Cat Magic by Whitley Strieber Read Free Book Online

fire last winter. All four members of the family had been killed in their home. Libby Gregory was high priestess of one of the town covens.
    George peered into the forest of wires that led to the isolation chamber where they had killed and restarted the frog. His gaze traveled along the red leads to each electro-magnetic coil. He was looking for a new wire snaking off to God knew what. “I think it’s okay.”
    “Maybe we’d better stand back, just in case. And warn Bonnie.”
    “Let’s do more than that. Let’s set the switches and then hit the generator from the other room. And open all the windows.”
    They went into the main control room. Beyond, in the menagerie, Bonnie could be seen cleaning cages.
    “Hey, Bonnie, we’re turning on the step-up transformer. Duck and cover, dearie.”
    “What’s going on?”
    “Look at this. I say ‘duck and cover’ and the first thing you do is poke your nose out. What if we were under attack? Do you realize that an atomic blast can vaporize you at four thousand feet? Unless you duck and cover, in which case you burn more slowly,”
    “George, you’re so weird.”
    “Weird and wonderful, my little chickadee. If we live through this, let’s go to bed together.”
    “Clark, thrash that man.”
    “Now, Clark, don’t deny an old man his pleasures.”
    “I’m not interested in Bonnie. I have other plans.”
    Bonnie bristled at that. “Constance going to marry you off to some pubescent priestess, eh, so you can mind the babies while your wife spends all night lathered with ointment balling the priests?”
    “You could live on the Covenstead if you would accept its rule,” Clark said gently. “It might do you a great deal of good.”
    “I guess I’m too much of a rebel. Smelling all that health food when I go out there gives me an overwhelming compulsion to eat about four Big Macs. I’m best off being a town witch where I don’t have to live by a rule.”
    “We don’t live by rules, Bonnie. We all agree on how we live.”
    “Which means only that you’re willing to push a broom for the anointed and take orders from teenage girls.”
    “No, that’s a complete misconception. There’s no fixed hierarchy on the Covenstead. Bonnie, I wish you’d just give a chance for a couple of weeks—”
    “Okay, kids, let’s not get into that discussion right now when we could be sitting on Brother Pierce’s Fat Man on our way to Hiroshima. I’ve powered up the transformer. I’m going to open the lines.”
    George stepped into the animal room with Bonnie and closed the door.
    “George, is it really dangerous, or is your paranoia getting the better of you?”
    “We’ve got to take precautions. They were in this lab, after all.”
    “The other animals are fine, by the way,” Bonnie said. “Just the one frog missing.”
    George shook his head. “The one frog.”
    “I ran blood tests on Tess and Gort, to be sure there were no slow poisons or anything. They’re in good shape.”
    “Small blessings count in this impoverished place. We can’t begin to afford new rhesus monkeys.”
    “The lines are open,” Clark called. “I’m activating the cage.”
    “Wait. Get out of (here.”
    “I have to watch the readings. If we overpulse we’ll burn out the whole thing.”
    “It might be dangerous.”
    Clark set his jaw. “Constance assigned me to this lab.” He needed to explain himself no further. George understood the loyalty of the witches to their queen. As a member of a town coven, he felt it himself, although less strongly.
    The lights dimmed when Clark turned on the extremely intense magnetic field that was the heart of the device. It was so powerful that electrons within it were forced to stasis. Electric motors in the field would stop, batteries cease to emit energy. And sensitive electrical systems, such as brains and nerves, would cease to function. A few seconds in this magnetic limbo sufficed to stop the animal’s nervous system and render it