by Renée Jaggér
“Interesting,” the wizard mused, his eyes getting that distant look as he turned things over in his mind. “I suppose it’s good to know that you don’t think it would be smart to become the furry version of Adolf Hitler or Genghis Khan. Frankly, it’s even better to know that Fenris approves of your choice.”
“Yeah,” she murmured, not sure what to say. “It’s just that…that thing I fought? It was me. It was part of me. It’s not…impossible for me to be like that. You know?”
He nodded. “I do know. Remember when I told you about how everyone fawned over me as a kid? I took advantage of that, sometimes more than I should have… and many a time, I pictured myself doing a lot more and a lot worse. If I’d wanted to, I could have screwed everyone over and come out on top, but I chose not to. That’s the important thing. Everyone has the potential for evil. It’s just a question of whether we act on it.”
She couldn’t think of anything to add to that. If Marcus had spoken the truth about her eyeing him as her…consort, she’d rather have a man who was smart.
A portal opened about twenty feet in front of them.
“Goddammit,” Roland blurted before anyone came through. “This had better fucking not be—”
Three women stepped out of the purple shimmer, and the wizard and the werewitch fell into fighting stances. But they’d never seen these three before. They wore familiar-looking leather pseudo-armor getups, yet spoke with American accents.
“You’re going down!” the apparent leader shrieked, her eyes giddy with excitement. She was a mixed-looking lady with curly dark hair. “Tamara,” she added, “kill the male.”
Everything happened at once. Bailey, acting reflexively on the emotions she’d just been digesting with regards to Roland, lashed out with her fist and slugged the lead witch in the face. As the dark-haired lady squawked and reeled back, her accomplices hurled spells.
The one called Tamara swung a flat plane of highly pressurized water like a giant scimitar blade at Roland’s neck. He blocked it and struck it with lightning, causing the sorceress to scream and convulse as sparks flew from her body.
The third of the witches swatted Bailey with a telekinetic blow, sending her tumbling through the grass. Then she summoned a globule of what must have been poison or acid and flung it at the werewitch.
Bailey jumped twenty feet into the air and the deadly liquid passed beneath her. She streaked downward, furious that these idiots would attack her after all she’d just endured and intending to stomp them so deep into the soft ground they’d have to gradually dig themselves out.
Although the witches weren’t as powerful as the Venatori they’d encountered before, they weren’t incompetent, either. The third witch seized her friends by the arms and the trio vanished, reappearing farther along the sward and jeering at them.
Roland stared at them. “Who are those ditzes? They don’t seem like Venatori soldiers, but they’re not anybody I know personally, either. I wonder if Shannon hired them or—”
Before any answers could present themselves, Fenris appeared.
The tall deity, still in his human form, descended from somewhere in the sky and crashed to the earth about halfway between the two groups with the force of a small meteorite. Roland and Bailey fell on their asses from the shockwave, and so did the witches.
Fenris reached out and summoned an actual meteor, which fell, blazing and shrieking, through the sky toward the spot where the three witches sprawled.
“Fuck!” shouted the curly-haired leader. They threw up their hands to block the deadly mass of fiery stone and managed to slow it and divert its course to the nearest bog, but that required all the strength of the entire trio, leaving them open to another spell. Even initiating coven-mind, their magical abilities were no match for a god.
Marcus hurled three spears of purplish-silver plasma. The witches screamed briefly before they were knocked back and impaled, their corpses twitching and smoking in the grass. The deflected meteor sent up steam as it sank into a nearby pond.
Roland whistled. “Okay, then.”
Bailey just stared in shock. The sorceresses had tried to kill them, but Marcus’ increasing ruthlessness was starting to bother her.
The tall shaman turned back to the pair. “How dare they?” he remarked, his voice lower and more gravelly than usual. “I didn’t think they’d be this bold or this stupid.” He saw that the portal was still open, so he slammed it shut and dismissed it with a swipe of his hand.
The werewitch and the wizard climbed to their feet. “Venatori uniforms,” Roland observed, “but we have no idea who they were.”
Marcus stood but didn’t look at them, advancing instead to examine the witches’ bodies. “Such a small band,” he said. “After the difficulty they had subduing the two of you with a full squad, they ought to know better. This was a feint to gauge our strength.”
Bailey and Roland flanked the shaman as he glowered at the women’s corpses.
Bailey added, “They sounded like Americans. Aren’t all the Venatori European?”
Roland responded, “Mostly. They’re based in Europe, but they do have a few members from other continents. Still, I wonder if they’re…emergency volunteer deputies. Something like that.”
Fenris kept his eyes on the trio of sprawled forms, and Bailey realized he was performing some kind of magical reading on them.
“Yes,” he stated. “They are not full members. They were given the distinctive outfits and sacrificed as expendable pawns to provoke us and determine how we’d react. A heartless tactic, but a clever one.”
Roland coughed. “Compassion isn’t a quality the Venatori cultivate. It’s strictly relegated to that one kid from Captain Planet. Remember that show?”
“No,” Bailey replied.
Marcus silenced them with a wave of his hand. “And there’s more. There’s a latent spell surrounding them, transmitting visual signals to their handlers—the real Venatori.” He made a crushing motion with his hand. Nothing seemed to take place, but Bailey guessed he’d just canceled the spell.
“So,” the girl surmised, “they just saw everything that happened.”
“I’m afraid so,” the shaman confirmed. “These three were unwitting pawns, meant to be slaughtered. And so they were. Sane people who saw that would flee, but the Venatori will interpret it to mean that they need more firepower if they plan to confront us.”
Bailey shuddered. The witches who’d attacked recently had been nothing to take lightly. And was the Order crazy enough to declare war on a deity? Then again, they probably didn’t know who Marcus really was, just thought him an extremely powerful were-shaman.
Roland sighed. “Well, this is just fantastic. So much for averting all-out war.”
Marcus turned around. With his next comment, he somehow answered both Roland’s quip and Bailey’s unspoken thoughts.
“As we’d feared, things will escalate, but if we tread carefully, we might be able to prevent the worst. It’s important that we don’t reveal my identity. If it becomes known that I’ve directly involved myself, it could start a battle of divinities, with the witch-gods taking sides against me and the whole Earth becoming a battlefield for vastly powerful forces. Or the Venatori might start looking for the means to kill a god. I would not put it past them.”
Bailey reeled in shock. What Fenris had just described was an end-of-the-world scenario. Not to mention, he’d implied that he could be killed.
Roland rubbed his eyes. “Okay, so what do we do now?”
“Return to Greenhearth,” said Marcus, “and continue your training there. The Other makes some things easier or clearer, but it’s not required. There’s no way we can avoid confrontations with the Venatori, but we can win. Furthermore, we can win in a way that won’t involve splitting the planet asunder.”
Once back in the mortal world, Marcus took his leave, wandering off into the forest to make preparations. The pair watched him go, Bailey wishing he’d stick around to advise her and
Roland wondering what he was up to.
She sighed. “Let’s go home. Looks like we managed to get here around dinner time again.”
“Truly, we are blessed,” Roland drawled. “I think Russell might have to make his coffee even stronger than usual, though. If he overdoes it, we’ll have committed suicide before the Venatori can kill us.”
When they arrived back at the Nordin household, a familiar though not overly welcome black car was parked in the driveway.
Roland frowned. “Uh-oh. Someone must have planted a microphone in the Other. I wonder if the Agency can do that now? Wouldn’t surprise me.”
“The hell do they want now?” Bailey wondered. “Probably going to remind us again to stop defending ourselves when psychotic assholes jump out and attack us for no fucking reason.”
Then she remembered all the work Agent Townsend had done after the battle in the woods to keep a lid on things and protect them from repercussions. Also, Spall had given his life fighting the witches.
“Shit,” the girl muttered, trying not to flush with shame.
Inside the house, they found her three brothers sitting down to a dinner of home-grilled hamburgers and coleslaw, with Agent Townsend seated in the vacant place where their dad would have been, had he still lived at the house.
“Hello, Nordin,” the agent greeted them. “I’m sure you’re thrilled to see me. The good news is that you’re not in trouble. At least, not from us.”
Bailey nodded hello to her brothers, then sat down and helped herself to some food. “We know damn well we’re in trouble from certain other groups,” she commented.
“Correct.” Townsend had a black binder resting on the table under his hand. She had no doubt that he’d open it at some point, and she dreaded what might be within.
“Wait,” Roland protested. “Did anyone make coffee?”
Russell scoffed. “Of course. We already drank it.”
Nodding, the wizard requested a moment’s delay while he refueled. He brought a steaming mug out for Bailey as well, then the agent began his briefing.
“The Venatori,” he explained, hands folded before him and face grim but not unkind, “have come back in a big way.”
Bailey wasn’t surprised. “Fuckin’ hell. We kinda hoped it’d take them, I dunno, a month or two so we could prepare.”
Jacob snorted. “How do you prepare for crap like that? They practically leveled a mountainside last time they showed up, not to mention the detour to murder that old shaman down south.”
Kurt tried to come up with an amusing remark but couldn’t find anything funny about the situation.
“Well,” Townsend continued, “they’re here now, and they’re headed this way. A group of them landed somewhere in the Puget Sound and have been working their way southeast, wiping out Were communities as they go. This is serious shit. As near as the Agency and I can tell, they’re trying to annihilate the PNW lycanthrope community, if not your entire species.”
Hearing the word “annihilate,” Bailey suddenly connected the dots. She recalled what Nick had said in the diner just before he’d attacked.
“Goddammit,” she burst out. “They’re behind all of it, aren’t they? The apprentice shaman who jumped us mentioned that. The Venatori killed those Weres up in Washington, then spread the rumor that we fuckin’ did it!”
She pounded the table with her fist, causing forks to jump and mugs and plates to rattle.
Townsend’s frown deepened. “I’m not aware of any rumors. I’ve been kinda busy dealing with all the mass murders to be tracking wolf-gossip, but otherwise, yes. Four massacres in as many days. There’s no way my organization can completely shut down public knowledge or discussion of something of that magnitude unless martial law is declared. The powers that be aren’t willing to go that far yet.”
He looked down, inhaled, and opened the binder. Bailey steeled herself.
“I have photos of the incidents in question. I’m only showing you these to prove what I’ve said, and so you’re aware of the danger involved. This is war-zone stuff.” He paused. “I apologize for doing this at dinner, but there isn’t any time to waste.”
Roland swallowed a mouthful of ground beef. “Let’s just get it over with.”
Townsend pulled out a stack of eight-by-eleven-inch printed photographs. He tossed the first one into the center of the table, oriented toward Bailey but there for anyone else to see as well.
“That,” the man explained, “is what they did shortly after they landed at an all-Were trailer park up near the Capitol State Forest and the Mima Mounds in Washington.”
The photo depicted a settlement that looked like it had been hit with multiple fragmentation bombs. Ravaged, blood-splattered people lay everywhere, and a couple of leather-clad women were visible in the background.
His voice low and thick with disgust, Townsend went on, “I arrived at the scene just after they finished killing everyone—men, women, children. Unfortunately, I was outnumbered and had no idea they’d planned to do this. These are the pictures I took right before they piled up all the corpses and burned down the whole place.”
He added the next photo, showing the scorched earth and a pile of blackened bones. A column of dark smoke rose from the pyre into the sky.
Roland slowly swung his head from side to side. “Oh, my God. What have we gotten ourselves into? And what are they thinking? Even for the Venatori, this is…”
His voice trailed off, lacking the right words.
Bailey and her brothers just stared.
Agent Townsend moved on to similar scenes of carnage farther downstate, near Mount St. Helens, and a third massacre over the Oregon state line, not far from Mt. Hood. In each case, the modus operandi was the same. Ambush the community. Murder everyone with overwhelming force. Pile up the bodies and burn everything.
Bailey looked into the eyes of the agent, which, as usual, were covered by dark lenses. “Why didn’t you stop them?” she asked. There was an undertone of anger, but mostly she found herself mourning the senseless waste of life.
Townsend frowned. “We tried. I noted the direction they were headed after the first massacre, but then they disappeared from the radar. They’re using highly advanced cloaking magic. I have the regular cops keeping an eye out for anyone matching their description, and I’m trying to bring the full brunt of the Agency to bear on this. But for now, we can’t track them the way we normally would. There are small lycanthrope packs that have apparently escaped our records, so we can’t just post guards, either.”
“Unfortunately,” Roland commented, “I can believe that. The anti-tracking spell thing. It’s rumored that the Venatori have top-level shit in their vaults, in addition to most of their individual sorceresses being prodigiously talented.”
The Nordins were still gazing at the photos when Townsend showed them a video on a small laptop-like device he’d brought that replayed the last moments of the first attack. Elemental magic leapt across the screen and Weres flew through the air, then howled and died.
Jacob closed his eyes. “We didn’t know them, that pack. But they look like they could be our neighbors.”
Townsend closed the laptop. “If I have my way,” he assured them, “we’ll have men—armed men, with experience dealing with the supernatural—in your town preparing to repel them. There’s little doubt they’re headed this way, and it’s likely they’ll arrive soon. My superiors agree with my conclusions but haven’t approved the mission yet. I expect to hear back from them by tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Bailey murmured. “That’d definitely help. And I got most of the local packs behind me. We made nice with the South Cliffs, plus the Junipers and the Whitcombs and the Shashkas farther downstate. And the Eastmoors since—”
She cut herself off, swallowed and coughed, then resumed, “Since the last fight with the Venatori.”
She’d almost said, “Since Fenris ordered them to follow me as their shaman,” but she’d stopped just in time.
; “Excellent,” Townsend remarked. “We don’t want a full-scale war between witches and werewolves on American soil, but these people are trying to start one, whether we want it or not. It’s up to us to stop it from going any further, and we will.”
He stood abruptly, and Bailey sensed that for all the man’s seeming unflappability, he was deeply furious and still grieving for his partner, Agent Spall.
“Right.” Russell grunted and clenched his massive hands into fists.
Jacob nodded to the agent. “Keep in touch. Bailey’s not someone you pick a fight with if you expect to win, but we can use all the help we can get.”
Townsend strode toward the door to let himself out. “You’ll get as much as I can manage. Be careful.” He closed the door behind him and was gone.
Letting out a long sigh, Bailey bent over the table and covered her face with her hands. “Pretty sure things are going to get worse before they get better,” she muttered.
Kurt raised a finger. “No murder charges being pressed, though. There wasn’t a body, no one said anything, and it seems like the Whitcomb Creek pack dealt with things by themselves. There’s an APB out for ‘a gang of suspicious young men’ for busting up the diner, but that’s it. That’s conveniently vague, isn’t it?”
“I guess,” Bailey answered him. “Don’t know how much longer before the damn FBI shuts down this entire town and interrogates every man, woman, and child. Do you really think they’d all keep quiet, facing something like that?”
Roland made a sour face. “That’s why the Agency exists. Not the FBI, the other Agency.” He gestured toward the door Townsend had just left through. “Much as I hate to say it, I think at this point, we need to have a little faith in them.”
“Faith.” Bailey sighed. “I’d rather rely on something a little more solid, but I guess you can’t go through life expecting everything to be guaranteed.”
Jacob put a big hand over hers. “Right. And you’re not alone. Remember that.”