Chain of Souls (Salem VI) (19 page)

"Are you one of them?" he asked her after a few seconds.

"I'm not sure what you mean," Giles said. "I
am
a witch, but I am not part of the Salem Coven. They are my enemy, just as they are yours."

John turned to Faust. "What is ODX?"

Faust pressed his lips together and glared at John. "The group that saved your life," he said after a few moments of silence.

"You've heard of Opus Dei, haven't you, John?" Amy asked.

"Aren't those the guys Dan Brown wrote that great thriller about a couple years ago?"

"Yes, but the real Opus Dei isn't as controversial as Brown made them sound; however, there's an offshoot of Opus Dei called ODX, which is far more radical."

"We believe the world is engaged in a titanic struggle between good and evil," Faust interrupted. "If you think it's radical to battle the Devil, then yes, we're radical."

"But that's not all you battle, is it?" Amy shot back. "You believe that all other religions besides Christianity pose an equal threat, don't you?"

John shook his head. "Father Faust told us that his group is allied with all the other religions."

"It's a lie," Amy said. "Isn't it, Father Faust?"

Faust's eyes were going back and forth between John and Amy. Finally, he settled on John. "This woman," jerking his head toward Lisa Giles, "is a Wiccan. Wiccans use
magic,"
he said, pronouncing the word as if magic was something unimaginably filthy and evil. "They believe in a bunch of
spirits,
including their horned god—and if he isn't the Devil, what is he?" Faust was nodding as he spoke. "The Wiccans are the Devil's agents."

Lisa Giles cleared her throat. "May I say something?" she asked in what struck John as a remarkably calm tone given the fact that a few second earlier Faust had been preparing to shoot her.

"Go ahead."

"I
am
a witch, and I am a member of a local coven of thirteen witches."

On hearing this Faust recoiled, as if proximity would somehow stain his soul.

Giles went on. "It is true we believe in a number of spirits, and it is also true that we attempt to work magic."

"See!"
Faust shot back. "I
told
you. These people are dangerous. Magic is the Devil's work."

"Every good lie has as much truth in it as possible," Lisa Giles went on, ignoring Faust. "There really are people from all the world religions who have united in the struggle against the Satanists, but ODX is not part of that group."

"Don't listen to her," Faust growled.

"I would think you would agree that the use of magic is not inherently evil," Giles went on, speaking to John.

"Why?"

"Because you have used magic."

John looked at Amy and shook his head. "That's not really true about me using magic," he said, turning back to Lisa Giles. "Something happened to me one time, and I don't even know what to call it."

Lisa Giles smiled, and again John found her calmness remarkable. "Call it whatever you wish.
We
would call what happened through you to be magic, and in fact it is our belief that you are one of the most powerful magic users on the planet."

John shook his head. "There's no way."

"No, John," Amy said, her voice firm. "I was there that night. I saw what you did in the catacombs, and I told Lisa. That's why she's come to speak with you."

Giles glanced at Amy then back to John. "We believe it's vital for you to learn to understand your gift and, if you can, to learn to control it."

"The point is I
can't
control it," John shot back.

"How do you know?" Lisa Giles insisted. "Do you have any idea what triggers magic and what it really is?"

John shook his head.

"Don't listen to her! Some things are not
meant
to be controlled," Faust shouted.

John turned to look at the priest. "Some things are triggered by the presence of evil," Faust went on. "Think about it! Your Putnam blood makes it possible for you to sense evil, just like a hunting dog can smell a pheasant."

John closed his eyes and shook his head and felt like Faust's words placed a terrible weight on his shoulders. He wanted to deny them, but he knew they were true. "What did you expect me to do?"

"To fight the Coven!" Faust shouted

"But if I have some kind of power, but I can't control it, what good am I going to be to anybody?"

Lisa Giles cleared her throat again. "Why don't you ask your friend, Father Faust, what was supposed to happen to you in this struggle against the Devil?"

John turned to Faust. "Well?"

Faust raised his chin, and his expression became cold. "If you are truly a magic user, as we also suspect, then in some part of your soul, whether you realize it or not, you are allied with the Devil."

John started to shake his head.

"Deny it all you want," Faust continued. "Mankind is not meant to use magic. It is the stuff of evil and ungodliness. Those who use magic are to be destroyed."

"So if I had agreed to help you, I was supposed to die in the process?"

"You are a magic user."

"And you are a sick sonofabitch, Father Faust," John said.

"Now that you know he intended for you to die, what do you want to do with him?" Giles asked.

John looked at the small woman. Whatever it was about her that just moments ago had struck him as mousy and weak had disappeared, and she now seemed tough-minded and decisive, a woman accustomed to being in charge. "What do you mean by that?"

"If you let him go, he and his associates will try and kill you."

John turned and gazed at Faust for a long moment. The priest said nothing, and he took the man's silence to indicate that what Giles was saying was accurate. Faust would indeed try to kill him, perhaps he would try to kill all of them. He glanced at Amy, who was still holding both knives and who looked as if she would instantly kill the priest if John gave the word.

"Would you really be stupid enough to try and kill me before I fight the Coven? If they're holding my daughter, it doesn't seem like I have any choice where that's concerned."

Still Faust refused to speak.

"So, what was your plan? You'd get me to attack the Coven and wait to see whether I won or I got killed, and then you and your ODX friends would kill whoever survived? In other words, you saved my life yesterday only so you could make sure when I died I would do you some good?"

Faust's mouth twitched, and a flicker of uncertainty seemed to pass across his face. Faust held his gaze but said nothing.

"Still," John went on, "no matter what your reasons, you did save my life, so in turn I'm going to save yours by letting you go. Get out of here. If I see you again, I'll do the same thing to you I did to the Coven leaders. I'm going to learn how to control that power, and I guarantee I'll use it on you."

"Think carefully," Giles began.

John cut her off. "I have."

JOHN KEPT THE PRIEST'S GUN AND ALSO FISHED
the silencer out of Faust's coat pocket, then he walked him to the front door. "One more thing, Faust," he said as he opened the door to let the priest walk out. "I'm saving your life by turning the other cheek the way the Bible says. Think carefully about that, Father Faust. Think about it before you try to kill me in God's name."

Faust looked at him, his expression a contest between anger and something else John couldn't name. He hoped he might see uncertainty or even shame, but he couldn't be sure. Finally Faust gave an imperceptible nod, turned, and stepped out onto the sidewalk where he walked quickly away.

John came back into the house and found Lisa Giles and Amy back in the kitchen where Amy had poured them both mugs of hot coffee. He turned toward Amy. "Time for a little disclosure, perhaps?" he said in a sarcastic voice.

Amy nodded. "Okay."

John glanced at Giles then back to Amy. "Obviously you two aren't strangers."

"No."

"When were you going to tell me you're a Wiccan? Or maybe I should ask why hadn't you told me already?"

"I'm not a practicing Wiccan, but I've been interested in the religion for a long time."

"And you know this woman?"

"Know Lisa Giles? Yes, very well."

"And you told her to come here?"

"I had a suspicion that Faust wasn't telling us the whole truth."

John looked away from her, trying to control the anger and confusion and hurt he felt. "Why didn't you tell me she was coming ahead of time?"

"I didn't know how you'd react to a witch coming to the house. I thought you might suspect she was allied with the Satanists."

John nodded, privately admitting she was exactly right about his reaction. "Why shouldn't I still suspect that?"

Lisa Giles cleared her throat. "May I attempt to explain some things?"

John looked at her, realizing that the woman who had first shown up at his door had been trying to appear as less than she was. Now, she had dropped her guise of insubstan-tiality and appeared alert and in charge, very much like a woman who might be the CEO of a good-sized company. He was actually drawn to her and realized his instincts were to trust Lisa Giles. He went to the counter, poured himself a mug of coffee, and raised it to her in a salute. "Okay, your dime."

Lisa returned his gesture with a formal dip of her head. "Everything I told you a moment ago is true. We Wiccans use magic, at least we attempt to. We believe magic exists in our world, very much like an as-yet-undiscovered science. Many people outside the Wiccan religion believe magic is nonsense, or if it exists at all, it's inherently evil; however their unbelief or dislike doesn't mean either is true.

"I would say the attitude toward magic today is a little bit like the church's attitude toward science back in the 1400s when their theology insisted the earth was flat and also at the center of the universe. Church leaders feared to discover they might be wrong, and they persecuted those who claimed to know differently.

"So," she went on, "we Wiccans believe that magic exists, but we are the first to admit we are inexpert at manipulating it. The one thing we have is what you might call a heightened sensitivity to magic when it is near us, either in the outer world or in an individual. For example, in your case, I sense your magic," she paused and seemed to search for a word, "profoundly."

John looked at Amy to see her reaction, and she nodded, silently encouraging him not to reject what Lisa was saying. Lisa went on. "If magic were sound, it's as if I have become accustomed to hearing very soft noises, but when you use magic, it's as if I'm hearing a sonic boom."

John started shaking his head. "That's where you're very wrong," he insisted. "I don't use magic. I don't know the first thing about it. I don't care about it, I don't study it, and I've never tried to use it."

"What do you call what you did the other night? That's what I'm talking about."

John glanced at Amy, who was nodding her encouragement, but he wasn't ready to go that far with his trust, not by a long shot. He turned back to Lisa. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"I'm talking about the magical equivalent of a twenty-thousand-pound bomb. Every witch in our coven has been walking around with a migraine headache since it happened."

John shrugged. "I really don't have a clue what you're referring to."

"Please trust me," Lisa insisted. "It's critical for all of us that do."

John looked at her and tried to calm his pulse. Every fiber of his being wanted to reject what she was saying. "Go on," he said.

"Every person, if they have any at all, has an aura that is as utterly unique as their DNA."

John still tried to shrug it off. "You're saying it was such a loud noise, you
could
be mistaken, right?"

Lisa shook her head. "I'm afraid not. It would be like turning up Frank Sinatra until it was so loud it made people's ears bleed. It would be painful in the extreme, but there would be no mistaking that the voice was Sinatra's."

John took a long sip of coffee and saw that his hands were shaking. He glanced at Amy again. She nodded, clearly wanting him to open up to this woman. "So let's say something did happen," he said. "What do you think it was? I just have to tell you before you answer that it wasn't
me
doing magic. It was . . . other entities."

Lisa smiled. "You don't think it was you because I'm sure you weren't trying to do anything other than survive and maybe save some lives."

"I wasn't doing magic," John insisted, his voice rising. "Something came into me."

Lisa held up her hands in a calming motion. "The only way another spirit could invest itself in you is when
you
have the ability to allow that to happen. Most people are totally unaware of other spirits. They go through their whole lives never even sensing other presences around them."

"You have to understand something," John shot back. "I wasn't trying to sense anything. I hadn't ever sensed any spirits, but then Rebecca Nurse showed up about a week before Halloween."

"You'd
never
sensed another spirit?"