The Witches' Ride

In a near future when America is fragmented and nothing is like it was, unlicensed private investigator Kim Murayama has returned to the vast metro area of the M. He leaves behind the distant, prohibited Isle Royale and the mysterious, enchanting witch people cloned by Wilmut, Inc. He's left behind Mick the Witch, forsaking love. The impossible adventure is over. Only it isn't. From the bottom of a black pool of nightmares, haunting a world of dreams, comes the malignancy of Dengra Heks and the vengeance of the Darkness.

Status quo. I almost believed things were like they used to be. Not before the Collapse, no, before America fell apart. I was born after that – post-D – and of six autonomous regions and however many little fiefdoms emerged from the rubble, the Northeast Regional Sovereignty was my home. Yeah, right here in the M on the shores of Lady Lake Ontario. They say it’s almost the size of the Big Apple before that place went rotten to the core. Couple of activist backpack nukes only helped accelerate the inevitable. The Rotten Apple’s not really part of the Sovereignty now, anyway. Dad wouldn’t have been too broken up about that. He said it was a sinkhole that drained the rest of the state. He once said the City That Never Sleeps should have been put to sleep. None of that matters any more. I wasn’t thinking about it, anyway. It was kind of a witchy night out, the moon waxing full, a disquieting red when it glared through occasional slashes in the dark clouds as they raced above the M. What you could see from the street, anyway. I was sitting toward the back in Jack’s Place, in one of the booths where the shadows hang like draperies and the lights can't quite get the job done. Your business is mostly your own there in the drifting haze of cigar and stick smoke. Kind of the way things used to be before I went to the prohibited Isle Royale and fell in love with Mick the Witch. She asked me to stay, but I boarded the Shady Lady with Dave and O'Connor, and sailed back to the metro area because I wasn't sure what was real any more. I couldn't believe what my eyes told me on that mystical island. I didn't understand the witches. I didn't understand myself. And I couldn't tell Mick that I loved her. Back in the M I expected problems – at minimum I expected to get arrested for criminal trespass on the island, maybe worse for consorting with the contraband witches. Curiously, that didn't happen. The Sovereignty didn't seem to care and, even more surprising, Wilmut, Inc. showed no interest. I'd told myself that our gallant crusade had rescued the Royale witches from the company's clutches. They and their telomeres were safe. So despite my regrets at leaving, I settled into the old, familiar routine which generally amounts to tracking down runaways and bringing them home, maybe some surveillance for loss prevention, and the occasional job for a corporate interest that wants things kept off the books. Settled right back in. Status quo. Then Mick the Witch walked through the door of Jack's.