Midnight 01 - Luisa's Desire

experiences the process in its entirety, she should be able to repeat it."
     
    "An intriguing notion." The abbot tapped his inkstained 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