Chain of Souls (Salem VI)

by Heath, Jack

  Whatever the discussion was about, too few of the words made it up the stairs for Sarah to know any more than that they were talking about some type of process and the need to hurry it along and also that something else was happening that was adding to the risk of this process. Finally, Jessica Lodge seemed to have heard enough because her voice suddenly rose from a whisper to a tone loud enough for Sarah to hear very clearly as the words came out imperious and final. "I understand your feelings, but the answer is absolutely not. I cannot allow anything to disrupt our plans when I am so close!"

  Next came an angry rumbling from the other voices, but Jessica seemed to hold fast. A moment later, Sarah heard the front door open again and then close, and assuming the people were leaving, she hurried back to the front bedroom and watched two of the men she had met at dinner in the basement dining room walk back to their respective cars. A second later she tiptoed into her own bedroom and slipped into bed again, pretending to be asleep until Jessica Lodge walked in a few moments later.

  "Still asleep?" Jessica said.

  Sarah opened her eyes as if she was just waking up. "Did I oversleep?" she asked in a husky voice.

  "No," Jessica said in a light voice, but when Sarah rolled over and looked at her she could see the red blush in the older woman's cheeks that hinted at anger or some other emotion Jessica was trying keep below the surface. "Come down and join me for breakfast, and then we can take our walk."

  Without appearing to, Sarah studied Jessica and tried to figure out what was different about her. Whatever it was, it wasn't anger, she decided, at least not anger alone. She sensed intensity, focus, a heightened energy, and determination that belied the idea they were just going to enjoy a simple country breakfast and then take a walk. There was a goal here, a purpose, and it had lain below the surface of things the whole time, but it was very important.

  As soon as Jessica left, Sarah hurried to get ready and then joined the older woman downstairs in the breakfast room about fifteen minutes later. For the first time in—how many days had it been?—her reporter's instincts were firing on all cylinders. Jessica poured tea and passed the toast cart and the butter to Sarah. The maid brought in scrambled eggs, sausage, and bowl of fresh fruit. If Sarah hadn't been observing Jessica so closely over the past many days, nothing would have appeared amiss, but because she had, she noted the sharper gleam in Jessica's eyes, saw the slightly quicker movements, detected the slight edge to her voice.

  That was why, when it happened, her senses were on full alert. She could not describe the sensation, only that within seven or eight minutes of the time she had sat down at the table something invisible, like maybe a shock wave or an energy pulse, rolled through the room. For Sarah it was perceptible, but for Jessica it seemed to be profound.

  The older woman had been in the process of raising her teacup to her lips when the wave hit. Jessica froze, eyes widening in shock and her skin going pale in a flash. Her teacup fell from her frozen hand, clattered onto her saucer, and shattered, spilling tea all over the table. Jessica let out a faint cry, then closed her eyes as if she was in great pain, and for a second Sarah was sure the old woman was having a heart attack.

  A moment later, as if an earthquake had tremored then passed, the house seemed to return to normal. Sarah reached across the table and took Jessica by the wrist where her fingers were gripping the tablecloth like talons. "Jessica," she said, the words tumbling out, "are you okay? Do you need a doctor?"

  Jessica opened her eyes and blinked, her gaze appearing suddenly rheumy and unfocused. She ignored Sarah's question and turned her head in the direction from which the wave had come, which Sarah knew from watching the sun rise and set each day was toward the east.

  Sarah watched Jessica closely, seeing her throat contract as she swallowed. Jessica's head remained frozen, staring unseeing into the east until the maid came bustling into the room with a towel and began to mop up the spilled tea, which had run off the table and was dripping into Jessica's lap.

  The maid's frantic dabbing seemed to snap Jessica into alertness once again, and she gave her head a little shake. "Are you okay?" Sarah asked again. "Should we call someone?"

  Jessica finally managed to turn toward her. Her eyes slowly came into focus. "No," she said, quite sharply. She looked down at where Sarah's hand grasped her wrist and for the first time seemed to notice she was gripping the bunched tablecloth like a lifeline. With what looked like a grimace of will, she made herself let it go.

  "What was that?" Sarah asked. "Was it an earthquake?"

  "You felt it?"

  "Yes," Sarah said, knowing even as she spoke it couldn't have been an earthquake because nothing in the house had shaken. Just behind Jessica's chair stood an antique open cupboard with fragile plates on small wooden stands. Not one of them had so much as tottered.

  "It was . . ." Jessica seemed to search for the right word. "A shift in power."

  "What?"

  Jessica shook her head. "I can't really explain it."

  Sarah looked at the old woman carefully, wondering if what had just happened connected in some way to the visit by the two men that morning. She realized at the same instant that Jessica Lodge knew damn well exactly what had just happened, but that she wasn't going to offer another word of explanation.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CZARNECKI WAITED UNTIL THEY WERE ON THE other side of Oswiecim before he took out his cell phone and placed a call to Lisa Giles. He gave a quick report on what had occurred at the scene of the old Auschwitz concentration camp, describing what he had witnessed happening to John and what he had experienced himself when he had touched John and heard the almost indescribable wailing sound that had slowly fallen to silence.

  Afterwards he gave a series of yes and no answers, seeming to respond to several questions Lisa Giles asked, and then he handed the phone to John.

  As John took the phone he felt a flurry of anger well up. "What the hell is going on?" he demanded. "Why the hell didn't you or Rabbi Czarnecki tell me what was going to happen?"

  "I apologize. We didn't tell you because we weren't sure that anything was going to happen. Please believe me when I say there is so much we don't know. In any event, what happened to you this morning was extraordinarily important."

  "Why is that?"

  "Because if I understand properly, you were invested by an incalculable number of spirits."

  John said nothing, just closed his eyes and shuddered as the almost unbearable intensity of the combined emotions rolled through him again.

  "It also confirmed a theory we had," Lisa Giles went on. "I sent you an email that will explain what I mean."

  John shook his head, still feeling as if he had cobwebs in his brain and trying to understand what she was talking about. "What theory?"

  "I have no time to explain. If you have questions after you see the email, call me. In the meantime, you need to go to your hotel, collect your bags, and get to the airport. The sooner you are out of Poland, the better it will be for all concerned."

  John felt something cold in the pit of his stomach. "Why is that?"

  "Because what happened to you at Auschwitz is now known to everyone in the Coven."

  "How?"

  "They are attuned."

  "Well . . . where are we supposed to go?"

  "I have already made reservations for you on a flight departing this afternoon."

  John rubbed his eyes. "Where to?"

  "Cambodia."

  "Why?" he asked, but even as the words escaped his lips he was sure he already knew the answer. He felt dread like a block of ice in his stomach.

  The next twenty-four hours passed in a sort of blur as they flew from Krakow to Frankfurt, then on to Shanghai and from there, after a seven-hour layover, to Phnom Penh. John spoke very little the entire time, feeling as if he was withdrawing deeper and deeper into himself. Part of it was anger and resentment, a lingering feeling that people he knew very little about were using him because, as Rebecca Nu
rse had told him back in Salem, You are the weapon.

  Amy seemed to understand his need for silence. She sat beside him for all the interminable hours on the airplanes and in the terminal at Shanghai, respecting the silence that had grown up between them. The only time she tried to shake him out of his torpor was in Shanghai when she downloaded the email from Lisa Giles.

  "I think you need to see this," she said, handing him her laptop.

  He took it without comment.

  The first part of the email was a reproduction of the piece of paper John had photographed in the Rare Book Collection at the Phillips Library, showing the unknown house with the lines extending from the gables. The second sheet was a drawing of the House of the Seven Gables, showing its orientation to the four points of the compass and then extending the same kind of lines from its gables. The third sheet was a map of the world with the lines drawn from both houses crossing in a number of places.

  The first place that caught his eye was a point in northern Europe. "That's where we just were, isn't it?" he asked pointing his finger to where the ley lines crossed at a point just east of Oswiecim, Poland.

  Amy nodded. "Yes."

  He looked closer at the map and what he saw next made the breath catch in his throat. Their next destination was right outside Phnom Penh, and that was exactly where another set of the lines crossed. He saw more lines that crossed in Rwanda, Africa, and he thought of the Hutus and Tutsis and the war between the two where hundreds of thousands died. More lines crossed at Moscow, and he thought of Stalin's purges.

  "What do these lines mean?" he asked, hearing the slight tremor in his voice.

  "I think they mark places in the world where great evil can take place, or where evil has taken place, or where the Devil's influence is strongest."

  "But the evil hadn't taken place in most of these places before that first map was drawn."

  "I know."

  "So, the House of the Seven Gables, was that built to mark out the evil places, or to somehow help them become what they became?"

  "Are you asking if the houses themselves are more intimately connected with the Devil?"

  John nodded. "What if they are more than just old houses? What if they are more powerful than we ever would have guessed and those houses and the way those lines cross actually create places where terrible evil is more possible than in other places?"

  He looked at her as she studied the papers and wondered if she had known this all along, in conjunction with a lot of other things she had known and not shared with him, like her knowledge of Lisa Giles, like her coming to the Salem News from the FBI with the goal of protecting him. Thinking about the misdirection and secrecy and manipulation made him angry.

  He knew he was the weapon, and that his supposed allies were bleeding information out to him at a pace that assured they'd maintain control. He wanted to get his daughter back, but they all wanted something much bigger, namely the defeat of the Coven. John wanted to defeat the Coven, too, but not as his first step. First he wanted Sarah back. He suspected his "allies" didn't want that because it meant they might lose control. The problem was he now knew Amy had been working with Lisa Giles and other members of the anti-Coven force for a while, and if push came to shove, he wasn't certain whether her loyalty lay primarily with them or with him. How the hell was he ever going to know for sure what she would do or who she would be loyal to?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  BY THE TIME THEY CAME OFF THE PLANE INTO the heat and humidity of Cambodia, John was exhausted, partly by the stress of the trip and his inability to sleep for more than short bursts, but more because of his continuing recollection of what had happened to him at Auschwitz and what he feared was going to be repeated somewhere outside the city of Phnom Penh. Still, he knew that his life might depend on his being as alert as possible, and he struggled with only limited success against the lethargy that seemed to have seeped into his very bones.

  He and Amy stood in the customs line watching their fellow passengers as they had done in each of the airports they had flown through, looking for anyone who seemed to be paying too much attention or any sign they were being followed. Echoing Lisa Giles, Czarnecki had told them before they left Krakow that the Coven could not have failed to register what had happened when they went to Auschwitz and therefore they needed to exercise great care on the remainder of their journey. John wondered if he would ever again be able to look at other people normally and not question whether any and all of them—the businessman, the tourist, the flight attendant, the mother pushing a stroller, the policeman—were actually members of the Coven.

  Seeing no one who appeared to be paying them too much attention, they reached the head of the customs line, went through, and had their passports stamped and then went to claim their luggage. Outside the luggage claim they spotted the man they had been told to look for. There was little doubt he was the right one because Lisa had texted them a picture of a one-armed man in the orange robes of a Buddhist monk. In the picture the man's face was round as a Buddha's. The chin cleft, a thick scar from above the left eyebrow down across the left cheek all the way to the man's chin bisected it. John doubted that not even the Coven could have found a man with the same face and the same missing left arm.

  As they walked up to him, the man brought one hand to his forehead and bowed his head slightly in a one-handed version of the usual Buddhist greeting. Amy also made a wai bow, bringing both hands to her forehead. "Master Viphop?" John asked, as he copied Amy's bow.

  "Yes," the man said quietly, shooting a quick look around. "Welcome to Cambodia. We go."

  "If you don't mind, I have to use the restroom first," John said.

  Master Viphop make a small grimace but pointed to a sign on the wall. "We wait here for you."

  John left his bags and walked quickly to the restroom, but paused at the door to make sure it appeared safe. Going over to the urinal, he unzipped and stood with his eyes unfocused, feeling the weight of his exhaustion settle on his shoulders.

  He gave a cursory glance over his shoulder as two men who looked Cambodian walked in, and then he turned back toward the wall. He was starting to turn away from the urinal when he noticed one of the Cambodian men was standing behind him while the other one had remained by the door with his foot against it to keep anyone else from coming in.

  He glanced down at the closest man's hand, saw the knife, and realized in an instant it was too late to do anything because it was already moving toward him and there was absolutely no way to stop it. He opened his mouth, instinctively preparing to cry out but no sound came forth. Instead, something inside him, something alien he hadn't even suspected was there but which had been waiting, coiled like a deadly snake, reacted with explosive joy.

  John had no time to understand when, rather than a panicked cry, a bolt of blinding light shot from his open mouth and hit attacker high in the chest. There was no sound but the damage was the same as twelve-gauge shotgun would make if fired at pointblank range with a load of buckshot. The man flew backwards, his knife clattering uselessly onto the tiles, his upper chest and most of his throat now a gaping hole.

  The thing inside John wasn't done. He felt its wave of elation and its thirst for vengeance and knew he was powerless to stop it. The second man who had stayed by the restroom door gaped at John, his eyes wide open and white with panic, but he was trying to get something out of his pocket. Knowing even before got it free that it had to be a gun, John pointed his right hand at the man. At some level deeper than intellect, John understood he could not risk opening his mouth or pointing the palm of his hand as he had done in the catacombs beneath Salem, both of which would produce a shotgun like blast, he pointed three fingers at the man's chest.

  Three separate bolts, each one like firing a pistol rather than a shotgun blast, shot out of the ends of his fingers and hit the man, one in the stomach and two in the upper chest. His hand stopped reaching for his gun as he fell to the ground.

  Shocked with hi
mself and horrified by what he'd done, just as he'd been in the catacombs beneath Salem, John also felt the overwhelming elation that came from striking back at the Coven. That part of him hungered for more Coven members to come pouring through the door; it hungered to kill and kill and kill until there were no more Coven members alive.

  John swallowed hard, recognizing that he needed to control whatever this thing was inside him, calm himself down, and get out of the bathroom as quickly as possible without calling any more attention to himself. Grabbing a paper towel from the dispenser on the wall by the sinks, he wiped off the flush handle of the urinal and then hurried out the door, stepping past the dead man and using the paper towel to grasp the handle.

  When he got back into the terminal he kept his head turned toward the ground and hurried across to where Amy waited with Master Viphop. "Let's go," he said in a low tone.

  "Trouble?" Master Viphop asked.

  "Yes."

  "Come quick," the monk said as he turned and hurried through the crowd.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  THEY WALKED OUT OF THE AIRPORT TERMINAL and stood in front of a line of taxis where Master Viphop negotiated with one of the drivers about where they wanted to go. Master Viphop and the driver finally settled on a price, and the monk signaled for Amy and John to climb into the back of the Toyota minivan. John glanced nervously over his shoulder as they climbed into the taxi, but there still did not seem to be a commotion inside the terminal that would indicate that the bodies had been discovered.

  As they drove away from the terminal, John looked over his shoulder, trying to pick out anyone who might have run out from the terminal and jumped into a taxi behind them or a car that suddenly pulled away from the curb and started to follow. He saw nothing unusual.