by Renée Jaggér
Next in line was a tall, dark-skinned man with a wise, lined, solemn face. He wore a headdress resembling an exotic bird—an ibis?—and a knee-length white sarong-like garment held up by a belt studded with blue, red, and green gems.
Finally, at the far right of the semicircular arrangement sat a being who looked mostly human but had distinctly canine or lupine features, notably his pointed ears and elongated snout. There was gray fur on the backs of his hands, his shoulders, and his feet. Bailey’s first impression was that he was a Were caught in the middle of shifting from humanoid to wolf form, but she realized that was incorrect. The figure resembled a dog or a coyote more than a wolf. His face was both playful and weary.
The six deities had been talking among themselves in low, hurried tones, but when Fenris and Bailey intruded, they all looked up in unison.
The red-bearded giant let out a hearty laugh. “Bailey Nordin! We have heard stories about you, girl. Fine tales they were, too. Welcome!”
“Hi,” she replied, waving and feeling awkward. Freya and Balder both stared at her in a neutral, reticent fashion, and neither spoke.
The fourth of the Norse deities, the smirking dark-haired fellow, gave her a curt nod. Bailey remembered who he was—the head of the small library in Seattle to which Roland had taken her to test her magical potential many weeks ago. She’d known that the man was more than he seemed, but it had never occurred to her that he was a god.
Fenris extended a hand. “The council. Among my family, you’ve already met Freya and Balder. This, as you might have guessed, is Thor. And this is my father, Loki.”
The girl must have failed to hide her surprise since Loki chuckled faintly as he watched her face. The seated deity looked younger than Fenris did and bore little resemblance to him. He gave a subtle nod, but Bailey couldn’t tell if it was directed at her or at his son.
Fenris turned to the two thrones to the right. “And these are Thoth, the Egyptian god of magic and wisdom, and Coyote, the indigenous American trickster-deity whose portfolio also includes the domain of magic.”
So does Freya’s, Bailey recalled. That must have been what had drawn this motley band together—that, and the fact that more than half of them were related.
Thoth leaned forward. “Greetings. As Thor mentioned, we have heard of you, Bailey. Your career has been most interesting.” His voice was low and dry, aged but authoritative.
Coyote, too, peered at her with intense curiosity. “Yes, yes. It’s been a long time while we’ve seen anything like you. These are fascinating times.”
All the deities studied the girl for a moment. Freya spoke at last.
“It is good,” she stated, “that you have joined us. It will simplify matters a great deal.”
Her tone was a bit frosty but not hostile. Both times Bailey had previously encountered the Lady of Witchcraft, she’d been less than friendly, but she had helped her and Roland. She seemed to have the best interests of witchdom at heart.
The girl wasn’t sure what the gods wanted of her, or if she was supposed to do anything, so she defaulted to the kind of thing a mortal would think of. She made a joke.
“So, when do I get a chair?” she asked, gesturing at the golden thrones.
Thor chuckled, but the other deities remained stone-faced. Behind her, Fenris coughed and bowed his head.
Freya leaned forward in her seat. “You presume much,” she commented.
Fenris replied, “She has only come to—”
“Silence,” Freya snapped, cutting him off. “Did we invite her here today? Did we ask you to fetch her for us? You do not sit on this council, but you’ve brought her here of your own free will, without asking us.”
Bailey could feel her mentor’s tension rising. He and Freya had come to a truce of sorts not long ago, but clearly, it was an unsteady one.
“You,” said Fenris, “were discussing her fate based on what you presume her next moves would be. I thought it would be useful to ask her those questions in person.”
Thoth spoke next, and his tone was calmer than Freya’s. “So we shall,” he intoned.
The Lady of Sorcery took the floor again. “Bailey Nordin, know this. You have recently acquired the power of a goddess, but that does not make you one of us, any more than a child who looks like her mother is her mother. Do not leap to any conclusions as to why we are interested in you.”
None of the other deities spoke, but they didn’t challenge or disagree with Freya, either.
Balder smiled in his boyish, innocuous way. “You must prove yourself worthy of your power, Bailey. We do not know if you will fail to control it and destroy yourself, which could cause great harm to everyone and everything around you.”
“Yes,” Freya agreed, “and if it reaches that point—if we have reason to believe your new abilities constitute an uncontrollable danger to your world’s stability—we shall not hesitate to intervene. We will siphon the power from you and disperse it or dispose of it as we see fit.”
Bailey froze, her mouth hanging open, and her heart palpitating in anger, anxiety, and the simple hurt of rejection.
“What, are you threatening me?” she inquired.
Coyote held up a furred hand for calm. “No, no, not exactly. At this point, we would prefer not to have to do such a thing, but there is great risk if you do not learn to control your powers. Perhaps Fenris might take you to a certain place within the Other where you might develop that control?”
Fenris rumbled, “I know the place of which you speak, but if I take her there for training, how do I know that she’ll be given the proper time and chances? What happens if this council decides too early that she is unfit to move on as a goddess?”
Thoth leaned forward, his broad hands folded under his chin. He exchanged glances with Thor, whose boisterous demeanor had changed to a frowning seriousness. The Egyptian answered for them all.
“If Bailey is unable to adequately master her powers and does not then agree to have them removed, she will be destroyed.”
The girl opened her mouth to object, to tell them that she hadn’t done anything wrong yet and she wanted to fulfill her role wisely and well. Fenris clamped a hand on her shoulder, pushed his way in front of her, and waved a hand dismissively.
“So be it.” The wolf-father grunted. “I will take her to the training place. We go in peace.”
After turning around, he took Bailey by the arm and led her out of the chamber. She started to pull away from him, so he hissed in her ear, “It’s not worth arguing with them all. Not here, and not now. Let us make progress, and then we’ll find them more amenable to hearing us out.”
The girl was trembling with chaotic emotions. Nothing had gone the way she’d expected or hoped, but Fenris had never given her reason to mistrust him. She swallowed the outburst that had built up and followed him.
Once they were back out in the long blue hall, Fenris opened another portal. Bailey didn’t know where it led, but she suspected it wasn’t to Oregon.
“Come.” The tall man waved her along and stepped into the glowing purple mass.
Blowing air out of her lungs, the girl did likewise. “Here goes nothing,” she muttered.
Chapter Two
The werewitch and the wolf-god emerged from the arcane doorway into what Bailey at first thought was Earth, but not the planet she was familiar with.
They were in a temperate green deciduous forest rather than the jungle of dead black jagged wood that covered most of the Other or the beautiful expanse of tall grass and ancient trees found on the holy land of the lycanthropic people. It wasn’t even the hilly pine forest of her home. It looked like something out of a movie.
Overhead, the sky was about two-thirds covered by marbled clouds, but the rest was a normal blue. Beyond the tree line a short distance ahead, the girl glimpsed a vast open field of short, pale grass, in the center of which a massive castle loomed.
“The hell?” she wondered. “Did we go back in time? Is this somewhere in E
urope?”
The overall feel of the place was medieval. The castle clearly came from that time period, with its broad stone walls seeming to enclose a town or marketplace, and another wall surrounding an inner bailey where the central keep loomed.
“No,” Fenris said. “This is a divine training ground in a far, obscure corner of the Other.” He gestured in turn at the woods, the plain, and the castle that was their likely destination. “It is a place without what you might call a true or essential form. Instead, it is conceptualized and manifested in accordance with the perspectives of those who occupy it.”
She squinted. “What?” It wasn’t that she had no idea what he meant; she got the gist. It just seemed like he ought to explain further.
He did. “Thanks to popular media and modern fiction, people from your civilization apparently think a magical training town ought to look like England in the High Middle Ages. Thus, it appears like that to you.”
That had a certain logic to it. “Okay, fair enough. Training town, you said? I can already tell this is going to be different from when you taught me yourself in the swampy part of the Other.”
The tall man strode forward, emerging from the trees onto the grassy sward with Bailey following close by his elbow. He enlarged on the situation as he walked.
“This is where beings who are empowered far beyond the norm for mortals come to learn and to refine and practice their skills. The goal is to permit them to be safe from inadvertently harming themselves or others during that time.”
At last, Bailey felt that things were going the way she’d expected, as per what Fenris had told her before they’d gone to the gods’ conclave. She just hoped that whatever awaited her would be less frustrating and confusing than their audience with the deific council had been.
A question popped into her brain.
“Wait,” she queried, “why didn’t I know about this place before? Why didn’t you bring me here when we first started out, I mean?”
The tall man shook his head. “You did not qualify at the time. A werewitch is a rare thing, much more powerful than a human or even a regular were-shaman, but your potential still fell within the bounds of what was achievable for a being born of flesh. Now...” His voice trailed off.
For whatever reason, it sank in—the sheer scale and magnitude of what had happened. Bailey was at least as far above her past werewitch self as a werewitch was above a human. Perhaps farther. She’d avoided thinking about it until this moment.
I’ve known Fenris for a while, she mused, and though I was aware of his godhood and all, he mostly seemed like a man. He restrains himself all the time. Being around him didn’t prepare me for what godhood is, but I guess he’s aiming to remedy that.
Fenris went on, “It’s a place for demigods, newborn gods and goddesses, and things that fall between the cracks. It provides for anything of deity-level power that needs to learn to channel its supreme might. Within, you will meet allies and begin a variety of courses, including staged battles somewhat like gladiatorial combat.”
Part of her was thrilled by that, though she wasn’t crazy enough to be fearless about it, either.
“It will be difficult, but if you succeed in taming the chaos that churns within you, you will be a full goddess in fact, whether recognized as such by certain other deific personalities or not. Oh, and succeeding does not necessarily entail triumphing in every combat. It is not a winner-takes-all elimination, but a process of growth in which there might be many winners.”
She nodded, unable to think of anything to say to that.
“For now,” Fenris concluded, “it will be enough to have control and internal stability. You will be more than capable of managing your responsibilities as High Shaman and ministering to both the Weres and the witches who have thrown in their lot with you.”
The gate leading through the castle’s outer wall was open, and the pair walked straight through into an area that reminded Bailey of the Oregon Renaissance Faire, though not as jolly.
They’d taken only half a dozen steps when two hulking creatures emerged from shadowed nooks to greet them. The humanoid figures of solid stone, eight or nine feet tall, were imposing, but their demeanor wasn’t hostile.
“Stone golems,” said Fenris, “who guard this place by acting as nullifiers of magic. They’re tough to destroy with brute force, and spells don’t work on them. To defeat one would require the true power and full creativity of a god. They act as both guards and wardens here, protecting the training grounds from external threats, and also keeping the trainees in. The beings who test themselves here aren’t allowed to run off if the powers that be consider them a potential threat. Those who do try to desert end up having to deal with them.”
As they passed the grim colossi, Bailey decided she’d keep that in mind. She didn’t particularly want to “deal” with them, at least, not until she knew how.
Various figures bustled between the primitive buildings and the myriad tents. Most looked human, more or less; others were difficult to describe. They wore clothes and equipment representing all different cultures and time periods, including some the girl could not recognize.
Many were dressed for battle, decked out in armor of one kind or another and girded with a dizzying assortment of weapons. A few looked at her, nodded at her, or made brief comments that her mind failed to register as she trudged through the hubbub. The majority paid her no heed. They were busy with other things.
Bailey and Fenris moved toward the inner wall, attached to which was a stone building that she supposed was an exterior manor or guardhouse. A tall, blank-faced man in colorful clothes met them at the door and led them through a maze of dim halls. They ended at a wooden portal to a room.
“Madam,” the host drawled, “please take your ease in here, and wait until you are called upon.”
The chamber was better-appointed than she would have guessed, with a sumptuous bed, stacks of books, racks of clothing, and an assortment of pitchers and mirrors, like the room of a noble lady in a period drama.
She breathed out and sat on the bed. “So, I guess I wait. What about you?”
Fenris gazed at her, his shadowed face enigmatic and unresponsive. “I can stay here with you if you wish. I do not need to rest much, but a bedroll on the floor is enough for when I do. I can advise you to the best of my ability, and to the extent I’m allowed. I know how this place works.”
“Okay, then.” She shrugged. It occurred to her that this meant sleeping in the same room as a man who wasn’t her boyfriend, but he wasn’t really a man, after all. She’d never gotten any sense that he had the usual mortal urges.
The wolf-father allowed himself a bittersweet smile. “I came into existence as a god. I’ve never been anything else, so I was not subjected to testing here. Still, I can help you.”
The girl laid her head on the pillow. “You always have, and you know I appreciate it.”
He nodded. “Get some rest. Relax. It won’t be long before they begin.”
Agent Velasquez sat leaning back in his chair, his feet in their polished black shoes up and resting on the desk before his computer monitor. The goddamn machine was taking the usual length of time—namely, forever—to analyze a bunch of data and then spit out the appropriate reams of paperwork, all of which would need to be filled out by hand. He wasn’t enthusiastic about it.
For the time being, though, there was nothing else to do.
Beside him sat another man, perhaps seven or eight years younger than Velasquez’s thirty-six. Both were lean and athletic and an inch or two under six feet. Both had black hair, though Velasquez’s was perilously close to “medium” length, the maximum allowable by the Agency.
The other man, of Korean descent, was lighter-complected, and his hair still bore a residual buzzcut from his recent military career. He had high sharp cheekbones, and his eyes were everywhere at once behind his standard-issue dark glasses.
It was good, Velasquez thought, that his new partner was th
e vigilant type, but he didn’t need to be on the lookout at a time like this. Not when they were safe within the bowels of the Western division’s headquarters beneath an unmarked building in Reno, Nevada.
“So,” Agent Park began, “do you guys actually do anything here? Is there anything to do? It wasn’t long ago I heard the organization was at war with some kind of terrorist group out of France. I’m not seeing a lot of action at the moment.”
Velasquez grinned sardonically. “No, Park. There’s nothing. It’s very, very boring. You got in at exactly the right time, and for that, you ought to be grateful. Sit back and relax. You’re getting paid. And compared to how things have been for too damn long lately, peace is a nice change of pace.”
Park scowled. “I’m glad America is safe if that’s what you mean, but I didn’t join the Agency for the purpose of sitting around collecting a paycheck while barely doing any work. Can’t we, I dunno, do a patrol or a scouting mission?”
“Later,” Velasquez remarked. “Technology does a lot of the legwork for us in that regard. As I understand it, that’s increasingly how things are in the military too, isn’t it?”
Park scratched the back of his neck. “Pretty much.”
“Anyway,” the older agent went on, “let me tell you a story. Well, to be fair, there’s, like, a whole set of stories about a certain natural disaster we call ‘Hurricane Bailey.’ Our predecessors in this office, Agents Townsend and Spall, dealt with her for months before I stepped into Townsend’s shoes and she fell straight into my lap.”
Park squinted in mock confusion. “So, you’re saying you have a problem with a hot twenty-something brunette falling into your lap?”
“In this particular case,” Velasquez shot back, “yes. Good Lord, yes. You can’t deal with her and not have a problem because she is, like, a walking catalog of problems. A shitstorm in humanoid form.”