope? This change can only take me far away."
     
    "That," said the abbot, blowing firmly across his tea, "is precisely what I hoped." To Martin's astonishment, his teacher's eyes welled up with tears. "Old friend, if you had seen the shadow I have seen hanging over our little country, you would know we will need every friend that we can make. You are no longer my charge, and I cannot give you orders, but I am not too proud to plead. Be our emissary, Martin, not to preach but to share our ways, to teach the world that Tibet is a treasure that must be saved." With heartfelt strength, he gripped Martin's icy hands. "It is a work of many years, but I know you will have them now."
     
    A tremor swept Martin's newly sensitive upyr nerves. What sort of shadow could cause his guide to plead?
     
    "Do not ask," said the abbot, one hand raised as if to fend off a blow. "We may yet find a way to turn this tragedy aside. Still"—he ventured a brilliant smile—"what country does not need friends?"
     
    "It would be my honor," Martin said through his thickened throat, "to make them on your behalf."
     
    He rose then before emotion could shame them both. An errant thought stopped him at the door. "What would you have done if I had not let her change me?"
     
    The abbot's grin was impish. "I could lie," he said, "and say I would have asked your Luisa to change me. Alas, even if she would have, I fear you would see through my deceit. I have always aspired to win free of this earthly plane. You are the brave one, Martin. With all my heart, I bid you joy in your life to come."
     
    "Thank you," Martin said, and hid his smile as he turned away. For all the abbot's wisdom, Martin knew he could not conceive how much happiness one life could hold.
     
Chapter Seven
     
    WITH her hunger taken care of—and so enjoyably—the voyage back to Florence was far more comfortable than the voyage out. Just the same, Luisa was not sorry to be home, especially since she had come home with him. Home, home, home, to her stately fortress on the Arno, with her view of the Duomo and her courtyard and her private cellar of fine French