The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  During the brief inspection, two of the girls turned their eyes toward them. They seemed aware of the pair’s presence but didn’t react; their gazes were dull. Sedated, Bailey concluded.

  “Okay,” the Seattleite whispered, “I should be able to heat up the bars enough to bend them aside in the rear here and then slip the girls out one at a time. It will only take a couple minutes. You can lead them back to the door.”

  “Sure thing,” Bailey agreed.

  Roland licked his lips and rubbed his forefingers together, almost the way a person might rub two sticks to start a fire. A soft red glow appeared on his hands, and Bailey suddenly worried that their foes might see it. Nothing happened, though.

  The wizard then gripped two adjacent bars, holding onto them to transfer the magical heat energy and pulling in opposite directions as they began to glow. The metal rods softened and moved gradually apart. One of the girls retracted her foot to avoid being burned. They weren’t totally insensate, then.

  After Roland removed his hands, the bars cooled and darkened. He waited for a moment and then tapped the metal to ensure it wasn’t hot enough to cause harm. He also checked the size of the gap. Should be big enough for teenagers to squeeze through.

  He reached through the bars, grabbed the nearest girl’s ankle—fortunately they weren’t zip-tied like the new arrivals—and pulled her toward the gap with one hand. With the other, he raised a finger to his lips to remind her to be quiet. She didn’t protest.

  As he and Bailey moved the girl out, the negotiations up front continued.

  “…that one. She’s supposedly a slut at the high school, which ought to increase—”

  “No,” one of the businessmen interrupted, “that will decrease her value. You have to consider the traditional values some people hold.”

  Trying to ignore them, Bailey helped the first prisoner crawl toward the back door. It wasn’t hard since the girl was waking up from her drugged stupor and seemed to grasp what was going on.

  She and Roland emptied the first cage within the next couple of minutes. They had the first three girls wait by the back door in silence, telling them they could flee if things went south, but otherwise, to wait for their rescuers to escort them.

  The wizard and the werewolf returned to the cage and helped the last girl out. She was the most out of it of the four, and they pretty much had to carry her.

  Now, finally, they all stood by the door. The South Cliffs and their customers hadn’t noticed anything amiss yet. Roland slung the fourth girl over his shoulder and stepped quickly out the door as Bailey urged the other three behind him.

  “Damn,” the wizard commented, “I almost can’t believe that worked.”

  They hustled back the way they’d come, around the pier-facing sides of the first two warehouses before running across the street to Bailey’s truck in the opposite lot. Roland laid the semi-conscious girl in the cab while the other three piled into the truck bed and laid down flat.

  One of them, a skinny freckle-faced redhead, gestured at the road with her head and then looked at the pair with intense eyes.

  “Yes,” Bailey told her, “we’re going to get you out of here, but not just yet. We have to go back for the others. Those two are from my hometown. Can’t just leave them. We’ll be back in a jiffy. Just lie here quietly and wait, okay?”

  The girl clearly didn’t like the idea, and for a moment, it looked like she might cry.

  Roland stepped in. “Everything will be all right. We’ll just be a minute. They don’t even know we sprung the four of you yet.”

  He and Bailey scuttled back to the warehouse, moving as fast as they could at first, then slowing to keep the noise down as they approached the small rear door again.

  Roland sighed as they crawled back into the dim structure. “This is going to be harder, you realize,” he pointed out. “We’ll have to creep across a semi-well-lit area in the middle of the floor to reach the cage, or else climb over a bunch of shelving that will probably collapse as soon as we touch it.”

  “Hell or high water,” Bailey replied, “we’re bringing those girls home.”

  “Agreed,” said the wizard. “Just don’t be shocked if things start to—”

  Just then, with them about to try to cross the middle space, Roland stopped. Bailey glanced at him and saw him clutch his pants pocket.

  “Oh, shit!” she lamented very quietly.

  The warehouse’s front door, along with the entire front wall, exploded. It didn’t merely blast apart; a fireball grew out of a bright purple flash before changing to normal orange flames, which licked around the ragged edges of the blast hole.

  The South Cliffs and the three guys in suits had all staggered back. Chins had fallen on his ass, and it looked like one of the businessmen was bleeding from a cut on his forearm where a flying piece of debris had snagged him. Even Bailey and Roland, far from the entrance, had felt the ripple of force and the wave of heat.

  Bailey gawked for a second, even though she knew she shouldn’t. “Have to admit,” she mumbled, “they know how to make a good entrance.”

  “True,” Roland acceded.

  Three figures stomped in through the smoke, ignoring the shattered remains of the door beneath their feet.

  “All right,” Shannon DiGrezza demanded, not bothering to use her silky voice, just leaping straight to the shrill, jagged one, “where the fuck is Roland? We know he’s here!”

  “The hell?” one of the werewolves shot back, spittle flying from his mouth in agitated confusion.

  One of the three men in suits—he seemed to be their leader—stepped forward. “We never heard of nobody named Roland. Who the hell are you?”

  “Bullshit!” Callie McCluskey yelled, jumping forward a step and extending a finger. “His stupid little wannabe-girlfriend just tattled on him. He’s here!”

  Aida Nassirian raised her purse from hip-level to stomach-level. “It is okay,” she cooed. “We won’t hurt him. Much.”

  The head suit jerked, almost as if he’d been slapped. “Did you bitches just threaten me? Do you have any idea who we are? You just busted into the wrong fucking warehouse!”

  He reached into his jacket, and in a flash, produced a big semiautomatic pistol. One of his companions pulled out a similar gun, and the other whipped out a sawed-off shotgun.

  During the confrontation, the pair of rescuers had scampered to the back of the other cage. Roland was already melting through the bars.

  “Wooo,” he almost whistled. “This is bad. We need to get the hell out of here ASAP.” He yanked on the metal rods, bending them aside as Lauren and Emma, having been jolted to attention by the explosion, tried not to panic.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” said Bailey. She wriggled forward to grab Lauren’s shoulders and the wizard yanked on the hem of her pants. Roland pulled her out through the bars, which were still almost warm enough to burn and just barely warped enough for the girl to squeeze through.

  As they started to repeat the process for Emma, the deafening cracks of gunshots in an enclosed space split the air, and there was another purple flash. Between it all, Bailey heard the familiar bestial growling of Weres who had just shifted form.

  Lauren screamed behind the tape, but the gunshots drowned out the sound. Bailey sprang to her feet to embrace the girl and drag her behind a crate. Roland appeared with Emma a couple of seconds later, and they got the zip-ties off their ankles and the duct tape off their mouths.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Bailey saw one of Oberlin’s boys—Gangly, she was pretty sure—in wolf form, light brown fur bristling as foaming drool trailed from his fangs. A silvery-fuchsia orb of light came toward him and he narrowly leapt clear of it as it crashed into the wall, sending a sonic pulse across half the warehouse and warping and cracking the wood and metal and plaster.

  Bailey’s head snapped toward Roland and she whispered, “We need to get them out of here. At least back to the truck, while I—or we—put a stop to this fuckery.”
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  “Agreed,” Roland replied. Bailey handed Lauren to him, and he led the girls toward the door.

  She followed a few steps behind, trying to ignore the gunshots, curses, snarls, crackles, and whooshes. Shannon’s increasingly unhinged and horrifying screams of frustration were the worst noises of all, though.

  Another violet flash of light, and a shapeshifted werewolf—small but tubby, probably Chins—flew between the now-empty cages, smashing through a decrepit shelving unit and scattering its pieces.

  “Crap!” Bailey exclaimed. She raised her arms to keep the debris from hitting Roland and the girls.

  The werewolf sprang to his feet. Rather than spin toward the witches, though, he looked at Bailey.

  The lupine growl that emerged from his thick, meaty throat somehow formed into a parody of human speech.

  “Youuuu,” he grated.

  That was it. Bailey was no longer the slightest bit interested in sneaking out and running away without a fight. She felt like she’d been struck by a bolt of lightning, only for it to invigorate her instead of killing her.

  “Fuckin’ A, it’s me!” she roared. She charged forward, and her fist crashed into the wolf’s snout. He yelped and fell back, although his claws were already lashing toward her, forcing her to pivot to the side. Then she tackled him into the pile of broken materials.

  “Hey!” a male voice bellowed from somewhere up front. “What the hell is going on back there! Check it out!”

  “What?” Shannon howled. “He must be back there! Callie, stop them!”

  Roland had by now reached the door and opened it. He was about ready to throw up, not only from the general violence, but also because Bailey had let herself get drawn into it. He needed to get the girls to safety posthaste and then save her.

  He looked the teens in the eyes. “Go to our truck,” he instructed them. “It’s a black pickup—lifted—parked across the street that way. The other girls are already there, and they’ll help you. We’ll be out soon, I promise!”

  Nodding, Lauren and Emma darted out the door. Unwisely, they moved in a straight line rather than ducking behind the other warehouses, but at least they’d reach the Tundra sooner.

  Roland slammed the door and spun back toward the melee.

  The witches and the other werewolves had interfered with each other’s efforts to check the back of the warehouse, so there was that.

  Bailey, meanwhile, was wrestling a fat wolf-creature and slowly losing, although it impressed the shit out of him that she was putting up a good fight against such a monster. Even in human form, she was one hell of a Were.

  “All right,” he ground out, pulling his belt free of his pants. “Looks like I need to teach this prick the same lesson all over again.”

  * * *

  The two girls ran. They were trying not to panic, but were confused and terrified. They understood on some primal level that this was the kind of situation in which there were good people who wanted to help them. If they did what they were told, they might have a chance.

  They didn’t know who the handsome blond man was, but he’d been with Bailey, so he must have been on their side.

  Then again, Lauren Heuerman had grown up believing that all Weres were on the same side. Despite the old rivalries between the different packs, there was a sense that they were all family in a way. She’d assumed that if anyone hurt her, it would be a human.

  But no, a group of Weres from Greenhearth had snatched her from the side of the road as she walked home—the South Cliffs. Nobody liked them much, but she’d never thought they would…

  “There!” Emma cried out. “The black truck.”

  They picked up their pace, briefly checking the road for traffic before they sprinted across it. Three teenage girls—Weres, all of them—suddenly sat up in the truck’s open bed.

  “Hey!” one of them called. “It’s the new ones. Over here!”

  As they practically jumped into the truck, Lauren cast a glance over her shoulder toward the warehouse, where a battle had broken out.

  Smoke, screams, crackling explosions, and flashes of light erupted from the blown-apart front of the building. From time to time, a dark figure streaked past what little of the opening she could see. Werewolves growled, and the three strange and terrifying women who’d burst in kept shouting in weird voices that reminded her of the cawing of crows. She shuddered.

  “Get in!” one of the girls urged.

  Lauren ran to the truck, then jumped and grabbed the bed rail. The others seized her arms and shirt and helped her in.

  Once she was safely amongst them, she decided to report what the blond man had said. “They’re coming.” She rubbed her eyes; her head still felt woozy from whatever Dan Oberlin had shot her full of. “They just have to, uh, take care of something first.”

  She swallowed, and on the faces of the other five teenagers, she could clearly read the question that was in her own mind.

  Could even Bailey handle something like this?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Roland’s belt lashed out, moving faster than even the werewolf’s eye could follow, snapping at angles nature should not have allowed. Even in wolf form, his enemy still had an interesting collection of chins.

  The leather strap raked across them, drawing blood from his lips, loosening a fang, and striking his wet canine nose for good measure. He yelped and tried to spring away, but Bailey had looped her arms under his front legs and was holding him firm.

  “Good shot,” she complimented the wizard. “Now kick him really hard in the balls or the stomach or something.”

  “Comin’ right up,” he assured her. He stepped forward and his foot flashed out, at first seeming to go high for the abdomen. When the werewolf raised his leg to block, the foot shot lower and connected with Chins’ fur-covered groin.

  The werewolf’s growl of rage turned into a low, sickening groan.

  “Nice,” said Bailey. She retracted her arms, then launched a fist into the side of the beast’s head, splitting open the skin of her knuckles but driving his skull into another of the half-collapsed shelves. It made a satisfying thunk, and Chins collapsed to the floor, unconscious.

  They moved toward each other, laughing, but there was no time.

  Any victory celebration would have been short-lived anyway since squeaking sneakers were moving their way. They pivoted toward the sound.

  Caldoria had managed to break through the line of werewolves to investigate what was going on in the rear of the building. The short blonde girl stopped where she was the instant she saw Roland. Her eyes bulged, and her mouth stretched open.

  “No, you don’t,” the wizard snapped and made a throwing motion at her face.

  Bailey saw a faint distortion in the air but no object. Nonetheless, the witch’s head reared back, and she made a gulping, choking noise as though something was stuck in her mouth.

  “Hah!” Bailey laughed and balled up her fists. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

  She charged.

  Roland started. “Wait! No!”

  Unfortunately, Callie was only using one hand to grip her throat as she tried to overcome the spell. With the other, she made a backhanded motion toward Bailey. A flash of light the same shade of blue as the witch’s jacket winked out of the darkness and instantly solidified, smacking Bailey aside as surely as if she’d run into a pane of double-thick glass.

  “Oof!” she grunted as she toppled, hitting the floor hard and rolling into the wall.

  Roland stepped in to engage the witch before she could do any more harm. By now, Callie had managed to spit out the invisible object choking her, but Roland still had the advantage.

  He raised his arms sharply upward, palms facing toward him, fingers straight up, and a portion of the concrete floor burst out of its place beneath the witch’s feet. Bailey, groaning and climbing to her knees, watched with a mixture of fascination and glee.

  The dislodged section of floor catapulted the loudmouthed fair-haired wom
an into the air. She screamed and her limbs flailed, but one of her hands pointed straight at Roland.

  “Shiiiiit,” he exclaimed as he began to slide backward on his heels as though someone were pushing him. He nonetheless swiped his arm toward the airborne witch and hit her with another invisible wave of force.

  Callie, raving and sputtering, was knocked out of her initial trajectory and plummeted earthwards at an angle, crashing into both Dan Oberlin and one of the brown-suited guys, who had caught up with her. They sprawled to the floor, even as they struggled against Shannon’s and Aida’s magic.

  Despite the ongoing fight, Bailey cracked up. Then she remembered Roland.

  She jumped to her feet, gritting her teeth in pain since Caldoria’s spell had banged her up pretty good. Then she bolted for Roland, who was trying to undo the spell that had him speeding toward the metal shelves against the back wall of the warehouse.

  Focusing on his feet, he managed to slow himself down, but he couldn’t stop. It also seemed like his feet were fixed to the floor; he could not simply step out of the spell or jump to the side.

  The slowdown was all the time Bailey needed. She bolted toward him, then past and behind him, wrapping her hands around his waist and trying to heave him toward the back door.

  “Bailey!” the wizard gulped. “That won’t work. I’m locked into—Fuck!”

  She discovered that the hard way as he jerked her off her feet and carried them both toward the wall. At least the extra weight slowed him down to walking speed.

  He gestured wildly. “I’ve almost got it!”

  “I sure hope so!” she exclaimed, trying to regain her footing even as she dragged on him to further reduce his speed.

  Suddenly, he stopped. Bailey, pulling on him, stumbled back and almost fell again, but managed to brace herself against a crate. Then both of them stood, frozen except for the labored motions of their breathing.

  Bailey spoke first. “Okay, then. Let’s book it.”

  Callie’s obnoxious voice filled the entire structure. “Roland’s back there! That little bitch is still with him! She tricked us!”