by Renée Jaggér
Then she did hear something: the furtive tramping of feet. It sounded like two or three large, heavy entities and many smaller ones. The sounds weren’t familiar, and she had no idea what might be making them.
She pulled her sword off her back, allowing it to wink back into sight, then took a deep breath and plunged through the opened gates into the outer yards of the castle.
Within, the sand and gravel of the lanes between buildings were trampled and irregular, and odd stains showed up here and there. Bailey sniffed the air, but her sensitive wolf’s nose was confused by the profusion of odors. The blood of gods and demigods must smell different from the blood of mortals.
She rounded a corner toward the manor-hall where she had bunked during her training and found herself staring at the backs of almost two dozen monstrosities. They heard her and turned around, leering.
Bailey raised her sword as she took in the sight.
Three of the creatures stood around twelve feet tall. They were ungainly, misshapen beasts that roughly resembled men, though with the body proportions of apes, and they were covered with curly hair the color of dark copper. Their huge mouths were filled with rows upon rows of bent, jagged, and crooked teeth, and they hoisted weapons like stone-headed mattocks in their big, bony fists.
The others, numbering fifteen or twenty, stood closer to three or four feet, and were similarly ghoulish-looking, though they were squatter and their skin a vaguely reptilian green. They held spears with barbed heads or crude scimitars and set to squealing and hooting at the sight of prey.
Shit, she thought. Ogres and goblins? I don’t know if that’s what they’re officially called, but it’s damn well close enough. Let’s see if their bite matches their bark.
The monsters charged.
Bailey stabbed her sword skyward, summoning a bolt of lightning surrounded by a cyclone of plasma, then used the blade to direct it toward her enemies. The blazing line of death struck the front lines of the advancing horde. Two of the ogres had gotten out in front due to their longer stride, along with six or seven of the goblins, and all exploded in flaming columns of light and smoke that scattered charred debris and dust to the sides.
The remainder of the beasts plowed ahead, jumping over the ruins of their brethren in their mindless bloodlust. Bailey drew her lips back from her teeth and plunged into them.
She surrounded herself with an adaptive shield that protected her from the monsters’ blows or bowled them physically aside with arcane force. Meanwhile, she hacked, thrust, and sliced her way through them. The divine longsword did its grim work with smooth efficiency, splitting goblins apart two and three at a time.
A great ogre swung its mattock at her, and she jumped and tumbled backward to avoid it. In midair, she conjured a lightning bolt that struck the beast full in the chest, causing it to go into spasms and drop its weapon while the remaining goblins piled ahead.
Bailey landed on her feet and quickly cut down the smaller creatures, then leaped onto the ogre’s shoulders to spike her sword downwards through its skull. The blade absorbed the lingering electricity, and the giant toppled to the ground with a sighing grunt.
The girl hopped off the body and checked for any more attackers. She’d slain them all, and no others were in immediate sight, but she thought she heard more sounds of movement from the castle’s inner courtyard.
Where did Fenris dig these bastards up, I wonder? A flicker of cold went down her spine at the prospect of all the minions he could have recruited. Is it possible that they have nothing to do with him?
It was, she supposed, possible...but she doubted it.
The girl launched herself into the air again, and this time, she flew over the wall of the inner bailey so she could observe the scene from above before descending to deal with it face-to-face.
Looking down, she saw a group of students, five of them, huddled into the corner between an outbuilding and the inner wall. Four of them appeared to be wounded and had trailed blood through the dirt as they’d tried to hide.
Another group of monsters, three more ogres and another twenty goblins, had caught sight of them and were charging toward their pitiful hiding place to finish them off.
“Hey!” the werewitch shouted, directing her voice straight at them. Both the students and the creatures moving in for the kill looked up with wide, disbelieving eyes.
Bailey crashed into the midst of the monsters, her sword splitting the tallest ogre in half lengthwise and scattering the others with the small shockwave of her impact. She threw out a circular wave of fire that incinerated most of them while they were stunned.
The one student who wasn’t wounded, a burly young man who might have been South Asian, rushed to join the werewitch, clobbering a pair of goblins near the front of the formation. Meanwhile, Bailey was a tornado of wrath, wheeling around with her sword, shielding herself with both arcane barrier-matter and electricity. She shifted instantly into her human-sized wolf form to pounce at the last goblin as it tried to flee. In a few more seconds, it was over.
The girl and the young man stood heaving, and the other four trainees gawked. Bailey stood up, becoming once again a woman in the same motion, and caught their eyes. Shapeshifting always did partial damage to her clothes, but she’d disciplined the ways in which her form altered enough that they still covered her body.
“Are you well enough to move? We need to get out of the open and into the keep.” She gestured toward the tall secure stone structure at the center of the castle complex.
The quartet nodded, though one of them looked bad enough that she wasn’t so sure. Remembering what Roland had taught her about healing magic, she cast a wave of soft greenish light on him to relieve his pain and speed up his recovery. Then she led the five across the courtyard and in through the battered and loose-hanging front doors of the central tower.
Once inside, the trainees collapsed against a tapestry hanging on the left wall of the entranceway. Bailey helped the uninjured man fetch a pail of water and cups for the others.
While they completed the simple task, the student remarked, “Thank you. I suppose in return for saving us, you want to know what happened.”
“Yup,” Bailey confirmed. “I do.”
Chapter Three
The council chamber of the gods was a high-vaulted room of blue and white crystal, with a translucent skylight looking out on a vast expanse of airy sapphire void and rolling ivory clouds. It was expansive, with a broad audience floor in front of the semicircle of massive chairs where the six deities of the council sat, and beyond the floor was a translucent barrier that provided privacy from the hallway beyond.
The hall had neither entrances nor exits unless one knew how to get there to begin with.
For the time being, two of the half-dozen chairs in the great chamber were empty. Bailey was not present to occupy the seat that had previously belonged to the Norse goddess Freya, and Balder was also unaccounted for. Thor, Loki, Thoth, and Coyote were all present. They settled in and prepared for the solemn discussion to come.
Thoth steepled his fingers and cleared his throat. The council had no leader whose authority superseded that of any other member, but as the oldest and most level-headed of them, the Egyptian lord of wisdom usually acted as spokesman, moderator, and master of ceremonies.
“Are we in agreement, then?” he inquired as Coyote watched him with bright eyes, “that Fenris is the likely culprit behind Balder’s disappearance?”
Votes of “yea” went around the room.
Thoth nodded his sleek dark head. “It is the only explanation that is remotely likely, and yet, we have no definite proof. If we haul him before us and charge him with a crime he has succeeded in covering up, we will do nothing except alarm him into being more careful. Or moving faster to achieve his aims.”
Coyote raised a hand and suggested, “He must mean to maintain ‘plausible deniability,’ as mortal politicians call it. Most of the bloodiest work is probably being done by his henchmen and
intermediaries, while he keeps his hands clean for the most part.”
“Aye,” Thor grunted, his bushy red brows descending in an angle over his blazing eyes. One of his hands balled into a huge square fist. “The skulking bastard intends to come after us one by one, doesn’t he? Picking us off in slow, measured succession, striking at the moment when we least expect it and are least able to fight back! Ah, the wretched cowardice and two-faced nature of it! If we can prove anything, I’ll wring his neck myself. Gladly.”
Loki held up a hand, barely restraining a contemptuous smirk at the boisterous attitude of his fellow Asgardian. “Patience, friend Thor. There may be time for that, but not immediately. We have to flush him out. What better way, I wonder, than to bait him?”
Thoth frowned. “Sending someone in our stead would not be nearly as effective, and it could lead innocents to be endangered beyond any need.”
The skinny mischief-god laughed. “No, no, Thoth, I’m not talking about using patsies or decoys. At least, not living ones. Illusions. Projected doppelgangers, carefully constructed to be as convincing as possible, and imbued with our same powers so as to further reinforce the deception.”
Coyote laughed. “Fighting lies with lies, eh? Fenris ought to learn how it feels to be deceived, at this point, anyway. And it may well work.”
Thor chuckled, suddenly appreciating the irony of the plan.
Loki raised his other hand as he continued to outline the details. “If done with skill and success, Fenris can pounce upon our doubles and appear to kill them; he’d be unable to reveal the illusion except with extremely powerful magic, or if one of us is stupid enough to cancel the projection before he leaves. Thor, take note.”
The red-bearded giant stiffened and glared. “What?”
Before he could protest further, Loki went on. “And as each of us seems to fall before him, we will, at the last instant, trade places with the double, making the illusion utterly seamless. To do this, I will handle the main conjurations, but I’ll need each of you to channel your powers into the task so I can replicate you more convincingly. Failure is, I think, not very probable. This sort of thing is second nature to me.”
Thoth allowed himself a faint, morose smile as the other gods chuckled.
Coyote slapped his knee. “Ha, ha! True, Fenris thinks of himself as a master schemer, and I must say I’m impressed with his layers of foul deception. But can he hold a candle to us?”
“Of course not,” Loki snorted. “He is my son—technically—and he may have inherited some of my skill, but he is no true trickster deity. He’s not on the same level as Coyote, let alone me.”
Coyote raised a paw. “I object to that last bit. But I love the plan. Let the wolf-father reap as he has sown. His confidence will burgeon into overconfidence as he assumes he’s whittling us down. Then we will be able to surprise him after he thinks he’s won and press the advantage granted by surprise.”
“Hmm,” Thoth mused, folding his hands over one another. “Yes. And furthermore, the mere fact of Fenris trying to murder us—or our doubles—proves his guilt. Each of us may be witness to an attempt on our own lives. Nothing could be more convincing than that, in terms of justifying the worst of our suspicions.”
Loki’s eyes rolled upward and aside within his head; the expression usually meant he’d thought of something.
“Oh,” he added, “one other thing. Bailey ought to be brought in on the plan and act as our double agent. She and Fenris have a history together. Well, what qualifies as a ‘history’ by the pathetically brief periods of time to which mortals are accustomed. It would not be difficult, I think, for her to convince the great lycanthropic one that she’s still on his side.”
Nods and mumbles of assent greeted his proposition.
Loki smiled more broadly. “It would help further if she was present during Fenris’ little assassination attempts. That may not always be possible, but imagine the impact. It will lull him into believing she’s still his loyal apprentice. And then, right as the bastard is reeling in shock to discover us still alive, Bailey will slip the knife into his back.”
Thoth frowned and eyed the trickster-god sharply. “You enjoy such things too much, Loki. Treachery is not our way, but in this case, we face a greater treachery that could destroy us and have no choice but to respond in kind. Let us begin construction of these illusory doubles soon and disperse for now. There is much to do.”
“And,” Coyote offered, “remember to have a psychic message ready to send out the instant Fenris or one of his cronies jumps out of the bushes and we pretend to fall. We must coordinate our efforts.”
Everyone agreed, and the council dispersed. Though confident in their counterplot, a pall of doom hung over the chamber. They had no way of knowing for sure if they’d ever meet here again.
Agent Velasquez leaned back in his chair, hands folded behind his head, staring at the ceiling air conditioning unit through his dark glasses. The unit came on, its steady mechanical purr accompanied by a blast of refreshingly cool air.
“Ahh.” He sighed, his face relaxing in a calm grin. “Much better. And I timed it perfectly. Seven minutes, thirty-eight seconds, though it’ll probably change as soon as the weather starts to cool off more.”
The Agency’s Western Sector Headquarters was located in Reno, Nevada, a location chosen for its relatively equal distance from both Portland and Seattle on the one hand, and Los Angeles, San Diego, and Phoenix on the other, not to mention being effectively next door to northern California and not too far from the Wasatch Front in Utah. Days in late summer were cooler here than what the poor schmucks down in Vegas, let alone Arizona and southeastern Cali, had to deal with, but the afternoons were still hitting a solid ninety degrees Fahrenheit.
Velasquez’s junior partner Agent Park scoffed. “Man, you got too much time on your hands. I guess let me know if some bullshit errand does come up because I’m in the process of dying of boredom. This is worse than being deployed in New Zealand or Alaska or something. Like I hear the guys out of Fairbanks at least get to hunt elk once in a while.”
Park was new-ish, having hopped directly over to the Agency from the military and hoping to get more action. He’d been disappointed about half the time, so far.
The senior agent chortled. “I’ll keep that in mind, Park. Keep fighting the good fight. You’re a great American.”
“Fuck off,” the other replied, though without much venom. He balled up a misprinted piece of paper and tossed it into a blue recycle bin.
Then he sat up straight, adjusting his glasses and staring at the wall-sized screen across from them, which had suddenly lit up from idle mode due to activity. “Hey. Look!”
Velasquez swiveled his chair around. His jaw dropped open. “Holy mother of fuck. What the hell sector of the Other are we viewing here again? Uhh, 3-A, right, got it. Looks like we’re back in the midst of a raging shitstorm, Park. Wanna pop open a bottle of champagne?”
“Maybe later,” Park retorted.
The screen showed a rough layout of a certain transitional portion of the Other, the point at which the swampy landscape closest to the mortal world gave way to a region of barren canyonlands. The Agency had been keeping a close eye on it ever since their brief but hazardous war against an army of eldritch crones created by the late witch Caldoria McCluskey. According to the wizards who’d tagged along and helped, the destruction of the crones’ main power source should have wiped them out, but there was always the possibility of stragglers sneaking back to Earth and trying to replicate themselves, preying upon mortal casters.
Now, the crude outline of the bleak landscape was swarming with masses of colored orbs, indicating supernatural beings on the move, but they didn’t look familiar.
“Man,” Park gasped, “what are those things? Do we have, like, a handy reference guide for what half-assed colored blobs of light represent on this thing? They don’t look like the witch-clones from a couple weeks ago.”
Velasquez seize
d the screen’s control console. He was a man who liked to relax when he could, but when there was a serious job to do, things were different.
Punching buttons, the senior agent flipped through different screen views showing various portions of the Other, all of which had access points to the world of mortals.
It was the same. Every screen showed what might well be an advancing army—clusters if not hordes, a veritable migration.
“Fuckdamn,” Velasquez sputtered. “I’ve never seen anything like this. I don’t know what it is, but we need to find out and fast.”
He and Park leaped up from their seats, the younger Korean-American agent adding, “One hundred percent concurrence rate here, chief.”
The pair strode from their office, Velasquez getting on his phone to report all he’d seen to his superiors, while Park handled the task of shouting the news to other agents and random support personnel as they hustled down the hall toward the armory.
“Okay,” Velasquez barked into his mobile, “we cannot yet confirm what we’re seeing, but if it’s anything remotely hostile, it puts us about at Defcon 2, you got me? We need eyes on this crap immediately, and two seconds after immediately, we probably need every single available field agent with any experience recalled from whatever the fuck else they’re doing.”
The voice on the other end barked back with clarification requests and miscellaneous expletives, and they didn’t end the call until Velasquez and Park were halfway down the elevator shaft to the basement rooms where the weapons, body armor, and hazmat stuff were kept.
The pair suited up, pulling on the glistening outfits that would protect them from some forms of physical attack, not to mention offer limited resistance against magic and elemental damage. Other agents came down the elevators after them, the reserve corps within the HQ building. Early responder types.