Luisa’s Desire

The Fitz Clare Chronicles - Book 1

(In Fantasy anthology)

By Emma Holly

Chapter One

Tibet, 1600

THE sun filled the air with diamond knives, its merciless brilliance shooting spires of brightness off the ice-locked Himalayan peaks. Beneath, on the precipitous path that circled the tallest mountain, Luisa del Fiore huddled deeper into her mink-lined hood. Black sheathed her from head to toe: her kidskin gloves, her yak hide boots, even the veil that draped her face was black as ink. Despite these precautions, the effect of the sun was barely muffled. This was Tibet, the roof of the world, and far closer to heaven than a child of midnight ought to go.

The sun was a drug to her kind, a pleasure beyond compare. Like all drugs, however, too large a dose could kill. Indeed, she would not have risked this journey had her need not been so great.

Unaware of her predicament, Dorje, her cheerful native guide, beckoned her forward on the trail. The mere thought of the drop to his right was enough to make her dizzy. The fall might not kill her, but even an upyr could break her bones.

“Come,” he urged. “Only little way more.”

He spoke the pidgin Chinese they used to communicate, the language of the traders to whom he sold yak butter and from whom he bought bricks of tea. A nomadic herdsman, Dorje was one of six whose pilgrimage to this lamasery she had joined. She knew she was lucky to have fallen in with them even though, had she been alone, she could have traveled in the sunless safety of the night.

Getting lost was not safe, of course, no more than freezing to death, a hazard to which she had not known she was vulnerable. Her first night in the mountains had taught her that hard truth.

Thankfully, on the second night, she’d stumbled into Dorje’s camp. He and his companions had offered her the foulest tea she’d ever pretended to drink and welcomed her to their fire. When she divulged her destination, they volunteered to guide her. Never mind she was a stranger, and a foreigner, and very outlandishly garbed. Never mind she posed a danger they could not begin to understand. They had heard that the gompa—the lamasery—at Shisharovar was holy. Anyone who helped her would gain merit from the trip.

At the moment, Luisa cared more for her next step than she cared for merit. Her exhaustion seemed a living thing, like one of the demons Dorje told tales of around the fire. She had no words for her hunger. She had not fed since she’d left the ship. She had not dared. It was not discovery she feared, nor others’ violence against herself. Instead she feared she would feed until she slew these people who had saved her.

This was the crux of her dilemma, that she might kill when she had no wish to. Lately the urge had been getting stronger. She genuinely loved her life. The challenge of doing business among the humans kept her engaged. But fill, and only for a little while. When she had begun to drink from criminals—just in case she lost control—she knew she could not trust herself anymore.

She was not the hand of justice. Better to starve than to act as if she were.

As much as she believed in her choice, she could have wept for the intensity of her hunger. To drink… to be strong again…

But strength was the object of her journey: true strength, not the strength that came from theft.

Ahead of her, Dorje’s crude felt boots punched holes in the snow she strove to follow. Like his fellows, he seemed to notice neither the cold nor the thinness of the air. Luisa felt both, her feet leaden, her blood-starved veins like overstretched wires of brass. She had not thought a mortal could be so strong. Forging steadily before her, Dorje seemed as tough as the grumbling yaks they had left in the spring green valley far below.

When she lagged, he laughed and urged her onward like a father exhorting a child to walk. She felt a child, so sun addled she could scarcely stand. All around her the light was slow, sure poison, a wine of gold and blue, a scent as sweet and fragile as mountain flowers. It had been days now, weeks mayhap, that this deadly radiance had been seeping through her clothes. Drunk with it, she clung to reason by a thread.

Sleep, the sunshine whispered. Pull off your cloak and bask in my golden rays. Be one with the beauty of the waking world.

Luisa cursed and grit her teeth. She knew she must not listen.

The waking world was not her rightful sphere.

They came to a turning. Dorje pointed higher and ahead.

“See,” he said. “Lamas here!”

As she rounded the scarp, the path widened into a table of land as flat as if it had been carved. Beyond this small plateau the mountain rose again, craggy and sharp, a final heavenward thrust of stone. Shisharovar nestled at its base. The lamasery was bigger than she had expected, many floors of white-limed walls and narrow, defensive windows. Lines of prayer flags fluttered against the sky. The jewel is in the lotus, she deciphered, the sum of what Tibetan she could read. A flash of silver drew her eye to men standing on the roof, tall brown men in flowing russet robes. She squinted. They held what appeared to be long trumpets. The low bleating the instruments made a moment later confirmed the guess.

“Oé!” Dorje exclaimed. With a sigh of resignation, he and his companions dropped their packs. “Lamas pray now. We wait.”

He gestured for her to sit but she could not. Within those walls lay darkness and warmth and quite possibly an end to her travails. She was walking before she even knew she meant to, crossing the trampled snow like a woman in a trance.

“Wait!” Dorje cried. “No can go. Lama here very holy. Very big power. Luisa make naljorpa angry. Luisa be sorry.”

He had her arm and was trying to drag her back. Anger rising, she spun around. Dorje’s jaw dropped. Her hood had fallen with the movement and the light shone clearly through her veil. She caught a glimpse of how she looked through his eyes: pale, porcelain skin and hair as gold as new-minted florins. Her expression was startled, even innocent. But she was too perfect, her eyes too vividly green, her mouth too carnally red.

Beauty like hers was dangerous.

His interest shimmered in the air between them. A sound filled her head: his heart pumping harder with desire, forcing the life-giving fluid through it, forcing his sex to rise. For a moment she felt faint. Blood, she thought, seeing it, tasting it. She closed her eyes at the power of her hunger—not just for food but to destroy.

She didn’t realize she had moved. When her eyes snapped open, her hand was wrapped behind his neck, already pulling him into biting range. Her gums were stinging where her teeth had broken through. She shook herself, then shook him.

He seemed not to notice the unfeminine force with which she did it.

“You go,” she said, sternly, huskily. “You no stop me.”

He stared at her, still under the spell of her foreign beauty. He licked his lips and she knew she’d done the same. Her mouth was watering, her eyeteeth razor sharp.

“You go,” she repeated. “Me no want hurt you.”

He grinned at that, as if he did not believe she could. “Haha,” he laughed with a Tibetan’s unpredictable humor. “No wonder you wear veil. You show face, you get too many husband!”

Her own laugh was weak but it allowed her to uncurl her fingers from his neck. His countrymen, she had learned, were polyandrists.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Me no want too many husband.”

She backed away, gesturing him to stay. He looked worried but this time he did not try to stop her. Perhaps he judged her a match for the terrible naljorpa, whatever in Creation that was. Steps led to the lamasery entrance, stone beneath the snow. She climbed them—one dozen, two… her eyes holding Dorje in his place.

At last she reached the top. Two large rings hung from the iron that bound the double door. Wincing at the bite of the frozen metal, she set her heels on the step and pulled. The hinges groaned. The door was too heavy for human hands, but impatience prevented her from pretending she could not move it. She was going in. Nothing, not prayers, not fears, not even her failing strength, was going to stop her now.

With a last grunt of effort, she heaved it open and slipped inside.

The shadows folded around her like a blessing, smoky and sweet and warm. Butter lamps, the ubiquitous Tibetan illumination, flickered on various altars along the walls. She had entered a towering hall, its roof supported by heavy columns, its walls hung with banners of colored silk. Through clouds of incense she made out the hazy forms of many Buddhas praying, teaching, and looking much like those she had encountered in Calcutta.

A group of monks, young and old, were crossing the passage as she came in—presumably headed to their worship. As one, they turned to gape. Luisa did not care. She was too elated to be inside. Her head was pounding, sun drunk still, but at least it did not ache. Giddy with relief, she threw back her veil and grinned.

It was a mistake she would not have made had her mind been clear.

Two of the monks cried out and the larger of them rushed her. She barely had time to brace before his weight crashed her over into the floor.

“Towo!” he cried as she struggled to free herself. “Tsem shes tsem!”

Luisa realized she must have bared her fangs. He had taken her for a demon.

“I pilgrim,” she protested in her limited Tibetan. “I come pray.”

Unimpressed, the monk took her head in both hands and smashed it against the floor. He must have been very strong. Like the crackle of early winter ice, she felt a tiny fracture in her skull.

The break healed almost as soon as it formed but, however ineffective, the injury snapped her control. Instinct took over, the remorseless drive for survival that marked her kind.

Taking his head in the same splay-fingered grip, she stunned the monk by coshing his brow against her own. Then, before he could recover, before she herself could think better of it, she rolled him beneath her and drove her teeth through the wind-roughened skin of his neck.

His blood filled her mouth, hot, rich, a feast for her starving veins. Her head cleared at the first swallow. The second was just for greed. But she had to stop. She could not kill within arm’s reach of her goal. When he moaned, she shoved off him and got up.

She might not be sated but she was sane.

“I am not a demon,” she said, even as she drew her fine Spanish glove across her mouth. “Not towo.”

The monk who had attacked her was on his knees, too shaken to rise. “No,” he agreed, his eyes wide and locked to hers. “You are not a demon.”

He sounded almost normal, almost, but she knew her bite had thralled him. He was hers to command, for an hour or a day, though she could not see what good that would do. The rest of the monks had closed around her, many of them as big as the one she’d bitten. She knew she could not overpower them all.

“I have come to learn your ways,” she said, switching to her more fluent Mandarin. Pray God, someone here would speak it. “I beg the favor of studying with your abbot.” Silence met her plea as she turned from one implacable visage to the next. “Look.” Careful to move slowly, she reached into the folds of her fur-lined cloak. “I bring a gift for him, for Geshe Rinpoche, the holy lama of Shisharovar.”

She held out her offering, wrapped as Dorje had advised in a white silk scarf. A rustle moved through the crowd, which suddenly parted to reveal another monk.

Everything seemed to hush as he approached—breath, heart, thought—as if the world itself had stopped turning on its axis. Even the terrible emptiness inside her stilled. Sun-drunk nonsense, she scoffed, but the sensation did not fade.

Here was a man to weaken knees.

Though young, the monk carried himself like a leader: upright, assured, with the grace of a creature whose body is completely in his control. He must be the lama she had come to see. His head had been shaved but not recently and new growth bristled out in a glossy brush. He looked healthy, smelled healthy. Helpless to quell the reaction, her pulse beat faster in her throat.

Swallowing, she tried not to stare at the way his stride moved the drapery of his deep red robe. Lifting her gaze did not help. The long, toga-like wrap bared one beautifully molded arm. As she watched, his hand settled on the shoulder of the kneeling monk. Without looking away from her, the lama gave the monk an order. Luisa could not suppress a shiver. His voice was as deep as the rumbling trumpets on the roof.

Whatever the lama’s authority, Luisa knew her victim could not obey until she released her mental hold. She stepped forward to do so. Unfortunately, watching a woman wipe blood from her mouth did not elicit trust. The lama barked a word and extended his second hand.

As soon as he did, something pushed her belly, something she could not see. It felt like a wall not precisely of wind, but not unlike. Under its influence, she slid backward, slowly at first, then gathering speed, her heels dragging on the stone, her arms wheeling for balance until she hit the plastered wall. The force of the collision drove the air from her lungs. Beside her, on a lighted altar, a heap of barley spilled from an offering bowl.

Luisa could barely contain a gasp. In all her years she’d never seen anyone perform such magic, neither upyr nor human. This, it seemed, was the power of a terrible naljorpa. She should have been frightened but her skin was tingling strongly with excitement. She could learn from this man. She could finally achieve her goal.

Pinned to the wall by the lama’s mysterious force, she watched him help the other monk to his feet. Her victim left the hall with no more than a reluctant glance in her direction. Amazing, she thought. No one but she should have been able to direct him in any way.

The lama continued his approach. Her body tensed, half with wariness and half with anticipation. Oh, she could happily have tied this one to her bed. He was staring directly at her, into her. The effect was eerie but oddly sensual, as if his gaze were touching places she had not known she had. His eyes themselves were lovely, the fold beneath slightly broader than the delicate one above. They did not slant so much as narrow at the ends.

When he stopped a foot away from her, she received another shock. In the light from the butter lamps’ floating wicks she saw that his eyes were gentian blue. The back of her neck prickled. This man, this Tibetan sorcerer, had European blood.

His gaze dropped to the package she clutched before her breast.

“You should kneel when you offer that,” he said.

She blinked at him. “You speak English.”

His expression did not change. “As do you.”

He must have assumed from her appearance that she would, a natural assumption and one that should not have unnerved her after all she’d seen him do. Nonetheless, she was unnerved. Though she was more gifted at putting thoughts into people’s heads than taking them out, she was not accustomed to finding anyone such a blank.

If the lama was unnerved, he did not show it. He was close to her, the tiny spikes of his lashes

shadowing his angled cheeks. Luisa was tall but he was taller, tall for any race, even hers. A warm soft scent rose from his robes, incense and yak butter and something sweeter: the scent that was his essence. She wanted to drag it into her lungs but knew she could not afford to, not now and maybe never. Already her attraction to him was stronger than she liked.

“You drank that man’s blood,” he said, “and you clouded his mind. If you are not a demon, what manner of creature are you?”

“I could ask you the same.”

His lips twitched with what might have been a smile. Then, as if this lapse were somehow shameful, he sobered and stepped back. Luisa sensed she was losing ground.

“Forgive me,” she said, doing her best to hide her consternation. “I did not mean to hurt that man. His attack surprised me. And I am not familiar with your customs.” Dropping to her knees, she bowed her head and held her guest gift up before her. “Please, holy lama, accept this humble token of my esteem.”

Someone giggled, a boy from the sound of it, quickly hushed.

“I am not Geshe Rinpoche,” said the man with an edge of stiffness, “nor a holy lama. I am, however, honored to be the precious one’s student. I will bring him to you when the service ends. If your request is sincere, I am sure he will honor it.”

She was not certain, but his final statement seemed to hold a hint of drollness. The possibility did not reassure her. Nor was she happy when he led her down a corridor to a little room. A set of iron chains hung from the raw stone wall. Luisa took one look and wanted to run away. Instead, she let her escort guide her to them. What sort of monastery kept such devices so close to hand? The room wasn’t even a dungeon! It had an ornate tea table and an extra cushion for a guest.

“You do not need to do this,” she said, fighting panic as he closed the manacles around her sleeves. “I am not a threat.”

The glance he shot her was sardonic. She had to admit he had cause to doubt her. But did he know iron was the only metal she could not break? Or had she simply imagined he had seen straight to her core? Either way, she could not fight. She needed these people’s help. She could not afford to hurt them.

But then he bent and chained her ankles like her wrists. His soft bristled hair brushed the front of her thigh, an inadvertent intimacy she was sure. Despite the sensual distraction, her panic rose.

“I do not like being restrained,” she said. She meant it to be a warning, but her voice shook, betraying her sincerity more clearly than she wished.

He seemed to hear it. He straightened and stared at her with his extraordinary eyes. His pupils gleamed like ink, large in the dimness, or perhaps he also was aroused. Her beauty was not, after all, of the common run. Given his show of control, she was surprised when he cupped her cheek. His palm was warm, his fingers calloused. The comfort they brought made her want to clench her jaw. Too easily she could imagine those careful fingers between her legs. She frowned to herself. His pull was as dangerous as her instinct to fight the chains.

As if he, too, mistrusted the contact, his touch fell away. A second later, so did his gaze.

“It is not a long service,” he said without his previous irony. “As soon as it is over, I will bring my teacher here.”

His teacher, she thought, rolling the back of her head against the stone. If a mere student could do what he did, what did she need to fear from the man who’d taught him?

Chapter Two

“SO,” said the abbot, his Mandarin even more elegant than hers, “Martin says you are interested in our ways.”

Geshe Rinpoche was older than his pupil and, at first glance, less imposing. He was shorter, for one thing, with a peasant’s solidity and bright black eyes that seemed an inch away from a smile. His robe was humble and the only badge of office he wore was the yellow stole around his neck. Martin stood guard at his side, stern and protective. His teacher, by contrast, did not behave as if she posed a threat.

And perhaps she didn’t. Perhaps the magic Geshe Rinpoche commanded turned her own into the useless huffing of the wind. It was a strange possibility, one she had not faced since her first encounters with her kind. True, the smattering of upyr at Queen Elizabeth’s court were more experienced than Luisa, but none of those backstabbers could take her without a fight—and certainly not by force of mind!

Knowing she must tread carefully, she bowed her head before she spoke. “I have heard much of Shisharovar, your holiness, and of your awe-inspiring power.”

“Indeed,” said the abbot. “How flattering.”

“Perhaps you would allow me to introduce myself?” When she ventured to look up, a grin had creased the old lama’s face, the lines fanning merrily outward from his eyes. He spread his hands in permission. Luisa composed herself. “Thank you, your holiness. My name is Luisa del Fiore and I am a prosperous Florentine merchant. My business takes me all over the world and also brings the world to me.”

“You travel all over the world? A woman alone?”

“Usually I have companions but sometimes I go alone, sometimes in disguise as a man. It depends on the prejudices of those with whom I deal, and on which appearance will tend to my best advantage.”

“Your skill at subterfuge must be great,” said the abbot with a wry enjoyment that warned her not to underestimate his wit. “But surely you are not here to trade.”

“No, your holiness. I am here because of a trader I met, one who traveled these regions long ago. His name was John Moore and he was rescued by your lamas when a snowstorm caught him in the pass. He remained some months and witnessed many wonders, one of which was a monk who had himself walled in a cave where he survived for three whole weeks on water and meditation. When he emerged, he was as strong as the day he’d left. That monk was, I believe, yourself.”

For some reason, the abbot glanced at his student, then at her. “You come here to learn to fast? All this way, to learn a trick any hermit can perform?”

“Self-denial is one of the paths to enlightenment, is it not? I believe in learning from the best.”

He furrowed his brow at her. The intensity of his concentration caught her unprepared. His gaze was even keener than his student’s. It lapped at her skin like water, crawling over and under until the hairs on her arms stood up in waves. She gasped, abruptly unable to catch her breath. Then, with no more warning than he’d given when he began, the abbot released her.

“You have a strange energy,” he said in a musing tone. “I see from the disposition of your subtle bodies that your thoughts and desires are very much concerned with your physical being. Our medical lamas claim such attachment leads to illness and yet your material self is very strong. I have never met a demon of your description, much less one who would enter a holy place. I confess, though, I cannot imagine what you are.”

He waited then, a picture of Oriental patience. More than anything he seemed curious. No one who suspected she was not human had ever reacted in this way. Then again, in this country, demons and ghosts were treated as little more than inconvenient neighbors. Tibetans bought an amulet or a spell and continued on their way. Luisa sensed that even if she admitted to being a monster, this holy man would not condemn her.

Of course, a failure to condemn was not the same as giving aid.

At a loss, she looked to Martin. He was watching her just as calmly. She wondered if his composure were a pretense or if, like his teacher, he was prepared to accept her as she was.

“We can see this request is important to you,” Martin said. “We would be interested to know why.”

Luisa hesitated. Could she tell them? Should she? Would they help her if she did not? She fisted her hands within the iron shackles. The slow, draining chill pulled at her through her clothes. The metal would not kill her unless someone thrust it through her heart. Eventually, though, it would weaken her enough to be killed. By sunlight. Or fire. Or the severing of her spine. She supposed she could take her choice.

As if sensing her fears, the abbot lifted a key from a ring on the belt that tied his robe.

“No,” she said before he could use it. “Let me answer before you decide to free me.” Uncurling her fingers, she forced herself to relax. “I was born as human as you. One hundred twenty years ago, on the fortieth anniversary of my birth, my master changed me to the creature I am today. He was the descendant of an ancient race who came from a distant star. They lived in peace here once, until a few took to killing humans. We… feed off them, you see. It is the only sustenance we can take.” She straightened her shoulders. “I am what the people ofRussia call upyr, a blood-drinker, an immortal.”

“An immortal.” The abbot’s head was cocked birdlike to the side. He seemed not so much shocked as fascinated. “An immortal who is neither ghost nor god. An immortal in human form.” Suddenly he laughed. “You know, we ofTibet aspire to leave the world of illusion behind. To us, this earth is a kind of hell—a schoolroom, if you will—where we are repeatedly reborn in order to perfect our true, nonmaterial being. You, Luisa del Fiore, seem to have enrolled for a very long term!”

His humor discomposed her. “I do not wish to give up my life,” she said, wanting to be clear. “I simply wish to live more ethically. I wish to live without drinking blood.”

“Ah,” said the abbot, “now I begin to see. You must realize that may not be possible.”

“Yes, your holiness, but surely if anyone can teach me it is you.”

“Perhaps.” His dark eyes narrowed in consideration. “I will have to meditate carefully before I act. It will not be easy to instruct you, who have not been raised in our system, and it may not be wise to try. We shall see.” He turned to Martin, his expression warming with a father’s fondness. “I leave it to you to make our visitor comfortable. Perhaps she would like a quiet room in the old east wing.”

Martin looked as if he longed to forgo this duty, but he bowed instead, his steepled hands moving smoothly from brow to throat to heart. “As you wish, rinpoche.”

From his tone, Luisa gathered “rinpoche” was as much a term of honor as a name.

To her relief, Martin unshackled her and led her in a new direction down the stony, torchlit hall. Apart from instructing her to follow and shooting her the occasional measuring glance, he did not speak. Luisa was no stranger to solitude, but for some reason his taciturnity frayed her nerves. They climbed a set of ancient stairs.

“Have you taken a vow of silence?” she asked.

“No,” was his short, basso response.

“Might I ask then why your abbot keeps a set of chains in his reception chamber?”

“They are for interrogating criminals. The neighboring villages sometimes bring their accused here. My teacher reads their auras to see if they speak true.”

“Their auras.”

“The aura is a second body. It is a match for the physical body, inhabiting the same space and extending slightly beyond it, but composed of life force instead of matter. The life force of the earth is what a hermit survives on while he fasts.”

Luisa considered this as they turned down another corridor, apparently uninhabited and lit by narrow windows. The slits were open to the icy air. A dusting of snow swirled in eddies along the floor. She pulled her cloak closer but Martin, like Dorje, did not seem to mind the cold.

She thought longingly of her palazzo, so marvelously snug after living out her mortal life with wind whistling through unglazed windows, a wind that had too often blown her nothing better than the stink of her husband’s fish. Resistance to the cold, she sometimes thought, was worth the price of turning upyr by itself.

Not that her homeland had ever seen cold like this. This was beyond even the winter she’d spent at sea with Sir Francis Drake.

Ahead of her, Martin pushed open a heavy door and held it for her to enter. Irked by his seeming indifference, she paused on the threshold, not touching him but close enough to mark the subtle pulsing of

his heat. To her gratification, a trace of color crept up his neck. So. Monk or not, he was not immune to her appeal. The discovery restored a portion of her confidence.

“I felt you touch my aura before,” she said. “You were trying to look inside me like your teacher.”

“Yes,” he admitted. She thought he would say no more, but then his mouth quirked slightly to the left. “Studying someone’s aura is not like a boy peeking under a woman’s skirts, if that is what you were thinking.”

Whatever riposte she might have made was lost when his gaze settled onto hers. Her spine tingled strongly. Again she had that sense of time held in suspension. She must have imagined the hint of teasing. He seemed the most serious man in the world.

How beautiful he is, she thought. How utterly male and comely. The admiration itself was pleasurable, though she knew it would not satisfy her long. Luisa was a creature who reveled in possession: a painting, a book, a perfect length of brocaded silk. Like her countrymen, she knew an object gained value by being owned: real value. InItaly, as in the rest of Renaissance Europe, a man was judged by what he had. Appearance was power. Illusion became reality. Luisa had survived and thrived by knowing that.

“You are big for a woman,” commented the object of her lust.

She choked on a startled laugh. “Not much for flattery, are you?”

He did her the grace of flushing. “I meant you are tall. And you are stronger than our females. You fought that monk as if you were a man.”

She was not sure how to respond. It didn’t seem wise to confess her strength had been at its lowest ebb. But Martin did not expect an answer. Without asking permission, he pushed her hood back to her shoulders. As if pulled by an unknown force, his hand slid into her golden waves. He seemed as bewitched as she.

“I have never seen a woman with hair like yours. It does not even tangle.” His fingers spread gently behind her ear, his thumb stroking the shadowed contours of her cheek. “Your skin is as smooth as satin.

Are all upyr like you?”

His touch sent a heated shiver to her sex. She had to clear her throat before she could speak. “In some ways. When we are changed, we become what we would have been had we achieved our full potential. Our perfect age. Our perfect height and weight. As a mortal, I was plain and dull.”

And bruised, often as not—first by her husband and then, more sadly, by her sons. She shook off the memory with a frown. That life was over. In any case, she had darker sins on her conscience than any that stained those of the foolish brutes who, for better or worse, had been her mortal family.

They were dead now, those strapping boys. Sometimes she regretted her failure to save them from their father’s sway. Sometimes she was grateful they were gone. She could pray for them if she wished, and forgive the blows they had no more power to strike.

Martin was watching her face as if he could follow the passage of her thoughts. When he spoke, though, he did not ask about her former life. “Why do your kind ‘change’ humans? Can they not have children of their own?”

She shook her head. “My master believed the sun kills upyr seed. But we have compensations. We are strong, as you said, and can influence human thought. I have heard some upyr are able to take the form of beasts, though I have not seen it done.”

“How many of you are there?”

“That is difficult to say. Many of the old ones died by human vengeance. Some simply grew tired. It is not easy to make new upyr. And we are wary of one another. Territorial. I knew of a dozen in London and heard there were similar circles in Paris and Seville. At least one more upyr lived in Florence, but we rarely did more than nod in passing. He was different, that one, dangerous. I suspect he was an elder.”

“An elder?”

“One of the old ones who knows how to perform the change. My master claimed there were only two—himself and his student, Nim Wei—but I think he may have been wrong.”

His thumb smoothed the orbit around her eye. “And you do not age once you are made?”

She shook her head. “Not physically.”

He leaned so close she thought he meant to examine her cell by cell. Knowing her passivity would increase his trust, she allowed him the inquisition. Remaining still was not easy. His scent curled around her while his breath brushed her mouth like velvet. An inch would have brought them to a kiss.

She made a sound she had not intended, soft and hungry in her throat.

At once he pulled away. “Forgive me,” he said, reluctantly drawing his hand out of her hair. He rubbed it across his chest as if it itched. “I have been rude.”

“Some would say a creature like me deserves no better.”

“Some lie. All living beings deserve respect.”

She could see he meant it. Dazed for more reasons than she could name, she obeyed his gesture to step inside. The room was small: a stone floor, a low, beamed ceiling. One arrow-slit window overlooked a snowy courtyard. The only furniture was an unlit altar and a pile of squared-off dusty cushions. Luisa assumed these were what she’d sleep on.

“I will bring blankets,” Martin said, “and a brazier.”

She smiled at him. “That would be kind. I think I must have been changed to suit the climate of my birth. I can stand more cold than most, but we do not have these extremes at home.” A burst of childish laughter drew her to the window. A group of boys were engaged in a kicking game with a ball. The shadows were long now, the sun sinking swiftly behind the peaks. After all she had been through, the lingering light did not affect her much.

“I hope the chelas will not bother you,” Martin said. “They like to play there between their lessons.”

“Chelas?”

“That is what we call young boys. Older students are trapas.”

“And you?” She turned to find him a step behind her.

His gaze remained on the scene outside. “I am also trapa. I have not been here very long. A year only. There were… reasons I could not join the lamasery as a boy. But someday I hope to be gelong.” If she had not been watching closely, she would have missed his tiny scowl. “Gelong is a special ordination. My teacher will tell me when I am ready.”

“You seem quite advanced to me. Your powers—”

He waved her words away with his hand. “Having power is not the same as being holy.”

“Certainly not in my case,” she said with a coaxing smile.

Martin did not return it. “I have been a monk before,” he said. “That is why my progress has been swift.”

“Before?”

“In previous lives.” He glanced at her, weighing her response to this exotic claim. “My memories drew me back to this place, to my teacher. He has never failed to guide me, even at my most stubborn. Always he took me in.”

Devotion rang in his voice. As if he heard it himself, and judged it unsuitable for display, he pulled himself straighter and stepped away. “Unless you have further need of me, I will take my leave.”

She inclined her head. “I await your teacher’s convenience.”

He paused beneath the lintel of the door. “If I bolt this, will it keep you in?”

She could not restrain a laugh. No one else would have expected her to be honest. “Probably not, but I pose no immediate danger to your colleagues.”

“I can bring food,” he offered. “Tea.”

“And I could pretend to drink it, but it would not sustain me.”

She watched him take this in, his thoughtfulness an echo of his teacher.

“Will you become ill if you do not eat?” he asked.

“There is time before that happens.”

“But you will not be comfortable.”

“No,” she agreed, “I will not be comfortable.”

He nodded at this. She sensed he also heard what she had not said: that she was more likely to take what she needed by force than to allow herself to grow much weaker. At any rate, she would try. From what she had seen of him, the outcome of a confrontation between them would not be sure.

Only when he pulled the door shut behind him did she remember where she’d first seen eyes his shade of blue.

***

“CLEARLY,” said Geshe Rinpoche, “the trader she met was your father. You must admit the coincidence is striking, as if Fate were taking a hand in bringing you together.”

Martin grimaced. That John Moore had drawn the woman here was hardly a point in her favor. A curse, more like, if she proved as unworthy of trust as he. Martin touched the pale jade horse that stood on the table by his teacher’s window. The carving was a gift from the Mongol khan, a thanks for an herbal healing. Nestled on a scarf beside it, the woman’s offering curled like a snake. It was a mala, a Tibetan rosary, a string of one hundred eight shining emerald beads.

Apparently she had not lied about being a prosperous merchant.

“I saw no sign she lied at all,” said his teacher, “though there was much she hid.”

His comment did not surprise Martin. He and his guide were so attuned Geshe Rinpoche could often read his mind. He, of course, would not presume to read his teacher’s.

“Haha,” laughed Geshe Rinpoche, “now I am presumptuous!”

Martin turned, face hot, but his embarrassment faded in the waves of warmth he felt from his friend.

“Yes, friend,” Geshe agreed, “for, as I have told you, you and I have shared many lives—lives in which I was not always the teacher.” He beamed up at Martin from the floor, still seated in the attitude of meditation, his legs crossed, his hands curled easily around his knees. After a moment, his smile softened into a look of deep compassion. “I know you are troubled. I would be surprised if you were not. After all, this woman is a living reminder that half of you belongs in another world.”

“None of me belongs anywhere but here,” Martin declared. “This is the country of my heart!”

Shamed by the passionate outburst, he hung his head.

“The wise man feels neither attachment nor aversion,” reminded his master with the patience for which he was renowned.

“I’m sorry, rinpoche. You know I am trying to follow the Path.”

His teacher released a quiet sigh. “Yes, I know you are trying. Too hard maybe. There are things I have seen in your future… But that is a talk for another day. You will choose your own way, as everyone does. For now you need only know that I have decided to help this woman. Tomorrow we will consult the medical lama. If our pilgrim is as earnest as she claims, I think we may accomplish much.”

“‘We,’ rinpoche?”

His teacher’s eyes held more than a hint of mirth. “Yes, ‘we.’ My meditation has told me you must help!”

Chapter Three

THE medical lama was a tall stork like man, as gauntly ascetic as Martin and the abbot were robust. He reminded Luisa of scientists she had known, truth seekers who burned for nothing but uncovering hidden things. She did not fear her nature would disgust him, only that at some point he would want to cut her open and look inside.

They had gathered—she, Martin, the medical lama, and the abbot—in Geshe Rinpoche’s surprisingly comfortable quarters. They’d come soon after midnight, not for Luisa’s sake but because midnight was when the lamasery’s day began. Every so often the chant of the morning service drifted up from the floors below. Distant as it was, the sound could not compete with the rapid-fire barrage of the medical lama’s questions.

Once he had taken her pulse at various places on her body, he interrogated her about her diet, her sleep habits, her strengths and weaknesses alike. Naturally, Luisa was reluctant to discuss the latter. She understood, though, that she must enter into this process wholly. As Geshe Rinpoche said: a doctor could not diagnose half a patient. All must be known or the treatment would not suit.

After an hour of this, the medical lama was so excited he was pacing back and forth across the colorful woven rug. “And you say you can consume food, but not digest it?”

“Yes.”

“But wine you can imbibe, as well as filtered juice and tea.”

“I cannot drink Tibetan tea,” she clarified with an automatic wrinkling of her nose. “The yak butter and soda disagree with me.”

The medical lama stopped to press his hands before his mouth. “Yes. Those additions are too coarse, too material. Blood is food a human has transformed for you and wine is sunlight on which the fruit has done the work. Are you certain you do not remember how you were changed into what you are?”

“Quite certain,” she said. “The procedure is wiped from our memory as soon as it is done. Only the elders possess the secret and I’m afraid it is a power they do not choose to share. I do not even know how many of them exist. Two, according to my master, but I often thought he told me less than he knew. However great or small their number, they are shadow figures who rarely walk among their broods.”

“Pity,” said the lama as if their presence would present no more than a chance for intriguing study. Luisa was beginning to see that nothing in this world or any other could cow these Tibetan monks. The medical lama pondered the ceiling, then turned to the holy abbot. “I must study her tsakhor. Please instruct her to undress.”

“Scusi?” said Luisa with a mixture of amusement and affront. She might not be a fount of modesty, but once upon a time she had been. Even now she drew the line at standing naked before three men—at least, three men she did not intend to bed. That Martin’s presence inspired the most discomfort, she chose not to examine.

To her relief, the abbot intervened. “Tsakhor are wheels of force within your subtle body. Examining them will tell Lama Songpan how your inner mandala channels energy. Your clothing would interfere with the emanations.”

“If I understood more than two words of that,” Luisa said, “I might be convinced.”

Martin frowned at her as the medical lama threw up his hands. Calm as ever, the abbot smiled. “You must forgive us,” he said. “We do not think of nudity as you do. To us the body is simply the vehicle of the soul. But perhaps you have something simple beneath those clothes? An undergarment that would preserve your privacy?”

“I am wearing a smock,” Luisa conceded, suddenly feeling foolish. These were men of science, not a science she understood but that did not make them satyrs in search of thrills. Nor, given her history, was she in any position to throw stones. With a shrug at her own illogic, she doffed her fur-lined cloak. Her Turkish-style tunic and trousers spurred no comment, since they were more familiar to her watchers than the ruff and farthingale she would have worn at home.

Hiding her discomposure under her briskest manner, she stepped from the embroidered trousers and undid the tunic’s pearl-studded buttons. The sleeveless shift she wore beneath fell past her hips, a cobweb silk woven by her own bottega, the best cloth-working shop in all of Florence. The silk was fine enough to pull through a woman’s ring, as soft and shimmering as smoke. For all the shield it provided, she might as well have removed it. She kept it, though, perversely determined to maintain at least a pretense of maidenly reserve—not that Martin was likely to be fooled.

She stopped disrobing once she’d peeled off her long black gloves. Feeling the cold now, she handed them to Lama Songpan, who exclaimed in wonderment as he turned them back and forth.

“Not a crease,” he marveled. “Not a single sign of wear. Her garments are as fresh as if she never had put them on.”

The abbot hummed and rubbed his chin. Only Martin seemed to view her barely clothed body as more than a scientific object. He had crossed his arms as she undressed and, while his face remained impassive, his knuckles were nearly white. Knowing his gaze was on her abruptly heightened her awareness of her flesh.

Yes, she thought, you know I am a woman. A draft stirred her hair behind her back and a shiver swept her breasts. She felt a tightening at their tips as if they had been pinched by gentle fingers. Martin’s eyes met hers, hot now, and not the least bit monkish. She remembered carvings she had seen in India’s northern temples: gods with thick, rearing phalluses, their consorts small of waist and round of breast. Phantom hands seemed to grip her around the ribs, lifting her, impaling her even as she hung splay-legged in the air.

It was not a position with which she was familiar. Then she knew. These memories were not hers. Martin wanted her. He was imagining how she’d feel. Tiny beads of sweat dotted his brow.

Perhaps he did not, after all, prefer a woman to be a maid.

She smiled at him and he immediately turned away—not, however, before she had seen the flush that tinged his ears.

“I will light the brazier,” he said. “She is cold.”

Lama Songpan, of course, had missed this little drama. “Hm,” he said, circling her slowly on the rug. “In the average person, the earth’s energy is continually being tapped for the replenishment of the aura. The process is as automatic as the beating of the heart. But her aura’s barriers to penetration are very strong. I suspect this must serve some protective function, for she is virtually cut off from these natural forces. Her heart tsakhor in particular is quite guarded.”

“You say she is virtually cut off,” repeated the abbot, “but not completely?”

The medical lama crouched and laid the tips of three bony fingers on her feet. “I sense a small draw. Very small. Under normal circumstances not enough to sustain a child.”

“She must be taught to increase it,” said the abbot.

Lama Songpan rose creakily erect. “Perhaps. I do not know if she can.” He shrugged. “I would recommend a cautious attempt. Otherwise, I do not know what to suggest.”

“Very well,” said the abbot. “Thank you for your advice.”

His subordinate bowed and retreated, leaving the three of them alone.

The sound of Martin stoking the brazier seemed very loud.

Geshe Rinpoche turned to watch his student. From the look on his face, Luisa could only assume the abbot didn’t expect her to be watching him. For once, his expression was not that of an indulgent teacher. It was considering, rather, almost cool, as if Martin were a racehorse he meant to bet on.

An instant later she thought she must have imagined it because he smiled at Martin just as fondly as before. “Come away from there,” he said, a hint of laughter in the words. “If you keep that up, our guest will think we mean to roast her.”

Martin straightened so quickly he nearly dropped the poker. “I’m sorry, rinpoche. I—”

“Sh.” His teacher patted the air with open hands. “It is all right. Everything is well.”

To Luisa’s surprise, she caught a hint of her own gift in the lama’s voice. He was putting calm into Martin’s head, calm that was not really there. Given the expression she had caught a glimpse of, she couldn’t help wondering what his motives were.

But maybe she’d grown too cynical. The love the abbot felt for his student lit more than his eyes. Luisa was not easily deceived. She doubted she could have misread that.

“Come,” said Geshe Rinpoche, waving Martin closer. “I want you to show our guest how to pull up energy from the earth.”

“Me?” Martin’s reluctance was emblazoned on his face.

The abbot chuckled. “It is only a request, Martin. You may refuse. But she is drawn to you,” he said, proving he had seen their exchange, “as you are to her. This sympathy will make teaching her easier. I will stay, though, if you feel yourself in need of a chaperone.”

The implication that he intended to leave startled Martin and Luisa both. Did the abbot’s trust run so deep? Or was this meant as a test of his student’s self-command? Either way, Luisa was not certain she approved. She drew herself straighter, only to find that Martin had done the same.

“It shall be as you wish,” he said, his chin raised up with pride.

This pricked her temper in a different way. Martin himself wished to be alone with her. He simply did not want to admit it.

***

MARTIN tightened his jaw against further lapses of control. He might have succeeded had he not recalled those long black gloves peeling down her shapely arms. They were foreign, those gloves, Western, a symbol of everything he’d turned his back on.

Just as his father had turned his back on him.

The gloves’ removal should not have inflamed him, should not have dried his mouth or thickened the restless organ between his legs. They should not have aroused him even more than the sight of her skin shining through her filmy shift. As to that, he should not have cared if she did resemble a goddess in a temple, her breasts impossibly buoyant, her belly a creamy curve. The body was simply a vehicle for experiencing earthly life. It was nothing to worship, nothing to lust over until one ached in every part.

But her beauty shattered his efforts to stay aloof. She was a lake at sunset, a mountain touched with gold. Her skin glowed in the lamplight and her hair… her hair made him clench his hands and break into a sweat. She smelled of violets and he wondered if all her kind shared this not-quite-human scent. But all her kind did not matter. Only she did. He wanted to burrow against her and breathe her in. She made him forget what he meant his life to be. For that alone he would have kept his distance.

That is, he would have if Geshe Rinpoche had not left them by themselves.

“Well,” purred his tempter, “why don’t you show me how it’s done?”

You know how it is done, he thought, far better than I.

“You seem to know what goes where,” she said with a satiny smile and a pointed glance at his loins.

The insinuation hardened him even further, his shock at odds with his arousal. She must have seen the pictures in his mind, the union of god and goddess in the flesh.

It seemed a travesty that this woman could read him as easily as his guide.

“You were thinking very hard,” she explained, her amusement gentler than it might have been. “Perhaps you were too distracted to shield your mind. I will stop listening if you prefer.”

“No.” He squared his shoulders. “Shielding my thoughts will not erase them. And you will learn better if you put no walls between us.”

“As you wish,” she said.

Her lashes fell in acknowledgment, then rose. Despite his reluctance, he could not look away. Her eyes were a rich, pure green, the color of innocence and nature, of drives both simple and complex. He forced himself to meet their unspoken promise. Whatever her experience in the sexual arena, he was her equal in many others. More to the point, he had faced lust down before. He was a man, after all, not a rock.

“Here.” He took her hand, slipping it under his upper robe. “Keep your palm pressed lightly above my heart.”

Her pupils dilated at the contact and the softest of flushes stained her cheeks. She licked her lips. The tip of her tongue was small and sharp. In spite of his resolve, he was not prepared for the strength of his reaction. His penis jerked upward, just once but hard, as if her tongue had wet its tip. Without warning, he became aware of the steady throb of an artery in his neck.

Her fingernails pricked his skin like a kitten’s claws.

“Your chest is very hard,” she said huskily, then shook her head with impatience.

The gesture reminded him she was hungry; that to her a man was more than a partner for her bed. What would it be like, he wondered, to gratify all those needs at once?

“Focus on your hand,” he instructed, striving to keep both their attention where it belonged. “You must concentrate on the energy swirling above my skin. It will feel like the currents of a lake in which you are submersed while very still, or perhaps like a sort of tingle. I am going to meditate, to draw on the life force of the earth. You should feel the flow change. If you are able, I want you to follow the current down.”

He closed his eyes and began to breathe, to slow his heart and calm the heated rushing of his blood. The touch of her hand was oddly pleasant, light now and quiet, with none of the twitches untrained people tended to betray. Without being told, she matched her breathing to his own. In and hold. Out and rest. He slipped quickly into the state he sought, enjoying for a moment the familiar sensation of weightless peace. He was more than Martin now, and less. He was, at least in part, the simple spirit Martin hid.

Before his sense of self could dissolve completely, he drew up a skein of force, slowly, letting Luisa see how it was done, letting her feel the gradual brightening of the spinning tsakhor above his heart.

There, he said, sensing he did not need to speak aloud, now I shall send the energy through the channels of my subtle body.

She shivered as he began. “Oh,” she whispered, “I feel it.”

She stepped instinctively closer, her thighs and belly brushing the woven folds of his robe. It seemed natural to wrap her lightly in his arms, to slide his hand into the small of her silk-draped back. Her temple nestled easily beside his jaw. Though he had witnessed the act of love, he had never held a woman. She was soft, a yielding pleasure to the touch. His arousal returned as calmly as a dream. The energy he had drawn from the earth fed its intensity, though its progress seemed honey slow. Hungry for more, he nuzzled her shell-like ear.

“Follow,” he murmured, “follow where I go.”

Her body pressed his, her free hand raking languorously up his skull. Sparks seemed to rustle through the shortness of his hair. She had been cool but now she warmed, reminding him this was no ordinary woman. No doubt her flesh followed strange rules of its own. When she rose onto her toes, the tips of her breasts matched his. The change in position made a place for his erection between her thighs. His skin tightened, his organ struggling against its own pounding weight. He longed to press her more closely, longed to slip his ache inside her hidden warmth. Even through their clothes he could feel her softness.

But this was not where his mind was supposed to go. He forced it back to the demonstration. “Do you see?” he said. “Do you feel the current flow?”

She shuddered as if she, too, had to pull herself from the brink.

“I see,” she said, “but I don’t see how.”

He tried to explain, in word and deed, but could not make her comprehend. Control she had in overflowing measure. She could regulate her breathing and her pulse as well as the most masterful yogin. What she could not do was change her state of mind. Nor could he feed energy into her himself. When he tried, it flowed around her aura like a stream of water around an egg. She seemed, as far as he could tell, utterly impermeable.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I simply do not understand.”

He drew breath to try again, then let his hold fall away. Luisa stepped back as he did. They stared at each other. At once, he missed her body’s warmth. As if she felt the same, she hugged her upper arms. Her breasts swelled into the neckline of her shift, beautiful in a different way now that his trance had begun to fade. His too-worldly organ pounded in complaint.

“I am sorry,” he said. “Perhaps my concentration was not complete.”

Her laugh was low and sweet. “If your concentration had been complete, I would have been insulted.”

He could not resist smiling back, at least for a moment. “I will consult my guide. He may have another idea.”

“We could try this again.”

Her eyes sparkled with teasing like a glacier in the sun. He knew better than to meet their temptation long. Touching her, and having her touch him—for however laudable a purpose—had strengthened her carnal tug. He knew how it felt to hold her, and he wanted that feeling again.

“I should escort you to your room,” he said. “Dawn is near. I know you will want to sleep.”

“Yes.” Her gaze dropped to the floor.

“Is something wrong?”

She looked up, her smile wry but gentle. “No. I was debating whether to invite you to join me. I have heard that some of your monks…” Her voice trailed off at the stiffening of his shoulders. “But not you, I take it. Please forgive me for being forward.”

“It is nothing,” he said, wanting to sound casual but knowing he did not. “The vow I wish to take would preclude me from experiencing sexual pleasures.”

“And in return you would gain what?” Her gaze was curious. His fell to the carmine fullness of her mouth, then slid away.

“A deeper spirituality. A chance to reach nirvana.” He caught the question in her eyes. “Nirvana means enlightenment, a knowledge of oneness with the universe, a freedom from the cycle of rebirth.”

“Like our concept of heaven?”

“Something like,” he said, though from what he knew of Christianity the differences were great. No harps played in a Buddhist’s heaven. No one lazed about or sang in heavenly choirs. And no sinner went to hell. Hell was here. Hell was earth. If one learned one’s lessons well, one could advance to a higher plane and continue one’s progress there.

To his surprise, a very human grin flashed across her face. “You don’t want to tell me what you are thinking,” she said. “You’re afraid you will offend me.” With a spontaneity that made his throat tighten, she squeezed his upper arm. “You must not worry. I may not be pious but my faith is firm. A matter of faith, I suppose you’d say, since—despite some people’s claim that I am a creature of the devil—I have never met him, no more than I’ve met God. My beliefs require no proof, nor do I fear to hear others speak of theirs, even at the risk they will change my mind.”

Martin blinked at her. His teacher would have approved of her attitude. “In that case, I shall tell you what you wish.”

“Good,” she said, and strode jauntily toward her folded clothes.

Watching her bottom jiggle was a pleasure he could not bring himself to forgo.

***

MARTIN and his guide stood shoulder to shoulder on the lamasery roof, gazing out toward the soft green haze of the nearest valley. Soon spring would bring herds of gowa to graze on the growing grass; herds of pilgrims, too, though not so many as trekked to the holier shrine at Kangrinpoche. He found himself glad they were not here yet. They would have been a distraction from Luisa.

She interests me, he thought, facing the truth as he had been trained. She pulls not just at my body but at my mind.

What would it be like to see history unfold in a single incarnation? To love the material world so deeply one never wished to leave? Martin shook his head. Luisa claimed faith in a higher power, but she did not experience its reality even as much as the youngest chela. She could not touch the truth behind the illusion. All things were one and yet Luisa seemed alone: separate from both her God and her fellow beings. She should have been miserable. He could not understand why she was not.

No doubt he would have pondered the matter longer if his teacher had not spoken.

“Do you remember,” he said, “when your family first came to Shisharovar?”

“I shall never forget it. I ran straight up the stairs and tried to kick two monks out of ‘my’ room.”

The abbot’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “You were quite adamant for an eight-year-old.”

“But it was all so clear to me. This was where I belonged.”

“Yes,” said his guide, “it must have seemed so. I admit, I felt the tug of it myself: to keep my old friend by my side. It is comforting to find again what you have lost, almost as comforting as finding what you have forgotten you ever had.”

Martin wondered what the abbot was getting at, but his placid profile gave no clue. He felt his forehead pleat together. “I know sixteen years was a long time to stay away, but I could not have remained here then, not when it meant abandoning my mother. My father leaving before my birth was bad enough. I could not betray her, too.”

The abbot patted his rumpled sleeve. “I did not mean to imply your choice was wrong. You had a lifetime in this monastery, more than one. To mindlessly repeat what one has done before can hardly be considered progress.”

“But I belong here now,” Martin said. To his dismay, his voice made the words a question.

The abbot smiled. “I do not doubt we are all where we’re meant to be. Speaking of which”—his teacher shot him a sidelong glance—“what do you think of your new student?”

Martin’s hands were clasped on the stony ledge. He stared at them, amazed they did not bear the silky imprint of her curves. “I regret I could not help her.”

“We have only begun. No one could expect the first attempt to succeed. And I am certain you did your best.”

Had he, Martin wondered, or had he allowed the clamoring of his body to drown out a better, quieter guidance? “I am not certain—” he began.

The abbot broke in. “She is settled in her room?”

“Yes,” he said, though he was perturbed by the interruption. “I brought her blankets as the sun was rising. When she took them, she stumbled and nearly fell. I think she is weaker than she is used to. I sat with her for a while, to ensure she was well, but I do not think she knew I was there. She slept strangely, like a fakir on a bed of nails. Her body was stiff and cold to touch. I did not see her breathe more than twice in a quarter hour.”

He did not add that her appearance had unsettled him, more statue than corpse but disturbing all the same. For a moment, he had feared she died in truth. But then her chest had risen with a shallow inhalation. The relief he’d felt had not been logical, no more than his gentle stroking of her hair. That contact could have comforted only him.

“She seemed… vulnerable,” he said, the confession as troubling as the memory.

“Indeed,” mused his guide, “if one wished to destroy such creatures, clearly their rest would be the time to try.”

“Sir!” Martin was shocked beyond holding his tongue. Among Buddhists, the taking of life, any life, was a powerful prohibition.

His teacher raised his brows. “I am not proposing we murder our guest, only that we prepare for any eventuality.”

His tone was eminently reasonable. Martin schooled his pulse to a steadier rate. “Forgive me. I know you will do everything possible to prevent such a necessity from arising.”

He did not understand the small, satisfied smile with which the abbot turned back to the view. He seemed almost smug as he spoke again. “I have thought of something else,” he said, “a meditation that might bring down her walls. We can drug some wine to induce the proper mental state. It will be dangerous, of course. Inexperienced as she is, she might get lost in the visions the herbs produce.”

“Most likely she will get lost,” Martin said, aghast. “Even trained monks sometimes mistake a vision for reality. Such a thing could break her mind!”

“Not if she has a guide.”

Martin caught his breath. He sensed his teacher was not proposing to fill that role himself. “No,” he said, before he could think better of it. “Rinpoche, please do not ask that of me. That kind of journey is too intimate. I would—She is already—”

The abbot cocked his head at him. “I know your response to her is strong, perhaps as strong as your first response to Shisharovar?”

“My reaction to her has nothing in common with that. Nothing! I have no memories of her. None!”

“One does not need a memory for there to be a karmic link. Dread can be as much a sign of connection as love. In any case, I know you have not forgotten the importance of facing fears.”

Martin’s head could scarcely hang any lower. “No, rinpoche.”

“Good. Because I am asking you to help our guest face hers. Fear is invariably the barrier to achievement. Once she overcomes it, I suspect we will progress.”

Martin had no doubt of that, but to what they would progress he dared not imagine.

Chapter Four

DESPITE the abbot’s sponsorship, Luisa’s presence unsettled the other inhabitants of the lamasery. Because of this, her tiny, isolated cell was transformed into a chamber for meditation. She was given a robe to wear, a simple wrap of woven cloth. Pots of incense were carried in and a thangka, or banner of painted silk, was hung across one wall. The image was grim to say the least: a fire-enshrouded demon with a necklace of severed heads.

“That is Hayagriva,” Martin said, “the deity of awakened energy. Those figures he is trampling represent the concepts of self and personality, both illusions of the earthly world. Illusion, of course, is the source of all human suffering.”

Luisa hummed in response and tried to blank her face. When Martin explained the purpose of this exercise, she had acknowledged the importance of facing one’s deepest fears. She could not, however, imagine wanting to lose one’s sense of self. She had spent her human life as little more than a beast of burden: unseen and unheard, almost too beaten down to think. Even after she was changed, her master had to bully her into learning. You need a strong mind, he’d said, to face the dangers of the world. You, my little peasant, will bow to no one else’s child.

However dubious that claim, she relished being someone now, someone who could read and reflect and affect not just her own future but that of others. If her identity was an illusion, she was not sure she wished to know.

Behind her, Martin chuckled. “I’m sorry,” he said when she turned around. “If you could see your expression… The self we seek to lose is only the self that is not true. Yes, we believe all beings are part of a greater whole, but within each is an essence that is unique.”

Luisa suspected their concept of uniqueness differed. Rather than debate him, she walked her fingertips up his arm. “You know,” she said silkily, “you have a beautiful smile. You would cut quite a swath if I brought you back with me toFlorence.”

Martin’s eyes widened. Clearly his experience with flirtation was very small. She looked forward to seeing him blush, but a quiet dignity fell over his face instead. He bowed from the waist. “I thank you for your words,” he said. “I am sure you meant to honor me.”

To her amazement, heat prickled over her cheeks. His politeness shamed her. They both knew her intent had been not to honor but to tease.

“I do honor you,” she said, meaning it sincerely. “I have to remind myself how earnest you are, and that there is no show in you. You are different from other churchmen I have known.”

“As you are different from other Europeans I have known—and not just because of what you are.” His smile returned, bringing a gleam of admiration to his eyes. The admiration seemed for her both as a person and a woman.

Uncomfortable with the pleasure this inspired, she turned her eyes to the wine into which he was mixing herbs. The cup that held the brew was skillfully worked silver studded with turquoise and coral stones. The merchant in her wondered if the monks had similar creations she might buy. But better, mayhap, not to ask about that now.

“I am not certain this will work,” she warned. “Upyr tend to resist the effect of drugs.”

“These are not ordinary drugs. My teacher prepared these herbs himself.”

Well, she thought, her humor recovering: if his teacher had prepared them, naturally they would not fail!

With a little bow, he handed her the cup and watched her drink it down. The taste was peculiar, heavy, with an oily bitterness overlaid. Whatever Geshe Rinpoche had concocted, it was strong. Still, she felt nothing as Martin led her to the cushion-bed and helped her to lie down.

“You should relax,” he said, lowering himself to the floor beside her. She turned her head to watch his descent, awed again by his grace. His legs seemed to fold naturally beneath him and his spine bore a straightness an emperor would envy. His face was unearthly in its calm. That one so young should have such self-possession, she could only marvel.

He touched her cheek with the back of one curled finger. “It may be a while before the medicine takes effect. Why don’t you breathe with me, as you did before?”

As she took his advice, a hush settled around her, and a dangerously seductive comfort. In they drew the incense-laden air; out they blew the breath of life. To soothe her, Martin trailed the tips of three fingers along the naked inside of her arm. She doubted he would have done this if he’d known the pleasure upyr took in touch—and no touch more than that of humans. Her kind loved the stroke of mortal hands almost as much as loving it made them wary. To crave a thing was to give it power. But perhaps God meant the need to humble them. Perhaps she was foolish to try to pull her own fate free.

Just as she might have been foolish to trust these lamas and their herbs.

“I’m afraid I do not feel anything,” she confessed, “apart from apprehension. I wish you would talk to me while we wait.”

“What would you like to talk about?”

“Would you tell me how you came to be a monk?”

His smile was as gentle as his touch. “You could say it was karma. I was conceived here, as you may have guessed.”

She nodded. “Your father was the English trader who was stranded in the pass. I do not suppose you knew him well.”

Martin’s only sign of emotion was a subtle tightening of his lips. “He did not remain here long enough to meet his son, though he knew he was going to have one.”

“When I spoke with him in London,” she said carefully, not certain he wished to hear, “he seemed the sort of man no one can hold. A restless soul. A foreign fever had spoilt his health and his sight was not what it had been. I think he resented getting older because he could only talk about his adventures. I cannot be sure—his was not an easy mind to read—but I think, underneath, he regretted the human ties he left behind.”

“I assume he did not regret them enough to mention me and my mother.”

“No,” she admitted, “though when he spoke of Tibet, his eyes were warm.” Martin pulled a face and she left the sensitive topic behind. “Tell me about your mother. She must have been special.”

At once his expression softened. Luisa did not need her powers to know he loved her.

“She was a woman of Kham,” he said, “a member of a traveling performance troupe. The Khampa have a reputation for being beautiful and fierce, and my mother was no exception. She once broke a man’s nose because he kicked a dog. One punch and he was down. But her voice was like birds warbling in the spring. With her brothers and cousins she would sing and dance and do acrobatic feats on horseback. I remember going from place to place, riding in front of her in the saddle and feeling luckier than any prince. My mother was completely fearless. She always kept me safe.”

Which suggested there had been something to keep him safe from. “It cannot have been easy growing up between two cultures,” she said, thinking of children she had known, of how cruel they could be to anyone who was different.

The curve of her thoughts caught a piece of memory: Martin as a boy backed into an alley by half a dozen ill-fed youths. Clods of dirt bounced off his lifted arms while tears of fury rolled down his cheeks. How dare they say such things about his mother! She loved him better than all their mothers put together, was better than them all.

The violence of his anger shamed the boy he was. He would have hurt those children if he could, even knowing he was much luckier than they.

She broke the link, not wanting to betray what she had seen.

“I was loved,” he said, “and I always knew that someday I would live here. From my first glimpse of Shisharovar on the peak, it was my beacon, the place where I knew I would find a home. When my mother died in a fall a year ago, I returned.”

The memory seemed to leave no mark on his face but Luisa saw beneath the calm recital. He claimed his mother kept him safe and yet it was he who felt compelled to remain with her, delaying his dream until she could not need him anymore. How great an outcast had she been because of her choice of lovers? She had given Martin an English name. That suggested there had been more between her and his father than an affair. When John Moore went back to England, he must have cut a painful wound.

“You are very loyal,” she said.

His robe rustled softly with his shrug. “It is not hard to be loyal to those you love, nor to return to a cherished home.”

Luisa’s breath escaped in a snort. “I have known people who could barely be loyal to themselves.”

“That is their loss,” he said as if what he’d done were a common thing. He seemed not to know how rare his integrity was.

Feeling oddly off balance, she covered his stroking hand. “Do you really believe you lived before?”

“I have dreamed of events from other incarnations and later had them confirmed. I have recognized possessions I used to own and people whose paths crossed mine. Of course”—his gaze met hers with banked amusement—“I do not expect you to take this on my word. As you said: faith is a matter of faith. There can be no proof for those who wish to doubt. But tell me of you. I am curious to hear of the man who made you, the upyr elder.”

“You mean Auriclus.” Luisa laughed quietly in remembrance. “My master was tall and dark. Sinfully handsome. The perfect lure for a fisherman’s work-worn wife. He had a face like a tragedian, as weary and sad as if he had taken the weight of the world upon his shoulders, as if compassion for every suffering creature suffused his breast. Our kind are good at illusion. Even now I don’t know if his face spoke true.”

“Did he seek you out?”

“In a way. But I noticed him before he noticed me. It was just past sunset in Florence. The sky was the color of lemons, the clouds like shreds of cotton dipped in blood. He was leaning on the quay, wrapped in his somber cloak, watching the scattered traffic on the Arno. I remember wondering what a fine man like him must think of those river men, with their talk and their swagger and their garish clothes. Looking back, he was probably judging which one would make the better meal. That day, though, I felt lower than I ever had, I was less than the boatmen, less than their whores, less than the pink-eyed goat who gave us milk.

“Auriclus must have heard my thoughts because he turned to me, not smiling, just staring as if I were a puzzle he wanted to work out. His attention shamed me so badly I scurried away as quickly as I could, but I saw him the next day at the well, and again the following evening as I left the mercato. I had a pomegranate in my basket, a treat I would have to hide when I got home. He blocked my way, then took the fruit to draw it to his nose. His expression when he inhaled was like a man in the throes of climax. When he spoke his voice was as husky as if he’d had one. It made me shiver to hear it, as much as did his words. He told me I smelled better than the fruit, as sweet and clean as summer grass. It was the first compliment anyone had ever paid me.

He had me for the price of it, so cheaply was I willing to sell my soul.

“Only later did I learn he was not supposed to choose me. He had a rival, a student to whom he had ceded the world’s great cities to avert a war. I was an experiment to him, an attempt to create a child who would be a bridge between their broods.”

“Did it work?”

“I do not know. Oddly enough, I have never met another child he made. I suspect he would say he failed. I may have begun as a peasant but in the end I succumbed to civilization’s lure.”

“Did he change you that first day?”

She rolled her head in negation against the cushion. “No. But I dreamed of him after our meeting, erotic dreams that made me long for sleep. I was scrubbing the wash and imagining his kiss when I tore my husband’s best shirt, the only one that had no mend. I hardly minded when Giulio came into the courtyard to beat me. I had a secret, you see, a hopeless fantasy that made me strong.

“And then it was not hopeless because Auriclus appeared, my dark avenging angel. One sweep of his arm tossed my husband against the wall. He plucked me up and away before I could think to resist. He said he wanted to fan the spark in my eyes to life. Said I deserved to be showered with jewels and draped in silk. I knew he must be a madman but I let him do as he wished because his words were food to me and because, by that point, I did not care what it might cost. My children were grown. I had nothing left to lose.”

“Your husband had beaten you before.”

“Yes,” she said calmly. “To his mind, I was no different from a dog who had misbehaved.”

To her surprise, this—rather than her confession of adultery—roused Martin’s ire. “He should not have done that. That is not the proper way between man and wife.”

Luisa spread her hands. “My husband suffered for his abuse, though he knew it not. I could have been more to him than I was. But that was long ago. Another life, as you would say.” Her mouth curved in a grin. “Now I do not even wish him to roast in hell.”

“You are wise to let your resentment go,” Martin said. “Strong emotion can bind people together for many incarnations. Perhaps you will not have to meet him on earth again.”

Luisa began to laugh, the idea striking her as funny. What would her husband say if he saw her now? Probably fall to his knees and pray. Get thee behind me, spawn of Satan… but please seduce me before you go!

The room rocked sideways with her laughter. Her head was so light she thought it might float away.

Martin smiled at her hilarity. “Yes,” he said, “the herbs have begun their work. Just remember, you must focus your mind on what you fear.”

But her mind was beyond her control, cut loose from its moorings like an oarless boat swept down a river. A landscape of images rolled by on the bank. The day her father sold her to her husband to clear a debt. The dirty clay of the hovel floor. One of her sons a wriggling bundle at her breast. So sweet they’d been, a tiny ray of love in her loveless life… until they’d grown into smaller versions of their father.

She’d tried to prevent it—how she’d tried!—but their world, or perhaps their natures, stopped their ears to the pleadings of a woman. Kindness was weakness to them; respect the reward for brutish force. She watched her youngest steal a toy from a neighbor’s child. When she paddled his bottom, her husband beat her. Let him learn, he had roared, how to live in a heartless world. Her cheek stung from the blow, a tooth spit bloody into her hand. Suddenly, with the muddled logic of a dream, Auriclus held her close with his face in her golden hair, her only beauty that remained.

Come to me, he’d crooned. Let me bring you to life again.

His bite had all the tenderness of death, lancing the stored-up bitterness from her soul. She was nothing then, only pleasure, clinging to his shoulders until the rising, throbbing silence swept her under, into oblivion and forgetting. When she woke she was alive as she never had been before. Strong, healthy, beautiful. So beautiful. Without merit or justice, the power of attraction was simply hers.

For that alone she would have adored him, but her master had not let her. Little Luisa, he’d teased, adore what you can be, not what you think I am. Sometimes she thought he was sorry he’d made her. He would watch her at her books or her correspondence as if he could not fathom who she was. Clever little monkey, he’d call her then, though he might as well have said clever monster.

Fourteen years later he was gone, driven out of Florence —so he claimed—by the rise of one infamous book-burning monk. Savonarola had seduced the masses, taught them to hate their bodies and their minds. I will kill him, her sire explained. If I do not leave, I will spray his maddened blood across the square.

Auriclus did not care that his abandonment broke her heart, that she had a growing business she could not leave. But at least he taught her not to kill. Charm the humans, he always said. Charm them and set them free.

But it was not the humans who tested her adherence to his rule. That honor went to the upyr she met on a trip to London. Until she surprised them hunting for sailors by the docks, she had not known her kind were there. She guessed at once that Auriclus had not made them. They had a sleeker look than he, a darker, more urbane smell.

Mindful of his warnings about Nim Wei’s brood, she had approached them with all the diplomacy she possessed. Staying away had not been an option. She longed too fiercely for the company of her kind. Perhaps they could teach her what she sensed her master had neglected. Sadly, far from teaching her, the English circle met her overtures with hostility, calling her spy and forcing her into situations where, had she been less strong and quick, she easily might have died.

Only when they discovered her skill at commerce did they begin to warm. Money they respected, money and ambition.

Ironically, finding them made her lonelier than ever: feeling so separate from those she should have been most like. Auriclus cared for humans. These upyr saw them only as animals to exploit.

In defiance, she gathered a mortal harem, three youths flush with manhood who vied for the privilege of fulfilling her every need. That was the beginning of her love affair with humans. She chose them for what they could teach her, about life or business or the mysteries of the spirit. Minstrels succumbed to her, adventurers and dukes. To her delight, her business grew by leaps and bounds. She never thralled the humans with whom she dealt; that did not seem fair play. Even so, her conquests at the court of Suleiman were productive, winning her trading rights few could boast. If cleverness failed, she did not scruple to use her immortal body as her coin. Sometimes it bought her influence, other times merely pleasure.

She remembered the pleasure now: hands, kisses, the passion-tensed curves of sweat-streaked skin. Men driven to madness by desire. Gasping. Trembling. Nearly bursting with their lust. Take me, they’d plead as she slid her tongue along their veins. Take anything you want.

Someone gripped her jaw and turned her face to his. Martin. Beautiful, noble Martin.

“Luisa,” he said, his voice commanding, “this is not the way to face your fears.”

His eyes burned like the center of a flame. She reached for him, her hand falling limply against his chest. “I want you more,” she whispered, the truth freed by the drug. “More than any man I have known.”

His gaze went black. She saw him swallow, his Adam’s apple moving strongly in his throat. Never mind his oath. Part of him wanted to bed her now.

“Luisa,” he said, “remember why you are here.” She sighed like the melancholy finish of a tale. Then she did as he advised.

***

THE drug was meant to let him into her mind, but what he found there shocked him. The things she had done with those men, those many men, were beyond what he imagined. He knew, naturally, what the procreative act entailed. Growing up as he had, in communal tents and inns, the basic facts had been his from an early age. The more esoteric were part of his education since coming to Shisharovar. After all, the union of male and female essences had spiritual meaning, too.

What he hadn’t known was the sheer physical joy one could take in sensual exploration. He had been there with her, had felt her body vibrate with longing and her teeth itch teasingly in their sheaths. He’d wanted to be those men, touching her, tasting her, forging thickly into her sex. One pair of hands was not enough. He wanted to be them all.

And the places she had traveled! Stormy seas. Opulent palaces. Even England, so wet and dreary compared to the sunny sparkle of Tibet, possessed an appeal he could not deny. What, he wondered, were those curious plate like collars women wore around their necks? For what reason did they hang those fancy curtains on their beds? Velvets he’d seen, and lustrous embroidered silks, the exotic, nested backdrop to her play.

She was almost childlike in her love of her possessions, though he could not deny a discriminating mind lay behind her greed. Here in Tibet, a painting was an act of worship; no artist would sign his name. In her homeland, Luisa had gleefully added luster to the name of scores. Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, and Titian: her patronage had helped them all.

In truth, her life was a foreign jewel. The more he turned it, the more the facets shone. He reminded himself these were temporal pleasures that would soon pass away. The key to Luisa’s freedom lay far from such glittering bits of stone.

When she told him she wanted him, though, more than she had wanted any man, the admission struck a resounding triumph in his soul, momentarily drowning out truths he knew.

She lured him because of what she was, not in spite of it.

He needed all his strength to pull them back to the path. “Luisa,” he said, “remember why you are here.”

His words took swift effect. A flash cut across his vision like the blade of a Mongol butcher’s knife. He saw her dream self. She held a baby to her breast—her son—warm and plump. Dread closed around him. Her lips brushed the infant’s milky neck. Sweet neck. Soft neck. She tipped the wobbling head back in her palm. Her gaze locked to the tiny pulse. Her baby. Her sweet, warm, sleepy baby. Her hunger rose like a mournful wail, like a sin she could not name.

This was her fear, the monster lurking in her shadows.

“No,” she whispered in his mind and in the room.

She set the child on the floor where it gurgled at her wide-eyed, waving its dimpled arms. She had not touched it. She would not touch it, not even in a dream.

“Luisa,” he said, knowing this darkness had to be faced.

She shook her head and backed away. No, she said, no sound to it. Then she turned on her heel and ran.

He called after her, warning her she’d get lost. She was not familiar with the geography of dreams: how fantasy and fear could parade as truth. To his dismay, she did not heed him. She ran up a narrow and

odorous city street, carts in her way, horses, men in tight-fitting hose. She shoved past them, shouting, “Make way! Make way!” They bowed down to her beauty with sweeps of feathered hats. Ignoring them, she flung open a wooden door.

Her harem waited inside the richly appointed room, the same three youths he had seen before. They were old now, walking skeletons with skin, their hands reaching ghoulishly from lace and velvet sleeves. “Don’t let us die,” they beseeched. “Make us what you are.”

She covered her eyes and moaned. She did not know how to change them. She was powerless to help.

The emptiness inside her yawned like a pit.

And then she grabbed them, one by one, drinking them dry. When their bodies fell to the Turkish carpet they were young again, not so young as when they’d graced her bed but strong men still. She had made a terrible mistake. She had killed them in their prime. She had been too hungry, too rash, too loathe to see them age and die. She stumbled to her knees.

This had to be a nightmare. It made no sense for her to have done this. She thought she heard Martin say Yes, these are only phantoms but there was blood on her hands. Sins enough to make an angel weep. Her hands were red. Her mouth.

She gripped the gate that rose before her and pulled herself to her feet. The bars were strong. Immovable even to her. They glowed with opalescence as if they’d been carved of pearl. Martin felt her relax, her head dropping back in tired surrender.

Yes, she thought, I am dead now and they must let me in.

But the gate did not open. The wind blew through it and the sun shone on it but no one came to see.

“Speak to me,” she demanded, clenching the pearly bars. “Tell me if I am damned.”

The air stirred behind her. Luisa spun. A man stood on the path in a dusty robe. He was tall and bearded, gaunt but strong. His eyes looked out from soulful hollows, their expression too beautiful to bear. Martin sensed Luisa knew who he was.

“Answer me,” she said in a choking voice. “If I’m damned, I want to know.”

The man said nothing, only stared at her sadly. Despite his humble garb, a golden shimmer bathed his skin. He reminded Martin of a bodhisattva, a wise old soul come to earth again.

“I want the ability to choose how I live,” she said. “I want my free will freed.”

You chose, said the man. You chose when you let your master make you what you are.

With that, the man disappeared, and the gate, leaving nothing but grass and sun as far as the eye could see.

“I am damned then,” she said.

She waited in the silence, empty of everything but despair. Tiny, starlike daisies waved in the gentle breeze. They did not care. No one cared but her. She thrust back her shoulders and firmed her jaw. If she was damned, so be it. She still had herself to answer to. She would live what life she had as she saw fit. If it ended, she would pay the price without demur. Her God had rejected her. Perhaps He had a right to. But from now on, her heart and mind were the only judges she would heed.

Something changed with her decision. Martin felt it. The silence was ringing, the air brightening as if the sun were rising yet again. Each blade of grass glowed like a gem. Luisa’s edges were dissolving. The barrier that had guarded her heart for seeming ages had been destroyed. Energy burst from the earth in a golden flood. The sweetness as it rushed inside her was indescribable, a heady mix of light and love and—

And then the link between Luisa and Martin snapped.

Thrust from her vision, Martin gasped. Here, in the material world, Luisa’s body began convulsing. Martin could scarcely hold her shoulders down. She had succeeded in tapping the auric resources of the earth. Now energy poured into her unchecked, energy she obviously was not meant to have. To Martin’s finely honed senses the flow seemed an angry, caustic river. With every second, the violence of her struggles heightened. Tendons stood out on her neck. Her hands curled into claws.

“Luisa!” he cried, pulling her to his breast.

He could not connect their minds. The energy was a torrent that swept his attempts aside.

The door crashed open. Geshe Rinpoche had been alerted by his distress. “Speak to her,” he panted, robe askew. “You must reach into her vision with your voice.”

“But how can she hear?”

“Those in trances still hear those they love,” said his teacher. “You must have faith.”

Martin could not refuse to try. “Luisa,” he said, rocking her gently in his arms, “what you are doing is not safe. I know it feels lovely in your dream. I know it feels as if your angels had at last welcomed you home. But if you do not come back, your physical self will die. You said you did not want that. You said you loved your life.”

His throat choked up but he forced himself to speak. “I do not wish to lose you, Luisa. I wish… I wish to get to know you on this plane, in this life. Please do not make me wait. Please come back to me now.”

With an abruptness that shocked him, her convulsions stopped. Her body relaxed, then went completely still.

“Lay her down,” instructed his teacher.

Reluctantly Martin did so. She was gaunt, her beauty burned thin, her skin as white and chill as snow. She looked even less human than when she slept.

The abbot knelt by her other side. “Luisa,” he said commandingly, and laid both hands atop her heart. Martin knew he was trying to use his healing powers.

For one long, dark moment, nothing happened. She is gone, he thought, even as his mind groaned in denial. Then, like a person saved from drowning, she drew a ragged breath. Martin nearly collapsed in relief. Her eyelids fluttered. She licked her lips. “What—What happened?”

Though she looked at Martin, the abbot answered. “I misjudged, I’m afraid. That energy was poison to you. You must not try to take it again.”

“Poison…” A slow, shining tear rolled down her cheek.

Martin knew what she was thinking: that all that love was not for her. She did not understand her vision had been a creation of her mind. No holy messenger had rejected her. No gates of heaven had been closed.

Throat tight, he brushed her tear away. “Luisa, the things you saw were just a dream. Your god, if he exists and if he is the source of what we call the energy of the earth, gives this bounty equally to saint and sinner. I do not know why you could not drink, but it is no judgment against your soul, merely an experiment that went awry—as if I were to eat a horse’s hay.”

She smiled but the attempt was weak. “Tired,” she murmured, her eyes drifting shut. “Need to sleep.”

Martin and his teacher watched her draw a score of breaths. Then, their thoughts in accord, they stepped quietly away.

The abbot rubbed his chin. “This troubles me,” he said. “We have left her weaker than before. Even if I found another method to attempt, I am not sure she could withstand it. I am not even sure she would survive a journey home. She must feed, Martin, in the manner of her kind.”

“We cannot ask any of the monks to let her drink.”

“No,” the abbot agreed, “we cannot.”

Martin’s heart thumped in his chest. He knew what the abbot was asking and he knew he could refuse. If he did not offer up his blood, Martin had no doubt his guide would volunteer. Even if it killed him, Geshe Rinpoche would do it. That was the kind of man his teacher was.

“She will put me in her thrall,” Martin said, the rasp of words not quite a protest.

His teacher’s gaze was steady. “I believe you are strong enough to resist her.”

If I want to resist her, Martin thought, far from certain that he did. He remembered Luisa’s harem, the slide of her slim, pale hands along straining skin. How easy it would be, how tempting, to make her upyr magic his excuse for giving in.

Then a flash of intuition struck. “This is a test,” he said. “You want to know if I am worthy to take my vow.”

His teacher neither confirmed nor denied the guess. He put his hand on Martin’s arm. “You must decide soon,” he said. “I do not think our visitor has much time.”

Chapter Five

MARTIN’S strong arms lifted her from the cushions and eased her onto his lap. Even that small motion made the room spin around her head. She moaned against the musty sweetness of his robes, smelling incense and skin and an acrid touch of fear.

She thought the fear must be for her.

“Shh,” he soothed. One hand stroked the pale gold curtain of her hair while the other cradled her back. He pressed her mouth to his neck. “Drink.”

The word made her jerk with longing. She drew back from temptation and stared.

His gaze evaded hers. “I know you’ve been trying not to, but you are weak.”

“Martin…”

“I know you will not hurt me.” The words were fierce. “Just…”

“Just?”

“Please do not make me do things I would not wish.”

Then she understood. Smiling softly, she flattened her palm against his smoothly shaven cheek. His skin was so warm it seemed to burn, its color rich against the whiteness of her hand. His eyes glittered in the dimness, wavering between trust and doubt. “Martin, when blood is offered freely an upyr does not, cannot, suborn her victim’s will.”

“She cannot?”

She combed his bristled hair around his ear. “No.”

“Will you take very much?”

Luisa shuddered, aroused—or frightened—by a lingering fragment of her dream. “Enough to make you weak. But only for a while. When you recover you will be stronger than before, more resistant to harm or illness. The effect does not last forever: a week, possibly longer.”

“No wonder those men—” He closed his mouth and flushed. “Forgive me. I did not mean to suggest you had no other charms.”

“Were you thinking I took my harem against their will?”

“Well, I am sure you did not have to force them into your bed.”

She laughed beneath her breath. “Thank you for that, though my scruples have not always been so fine. In this instance, I assure you their thrall was no more than any healthy young male might feel when an attractive woman offers him a sexual adventure. I may have added a few compulsions, of course, to ensure they did not speak of me where they should not.”

“I imagine they were easier to control because they were young.”

She saw he meant this as an observation and not an insult, but she squirmed beneath it nonetheless. “How uncomfortably perceptive you are! Yes, older men—or for that matter, younger men with strength of mind—are difficult to influence without the added coercion of a bite. As the years passed, I found I did not like to use that means.”

“Friendship can be lonely when it is forced, or when it is not with an equal.”

Tears sprang to her eyes at his understanding. Since her brush with death, Luisa had felt strangely vulnerable, not in body but in spirit—as if her heart had in truth been opened by her dream. His simple statement reached into the raw place, putting into words the yearning of many years.

“I have been lonely,” she admitted. “That is why your… consideration for me means the world.”

He smiled, an unexpectedly boyish grin. Seeing it, she was happy despite the danger to them both—not to mention to the achievement of her desire. Assurances aside, stopping before she hurt him would not be easy. Too much time had passed since she last fed and there were too many ways she found him appealing. With one nail she traced the strong blue thread that marked his neck. Her throat tightened. “Maybe I should not do this.”

“My master says you must feed.” Though Martin’s expression was stubborn, worry lay beneath: worry and an intriguing glimmer of guilt. A muscle bunched in his jaw. “I want you to,” he said, his innate honesty forcing the gruff admission. “I am curious to know how it feels.”

She could not control the quickening of her pulse. So. He was curious. She skated her fingers down his vein and wet her lips. “It hurts for a moment, for the penetration.” She lifted her eyes to his. “After that, it is erotic. Taking blood is the most intimate act a child of midnight can perform.”

“More intimate than sex?”

His voice was husky. A quick, sharp sting told her her teeth had sharpened to feeding length. “More intimate than sex,” she agreed, “though drawing what we need from another’s veins awakens that desire as well.”

“You will refrain from indulging it, though, won’t you?”

“You may not want me to. Humans find the act exciting, too.”

“I have faced attraction before. I am not afraid.”

But he should have been. Martin could not guess how strong the urge to join could be, a frenzy of lust that sometimes hours of bed play could not sate.

“My resolve is strong,” he said, sensing her hesitance. “I do not fear to put it to the test.”

Her smile, gentle as it was, must have been too knowing. His eyes narrowed and he yanked the wrap of his robe halfway down his front. Her smile froze as her body heated. His muscles were tight and flat, their edges chiseled, their development perfectly balanced from sternum to shoulder cap. His chest hair was sparser than a European’s, sheer dark swirls that clung to his flawless olive skin. His nipples were flushed and delicately erect. Yearning to pinch them, she curled her nails into her palms.

“Drink,” he ordered in a tone that brooked no denial.

She had not the willpower to resist. With a moan she pressed her mouth to his neck, open, breathing heat and soul-deep need. His grip tightened on her shoulders but he did not push away. She licked him, dragging her tongue up the beating vein until a shiver swept his frame. He was hers now. She set her teeth against him and bit down.

Blood flowed, filling her mouth with power and life and will as strong as sugared ginger to her tongue. Here was vigor. Here was hot male strength. Enthralled by his taste, she drew on him, wrapping her arms with grateful fervor around his back. Oh, it was good to be close, better than good. Martin seemed to agree. Gasping her name, he slid his hand down her arching spine. She knew he was losing control but she could not hold back. She pushed even tighter to his chest. Her breasts flattened beneath her robe, her nipples as hard as his. When she writhed against him, he murmured what sounded like a prayer.

It was almost all she wanted, this evidence of his desire. Strength rushed into her with each swallow. She wanted to take him inside her, every throbbing, rigid inch. Desperate to touch his skin, she pushed her hand under his robe. The small of his back was smooth and dewed with sweat. She gripped his narrow buttock. His moan was even sweeter than his blood. Greed swamped her: to have him, to drink him down. Her heart pounded violently in alarm. With a groan of reluctance, she tore her mouth away.

“No,” he said, a hiss that drew her eyes to his. His pupils were shining jet within rings of azure flame. She could tell he was dazed but not as deeply as most humans would have been. His protest was not the effect of any thrall. She had not taken anything he did not freely give. As if to assure her of this, he cupped her blood-flushed cheek.

“Let me make you strong. You haven’t taken half of what I can offer. Here.” He pressed her palm to his breast, his voice sinking to a growl. “Bite me here. Slowly. I want you to make it last.”

A rush of moisture squeezed from the tender hollow between her legs. “Slowly,” she repeated, the word shaking on her lips.

He nodded, shyness in it, but pride as well. His chin lifted in silent challenge. He did not care how others did this. He was asking for what he wished, drawing the veil from secrets most lovers hid. She thought she had never been so moved by someone’s trust. She knew she could not refuse. “Just a little more,” she agreed, then flashed a grin. “By sips.”

She bit him slowly this time, letting him savor the dull cold sting of breaking skin. From what she had seen of his country, not to mention the discipline of the monks, she was not surprised he would welcome a little pain. It was a test to him, a hurdle to rise above. True to her expectations, he shuddered with enjoyment as her tongue swept his tightened nipple. Knowing he liked this, she suckled him as she drank. His breath came more harshly and his muscles tensed. His aura pricked like fire where it touched hers.

But she wanted to offer him more than this. She moved her second hand to the bend between his torso and his thigh. He flinched but did not withdraw. Slowly, giving him time to stop her, she shifted her caress to the rigid swelling where his erection pushed out his robe. Its crown bumped against his belly, its long thick ridge an invitation to measure how much he’d fill. A plenitude, she decided, her body softening deep inside. He was already too hard to get any harder. She could tell from the way his shaft resisted her gentle squeeze. He sighed at the pressure as if he’d been waiting an eternity to feel it. Taking this as permission, she slipped her hand beneath the cloth and held him bare.

***

THE shock of Luisa’s touch was not one for which he could have prepared. Her warmth, her strength, her devastating knowledge of male desire combined to set his nerves ablaze. His body tightened in every muscle, then melted with delight. He knew he ought to stop her; no man could resist this temptation long. Instead he closed his eyes and let his head drop on his neck. She was rubbing his aching length, her fingers tightening and releasing in a rhythm that made him wonder just how long such pleasure could be borne.

In all his life he had barely touched himself. Now those years of denied sensations seemed to squeeze together into the present, into those burning inches of stiffened flesh. Waves of rapture rolled through him, surging then ebbing, only to gather higher than before. He knew if she did not stop he would unravel like the sexual novice that he was.

But she had no mercy for his fears. Shifting in his lap, she began to draw on his organ with both hands. The strength of her hold pulled him outward from his body, his testicles drawn up, his tip seeming to burn

and prickle each time her fingers tugged its rim. He was going to explode. He was going to burst like a Chinese rocket. Sweat ran into his eyes as he fought the desperate urge. The sounds he made were hardly human.

He had thought he knew desire; had believed he felt it when the young girls and the widows tried to lure him into their tents. They had smiled for him and tossed their braided hair. They had wagged their hips and let him see them with other men. To them, he was a challenge or a game: the handsome half Khampa who wanted to be a monk. Once or twice he had been tempted but never like this, never with more than his body.

This was a lust to sear the soul.

He cried out as she left his breast, and again as she found his mouth. Oh, the taste of her, the feel! She had to lead the kiss, his astonished, enchanting first. It was a mating, he realized, of lips and teeth and tongue. Sensation multiplied as they parried, wetly, sweetly. He tasted a hint of copper, then only her. Her incisors were sharp but they did not cut him.

So lost was he in pleasure that his body jerked at an unexpected touch. She had curled her thumb over the swollen crest of his erection, pressing the tiny slit as if to block his impending end. The move made him excruciatingly aware of the pressure that was building in his scrotum. An uncontrollable tremor seized his limbs.

“Touch me,” she gasped against his cheek. “Put your hand between my legs.”

Heart thumping wildly, he fumbled through sleek warm folds and tangled curls. This was a woman’s yoni. This was a lover’s prize. Her liquid welcome was a wonder as deep as any he had found through meditation. He had called forth her arousal. He had. He slid two fingers through the constriction at her gate and moaned at her forceful clasp. She was soft inside, as soft as the lotus flower most venerated by the sutras. To his gratified relief, her madana-chatra did indeed project like a plantain root from the upper petals of her sex.

Burnishing the tiny organ with his thumb, he drew his fingers in and out. The sound of her wetness made him swell even fuller with excitement. Her hand gentled on his shaft, but it did not help. His skin was as sensitive as if its nerves had been multiplied by ten. He was not sure he could bear this painful pleasure a second more.

“Your kama-salila is very generous,” he said through gritted teeth, struggling to distract himself with words.

She laughed, a beguiling, throaty sound, and pushed her sheath up his hand. “I hope that is a good thing.”

“It is recommended that the woman be wet in order for the man’s organ to slide easily in the narrow—”

She cut him off with a kiss. He could not think at all then, except to wish most heartily that his penis and not his fingers were clasped inside her fragrant depths. As if she knew, her hand tightened on the sensitive ring beneath his crest.

“Move with me,” she said. “Pretend that we are joined.”

He did as she directed, tightening his hindquarters to push himself through her hold. Without even trying they began to breathe together, gasping in tandem, tensing in tandem, as the end he craved and wished would last forever rumbled like an avalanche into view.

It was a panic in him, to make it last, to engrave the moment in his mind. He showered her face with kisses, a gesture he could not withhold.

“Sweet Luisa,” he said, her name a cry for things he’d lost so long ago their only trace was a tangled hurt. He nuzzled her swollen nipple, drawing it with her robe between his teeth.

“Take it,” she said, tearing the wool away with her other hand. “Take what you want.” She arched up to him and gave him what he longed for. The tip of her breast was softer than silk against his tongue. She moaned as he sucked and the sound was flames licking through his skin.

The final rise was more intense than he had dreamed a man could feel. He hung on a cutting wire, its promise of imminent fall sublime. To plummet, to give in… But wrong as the physical pleasure was, it was not enough. His body demanded more. Union. Penetration. He had no mind then; he only had desire.

With a curse of resignation, he wrenched his mouth away.

“I cannot pretend,” he said harshly, drawing his fingers from her sweetly clinging sex. “I belong inside you.”

“No. Don’t relinquish your vow for me.” Her hand pressed his fingers back to her softness and her mouth opened on his neck. He was dizzy, confused. Her tongue trembled briefly on his skin. “Now. Come with me now.”

She did not even have to bite him. Energy rushed up through his feet, a flood of unstoppable golden-white. He felt the barrier around her aura give, swirling and blending into his. She caught her breath, but not in pain. He had a second to wonder at her reaction and then his climax burst like a never-ending fountain. One instant his shaft was pure, burning steel, the next a convulsing instrument of bliss. His groan echoed through the little chamber, as strange to his ears as this ecstasy was to his body. Again the tight, squeezing shock lanced through him, again, again, a release so deep it seemed to rake his soul.

He did not realize she had joined him until the last flickering pull of her sheath tugged at his hand.

She wriggled as it faded and relaxed against him, her mouth curled, her cheeks rosy, her eyes glowing like emeralds fringed with gold. He could not contain a flush of pride at her satisfaction. His head was light but strangely clear. Already his weakness was fading. Then he looked down at the much diminished organ she still held in her hand. She was petting it as if she relished its sticky softness. So much for pride, he thought.

It seemed important to acknowledge what she had done.

“I must thank you,” he said. “I would have taken you if you had not stopped me.”

She batted her lashes and dragged one sticky finger across her tongue. The gesture nearly put him in a trance.

“Maybe I did save you,” she said playfully. “And maybe you would have found your strength.”

He shook his head to clear it. “You should not give me more credit than I deserve.”

Her eyes hooded as if she were embarrassed to have been caught doing him a kindness. “I know you are not used to facing urges of that strength. It seemed unfair to let you do something you would regret. Especially when I still need your help.”

Martin did not believe her explanation, though he chose to pretend he did. “I do not know what else I can try. Unless…” He pushed up from her, recalling the way her aura had momentarily seemed to welcome his. He knew orgasm called up a special energy from the earth, an energy transmuted by the nature of the connection between the partners.

All of which had been academic up till now. But if Luisa could utilize that special force, without ill effect, it could prove an alternate source of sustenance. Lost in thought, he rubbed the sides of his mouth, remembering too late that her scent clung to his fingers. To his embarrassment, his organ twitched and began to lengthen.

“Unless what?” she prompted.

He shook his head and rose, shaking his robe down as he did. The chuba’s fall was not as straight as it should have been. Frowning, he shoved his arms back in the sleeves. Apparently one encounter would not sate this new appetite. “It is only a thought,” he said. “I do not wish to raise false hopes.”

“Or anything else,” she said, with a pointed glance toward the tenting wool.

Responding with dignity was a challenge but he managed as best he could. “The sun will rise soon,” he said. “I am sure you want to rest.”

He left her lolling on the cushions, more beautiful than a goddess, more nettlesome than a fly. He did not tell her he went to consult his guide; indeed, he hardly wished to admit to himself what he planned to do. Fairness, however, demanded he speak to the abbot immediately.

If Martin’s theory had the slightest chance of being true, Geshe Rinpoche would know.

***

HE found his teacher in the storeroom with the steward. They had pulled two dusty cushions together and sat, hunched and cross-legged, before a fat horizontal book. The single window cast a dawn gray light over their heads. Accounting, said their serious faces, is not a business for the faint of heart. Certainly it was not a small business. The consumption of barley, tea, butter, and other staples by nearly two hundred souls had to be closely tracked. Moreover, Shisharovar did not live by pilgrims’ gifts alone. The lamasery was famed for its expertly fashioned religious objects—prayer wheels, butter lamps, malas—both in silver and in brass. Like most of the brothers, Martin had taken part in the various stages of production, though his gift was not that of a craftsman.

No, he thought sourly, his gift was the one he had so recently put at risk. His mind was strong; it could focus like a sunbeam through a lens of glass. Such a mind was meant to serve his country and his faith. If he let his carnal urges steal the upper hand, he would waste the very talent that gave him worth.

Or so he might have said before. Chewing his lip, he stared at his felt-topped boots. Luisa also had a right to expect his aid. If he failed to put his gift at her service, when he might be her only chance, would not the omission taint any good he might do later on? She had given much to come here, to learn to live a better life, and she had done so with no one to set her a good example. From what he had seen, the one who made her barely deserved the name of teacher. Certainly he was no beloved guide like Geshe Rinpoche. Martin admired her for forging her own morals, strange as he might find them, in a less than moral world. She deserved a chance to achieve her dream.

Just as he was about to clear his throat, the abbot looked up from the accounts.

“Ah, Martin,” he said, with the smile that never failed to warm his pupil’s heart, “we are finished here. Please come in.”

“You are not finished,” Martin said, reading the steward’s startled look.

The abbot laughed. “Well, we are surely in need of tea. Do have a break, Myingmar. I will send the chela for you when Martin and I are done.”

The steward bowed and left, his obvious eagerness at the prospect of nourishment drawing another smile from Martin’s guide. The boy who had been sleeping in the corner scurried off to get them a pot and then Martin and his teacher were alone.

The abbot cocked one wispy brow in his direction. “I must say, you look none the worse for wear. I trust your sacrifice was not too onerous.”

“I am well,” Martin admitted. He took the cushion the steward had just left. As Luisa promised, his body hummed with vigor. He felt both relaxed and refreshed, his spine loose, his concentration crystal clear. Which did not mean what he had done deserved reward.

“You have a confession,” guessed the abbot.

Only a day ago, Martin would have hung his head in shame. An impulse he did not understand kept it upright now. “Of a sort,” he said. “Mostly I am here because I require advice.”

He explained his theory that the power lovers drew from sex might be changed enough for Luisa to imbibe. Direct sunlight would burn but, as the ripening of a grape transformed its rays to healthful wine, so might lovemaking transform the forces of the earth—if Luisa had a partner who knew how to channel them.

“I felt her aura give,” he said, “just as it did during her vision. I admit, the amount of energy that entered was small, but it did not seem to harm her. If what I suspect is true, this could serve as an alternate form of sustenance, perhaps even a replacement for drinking blood. Once she experiences the process in its entirety, she should be able to repeat it.”

“An intriguing notion.” The abbot tapped his ink stained quill against the low, scratched surface of the desk. “But I do not think we can ask another man to try this. Even assuming she would accept a substitute, she might enspell him. Do you know, we had to barricade Brother Dhondrup in his cell? He kept begging us to let him serve her. Said he lived to be her slave.” Brother Dhondrup was the monk Luisa had bitten on her arrival. Martin thought he had saved him from the brunt of her influence, but apparently her pull was stronger than he had known.

“He has not yet recovered?” he asked as he tried to tamp down his unease.

“He is beginning to, though I suspect her beauty dazzled him as much as her upyr power. She is not a woman a man could easily forget.”

“No,” Martin conceded, aware of the abbot’s watchful gaze. Geshe Rinpoche was searching him, though for what he did not know. With an emotion akin to dismay, he realized Luisa’s beauty was not what called to him most strongly now. She had become a person to him, her outer appearance not nearly as alluring as her inner fire. He thought of jewels again, of all those facets shining in the night.

When he looked outward, the abbot’s attention was still on him. “If your theory is to be tested,” he said, “you are the only one who can try.”

Martin felt as if his guide had kicked him in the belly. Did Geshe Rinpoche place so low a value on his student’s continued progress on the Path? Never mind his gelong vow, didn’t he care that Luisa had the potential to tempt Martin far away? If her only attraction were carnal pleasure, Martin thought he might have fought. But she also offered adventure and mystery and, most persuasive of all, the chance to share an affection whose appeal he had just begun to savor.

Amazing as it seemed, Luisa liked him.

Didn’t his guide understand how powerful that was to one who had rarely felt accepted? Or did some other motivation lay behind his actions, some agenda Martin was too slow to comprehend?

“Come,” the abbot chided gently, “you cannot mean to say you expected, or even wanted, me to assign another lama to this task.”

Martin knew his teacher spoke the truth. The thought of anyone else touching Luisa, knowing Luisa’s innermost essence, was intensely repellent. “Of course not,” he said, then huffed out a harried breath. “But I thought you might at least try to discourage me.”

“When have I stood between you and an important choice?”

Martin had to admit he never had and yet his guide seemed oddly eager for him to risk his calling. That was what he could not understand, what seemed a betrayal of their bond.

Before he could find the words to explain, the abbot clasped Martin’s upper arms. The growing light picked out the wind-worn lines around his eyes, eyes that shone as black as water in a cave. Martin knew his teacher’s face better than he knew his own, but in that moment he might as well have been a stranger.

“Are you so certain,” said the abbot, “that this course will lead you from the road you were meant to take? Maybe if you taste what you are proposing to give up, your sacrifice will have more meaning. Or maybe you will decide you don’t want to be celibate after all. You know our sect does not require it, just as you know many yogins have taken lovers. Your spiritual progress need not be hampered unless you let it.”

But I fear I will let it, Martin wanted to cry. I fear I will trade everything for her.

This, however, was not the abbot’s problem.

“You must meditate,” he said. “The answer will come.”

The suggestion was clearly a dismissal. Martin rose, and bowed, and withdrew toward the door on less than steady legs. He would do as his guide advised. He would meditate. He only wished an answer existed that would be wholly good.

His teacher halted him at the threshold. “Your heart,” he said, “is not your weakest organ. You should trust it, old friend. Through many lives it has not misled you.”

Martin’s throat was too thick to speak but he nodded in acknowledgment.

The abbot, it seemed, already knew what he wanted his choice to be.

Chapter Six

LUISA rose from her bed shortly after sunset. Though the butter lamps had burned out, the light of the stars was enough for her upyr eyes. Catlike, she stretched her arms and spine. She had enjoyed her first sound sleep since arriving inTibet. Her first meal, as well, not to mention her first good—

But her mind stopped short of calling what she had shared with Martin her first good tupping. Their encounter had been more rewarding than she expected, if also less than she desired.

Frowning, she straightened her robe and ran her fingers through her waist-length hair. No more than this was required to keep her tidy. What Martin called her aura kept her person and her clothes in immaculate condition—though she had never lost her fondness for a lengthy soak. She would treat herself to one, she vowed, the minute she got home.

But thoughts of Firenze made her restless. Swinging her cloak around her shoulders, she headed for the door. Apparently the nervous monk who stood outside was there for her protection: he let her pass without a word.

Not wishing to disturb anyone else, she turned her steps down the abandoned corridor. The stiff yak hide soles of her boots made shushing sweeps through the eddies of frosted snow. Beneath its powdering the stones were cracked. Had this wing been new when Martin first lived in Shisharovar? Had he wandered down this hall as she did? Had his mind been filled with different dreams?

She smiled at the ease with which she had accepted his beliefs.

But how could she not? Since turning upyr she had seen more marvels than she could count.

A narrow stairway led her upward, so dark even she had to feel her way by touch. The sound of air whistling drew her higher. Finally, after shouldering a heavy door aside, she reached the roof. Her breath caught at the vista that stretched before her: range upon range of rugged snowcapped mountains, their peaks milky and effulgent, their shadows streaks of sapphire ink. In every direction the towering crags marched over the horizon, as if their bulk filled all the world. The sky above them was the purest black she’d ever seen. Against its backdrop the stars seemed not like diamonds but pinprick holes through which the light of some higher sphere was breaking through.

God is here, they seemed to say, a greater god than humans can conceive.

Luisa felt simultaneously dwarfed and exhilarated. How can I exist? she thought. How can any creature? Why would God need more than the beauty of this night?

She stepped through the shallow drifted snow, past gilded, onion-peaked structures that rose from blocks of stone. From pedestal to peak the things were twice her height and strung one to another with lines of wind-torn prayer flags. They exuded an eerie vibration as she passed. Were these the reliquaries her native guide had called chortens: containers for the possessions, and occasionally the remains, of holy abbots? Dorje had claimed the bodies were boiled in yak butter and salted to preserve them. The practice seemed bizarre, but who was she to judge? Whatever lay inside them, the structures must be some sort of shrine. They reminded her of churches she had known. The lamas’ beliefs had not quite let their contents die.

Reaching the wall at the perimeter of the roof, she crossed her arms atop the ledge. As she did, images of her sire came to her mind. What, she wondered, would Auriclus make of her present quest? For that matter, who would she be if he had not left her? If he had taught her more of his secrets, would her powers now be so great these lamas would be in awe of her? Would she even care about a thing like not living off stolen blood?

Martin would care, she thought, then shook her head at how easily the monk filled her awareness. Her own father she barely recalled, so completely had her master’s shadow subsumed his. But even Auriclus could not obscure the shadow Martin threw.

Ever since he had withdrawn from her cell the night before, she had sensed him teetering on the cusp of a decision, one that would affect not just her mission but whatever chance they had of being more than a petitioner and her guide.

Troubled, she joined her hands in an attitude of prayer. I want that too much, she thought. I want everything from him too much. She closed her eyes, then opened them to the sky. The truth was as undeniable as the stars. She loved him. For the second time in her long upyr life, and perhaps for the first time that was real, Luisa del Fiore was in love.

She had not anticipated this development. How could she? Martin was no father figure like Auriclus. Nor was he a hedonist, despite having shown himself ready enough for pleasure the night before. He had a better heart than she did, and probably a stronger mind. God knew his soul was purer and yet, when she was with him, when she looked into his incomparable gentian eyes, she felt not diminished but complete.

He had never judged her. In truth, she could tell that he admired her.

Which was all the more reason she must not cause his fall.

Let him go, she thought, tightening her jaw against the blooming pain. Stop tempting him and you’ll have earned your freedom from the blood. She could make it a bargain with the angels. Surely one good deed was not too much to ask.

And if the good deed gained her nothing, what then?

Luisa forced her muscles to relax. She stared at the mountains, their ceaseless winds blowing the hem of her mink-lined cloak against her thighs. As if in sympathy, her robe twisted around her ankles. Fur and wool, luxury and necessity—and her mind unable to say at the moment which was which. Blithely she had spoken of wishing to live more ethically, a half-truth at best, designed to impress the people whose help she begged. Much more important had been her desire to depend entirely on herself. To need a human for its blood, even a human she could suborn, was to be vulnerable. But now she needed much more than blood.

With a skin-chilling shock, she saw her quest had come to mean less to her than one man’s good opinion.

Then she laughed, sharp and bitter, her breath clouding thickly in the air. Even now she hedged the truth. She wanted more than Martin’s good opinion. She wanted his well-being.

***

FROM his interview with the abbot Martin had gone straight to his private chamber, where he turned at once to light his altar’s lamps. Now a cone of his finest Indian incense smoldered sweetly in a dish. He had bathed and stretched and said his customary prayers. He had prostrated himself and fixed his inner vision on a point. Or he had tried to.

His body wanted nothing to do with prayer. His body wanted only to wallow in the memory of Luisa’s touch. His phallus throbbed with readiness, hard and heavy and full, demanding union, demanding her.

His guide had claimed his heart was not his weakest organ. What, Martin wondered, would he have said of his cock?

His desires were at war with each other. He wanted to be the man of his own ambitions: a steadfast servant of his faith. Being recognized for his spiritual achievements was admittedly attractive, but more than that he wished to be true at heart.

Of course, he also wished to be the person who saved Luisa.

How else could he ensure that she remembered him? Not in bed. Too many men more skilled than he had gone before him. But this only he could do. A hundred years from now his image would brand her heart.

Sighing, he unfolded his body from the floor.

He had no business with her heart. Their likely paths in life could not have been more divergent. Except—

He brought both fists to his mouth and pressed them hard against his teeth.

Except his heart had business with her.

In spite of everything, he and Luisa were kindred spirits. Both were strong of mind, both concerned with a longer stretch of time than most lives could hold. Certainly both were trying to balance the promptings of the body against those of the soul.

Nor were those the only parallels. Luisa had twice been betrayed by the men who sired her: the first marrying her to a brute, the second simply leaving. To Martin’s mind, neither abandonment was deserved. Whatever her flaws, his life was immeasurably richer for having met her. Auriclus had missed out. And so had Martin’s father. Luisa had taught him that by proving how easy to love one imperfect soul could be.

His eyes went hot with the sting of truth. He did not simply admire Luisa’s beauty or her spirit or her decadent Western mind. He loved her as any man loved a woman. He loved her as he loved the peace of meditation and the mountains in the spring. He loved her as the boyhood friends he’d never had. He loved her as he loved his cherished guide.

He also loved her as herself, in a manner unlike any other. He, who had never thought to love at all, loved her with all his being.

The discovery floored him. It was a miracle, a raw, exciting terror. He tottered under it like a two-year-old, neither knowing nor caring if the abbot had been right about there being a karmic bond between them. Whether they had shared a thousand lives or none could not have mattered less.

He loved her.

Stumbling to the door, he leaned his brow against its time-worn wood. He could not ignore this emotion. He had to sum it into his accounts.

Not here, though, not in his solitary monkish cell. He needed…

He did not know what he needed but he strode into the hall to find it, letting his instincts be his guide. The decision was there before him. He had only to clear his mind.

***

MARTIN was waiting in her cell when she returned. The sight of him made her heart sink to her belly. He sat tailor-fashion on the floor, in the position his people called the lotus, so still he might have been a statue. His string of wooden prayer beads was wrapped around one hand, their surface smooth as stone from many tellings. Gone was his agitation of the night before: his arousal, his embarrassment, anything that marked him a man of flesh. His absolute, effortless peace filled the room the way a stream of water fills a cup. Luisa inhaled without thinking, as if she could draw his serenity into herself. All she did was underscore the differences between them. Self-denial and contemplation were the essence of his world. She did not see how it would ever mesh with hers.

As if he’d known the moment she entered, his eyelids slowly rose. “I am glad you are here,” he said, in his deep, heartbreaking voice. “I have something to show you.”

He set down his beads and extended his hand to her, though she knew he needed no help to rise. His hold was warm, its illusion of camaraderie intense. He did not drop her hand even after he reached his feet. With a gentle smile, he led her to the cell beside her own.

She had assumed the space was empty, and maybe it had been. Now, however, it glowed with warmth. Butter lamps ringed the room and someone had softened the floor with a rich Pashmina carpet. The walls resembled a sultan’s tent, draped in hangings of painted silk. Far happier than the banner of Hayagriva, these thangkas depicted various Buddhas and their consorts, each gracefully straddling the lap of her protector. The colors were bright and pure, the execution of the figures marvelously adept. Decorative as they were, she did not notice at first how explicitly they were joined.

But none of this was as suggestive as the pile of cushions on the floor. No dust marred them, no fading or frays of age. All red, all shining silk damask, they could not be the prop for anything but a seduction.

“No,” she said, turning to her companion. “Martin, I don’t think we should do this.”

If anything, his manner grew calmer. “It is my wish,” he said, his beautiful eyes like stars, “and possibly your need. Last night, at the moment we gave each other pleasure, I felt your barrier begin to fall. You opened your aura to mine and the flow of power did not harm you. Because of this, I believe you may be able to live off the energy lovers share. But there is only one way to find out.”

“No,” she said again. “Your vow…”

“In your heart, you have.” The scope of what he offered stunned her. She ran her fingers through her hair, distressed to the point where she knew she’d become disheveled. “Martin, I am honored. Truly, I am. But this is not a sacrifice I can accept. Perhaps I could make this experiment with someone else.”

He frowned at her, his expression abruptly cool. “You are welcome to try, but I doubt you will see the same results, especially since—despite your many lovers—you never saw them before. Those men did not have my mental training. Nor, I think, did your soul view them as equals. Once you have experienced the process of exchanging energy in full, then perhaps your body will know the trick of repeating it with another.”

“You are jealous,” she said with a flattered laugh.

Martin drew himself up. “If I am jealous, it is no one’s business but my own. I do not wish you to be a killer, not even against your will. If I were able to help and did not, any death you caused would be on my hands.”

“I am responsible for myself! The minute I took what Auriclus offered that was true. Even if no one but you could aid me, I could not let you do this. You were born to be a monk.”

“Was I?” he said. “I have lived as a monk before, taken my vows, followed a path no woman shared. Perhaps it is time to walk another way. Perhaps my spirit shall not progress until I do.”

Luisa tossed her hair in exasperation. “How could someone like me help you progress? No. I am not going to let you risk everything just to keep me from drinking blood!”

He covered his face and shook his head, the gesture at odds with his usual self-control. When he dropped his hands, his eyes swam with emotion, part rueful laughter, part something deeper than she could read. “You underestimate the strength of your character—and overestimate mine. I am afraid more lies behind my offer than concern for you and your future meals.”

“Much more,” he admitted, his seriousness belied by a spark of humor in his eye. “There is my shamefully eager body, which remembers too well the pleasure of your touch. There is my teacher, who seems to think I should taste what I’m giving up. And let us not forget my curiosity. To know the full fruits of passion is an enticement no holy man should discount.”

Luisa fiddled with the edge of her heavy cloak. Though she had no right to ask, she could not hold her next question inside. “Are those all the reasons you want to help?”

“No,” he said, a laugh in it, but his amusement soon fell away. He looked sad then, as if his years truly were as great as hers. “No. There is one more reason. I am not sure you will want to hear it but, in truth, it is the only one that counts.” He took her hand from the button it had been twisting and pressed it to his steadily thudding heart. Her own was fluttering with dread, with hope, with so many feelings she could not sort them out.

“Luisa.” He laughed again, an ironic puff of air. “How many times you must have heard this! I wonder if you will even understand what it means. I love you, Luisa. I love you and wish to give you the one gift no one but I can offer. I wish to free you. I wish to give you your heart’s desire.”

“You love me?” She knew she must sound astounded. She was astounded. Her heart felt as if it had been taken out and put in backward. “I—I—” She swallowed and willed her throat to work. “I love you, too.”

He blinked, twice, and then his smile spread like honey across his face, slow and broad and, at the last, completely blinding. “Well,” he said, “of all the answers I prepared for, I did not think of this.”

“I have not—That is, I do not believe I have ever—”

“You are stammering,” he said, and this also seemed to charm him. His arms found their way around her waist.

“I am trying to say I have never felt this way before. Not in a hundred sixty years.”

He laughed. “I have not felt this way in a hundred sixty lifetimes.”

“Martin.” She struck his shoulder in gentle scold. “You cannot possibly remember so far back.”

“Perhaps not,” he conceded, his gaze falling heatedly to her mouth, “but it feels true.”

She waited for him to kiss her, poised between expectation and impatience. He caught his lip in his teeth, and licked it, and finally lowered his mouth to hers. Their softness melded together like two parts of a whole. This time he needed no instruction. Deeper and wetter his kisses sank while he cradled her head and cupped her bottom in his hand. Yes, she thought, meeting the sweet intrusion of his tongue. Oh, yes, this was what she needed. His arousal pressed her hip, thickly eager and sun warm. If her bones hadn’t been melting, she would have climbed him. Happily, one of his thighs found a home between her own. She rolled herself up it and clutched his muscled shoulders, moaning as his teeth lightly scored her neck.

“Luisa,” he murmured, the sound a soft caress, “let us share what lovers know.”

Her answer was a groan he had no trouble understanding. With endearingly awkward ardor, he divested her of her clothes. Her cloak fell with a thump, then her robe. He nearly tripped over both trying to wrestle his arms out of his sleeves.

The stumble was forgotten in an instant. His naked body was spectacular: long, lean, as graceful as any artist’s masterwork. More graceful, really, because it was alive. His erection jerked and throbbed, its blood-dark thickness luring her to her knees.

“No,” he gasped as her mouth engulfed the silky crest, as his hips cocked forward in spite of his denial. He tasted of salt and lust, his pulse so quick she could not count it. “Luisa, stop.” He was laughing but he meant it. With one final purse-lipped pull she set him free.

“Up,” he urged, and pulled her to her feet.

Her hands went immediately to his chest, stroking, exploring. His skin was smooth, his hair a rasping warmth. She followed the line of it to his navel and twirled the tip of one finger just inside. His eyes went dark. With her touch still on him, he turned to toss her fur-lined cloak across the bed. Incense wafted as the garment settled neatly, mink side up.

She was behind him now, behind his beautiful tapering back. She pressed her breasts against it and kissed his nape. The dip of his shoulder invited her cheek to rest and she could not restrain a sigh. The comfort of holding him was stronger than shade at noon. He was so solid, so marvelously aroused. His body hummed silently with excitement. To her, his control was as alluring as his need. Wound tight with anticipation, she looked beyond him to the waiting cloak-draped cushions.

“You,” she said, “want to see me on that fur.”

He shuddered as her hands smoothed downward toward his groin. “Yes.”

“Legs spread… sex wet…”

“I will spread your legs,” he offered, then hesitated. “If you would allow it.”

Her nails drew another shudder as they ruffled his pubic curls. “Yes,” she said, “I believe I would.”

She pulled away and circled him, hands trailing, gaze locked hungrily on his face. A muscle in his side twitched as she strafed it. He could not quite keep his attention on her eyes. Her naked body was clearly a distraction: her breasts, her belly, her pale and rounded thighs.

Look your fill, she thought with a secret smile as she lowered herself to the bed. Never had she been so grateful for her beauty. It was a gift she gave him, a gift that—pray God—would please them both. Especially him, though. She felt young again beneath his reverent gaze, every nerve and sinew born anew. Her back settled to the cushions. With knees bent and pressed together, she reached up for his hands.

“Come,” she said, “make a place for yourself where you belong.”

His face darkened at her invitation, the blood rising up his chest and neck. He did not speak but knelt as if in supplication at her feet. His palms settled on her knees, their dampness just as erotic as their warmth. Gently, slowly, he pushed her legs apart until her golden triangle was bared to view.

He exhaled then, long and hushed, and slid his fingers up her thighs.

“You are a flower,” he breathed, spreading her folds with such delicacy she had to strain to feel the touch. “I would paint you, if I could, and gaze at you every day.”

His words and his gleaming, avid eyes robbed her of speech. Called forth by his admiration, a trickle of fluid slipped from her sex. As his thumb traced its downward course, his mouth fell open, then closed when he swallowed hard.

She wanted to laugh but she did not, no more than she told him what to do. These discoveries were his to make, his to learn on his own. With a mixture of confidence and shyness, he shifted between her legs. He was intent now, his breathing shallow, his pulse racing visibly in his throat.

Hush, love, she thought, her hands stroking down his back. Your body knows what to do. Indeed, his instinct led him better than he knew. His hips settled into the cradle of hers as if a lode-stone drew them down. With heart-stopping accuracy, the tip of him probed her then pressed inside. His breath caught, held. He was testing the feel of her, taking in that first luscious clasp. She knew her softness pulled him, knew he wanted more. He pressed deeper, surer, his vision glazed, his senses tuned to that miraculous inner glide. He hiked with a sigh.

“Ah,” he said, a sound of enchanted wonder. “Ah, Luisa, that is so good.”

She laughed and hugged him with all her limbs. His hips ground back at her but it wasn’t long before he complained.

“You must not hold me so tightly,” he said. “I am certain I should move more vigorously in and out.”

She let him do as he wished, loving his fits and starts and gasps.

“No,” he said, after a rather amusing failure to find a working rhythm. “I need—”

With a strength that impressed her, he secured her against him, then tipped back and crossed his legs. The movement brought her over his lap, her thighs to either side of him, her sex pressed snugly onto his. His erection thumped inside her as if it approved the change. She could not help noting that their position echoed the sacred pictures on the walls.

“There,” he said, happily flexing deeper with his hips, “now you are my consort.”

“May your consort move?”

His eyes twinkled. “I should be grateful, for my hands would be free to touch you as you deserve.”

He must have thought she deserved a lot. He caressed her as she rose and fell: her back, her haunches, her belly and hard-tipped breasts. His touch was like a drug. Her skin began to hum at the sweeping strokes. She would have purred if she’d had the means. His mouth glided up her neck and found her ear. The rush of his breath made her sheath tighten on his shaft. His fullness was exquisite, his living, vital pulse. His hands fell to her waist. He gripped her, half guiding, half greedy, then rested his forehead against hers.

“Let down your walls,” he whispered. “I want to touch your soul.”

Letting him in was as easy as drawing breath. Between one thrust and the next, her barriers simply fell. He was inside her then, as if her heart had always been his home. She could see with his eyes, feel with his body. His love was a sea that buoyed her in boundless warmth, deep, unstinting, as amazing as it was sure. No emptiness could survive it. This was her salvation, no matter what came to her in the end. She was loved and she could love, a blessing greater than any for which she’d dared to pray.

Their auras flickered together, shimmers of green and blue, ribbons of red and gold. Martin groaned and thrust so hard he lifted her from his lap. She could feel his swelling rise to climax, or maybe she felt her own. Sensation blurred, doubled, as if he were joining with her in truth, as if their bodies had lost their separate forms.

A hallucination, she thought. Real or not, the intermingling was delicious. Her body became her sex, yielding, giving, being taken in every cell.

And then she remembered.

This was how she had changed. This was how Auriclus had made her an upyr.

Exultation rose like new spring wine. She could make Martin what she was. She did not have to lose him, did not have to watch him age and die.

But—said the last sane corner of her mind.

But—said the first selfless corner of her heart.

If she made him what she was, she shared not just her gifts but also her burdens. He might have chosen to love her but he had not chosen that.

Her awareness expanded, then stilled. Colors pulsed in the hush like veils spun out of gems. She felt his attention, and his question, as if it were her own.

“We must stop,” she said, or maybe only thought. “I cannot steal your future.”

“And if my future lies with you?”

She wanted to believe so badly, the ache of it rang through her bones.

“Luisa,” he said, his thought-voice as rich as velvet spice. “In all my lives, I have lost and found more treasures than I can count. But none of them, none, ever meant as much to me as you. There is no nirvana without you. There is only an empty night.”

She searched him for the truth, though she knew he could not lie. What if he came to be sorry? What if she dragged him down?

“We will drag each other up,” he promised. “Together we will be twice as strong.”

“This is your choice? Truly?”

“I did not know how much I wanted this until I looked into my heart. I will not be sorry, Luisa. And I am not afraid.”

All that he was infused the declaration: his pride, his courage, his curious, questing mind. It seemed impossible to fathom and yet she saw that loving her had made him stronger. Gone was his bitterness at his father, gone his fear that he never would belong. Because she loved him, all of him, he knew he belonged and always had. He did not need to renounce either West or East. Instead, all the world could be his home.

“Change me,” he said, “and I will share the world with you.”

***

A shower of stars burst within him, diamond cool and bright. His body disappeared, no boundaries, no limits, just sparks spread far and wide. I am the world, he thought, but a heartbeat later he slammed back in.

He was all body then, all tautly focused nerve and flesh. His phallus tightened. His throat burned with a swallowed scream. Luisa tugged at him, outside, inside. She was so wet, so warm. Sweat sprang from his pores, the pleasure like a cramp. When it swelled his cry broke free. He could not stop it, could not stop any of it. He came so strongly he almost turned inside out.

When Luisa arched, he came again.

And then a peace like none he’d ever known spread outward from his sex. It was purely a peace of the body but its power coursed sweet and deep. For the first time in his life, he knew what it was to be flawlessly in balance, every bone and muscle, every particle of being. Sighing at the liquid, golden feel, he toppled with her in his arms onto the bed. Apparently her strength had not abandoned her. She leaned over him, smiling, her hair hanging around them like new-washed silk. She seemed an angel to him, a dakini of the highest grade.

Angel or not, she traced the shape of his face with the tip of her longest finger. “You hardly look different,” she mused, then laughed deep in her throat. “You must have been nearly perfect as you were.”

The compliment pleased him, though it seemed vain to admit.

“I am sleepy,” he confessed, watching her through pleasantly drowsy eyes. “If I let myself go under, will I forget what you have done?”

She smoothed his brow beneath her thumb. “I am not sure but I do not think so. Auriclus never taught me to blank a mind. Not that it matters. I would not alter your memory. I trust you with my secrets more than I trust myself.”

This compliment he accepted without shame. “I shall strive,” he said huskily, “to be worthy of your esteem.”

***

HE woke to a subtle twang inside his body. Sunset. It was almost a taste, like water from a spring: sweet, pure, the darkling dawn of his new day. At some point, he and Luisa had rolled out of bed onto the carpet. Despite the fading light, his vision was crystal clear. Different. Changed. I am upyr now, he thought. I am a foreign being. The recognition inspired exhilaration instead of fear. Maybe tomorrow would bring regret. For tonight he was simply glad.

He shifted, oddly at home in his altered form. The nerves in his back were alive to every strand of Kashmir wool. Luisa, bless her, lay sleeping across his chest. She was warm even now, or possibly he’d grown cooler. Her skin still felt like burnished silk. Desire overwhelmed him, sharper and harder than before. If this was what upyr felt, he did not know how she had held off. Too impatient to wake her, he rolled her under his body and thrust inside.

“Mm,” she said, and cocked her calf around his hip. “I like an early riser.”

The act was easier now, more natural. The rhythm came without duress. His arms were tireless, his thighs like tempered steel. And the pleasure… that was a roaring flood. When he threw back his head in climax her nails left approving half-moon pricks against his skin. Sadly, they had healed by the time she climbed atop and began to ride. He would have liked to bear her mark, just as the sages promised in the sutras. That one small disappointment, however, could not allay his joy.

As if she sensed this, she smiled through her flaxen hair. “You are not hungry,” she said, wonder growing in her eyes.

Martin gripped her waist. “Only for you,” he said, and thrust as deeply as he could. “From now on only for you.”

***

“SHALL I come with you?” she asked. She stood before him, her head lowered, her hands resting lightly on his breast. She was the picture of the wife he had not known he wanted.

“No,” he said, “I have delayed this long enough.”

She smiled at that, a secretive curling of her mouth. Since sunset they had put everything off but love. On the floor. Against the wall. Standing. Sitting. Twice they had even done it head to toe.

He had liked that. He thought it was a thing a god would do.

“I do not care what you say,” he grumbled even as his body stirred again. “This incessant desire for coupling cannot be normal.”

Her hands flowed seductively across his shoulders. “I did not say it was normal, I said it was natural. You were a healthy young man. Now you are a healthy upyr. Given your history, how could you not have numerous unmet urges to fulfill?”

“But I am turning into a fiend!”

She looked at him, her eyes round with concern. “Is that what you think? That I made you a fiend?”

“No, my love, no.” He kissed her alabaster forehead. “I am merely feeling guilty for enjoying this so much. Or, rather, I am feeling guilty for not feeling guilty enough.”

Her face lit up, as sunny as daybreak. “You called me your love.”

He laughed. “You are my love. And now I must go, before you convince me I cannot.”

She nuzzled the hollow beneath his throat. “Are you certain you don’t want me to talk to the abbot with you?”

“I am,” he said. “This task is mine alone 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.

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 wine—each pleasure doubled by being shared. Even sunset, she discovered, possessed a deeper charm. A glimmer of scarlet still blooded her windows’ mullioned diamond panes. She had had her blessed soak and was now being dressed for her first dinner since their return.

Martin lounged against the bedpost to watch the maids prepare her. Outwardly amused, the gleam in his eye bespoke arousal. To him, her Western clothes were like a whiff of she-cat to a torn. His nostrils flared as her whale-bone stays encased her smock, followed by the hip-widening cage of the farthingale. As her skirts were eased down the frame, he had to shift one ankle over the other. The way her breasts over-swelled the bodice made his gaze shoot aqua fire. When the maids began pinning jewels onto her slashed and embroidered sleeves, however, he could not restrain a laugh.

“Behold the glittering idol,” he said, spreading his arms in a gesture he had been practicing for a week. The pose was convincingly Florentine. “Tell me, milady, is there an inch of that gown that does not bristle with lace and bows and a sultan’s ransom in precious stones?”

“Pray God there is not!” she huffed, surprising the younger maid into a laugh. Both girls curtsied when she dismissed them, leaving her alone with her new spouse.

Unaccountably nervous, she adjusted her open ruff. With a small, quirked smile and a careful foot, Martin stepped into the circle of her skirts. In waves of emerald silk they spread around the gilt wood stool on which she sat. As if to make certain she was real, he touched her powdered cheek. The cosmetic pinked her skin, a requirement for one so fair when mixing with mortal guests.

“My attire is part of doing business,” she explained. “People do not believe you are successful unless you put on a show, and unless they believe you are successful, they will not help you to be more so.”

“Is that what you want, to be more successful?”

Heart overflowing, she kissed his hand. “How I love you. When you ask a question, you never act as if you will judge the answer. I enjoy my success, yes. I worked hard for it. It is also a kind of safety. The

Inquisition cast a shadow, you know, not as long in Florence as elsewhere, but such dark days I shall not soon forget. Besides”—she flashed a smile—“someone must fund the ventures of men whose stockings are full of holes.”

“Is that what you do?”

“Among other things. I am not one lone woman anymore, I am a net of enterprise. My success supports that of others and that, too, warms my pride.”

“And these partners do not know what you are?”

“No. Only my lawyer and his venerable father know. The Vasari are a proud Florentine family, back from when the great casate built towers to defend against being assassinated by their rivals. Old and young Piero understand loyalty—and discretion. I shall have to start silvering my hair, though, soon enough.” She touched the youthful coils that supported her velvet cap. “After a time, I shall go into seclusion, perhaps even leave the country. Then, once I pass quietly away, I can return as some far-flung niece and heir.”

Martin rubbed his nose. “It seems complicated.”

“It is inconvenient,” she admitted, “but necessary, and considerate in its way. If people do not know for certain why you are odd, they are content to have you be so.”

“As long as you are successful.”

Luisa smiled at his quickness. “Precisely.”

“I have much to learn,” he said, and plopped down on their bed. The feather bolster fluffed around his hips but could not detract from his dignity, no more than could his foreign clothes.

Much as Martin enjoyed her dress, he had been shocked by the fashions for men: their expense, their

colors, their—to him—immodesty. But “I do not mind,” he had assured her. “I cannot make friends for Tibet unless people see me as one of them. It is only, well, to wear this garb in public..”

Since he was determined to try, she had steered his disappointed tailor to the less flamboyant products of his trade. Now a pair of snug black Venetians, sans padding, hugged Martin’s well-formed thighs. The ice blue doublet displayed his shoulders to perfection and the blazing white neck ruff, small though it was, enhanced the still-warm color of his skin.

Despite his discomfort, his regal bearing and natural talent for mimicry carried off the style. With his hair growing out, his wonderful Asian face almost seemed Italian.

“You have learned so much already,” she said. “I hope you do not think—”

He shook his head, hearing the words before she spoke. “I do not think you expect it of me. In truth, I find I must work hard to discover what you desire.”

“As if you could not guess!”

His blue eyes darkened with amusement. “Yes, there are many things I can guess, but since most would require being shut up in this bedchamber..” His grin turned wolfish, but his gaze as always was sincere. “I am learning because I want to, my love. I wish to move smoothly in your world. Once I can, I will decide what I want to do.” He laughed, the sound both deep and happy. “I cannot imagine what I shall be. A builder of ships? A lawyer?”

“Oh, not a lawyer, love.”

He leaned in to nip her ear. “Then perhaps a famous sculptor. Shall you sponsor me, donna, if I model my creations on your form?”

“Our guests..” she murmured as his palm slipped down her pearl-decked bodice to her waist.

“Let them wait,” he growled, beginning to gather her under gown. “Then they will savor you as I do.”

His mouth breathed heat across her bosom, stirring the longing that never ebbed very far. Her teeth sharpened, then the peaks of her breasts. How lovely it was to feel this hunger without fear, to know it would be matched and met. Her hands seemed to drift of their own volition up his thighs. She found the extravagant swelling at their apex, the hardness of his desire.

With a moan of impatience, he pierced her neck.

“Oh, my,” she sighed at the throbbing pleasure of his bite. “By all means, let them wait!”

THE END

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Six