The Witch Doctor Books

They were the kind of musical notes men and woman once swayed to—even worshiped to—or so Jasper had told him, ground from an instrument called an “organ”—which had once been common, or so he’d said, but had vanished from the face of the world. So, too, were there cymbals, which echoed throughout the crew compartment of the War Wagon like tinsel—if tinsel could be said to have a sound—and mingled with the steely whispers of their muskets and tanks and other gear as the truck rocked and their harnesses held them fast. “When a maaan loves a woman,” sang a hearty and soulful voice both inside and outside the compartment, and Jeremiah knew they were close, else the driver wouldn’t have cued the music, and when he scanned the other Witch Doctors, strapped in six to a bench in the wagon’s cramped confines, he knew that they knew it too. What was more, he knew that, however fearsome they looked in their black jumpsuits and white flame-retardant vests, their goggled respirators, their buckled hats—they were frightened, too. But then the wagon ground to a halt and there was no time to be feel anything, much less fear, as Jeremiah unbuckled and piled out with the others. And yet, as he paused momentarily to take in the building—a ramshackle six-story brownstone which looked as though it had been built before the Betrayal, much less the Pogrom—a strange thing happened. He thought he heard a voice; not from without but entirely from within—a woman’s voice, a witch’s voice. And it said to him, as faintly as the cymbals at the start of the music, Why have you come for us, Witch-Doctor? And he found himself scanning the illuminated windows of the brownstone as if someone had perhaps shouted to him (rather than reaching directly into his mind), and saw behind one of the uppermost panes a figure so small and motionless that he might have thought it a piece of furniture, a lamp, perhaps, had it not slid to one side and vanished.

He went into the kitchen and poured her a glass of water. “How long has it been since you’ve eaten?” “I’m not hungry,” she said. She seated herself slowly, tentatively. “Two, maybe three days. Ever since Sister Samain wrested control of the coven from the Council. Thank you …” She took the glass from Jeremiah, still looking at the paintings. “They’re all done by the same hand, aren’t they?” He took off his wide-brimmed hat and studied them. “The same eye. Sometimes Jasper’s hand shakes uncontrollably and I have to steady it with my own. Other times I am his hand, and he tells me what to do.” He laughed a little. “He says that I am an artist, just as he. But even I know it’s the eye that sees, not the hands.” She continued staring at them. “No, I don’t think that’s true. These pictures have lines of grace … look, see how the fingers are elongated, and tend to curve up or down depending on the position of the body. They dance upon the canvas … surely you can see that. I think you paint them together, Jeremiah.” He swung the strap of the respirator over his head and set it on a mantle. “I’m just his hands.” He moved to leave the room again. “Just? But hands are for feeling,” she said. He paused at the entrance to the hall. “And they’re for killing, too.” Then he disappeared into the dark. And she thought, It’s the heart that kills, Jeremiah. The hard one by slaying others … and the soft by slaying itself. Then she pushed it from her mind.

It was a night for dreaming and for murder too, a night that would live in infamy or be celebrated for a thousand years, a night which lay over the Witch Doctor’s complex like a crisp, black linen. It was also a night for destruction, and for the holding down of triggers, for the flames to flow like water over everything he had ever known and the past to blacken and curl upon itself like so much burning paper. It was, in short, a night for monumental change—and for everything to stay the same—depending on the actions (and the fortune) of a few; a night in which the fates of many would hang in the balance, while the fates of five would be sealed—Chairman Kill-sin and Sister Samain, Jasper, Jeremiah, Satyena—a night that would decide everything from whether the Witch Doctors or the witches (but preferably neither) would at last be dominant to whether there would even be another generation to tell the tale.

A Prequel story to the Witch Doctor series ...She looks at me incredulously, disbelievingly, then, suddenly, rushes to within several feet of me, where she pauses. “You’re … But—your voice, your eyes. How could a woman have clear—” I only shake my head.Slowly, it dawns on her, spilling across her face like the sun, illuminating her eyes. “Oh, my God.” She sways as though she might fall upon the floor; then, recovering, begins pacing back and forth. “I mean, what are the odds …”“You begin to see my interest,” I say, even as my finger tightens against the trigger. “Now—again. Your life for information. What is all this about?” She stops pacing suddenly, her face a riot of emotions, as though she is experiencing some kind of epiphany. “But, don’t you see?” She gestures at the tanks and jars. “You’re what all this is about. Facial reconstruction, breast reduction, eye normalization—all attempts to place spies amongst your ranks; to infiltrate you, as you have infiltrated us.”She steps to within a few feet of me. “The Power—do you have it? How about identity? Orientation? Do they know—the men, that is—do they accept it?”I hesitate, questioning my own motives. At last I say, “No, they do not—know, that is. I came to them before puberty. As for acceptance, they accept that I am a man with androgen insensitivity syndrome; a man who’s face resembles a woman’s. That is all. As for having the Power … my eyes have begun to change, at night, but clearing as the day goes on—if that’s what you mean. Now … please. Details.”She looks at me as though having achieved a minor victory. “That’s how you found me, by accessing the hive mind, though you wouldn’t have been aware of it. So, you’ve stayed among them and killed for them in order to survive, but now all that’s changing. Isn’t it?”I don’t say anything, only continue to stare at her.“And it is changing—make no mistake. That’s how M24 progresses. Your eyes will remain white longer with each passing day—until the transformation is at last complete.” She scans my face as though attempting to read my thoughts. “Tell me, Witch Doctor. What will you do when that day arrives?”

“Well, now we are getting somewhere,” says Sula, glancing him up and down, appearing victorious. “But she was not a witch like me, else she would not have done what she did. For that is exactly what happened, isn’t it? Jadis became infected by M24 and slew her own son, and your son too. And then you spent the next year and a half wandering a world you no longer recognized, a world where the dead were stacked on every street corner and the bonfires burned day and night, until you stumbled into a beer hall one night because they were offering free bread and heard a powerful orator talking about male superiority and cleansing the world; and you listened, at first just because it felt good to have something in your stomach, but later because you were swayed, and that orator’s name was Kill-sin, who would go on to found New Salem and rule it with an iron fist. Am I warm, Witch Doctor?”

“Well, now we are getting somewhere,” says Sula, glancing him up and down, appearing victorious. “But she was not a witch like me, else she would not have done what she did. For that is exactly what happened, isn’t it? Jadis became infected by M24 and slew her own son, and your son too. And then you spent the next year and a half wandering a world you no longer recognized, a world where the dead were stacked on every street corner and the bonfires burned day and night, until you stumbled into a beer hall one night because they were offering free bread and heard a powerful orator talking about male superiority and cleansing the world; and you listened, at first just because it felt good to have something in your stomach, but later because you were swayed, and that orator’s name was Kill-sin, who would go on to found New Salem and rule it with an iron fist. Am I warm, Witch Doctor?”