The Magnificent Bastards

III | The Shadow, the Siren, and the Sage-5

WAIT, DO NOT ENTER, projected Jasper even as Kill-sin came into view around the half-opened office door. It’s Satyena, and she’s in trouble. It was too late. Kill-sin had already looked up—forcing Jeremiah to push the door the rest of the way open and to level his musket.

Do not fire, I say! I repeat: Satyena is in trouble.

“Well, well,” said Kill-sin at length, and exhaled. “I would say that this doesn’t make any sense ... but in fact it’s the only thing that does. And now you wait. Why?”

Jeremiah ...

A voice, not Jasper’s, sounding as though it were a million miles away.

Jeremiah ... help me. See me.

Satyena. I hear you, he projected, keeping a close eye on Kill-sin. But I cannot see you.

“Jeremiah,” crooned Kill-sin—calmly, mellifluously. “It is you, isn’t it? You have survived.” He pushed back in his chair slowly.

“Don’t move,” warned Jeremiah, and inched forward. “Your fate has not yet been decided.”

“Just so,” said Kill-sin, and placed his hands on the armrests of his chair. “But then ... neither has yours.” He pushed against the rests and stood. “Else you would have already killed me ... is this not correct? Tell me, Jeremiah ... why is it you have not yet killed me?”

He began circling the desk even as Satyena projected to Jeremiah once more: Push me, Jeremiah. Push me as I once pushed you. Dip your dagger into my chalice. Fill me with those things that can only be felt between a man and a woman and help me to focus them outward.

“I’m warning you, Kill-sin,” said Jeremiah, tracking him with his pistol. “I’ll act alone if necessary.”

Don’t do it, Jeremiah, not yet—Jasper again, sounding quietly desperate. Help Satyena. Fill her as you would an empty vessel ...

“You mean, without the council of the witches?” Kill-sin nodded calmly, knowingly, as he continued his advance. “I know you commune with them. It’s all right. You are not the first Witch Doctor to become possessed ... nor, I suspect, will you be the last. The important thing is that you allow me to help you. Will you allow me to help you, Jeremiah?”

Fill me, Jeremiah, urged Satyena. And you too, Jasper. Fill me with your visions and your canvases, your love of the female heart and form. Fill me with everything you have ever felt and dreamed regarding woman—with your passion for their physical symmetry, your desire to please and to comfort, your will to protect them even at the cost of your own life. Show me the void you have felt in their absence ... the void you feel in their presence ... the intolerable darkness of being an incomplete equation, a half-entity, a thing alone but so full of love!

Jeremiah felt a sweaty palm on his forehead—Kill-sin’s— even as he channeled all his energy through his third eye and into Satyena’s, whom he suddenly loved as though he had never known a day without her—never awakened from a dream of reunification to the dull vacuum of reality. And suddenly they were together, the three of them, projecting as a single beam, a single beacon, and they entered Samain like a lightning bolt and filled her with something akin to love, which for her was pure, undiluted poison.

So, too, was Kill-sin effected, for having taken off Jeremiah’s hat and pressed his palm against his forehead, he had unwittingly entered the circle of their spell, and now began to shake and sweat profusely—for he was trapped, Jeremiah knew, just as Samain was trapped, as all of them were. They were bound together now like a single whirring entity—an entity at war with itself—each knowing what the other knew, each feeling what the other felt, as Witch Doctors gathered outside the office door and looked on (for Jeremiah had forgotten to secure the elevator) and witches, having sensed a great disturbance and broken in, gathered in the room next to Samain’s kitchen. And what those witches saw was the two women standing with their hands on each other’s foreheads, just as the Witch Doctors saw the same (for Jeremiah had dropped his musket and placed his palm against Kill-sin’s forehead, as well).

And then each group saw their leader burst into flames as Jeremiah and Satyena and Jasper performed one final push; and Kill-sin and Samain fell writhing to their respective floors, screaming as they had caused others to scream, burning as they had caused others to burn.

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* * * *

IT WAS A NIGHT FOR dreaming and for murder too, a night that would be celebrated for a thousand years, a night which lay over the Witch Doctor’s burning 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 what remained of the Pogrom’s apparatus, its documents and its War Wagons, and the past to blacken and curl upon itself like so much burning paper.

It was, in short, a night for monumental change, a night in which the fates of many had hung in the balance, while the fates of five had been sealed—Kill-sin and Samain, dead, Jeremiah and Satyena and Jasper reluctant leaders—a night that had decided everything from whether the Witch Doctors or the witches would at last be dominant (neither would be) to whether there would even be another generation to tell the tale ...