Midnight 01 - Luisa's Desire

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.