by Renée Jaggér
The whole thing had left a bad taste in Bailey’s mouth. The warmer vibe she encountered here among the other werewolves who understood what was going on came as a massive relief.
It was her turn to speak. “Everyone,” she began, seeing a welcome lack of harsh judgment in their eyes, “I wanted to start by saying two things. They are maybe obvious, but they need to be said, and I’ll be damned if I don’t mean them both. Thank you, and I’m sorry.”
Heads nodded; they were with her on this. She felt a little better.
“Thank you for helping me—and all of us—deal with this horrible situation. We’re under attack, and we didn’t provoke it. All I did was have the bad luck to be born a werewitch, and the rest of you did even less. That leads into the ‘I’m sorry’ part. I’m sorry you all got dragged into this, and I’m sorry we lost three good young men. The Venatori seem to have decided that all of us are thorns in their sides, and there’s nothing we can do except defend ourselves.”
She wasn’t done yet, and they knew it. They waited to hear more.
“This started because of me,” she conceded, “and I regret that. I never wanted things to turn out like this. But now that they have, I’m gonna do everything I can to stop it. That’s what I’m training for, and I will succeed. We’re gonna get through this. All of us.”
The nodding grew fiercer and shouted words of assent and encouragement rose from the crowd.
“We’re with you, Bailey,” one voice insisted.
She almost grinned like a schoolgirl, but this wasn’t the occasion for that. “Thank you again. I…well, public speaking isn’t my forte, and I don’t have much else to say. We’ll all be in touch, though. Take care.”
Bailey stepped back, feeling as if her speech had gone out with a whimper instead of a bang, yet no one seemed disappointed or mocking or angry. She let out a big slow breath.
Then Fenris stepped forward. “My children,” he opened, his deep gravelly voice more resonant than usual, perhaps supernaturally augmented. “I have little to add. Your shamans have said what needed to be said. Provided you do not defy my will or my commands, you have my support. You know who I am, and therefore, you must understand that I cannot intervene directly in this situation without drawing unwanted attention to us all. I will do what I can. Namely, I will finish training Bailey for her role as High Shaman. Soon she’ll be ready, and you will have a protector. Now, return to your homes, and make ready for whatever might come.”
Bowing their heads in deference, the Weres dispersed. Some went to the vehicles they’d used to carpool. Others climbed the hills or went down the cliffs or disappeared into the woods on foot.
Out of the tangle, the three Nordin boys appeared. Bailey approached them with a faint yet warm smile. “What are you miscreants doing here?” she asked. “Instead of sitting around watching football and drinking beer?”
“Oh, you know,” Kurt opened. “Just our god summoning us to a low-key war council or something.”
Jacob smacked the back of his brother’s head. “Something like that, yeah. Anyway, Bailey, that was a good speech, seriously. Maybe not polished like what you’d hear from a politician, but good enough for us. People are behind you. I don’t think anyone thinks it’s your fault, and if they do, at least they understand that we’re all in this together.”
She hugged him. “Yeah, that about sums it up. I mean, shit, it is my fault. But how the hell was I supposed to know that a bunch of damn witches in Europe who I never heard of would randomly decide we need to be wiped out just because I rescued some kidnapped girls and then started trying to control my powers? Which, by the way, I didn’t ask for? Goddamn!”
Her brothers just shrugged.
“You weren’t,” said Jacob. “No one could have predicted that. Now come on, let’s go home and get something to eat, and then get around to that football-watching and beer-drinking you mentioned.”
Finally, she allowed herself a full grin. “Sounds good to me.”
When they reached the truck, however, Marcus appeared out of nowhere beside them. All four stopped and looked at him, awaiting his words.
“Bailey,” he intoned. “Once again, I am proud of you. You handled today’s duties well.”
She gave a single nod, almost a bow. “Thank you, Fenris. I won’t lie, I was worried. Part of me still feels like I’m the one to blame for all this shit.”
He shook his head. “Only in the most indirect and abstract sense. You did not draw first blood. Since things have reached this point, with the conflict having escalated to open combat in the streets, you’ve done just the job that a shaman is supposed to do. You helped protect the humans in your town as well as the Weres. That has made them more amenable to you, even if some of them are in a low-level panic. You fought well, made good use of your allies, and turned back the threat. It’s tragic that three Weres died, but far more would have perished if the Venatori had been left unopposed.”
Russell surprised them by entering the discussion. “Yeah,” he growled. “They won’t be unopposed, though.” His clenched fist looked like a giant war-hammer from the Dark Ages.
Marcus glanced at him. “Yes. We are a warlike people. Even the wolves farther north who were ambushed and murdered in their beds tried to fight back. And now they no longer have the element of surprise.”
The day had waned; the sun had set. Bailey briefly pondered if Townsend’s Agency was finally prepared to send their support. It had been days since he’d pledged their aid.
“One more thing,” said Fenris. “Part of why the witches can no longer take us unaware is because of the work you’ve done rallying the whole community. Not only fighting, but also talking to them in peace, and soothing hearts when lives were lost. I heard several of them in today’s crowd talking about how you went to the funerals of the Junipers who died in the Other weeks past. Things like that form the other half of what makes a true leader.”
He laid a hand on her shoulder, and she put her own hand atop it and closed her eyes.
Chapter Fourteen
Neither the Venatori nor the Agency showed up the following morning, but everyone knew it would only be a matter of time. They could do little but wait, hoping the Agency’s personnel would arrive first.
But they knew better than to rely on others. Defending their community was up to them.
Bailey spent an hour talking to Weres and humans alike and ensuring that patrols of local militia were guarding the whole of the Hearth Valley. Then, with the precious time they still had before the next battle flared up, Marcus took her and Roland once more into the Other to complete their training.
They stepped out of the cool rushing void between one end of the purple gateway and the other and found themselves on the rocky ledge rising from the middle of the vast, swampy dark lake where they’d been last time. Marcus hadn’t told them what to expect yet, but the mere fact they were here suggested that more interactive dream visions were on the agenda.
Bailey said as much to her teacher.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “You made progress last time, but there are a couple more tests. They are much like the ones you dealt with before, and the same rules apply. Anything that happens in the spirit realm will have direct consequences for you in this one and on Earth—anywhere your body can exist. Do you understand?”
She put her hands on her hips and inclined her head. “I do. And even though it wasn’t exactly pleasant last time, I dealt with it. Let’s get it over with.”
“Soon,” the god-shaman replied, but rather than admonishing her impatience, he seemed pleased by her enthusiasm since a smile crept to the corners of his mouth. “For now, relax.”
She reclined on the damp rock. Roland sat beside her, while Marcus again conjured a cozy orange campfire and brewed the strange hallucinogenic drink in a stone mug. It seemed odd that a deity would need to go through the motions of a primitive procedure to produce the stuff. She would have thought he’d just be able to conjure it. But perhaps t
he fire and the stone vessel served some ancient symbolic purpose.
Roland took her hand. “You’re going to do great, and we’ll be here to keep an eye on you.” His eyes went distant. “I ought to be back in town keeping an eye on all that, but it seems like having me around helps you. When you’re the queen of the wolves or whatever, make sure to shower me with riches and titles and honors, all of which I deserve.”
She ruffled his hair and pushed his head away in the same motion. “Shut up. Cocky bastard. The reason you’re good to have around is that it inspires me to be less of a dick than you are.”
The quip came out sounding harsher than she’d intended. “Sorry. That was a joke.”
“Oh, I’m aware.” He didn’t look offended, although he immediately put his hair back in order. “I don’t think I’m that much of a dick, though. Well, metaphorically speaking, anyway. If we’re talking literal—”
“No!” Bailey cut him off, biting her tongue to keep from breaking into a goofy smile. “We’re not.”
Not yet, anyway, she mused, then stopped thinking too hard about that.
Fenris ignored their discussion and turned to the girl, holding the stone cup with its steaming liquid. “Drink. And take care. You know what’s at stake.”
She accepted the beverage, raised it to her lips, and felt the world around her melt into blackness.
After an indeterminate amount of time that might have been a few seconds or a few months, she woke up standing on her feet in a misty and featureless blue-black void, much like the one she’d been in before.
A chill of dread struck her—not because of any particular foreboding element, but because there was nothing. That meant that anything might pop out, perhaps something even worse than what she’d previously seen.
The blue-white fog began to coalesce into figures, landscapes, and activity, a solid and living scene.
There were vague humanoid forms that moved slowly at first, then faster. Then came rolling land and roads and trees and buildings and something that suggested a sky. It was horribly familiar because it was Greenhearth two days ago, during the siege of the Venatori.
Bailey recognized herself and Roland by the sheriff’s station. Above them on the ridge was the witch Rhona, surrounded by her aides. This time, though, things were different.
“No,” Bailey murmured. “Wait.” She reached out to herself and her companion.
The other her, the phantom her, and the phantom Roland were unaware of their nemeses. Blindly and stupidly, they walked into the sheriff’s office. Behind them, the witches descended. Rhona’s group surrounded the building, while onlookers drifted by and watched them with deer-in-the-headlights expressions of slack-jawed curiosity.
“No!” Bailey cried. Although she knew abstractly that this was an illusion, something about the imagery was intensely real.
She felt like she was trapped and invisible, forced to watch an alternate version of a reality that was truly happening. A Greenhearth where no one knew what was coming and blindly stumbled into the slaughter.
Then the second wave of witches arrived, the reinforcements. They joined the first group, and a small army began the attack. The station went up in flames before any of the people within—including her and Roland—could react or defend themselves. Random blasts of magic leapt out at the bystanders, cutting them down and tearing them apart. Screams echoed and smoke wafted.
And Bailey could do nothing.
She struggled against the blockage, the unseen limitation that had been placed on her ability to act. Frantic rage welled up as the building slowly burned down and the witches continued to blast it, occasionally pausing to murder anyone who showed up.
Soon the walls collapsed, and within the ravaged shell of the station sprawled the corpses of Browne, Jurgensen, and Smolinski. The other Bailey and the other Roland had severe burns and abrasions and were on the verge of collapse, weakly trying to defend themselves as the sorceresses closed in.
Then a storm of magic fell atop them, and the Venatori cackled in victory.
“No!” Bailey screamed, loud enough that it echoed. The sound shattered the barrier around her.
Suddenly, she could act again—at the price of being inserted into the scene, where her alternate self had just been.
She was on her knees, burning ruins around her. Her enemies completely encircled her and laughed at her misery.
Rhona smirked and jeered. “Surrender, and we might let you live.”
All at once, she realized that she was the one who had failed—not the hapless spectral doppelganger, but the real her. She had lost everyone she cared about. They were all dead around her, the whole town having been annihilated.
She sprang to her feet, volcanic with anger, forgetting her panic and weakness. “How dare you! I’ll never fucking surrender to you!”
The very fabric of reality tore asunder as she channeled more magic than she’d ever managed before, more than she would have thought possible. A tidal wave of elements and arcane essence and invisible forces descended upon the witches, wiping them out of existence.
Avenging the slain.
Then it was over, and she awoke in the swamp, gasping. The placid face of Marcus and the worried eyes of Roland hung over her.
The shaman was first to speak. “What happened?”
She told him. Even talking about it was painful-not only the horror of the vision, but also the sense that it had only occurred because she’d screwed up. It had seemed like the kind of illusion that would only manifest after a failure on her part.
Fenris only offered a calm nod. “Good,” he praised her. “It’s just like a wolf to keep fighting no matter how unbalanced the odds are or how overwhelming the opposition seems. The vision showed that you will never give up and that you possess hidden reserves of power. You used them to gain retribution for those who were killed and neutralize the threat. If it had been real, those witches would not have harmed any other settlements after your town.”
She sighed and shut her eyes for a moment. “Yeah. True. I didn’t think of it that way. Just seemed like it never should’ve gotten to that point.”
Her teacher went on. “You must realize you’ve been holding back. The power you called upon in the vision exceeded any you’ve ever employed, and it was unlocked by your anger. Good, righteous anger, justified by the innocent people of your town who were wrongly killed. A shaman must be able to tap into that kind of fury when it’s needed. It can provide a tremendous boost and turn the tide of a seemingly hopeless battle. But you must be in control of it. Power like that can’t just be thrown around willy-nilly whenever you feel mildly threatened.”
She rubbed her eyes. “I understand. I’m not sure I want to be that angry. Ever. But I guess it’s good to know I can still win, even in a god-awful situation like that.”
Roland chimed in, “I think the visions are testing how you respond to worst-case scenarios. You’re right in that it shouldn’t come to the point of things being that terrible, but it helps to have a notion of how you’d deal with it. Just in case.”
“Makes sense,” she acceded.
Marcus had gone back to the fire and was reheating the remaining broth in the stone cup. He offered her the mug again. “Drink. You have at least one more trial. Then we’ll see.”
She didn’t know what that meant, but she sucked in her breath, took another swig, and returned to the realm of darkness.
This time, it seemed that the period of formless black was over quicker. The nightmarish illusions took shape almost as soon as she realized she was no longer in the Other. The vision that presented itself was not as dramatically violent as the previous one, but in some ways, it was even worse.
Roland was a captive of the Venatori. He was on his knees, bound hand and foot, his head bowed and his mouth gagged. He occupied a lighted square of tile floor within a dim stone hallway with arches and tapestries, like something in a medieval castle or a cathedral.
A procession of witche
s was lined up before him and moving past. Bailey knew who they were, although they were now dressed in dark burgundy robes rather than leather suits. Each had a curved silver knife and a chalice that looked like it was made of bone.
She tried to reach out, to warn him or free him, but once again, it seemed like she was locked away someplace where she could only observe.
One by one, the witches approached the captive wizard, cut him somewhere on his body with their knives, and took a little of his blood in their grisly cups. He winced with each slash and seemed to sag after a dozen had bled him, growing weaker with each wound. He was dying.
Then Bailey saw herself. She was thousands of miles away—still in Oregon, while Roland was a prisoner in France. She was leading her Weres, managing them and aiding them, organizing the lycanthropic community in the Pacific Northwest. Doing a good job.
And yet, she was doing nothing. Nothing for Roland.
“No, goddammit!” she protested.
In this vision, the Venatori had succeeded in part of their goal. They’d failed to kill her and they’d been repelled from the United States, but they’d claimed a prize to take home with them.
She gaped in horror as Roland, now infinitely far away, slumped to the floor and turned white.
Suddenly she was furious that the spirit world would dream up a thing like that. It was mocking her, forcing her into a scenario she would never accept in real life.
So she rejected it altogether. The imagery vanished like a cloud of smoke dispersed by a strong wind, but Bailey didn’t stop there. She refused to let it reform into whatever nightmare it saw fit. Instead, she repainted the scene.
In accordance with her will, the mists returned and formed a new scene. In this one, Roland was still a captive within the castle of the sorceresses somewhere in Western Europe. But this time, everything else was different.
Bailey was still a leader of wolves, and she led them on a daring rescue mission over the American continent, then the Atlantic Ocean, plunging into the homeland of their foes. They located the mysterious estate in France and prepared to assault it.