by Renée Jaggér
“No.” He grunted. “But he was leaning over her, and there was no sign of anyone else around.”
Ironfist growled. “Right. Just as we figured—both of you stumbled onto the body within seconds of each other, and like the hotheaded morons you are, blamed each other. Because neither of you could think like rational beings, one of you is dead, and we’ll have to produce explanations for the bereaved. Good fucking job!”
The Viking lowered his face toward the ground, looking abashed and uncertain for the first time.
“More likely,” Malkeg added, “while you two were fighting, the real assailant got away and is still at large. Get out of here. Eat and drink something to clear your thick heads. We will continue the investigation while trying to manage all your foot-dragging friends.” He jabbed his elbow at the portal.
Bailey and Ragnar strode in the direction the man had indicated, collecting Carl on their way.
“I,” Ragnar began, “I did not think of it that way. I would not have killed an innocent man if I’d known. Why did he act that way?” His grief and remorse, like all his emotions, were blatant and theatrical.
Bailey put a hand on his massive shoulder. “We both made a mistake,” she acknowledged, “but it’s true, that guy should have said or done something different if he was innocent.”
Carl chimed in with, “There’s nothing we can do now. It was a tragic accident. We need rest and nourishment. Maybe they should have allowed us breakfast before they tossed us into such a stressful situation.”
Arm in arm, the three friends walked through the portal.
Roland had feared they might end up in some awful, hellish plane, but the crone’s gateway took them to a fairly standard stretch of the Other. It was not a pleasant domain, but he was used to it. Dim purplish-gray light filtered down from a sky of deep violet, and sporadic black trees rose from the marshy earth with its pale, colorless grasses and eerie white mists.
As the witch-creature lowered him and Dante to the ground, no other people or entities were in sight. They were alone in the desolation.
Out of half-lidded eyes, still feigning unconsciousness, Roland watched as their kidnapper raised her gnarled and scrawny hands and drew the black hood away from her face. What he saw was as bad as he’d expected.
The woman, or whatever she was, looked as though she were at least a hundred and twenty years old, perhaps more like five hundred and twenty. Her features were distorted and emaciated, at once withered and mushy. Her skin was the color of ashes, and she resembled no one in particular. Sparse stringy white hair grew from her scalp and fell to her shoulders.
She took a step forward and kicked Roland in the stomach with surprising strength and force. “Wake up!” she snarled. “Have a look and tell me if I look familiar, Roland.”
The wizard sprang to his feet, using subtle magic to augment his speed and smooth over the muscular stiffness he’d acquired. In the blink of an eye, he held a sizzling blade of green plasma beside her throat. Dante had jumped up also and stood ready for a fight.
Roland stated, “I don’t recognize you, and I don’t care. Where are the witches you took? Tell us!”
The crone stared at him as if he was stupid and made an ugly snorting noise. “Too late for that. They’re gone. I drained them to restore myself. It’s taking too fucking long, though.”
She talks like a present-day American, the wizard observed, which pretty much rules out her being an elderly Venatori operative. Who is she, then?
Dante gulped as the reality sunk in; the people they’d been searching for were dead.
Roland’s lips drew back from his teeth. “Restore yourself from what? Who and what are you?”
The creature grinned, and the sight sent chills through Roland’s vertebrae.
“You always were kinda stupid,” she sneered. “You would have recognized me back when everyone called me Caldoria McCluskey!”
The wizard blinked. “Callie? I thought you were—”
“Dead? Yeah, no shit!” the witch shot back. “I was. The Venatori fed me to cave wraiths. Then they came back and tried to revive me as part of their stupid scheme to kill Bailey before she destroyed their goddess and screwed everything up. They forgot about me, but I haven’t forgotten anything.”
Roland tried not to quiver with dread and loathing. In addition to Callie’s new and horrible appearance, the thought of her, of all people, becoming a lich was beyond disturbing. In some ways, she had been the worst of the trio centered around Shannon DiGrezza, though all three sorceresses had had an unhealthy obsession with him and his “seed” for far too long.
“I started,” Callie went on, “by drawing off the magic of the Venatori who came back here. After they left, I sucked the life out of other witches. I got more power from them than I’ve ever had before, but it’s taking forever to restore my life. I always wanted your body,” she cackled, “and now you’re in my clutches. I’m gonna have it, but in a different way. Ironic.”
The wizard took one step back but did not lower his blade. “My body is nowhere near your crusty-ass clutches, and since you’re technically dead already, you’re about to get the proper dust-to-dust treatment. Fuck off, Callie.”
Light and force exploded across the bog as Roland drove his plasma sword toward the witch’s face, protecting himself with a thick arcane shield that blocked the wave of boiling lava she hurled at him. He left a space open at her side for Dante to flank her.
The other wizard tried to send a lightning bolt through the gap, but Callie blocked it with a shield of her own and waved a bony arm, sending both young men hurtling back through the air in different directions.
“Ha, ha! You guys completely suck!”
In midair, Roland summoned a rain of hail and fire to pin the witch down from above while also shaking the ground with a minor earthquake. It was enough to disorient her and prevent her from finishing them off.
He floated toward Dante and stopped him from falling. The younger wizard must not have known how to fly.
“Holy crap!” Dante cried. “How are you doing that? And she’s like, about as powerful as the goddamn Dreadknights were.”
Clusters of blue plasma spears streaked toward them while they floated downward and away to seek shelter amidst a copse of dead trees.
“Yeah,” Roland agreed. “She did say she got a power boost from the witches she drained. Listen, instead of fighting fire with fire, let’s lead her on a chase. She’ll tire faster with her body in the condition it’s in.”
Dante nodded. He and the other man landed, and the black shape of Caldoria in her billowing robes moved closer. They bolted into the woods.
The witch screamed, “Pussies! You’re afraid to fight me? You won’t get away!”
The ground trembled, and trees fell over as blasts of magic tore the forest away behind them. Roland conjured a thick moving shield at their backs and felt the massive force of the crone’s attacks strain it nearly to breaking point within seconds.
Dante enacted a spell that shifted the lay of the land so the flat area before them sloped upwards. The two wizards, still with bodies in their twenties, ascended it easily, but the crone would have trouble, even with her arcane might.
The running battle wove its way through the boggy wasteland, with Roland and Dante keeping far enough ahead to entice Callie to follow, but not allow her to catch them. They fought defensively as waves of her terrible power were flung at them.
As time went on, the pair found that they kept having to pause and wait for their pursuer to catch up. During one such break, Roland, breathing heavily, turned to his friend.
“Callie was always pretty stupid,” he observed, “but she might figure out what we’re up to and give up the chase. I think it’s time to engage.”
“Sure,” the other agreed. He grimaced as he flicked his hair. “I can’t believe you know her, though.”
Roland turned away and scanned the wooded slope for the witch. “It’s a long story. Shit, there she is.”
/> The squat black-clad shape moved out from between the trees, stumbling as if drunk and resting against trunks every fifteen or twenty steps. The sight was pitiful, comical, and encouraging all at once.
Callie gasped, “There! You…get back…here!” She could hardly speak.
Roland conjured a solid wall of shield material in front of them, then encased both their bodies in shield-armor to be safe. It was all that saved them from the devastating explosion the witch conjured, which drove them reeling apart from sheer physics and reduced a full acre of forest to ash.
Then the wizards attacked. At first, the crone blocked or redirected their projectiles and resisted their enchantments, but she seemed slower and clumsier, as though her mind could not keep up with the exhaustion of her body.
Finally, Dante stripped away her wavering shields and hurled her into a fat tree, knocking her unconscious.
Roland stepped in front of the wasted figure. “Sorry, Callie, but the changes you’ve gone through lately made you into an even worse person, amazingly. Goodbye.”
His hand shot out, and a greenish-white spiral beam of arcanoplasm, electricity, and molten metal struck the crone square in the chest. Coming to at the last instant, she screamed as her body sparked, smoked, and disintegrated into a pile of dust. The burning black robe fluttered to the ground.
Then a breeze came up, stirring the dust and carrying it away through the woods.
“I’ll be back,” a faint voice whispered. “I’ll...be...back...”
Roland exhaled and turned away. “No, she won’t.”
Dante frowned. “Are you sure? You destroyed her, but there was magic going on with her that I’m not familiar with.”
“Yeah,” Roland replied. He was not a hundred percent certain, but ninety-nine percent was close enough. “She’s dust. No more local witches getting drained.”
It occurred to both, though, that they’d failed to save the people who’d been taken. More lives had been lost at a time when the Pacific Northwest's paranormal community was just starting to emerge from the trauma of the war against the Venatori. The pair stood in dejected silence.
Dante commented, “I knew one of them—that girl Renee. Not very well, but still. She’s gone.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Roland recalled a time when Callie, for all her obnoxiousness, had not been a deadly and monstrous enemy. He’d lost her, too. “Well, at least we avenged them and stopped the problem at its source. That will have to be good enough.”
Chapter Seven
The mess hall served mead that evening. It came as a relief, but Bailey was starting to wonder if it might have been a mistake.
The werewitch was dejected. Ragnar’s depression was rubbing off on her, and the alcohol wasn’t helping.
“How?” the Norseman wailed, wringing his hands over the wooden table. His eyes were wet and shiny. “How could I have made such a foolish error? How could I have lost my head to such an extent? Yes, I could offer a payment of weregild to his family, but will that be enough? Will it redeem the shame I’ve brought upon myself or replace the dreams his loved ones held for him?”
He’d barely eaten, though he had downed four cups of mead. Bailey wondered why the servers weren’t enforcing a drink limit. She was on the verge of cutting him off from further intoxication herself.
Carl put a hand atop Ragnar’s. “Hey, now. It was a terrible thing, but accidents do happen, and you thought you were doing right. We’re all under a lot of strain, and it’s much worse with a murderer on the loose.”
Bailey wolfed down some of the chicken and dumplings the facility had served for supper, wanting to help Ragnar but knowing he would have to help himself if he wanted to get through this.
“Many men and monsters have I killed,” the Viking continued. “But there was cause in each case. I had always thought myself better than this. An innocent man has died! If such a thing can happen, do I truly deserve the power of the gods? The responsibility?”
The werewitch swallowed her food and told him, “We’ve all fucked up in pretty bad ways, Ragnar. There are things I wish I could go back and undo, but I don’t think even the gods have that power.”
The Norseman cursed in a language Bailey didn’t recognize—perhaps Old Icelandic?—and smacked his huge hands on the wooden surface, then rose suddenly from the bench and stomped into the smoky gloom beyond the kitchen.
Bailey and Carl exchanged glances. The scion asked, “Should we go after him? I’m worried.”
The werewitch pursed her lips. “I don’t think so. He’s the emotional type, but he’s tough. He needs to mope for a while and get this all out of his system. We’ll see how he’s doing in the morning.”
Carl agreed, and they ate in silence for a bit before resuming their conversation, though they steered it toward more pleasant matters.
“That guy Ethan,” Bailey started. “Nice hair, but he seemed awfully, uh, nonchalant about winning, like he just stumbled into it and it was no big deal. I think that might be the worst false modesty I’ve ever seen.”
Carl snickered. “Yeah, something like that. I guess it’s better than if he’d been an egotistical prick about it, but still. Oh, do you know who came in last? I feel bad for them whoever they were, but rules are rules.”
Bailey shrugged. “I didn’t inquire. Not anyone I know. They’ll live, though, as long as we get a proper breakfast tomorrow.”
Feeling mischievous, they glanced at the trainees eating and drinking in the hall, speculating who the loser had been and laughing like dumb schoolgirls. Soon they turned to trying to guess what each person’s divine background and portfolio might be.
Bailey pointed at a hugely fat trainee who was wolfing down his third plate of dinner. “Look at that guy there. What do you suppose his power is? A hollow leg with a portal at the bottom? Must be the son of the god of all four seasonal feasts.”
Carl chuckled, half-embarrassed at himself, and Bailey blushed as well. Normally she didn’t go around mocking people’s looks, but right now, she felt like any levity would be healthy, including the mean-spirited variety.
“Or her,” the scion remarked, gesturing at a woman whose hair was styled in a mohawk-ponytail hybrid like the crest of a Roman centurion’s helmet. “The demigoddess of hairspray. Sponsored by...shit, I don’t know any hairspray brands offhand. I never use that crap.”
Bailey cracked up. “Yeah, we got some interesting characters here.” She took another swig of mead. “Like, in all fairness, I guess I’d be the goddess of muddy pickup trucks.”
They spouted further rounds of jokes, challenging each other to come up with the most creatively offensive bullshit until a small crowd gathered around them: five young men, and they looked angry.
Bailey sighed. “I have a history of problems of this particular sort when I’m in an establishment that serves alcohol,” she confided to Carl as though their new visitors couldn’t hear them.
“Hey!” the apparent leader of the group growled. “We heard what you said. My girlfriend doesn’t even use hairspray!”
The werewitch spread her hands. “Makes it all the more impressive she can maintain that hairstyle, then.”
“Shut up!” one of the others bellowed.
Carl narrowed his eyes. “Don’t talk to her like that. We’re just joking around. Nothing worth getting seriously antagonistic over, you know.”
Apparently, they didn’t know since they continued to argue and threaten. Things were teetering on the brink of violence, but the gang refused to make the first move.
Bailey stood up. “For fuck’s sake. If you’re going to surround us and act all tough, you can’t drag out the shit-talking phase indefinitely like a bunch of chimpanzees hooting at each other. You either got to make your move or leave. Which is it gonna be?”
Carl stood up too.
The leader trembled with indignation. “No,” he retorted, “you started it, so you leave.” Clearly, he hadn’t gotten the message.
“R
ight.” Bailey nodded and punched him in the jaw. He staggered back, sputtering and flailing his limbs.
The other four piled into her and the scion, and their table was kicked over. Mead cups crashed to the floor, and thrashing bodies struggled.
Exclamations, oaths, curses, and whoops of delighted amusement went up from the other trainees nearest them. Those on the other side of the mess hall did not bother to investigate. They were too tired to care about anything that didn’t directly affect them right now.
Bailey braced herself against one of the posts holding up the hall’s roof and kicked with both legs, taking one of the guys full in the chest and knocking the wind out of him. He groaned and crumpled, replaced immediately by a bald-pated bruiser who directed a massive punch at her. She spun aside and the man’s fist smashed into the pillar, splintering the wood.
Meanwhile, Carl had put the guy closest to him in a headlock and successfully used him as a human shield, so his stomach absorbed a punch from the fifth man. He tossed his captive aside and grappled with the other attacker, the two struggling over the lumber of the fallen table.
In another minute, it was over. Three of the gang lay incapacitated, and the remaining two were in a stalemate with Bailey and Carl. All four of those still on their feet had bruises, black eyes, bloody lips, and lightly twisted limbs. No one was badly injured, but they knew they’d been in a fight.
Bailey laughed all of a sudden, and the men looked at her oddly. “You know,” she quipped, “I’m used to fighting mortals, humans mainly. I forgot you guys are better qualified to put up a proper tussle. Let’s just say I’m sorry I shot my mouth off and have another drink. I think we all needed to blow off some steam.”
Carl laughed too, hearing that, and grudgingly, the two men opposite them nodded. They shook hands, helped their friends up, and righted the table as well.
Bailey spied the leader’s mohawked girlfriend staring at her. “Sorry,” she called.
One of the trainers, not Malkeg but another whose name the werewitch didn’t know, ducked under the heavy hangings that passed for walls and glared around. “What happened?” he demanded.