Bad Attitude (WereWitch Book 1)

by Renée Jaggér

  Something sank inside her at the prospect of having to outrun two different vehicles with a bunch of kids in the back. This was not going to be easy.

  Roland seemed to read her mind as they hopped into the cab. “I’ll whip up something to keep them from falling out,” he said. For some reason, he had scooped up a bunch of rocks and gravel in his arms, and now he deposited the pile on the seat between him and the sixth girl. “You just focus on—”

  The engine roared to life almost the instant she put the key in the ignition.

  “Well,” he remarked, “that was fast.” He strapped himself into his seat.

  “What,” asked Bailey, “you thought my motor wouldn’t perk up when I needed it to? What kinda mechanic do you take me for?”

  She was already gunning it south.

  Behind them, they could see the Jaguar and the Suburban converging on the street at the same time. They were still a ways back, but were quickly gaining.

  Weirder still, Bailey no longer saw three men in brown suits. Instead, three werewolves had bounded to the sides of the road and were running toward them as fast as the cars were moving.

  “I guess they were Weres, after all.” She pressed down on the gas.

  Roland was caught up in a spell to secure the girls in the truck bed. She just hoped it would work—and that the cops wouldn’t find them this time. They’d been damn lucky during the last chase.

  Bailey increased her speed, not wanting to get as crazy as she had before, but their pursuers were getting closer. Even the three Weres on foot were closing in. All of them were crazed with the need to recover their quarry—Roland in the case of the witches, and the six girls in the case of the werewolves.

  “Okay,” the wizard began, “that spell should hold them. Just try not to flip the damn truck. Deal?”

  “Deal, obviously,” Bailey snapped.

  “Great.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I think I can also concoct something that will convince all those asshats to stop following us, so we won’t have to pull a repeat of the demolition derby from earlier.”

  Bailey grimaced. “Ha-ha. Great. Get to it, wiz kid.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He waved his hands over his pile of pet rocks as the Tundra skidded onto the highway and then crossed a bridge over the Willamette.

  Her plan was to bear north and drive along the river, then make for the eastern hills she’d almost driven into earlier when they were looking for Oberlin.

  Seeming to perceive her line of thought once again, Roland piped up, “Oh, and don’t go north across the Columbia River. That’d put us in Washington State, and if we get caught, it’ll technically be a multi-state crime spree, which is bad. Might as well keep all your misdeeds in Oregon.”

  “Thanks for the advice.” Behind her, she could see the two hated vehicles keeping pace a hundred or so feet back. The three Weres were still traveling on the road, two on one side, one on the other, knocking aside the occasional astonished pedestrian in their mad dash.

  A motorist up ahead swerved, and Bailey saw the driver staring in the mirror at the wolf-beasts. She turned the steering wheel expertly back and forth, weaving around the stalled car. Both the Jaguar and the Suburban had to brake to avoid crashing into it. Horns honked all around.

  “Ha, ha!” Bailey scoffed. “None of you pieces of shit can out-drive me. You all just bought your rides. I practically built this thing!”

  Roland didn’t respond since he was deep into some arcane process. His eyes actually showed their whites for a moment. Bailey’s heart skipped a beat, and she was about to ask if he was okay when he returned to normal.

  “Now,” he gloated, “let’s see how they like the taste of my little gravity bombs. I enchanted them so they’ll artificially pick up mass at an exponential rate as they travel through the air, so it’ll be like hurling cannonballs at the fuckers.”

  Bailey blinked. “Clever. Go for it.” She pumped the brake as she navigated a sharp curve in the road, veering around a semi and momentarily losing one of the running werewolves.

  Roland opened the back window. The girls in the bed stared at him, and he motioned for them to scoot to the sides. Then he gently chucked a pebble toward Shannon DiGrezza’s beautiful car.

  His aim was a little off, and he’d grabbed one of the smallest stones, so he must have been using it as a test run of the spell. It made a loud whooshing noise and collided heavily with the vehicle’s front end, putting a massive dent in the front bumper and stripping off some of the silver paint.

  The shrieking of the witches was audible even over the noise of the road.

  “Oh, boy.” Roland guffawed. “That was almost worth the rest of the shit we’ve been through today. Now it’s that horrible flame-decaled SUV’s turn.”

  Bailey wanted to watch, but she was kind of busy keeping them ahead of their pursuers while trying not to smash into a girder or a storefront.

  Before he tossed the next rock, which was closer to the size of a golf ball, Roland added another piece of commentary.

  “It just occurred to me that the witches might be scrambling the police from locking onto us. It’s not like all three of them are needed to drive the fucking car, after all, and they’re not complete idiots, so drive however you think is best.”

  “Cool,” she growled, and added another five miles per hour to her speedometer.

  The wizard pitched the next stone.

  This one made a sound like a small mortar as it careened toward the Suburban. It flew high and went straight for the top of the windshield. Dan Oberlin made no effort to dodge; he was probably expecting a spiderweb crack at worst.

  Instead, it shattered the glass and tore the entire top off the SUV.

  “Whoa!” Roland shouted as the vehicle swerved. The Weres within it cursed and waved their claws and fists.

  He then aimed two more stones—one of similar size to the one he’d just thrown and another pebble—toward the Jaguar, but this time, Shannon was ready.

  The rocks blasted toward her, but she reached up with a fuchsia-nailed hand and made a sweeping motion with her arm, deflecting them and sending them toward the sides of the street. The smaller one popped the tire of a parked car. The bigger one crumpled an entire railing around it and then disappeared into a hillside in a puff of kicked-up dirt.

  “Crap,” the wizard muttered. “Well, at least I think we can remove the goddamn werewolves from the equation.”

  “Yeah,” Bailey quipped, “that would help. The Suburban and the assholes on foot. Take ‘em out!”

  The wolf-beasts bounding alongside the road would catch up to them in about ten seconds, Bailey estimated. She just hoped Roland’s throwing arm would be enough to deal with them that quickly.

  The wizard took a deep breath, then rapidly pitched five stones in multiple directions, sinking back into deep concentration as he guided the projectiles’ course through magic.

  The first two struck the front tires of Oberlin’s SUV on either side. The awful vehicle leaped into the air as its tires exploded, and frenzied snarls and howls were faintly audible as the rest of the Suburban sailed forward and then slammed into the pavement, kicking up sparks before spinning off the road. It finally crashed into an embankment.

  Bailey saw it in her mirrors, and she was torn for a moment between triumphant joy and deep worry. The wolves could have been badly injured, maybe even killed. She saw them moving around before they vanished from sight, though, so they probably weren’t dead.

  Dan Oberlin and his cronies didn’t deserve her sympathy, but she didn’t want to celebrate the demise of people she’d known all her life, even if they were the scum of the earth.

  The other three rocks zig-zagged in midair as they homed in on the three Weres on foot. The first one landed directly in front of the one on the right side of the road, kicking up earth and sending him tumbling into a sudden muddy hole.

  The two on the left were less lucky. The stones hit them in the forelegs, shattering the limbs and cau
sing them to collapse, bellowing in pain even as they unwittingly shifted back into human form.

  Roland leaned back and exhaled. “That simplifies matters somewhat.”

  Bailey nodded sharply, then thought of something. Although the Jaguar was still close behind them, eliminating the wolves had bought them a little bit of breathing space—at least, until the witches started hitting them with magic. Bailey kept one hand on the steering wheel as she slid her phone out of her pocket and speed-dialed Gunney.

  The now-damaged silver Jaguar began accelerating, trying to overtake the truck during Bailey’s moment of overconfidence.

  Shannon gripped the wheel with both hands, the bones standing out against her skin, her eyes blazing, the breeze whipping her purplish hair back from her angular face.

  “Dealing with this fuckhead,” she hissed, “is almost more trouble than it’s worth. When have we ever had to work this goddamn hard just to get laid? If this is his idea of foreplay, it’s not working. All he’s doing is pissing me the fuck off! And we can’t even fireball the truck in case he’s damaged in the crash!”

  She pulled a hand from the wheel and smacked the side of her car. In the frenzy of her anger, she almost unleashed a blast of force while she was at it, but stopped herself. Roland had already mangled her ride enough.

  “Yes,” Aida added in a low voice. “He could at least be gentle with us.”

  Several more empowered stones flew at them from the rear of the truck, and Aida reached forward to deflect them, sending them shooting straight up into the sky. They cratered the earth somewhere behind them.

  “Yeah!” Callie almost exploded. She was bleeding in four or five places after being tossed around the warehouse, and her jacket was pretty much ruined. “After this shit, we should be the ones fucking him! Who has a strap-on?”

  If anyone did, Shannon thought, it would be Callie, but she didn’t bother saying so aloud. Her focus was on the stupid redneck pickup truck that managed to stay slightly ahead of her. She could not decide whether she was more furious at Roland for continuing to evade her or at the little slut accompanying him for having lied to her on his behalf.

  Bailey, comfortable now that she was on a fairly straight and low-traffic stretch of road, waited for Gunney to pick up his phone. He answered after three rings.

  “Bailey! You okay?”

  “Yeah,” she answered him, speaking quickly, “and we found the girls. Oberlin’s gang took them and had them in a warehouse here in Portland. We’re bringing ‘em home. Somebody bake a cake and buy a thing of champagne.”

  “I knew you’d go after them,” the old man stated. “And I figured you might even succeed. Listen, the sheriff is already up in Portland. The deputies are watching town while he calls in favors from people he knows in the city.”

  Bailey’s heart quickened. That could be good, but it also might mean that the police were actively seeking them. She had no intention of calling the sheriff, though. That couldn’t end well.

  “Five or ten minutes before you called,” Gunney went on, “they put out an APB and sent out the cavalry to look for that godawful Suburban and that swanky Jaguar. They’re gonna find ‘em and soon if they’re still in Portland. Are they?”

  Bailey cleared her throat. “They are,” she said flatly. She filled him in on what had happened and asked him to let the sheriff know.

  “Good. You need to get the hell away from them, then get out of Portland and come home. The cops will take care of the rest, you hear? I’ll call the sheriff and tell him what you said. Just get everyone back safe.”

  “Well,” she replied, “you’re my boss, so I’ll do what you say. Thanks for the update, Gunney, and make sure you give the new girl a proper lunch break. Over and out.”

  He half-snorted and half-chuckled. “See you soon.”

  Roland looked at her. “I heard that, but bad news. The terrible trio is gaining on us.”

  It was true; the silver car was now only about fifteen feet behind them. Bailey could see the witches staring at her with loathing.

  And sirens were now audible—distant, but getting closer.

  Bailey grunted. “We need to lose their asses right now. Do you think you could—”

  She ran a yellow light as it turned red, and a school bus pulled out in front of her at a point where the road curved as it bore toward a freeway overpass.

  “Oh, shit!” Bailey cried. She stamped on the brake and yanked on the wheel, swerving in time to avoid striking the bus but heading straight for a light post. She jerked the wheel back and they fishtailed, ending up half-on and half-off the road.

  Roland clutched his seat and gritted his teeth, and the little girl between them, as well as the four in bed, screamed. The one in the back seat just covered her head.

  Suddenly they were driving normally again, but they had another problem—Shannon had caught up. She pulled alongside them on the left.

  “Hey!” the sorceress raged. “Pull over and let the inevitable happen, you stupid fucks!”

  Roland pointedly avoided looking at her but scratched his nose with his middle finger.

  “Yeah!” Callie added, once again contributing something classy and useful to the discussion. Aida just pouted at them.

  Shannon honked and pulled farther ahead, trying to cut them off and forcing another car to pull onto the shoulder to avoid her. In the generalized clusterfuck, both vehicles were now driving only thirty miles per hour or so.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” the fuchsia-haired witch shrieked. “You dumb bitch!”

  Bailey shot a hard glance at her. “Watch your language.”

  She jerked the steering wheel to the left.

  Sparks flew as the Tundra smashed into and scraped the Jaguar, forcing it to drive on the shoulder, zigging and zagging as Shannon struggled to keep control. Then Bailey accelerated.

  Roland looked at her bug-eyed. “Your truck,” he marveled.

  “Yeah, yeah, I can fix it later,” she grumbled.

  “Wait…fuck,” the wizard added. “They’re getting ready to throw some shit at us. I think we finally pissed them off enough to make them willing to use obvious magic in public. However…” he glanced around, “I have an idea.”

  The Jaguar started gaining on them again, and Bailey’s spine went cold as she noticed all three of its passengers mouthing strange words in unison and raising their hands. Something crackled in the air.

  Roland picked up the last piece of his rock collection, a jagged fragment about the size of a quarter. “Lean back, please,” he told Bailey.

  She had no idea what he was doing but obeyed, tilting her head and shoulders as far back as she could while maintaining control of the vehicle. Roland pitched the rock straight out the window…

  Only for it to curve in midair and strike not the witches’ car, but a fire hydrant in front of them. Loud pinging sounds split the air as the caps burst off, then a massive jet of foaming white water blasted into the Jaguar’s interior.

  “Noooo!” Shannon screamed, almost hysterical in defeat.

  The artificial geyser stripped paint, killed visibility, and thrust enough kinetic energy against the car to force it to wobble straight into a dumpster, crunching the rest of the front end. The witches spilled out of the vehicle, along with the water that had flooded the interior.

  Watching them in the rearview mirror, Bailey saw them thrashing around and raising their hands to claw at their faces. She didn’t think it was because they were in pain, although the water was spraying pretty damn hard, but because it had completely destroyed their hairstyles, clothing, and makeup.

  It almost looked like their faces were melting.

  Roland lost it, abandoning all self-control as he flailed in his seat, heaving with laughter. “Oh, this is great. I wish I had that on video. That, and you sideswiping her precious car. Hah!”

  Bailey, despite how seriously she’d been taking the whole pursuit, cracked up too. After the hell those three had put them through, it made
her feel quite a bit better.

  The sirens were still getting louder, though. Bailey picked up speed, but now that they no longer had to outrun anyone, she kept it within reason.

  “Hey!” Roland exclaimed out of nowhere. “I was wondering. Back at the barn, you said something about your truck ‘running rich’ when Oberlin first showed up. I forgot ‘til just now. What the hell does that mean?”

  She was so annoyed she almost burst out laughing again. “Goddammit, Roland, now ain’t the fuckin’ time.” She swerved around a taxi that was ambling along—looking for an address, probably.

  Still, almost as soon as the words left her mouth, she found herself answering his question. After all, with so many people trying to kill them in the middle of a car chase, they might not get another chance to talk about trucks.

  “Running rich,” she explained, “is when a vehicle starts burning excessive gasoline. It leads to that godawful stinky pungent gas smell you sometimes encounter on the highways, usually when people aren’t keeping their vehicles properly maintained.”

  “Ohhh,” Roland answered. “Interesting. You learn something new every day. Do you think this thing might be doing that right now? I thought I smelled something a minute ago.”

  She drew breath sharply over her teeth. “Not this lifted pickup truck, city boy. You’re gonna pay for even insinuating that.”

  As he laughed, though, she wondered if he might be correct. She had been driving the Tundra awfully hard lately and hadn’t had much time to check the engine.

  Something tapped the rear window. It was Lauren, who seemed to have assumed leadership of the girls, knocking on it to get their attention.

  Bailey locked eyes with her via the mirror. “Yes, honey?”

  “Are we okay?” the girl asked. “Is it over?”

  “Yes,” Roland said. “For now.”

  Bailey nodded and repeated, “For now. You girls are safe, and we’re headed home.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “He’s dead,” Shannon stated in a tone that might have frozen the sloshing puddles around them. “He’s fucking dead. He is a fucking homicide victim walking, and he doesn’t even realize it. So is his little whore of an alleged girlfriend.”