Midnight 01 - Luisa's Desire

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 yakhide 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 sunaddled 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