Sister Karen had a mission. While the others bickered and menaced their way through events and maintained their malevolent harmony, she had slipped into what she at first believed to be catatonia. As the gunman, Tiny, manhandled her in the car, the sensation of his fingers on her slipped away-the pressure took on muted qualities separate from her awareness. The catatonia was not so much a falling away from awareness, as it was a redirection, a sharpening of her perceptions. She had read stories about people who could read auras. She could see them now. You sent my blindness reeling.
Since her abduction, she had been entirely at the mercy of others. Despite her best efforts to bolster her courage, she knew that she lived and died by the wishes of the men who held her. This new perception allowed her to see past their boisterous personas to the emotional men beneath. This challenged her, because it was easier to hate them when she evaluated them on their actions alone.
Grant that the sick Thou hast placed in my care may be abundantly blessed…
She knew judging them was wrong. They were God’s children and deserving of compassion until He judged them. Murderers obviously, and worse, but they were no different from her in the eyes of God.
She corrected herself. These men, though they might be God’s children, had too much power for their own good. And until their power was taken away, they would be dangerous. They’d never learn while they controlled-while they were closed. Seeing their emotional underbellies might give her an edge. She corrected herself. Grant me the required insight and wisdom to thoroughly digest Your mysteries…
If it were God’s plan to allow her to see her enemy’s humanity, then she would have to learn to use the gift. And Karen quickly understood that it was a powerful gift because it acted as catalyst to reviving her faith. These men needed love. They needed compassion. They’d missed it on the road to adulthood and that brought them to these evil ends. Felon had murdered Able, but Able would have found a way to love him. That was his job as a shepherd and teacher-and hers: to see past the humanity and love the soul.
So Karen used this gift from God, this new vision, to teach herself to love them too. Wasn’t this the reason for her self-hatred? The reason she behaved like a self-destructive harlot? If she believed she did not deserve love, how could she love God? And how could anyone love her? How could she teach these men to love themselves? Perhaps that was the reason for this gift of sight. With it she could learn to love herself in her enemies, and free God’s love to flow through her to heal them.
I love my neighbor as myself for the love of You. I forgive all who have injured me and I ask pardon of all whom I have injured.
She realized now that she had closed her heart to the world and made herself vulnerable. She saw that if she chose to open herself, be vulnerable, she would have control. She wouldn’t feel overrun by life. Instead, by opening herself to it, she could see the avenues open to her. She was not a plaything of life; she was its voice. Only when she resisted her connection with it, did she feel overwhelmed and want to hide. Karen realized she had powers yet. And that seemed to be the instinctive key to her vision. She had love to give and she wanted it.
She opened herself to Driver and saw his competition with Tiny and Felon. But it was not a green with envy that she saw. She simply recognized or deciphered what had been hidden by actions. She saw Driver “flare” at Tiny. The “flare’ she read was rebellion-a light blue flame flickered over his body, undulating around his movements. The color didn’t tell her more than the feeling that went with it. It was antipathy. With Felon, Driver “flared” envy, but there was coldness, and youthful enthusiasm. She knew that Driver cared for Tiny but didn’t want to be like him, and he disliked Felon but wished to be him. Karen realized she was reading two perspectives of the ambiguous emotion of love.
Tiny, on the other hand, had an overpowering flare of his own. It was red, pulsing at its perimeter with tongues like flame. It was dangerous. It flickered out menacingly between his companions and back upon himself. Tiny’s flare was that of ambition. He was ruthless-and capable of anything. And something else came to her that she had only guessed at before: Tiny rarely said what he felt. She could see the colors of his manipulations. Tiny specially colored or “coded” his words for each individual he spoke to. His ambition was reckless.
Her study of Bloody revealed a mystery. He behaved in an aloof but menacing manner, yet his aura was a pulsing orange envelope-it hugged his form like a second skin. He was wrapped in his own self-pity. And by its feral self-destructive movements, she knew he would go to extremes to extirpate it. Incline, O Lord, Thine ear to our prayers, in which we humbly beseech Thy mercy…
The Angel had no aura-even when he died, she saw nothing. He was beyond her perceptions. At times he would turn his old man’s face to her catatonic eyes and smile-as though he understood her new sight and thought it quite a joke. He was an Angel, but he was empty.
Felon, on the other hand, had an aura that would have made her scream if she had not decided to love him. It appeared in many ways-and disappeared as often as it changed forms. She watched his aura burst upward like magma-murderous and hot as flame-watched it boil down around his skull like volcanic ash. As Felon moved, it changed shape and consistency. At other times-it took on near solid form-scaled-emerald like the back of a snake. It was monstrous, this man’s aura. It was powerful, and dangerous. And it was ancient. Your own Son was delivered into the hands of the wicked, yet He prayed for His persecutors and overcame hatred with the blood of the Cross.
And she remembered waiting in the car with her newfound vision, while Felon left to speak to Lucifer in the sewers. She closed her eyes and watched through the bricks and imagined the scene anew. She saw them standing by a group of derelicts. A fire burned in a drum. The Marquis fanned his face and blushed. Felon’s aura burned white hot. And one of the derelicts around the fire broke free of the grouping. He was like the Marquis and empty to her eyes. And then the distance was gone, and he stood by the car and met her gaze. A voice inside her head said, “Go to the Tower.” She could only see his outline, nothing more. It was a man’s shape. His features were obscured. “Love will free you all.” Neither Driver or Bloody reacted, so she assumed only she could see the man-the vision. Let me be a holy sacrifice and unite with God in the sacrament of His greatest love.
But to the Tower? Sacrifice? Was it her turn? Was that why she’d been given the new sight? Why her heart had been opened? She knew that great powers were loose upon the earth-it was plain. Whatever had happened the morning Able died had started a fire that threatened to consume the world. One look at Felon told her that. Great Power had a claim upon him.
And now he was gone. The last time she saw him he had killed an Angel. Then ugly shapes overpowered him; their bodies were bloated and pale against the streetlight. Their auras were orange like Bloody’s-self-destruction dripped from them too. Felon had fired one vicious glance at her before going down beneath the glistening, grappling arms. He would not ask for help. He would bring about his own destruction.
At first, Karen felt a loss. With Felon gone, so too was her primary threat-but also her only connection to her former life. Any thought of escape was lost before it was formed when Driver, Tiny and Bloody ran out of the diner.