by Renée Jaggér
But these creatures were even more susceptible to heat and light than the wraiths had been, and with the wizard and werewitch collaborating to surround themselves with arcane fire, the demons’ attack had faltered.
One of them wafted above the heat of the thin blaze, its smoky white form displaying horrible images of fanged jaws and bulging eyes. Bailey raised a hand as if to smack it in the face, producing a red spark of low to moderate intensity. It took enough effort that her hold on the flame-wall nearly faltered, but somehow she maintained it.
The mist-demon, meanwhile, found itself headless as the spark dissipated the mist above its makeshift shoulders. Tumbling backward, it was consumed in the fire.
By now, most of the demons had been corralled on the shore in front of them.
“Hey,” Bailey said, “let’s push them back! Force the fire outward.”
“Good idea,” Roland agreed.
Concentrating, feeling each other’s powers, they moved the flaming barrier forward, destroying the first couple of mist creatures and driving the others into a retreat. A few fled around the sides of the black lake and were lost to the mist in the surrounding woods. Most simply dissolved as soon as they touched the dark waters.
The two mages waited, keeping the blaze burning in case the things came back. They did not.
“Okay,” Roland panted. “That’s that.” He clapped his hands, and the flames died out.
Bailey lowered her arms. For a moment, she’d felt downright vigorous as they started to win, but now, the immense expenditure of so much magic under the dampening conditions of the Other struck her full-force.
“Gods,” she gasped. “I’m dead-fucking-tired.”
She collapsed onto her butt, and Roland sank down beside her, obviously in agreement.
Behind them, Marcus tramped down the slope, stopping about two-thirds of the way down. “Well done,” he commended them. “You worked together, didn’t panic, and maintained good control of your powers. Bailey, you’re still short of the breakthrough we need, but you are moving in the right direction.”
Her breath heaving, she acknowledged him with a motion of her head before she could actually speak. “Thanks,” she muttered.
He smiled slightly. “Now, rest. I’m leaving for a little while. I will return, and then we will resume your instruction. Remember that we have all the time we need.”
“Oh,” Roland quipped, wiping his brow, “I don’t doubt that in the slightest.”
The shaman turned away, then bounded up the hill in great leaps, seeming to fly back up the ridge. Then he vanished into the gnarled forest on the other side of the incline.
Bailey and Roland remained where they were, regaining their strength and going over what had happened in their minds before they picked each other’s brains.
The werewitch broke the silence. “So, that was fun,” she remarked. “Like building a bonfire with my brothers out back, or when we went camping.”
Roland chuckled. “Something like that. Well, I’ve never been camping, but it sounds accurate.”
“Never been camping?” She shook her head. “Boy, I still need to do some work on you, that’s for sure.”
He smiled. “You can work on me however you want.”
She blushed and decided to pretend he hadn’t said that. “Any, uh, new revelations?” she asked. “Like, about how magic works. Last time you were flabbergasted by the circuit thing we did.”
“Hmm.” His eyes went distant. “Not really, though this time we collaborated on a different type of spell, and under duress. It was good practice. We both have a better feel for what we’re doing under the conditions this place imposes.”
Then he frowned. “I’m getting tired of the limitations this shithole imposes, though. I understand his logic, but it will be nice to practice this sort of magic when things are, you know, normal.”
That made sense to her. “Aye.”
Before she could think of anything else to say, he asked if she could share with him in more detail what had happened during her mental battle beside the pool earlier. She sensed that it was partly concern for her, but also intellectual curiosity on his part.
She didn’t want to recall the experience, but she did her best, repeating what she’d told Marcus, but with more detail about the emotions she’d gone through.
“It was…” she reported haltingly, “even worse than it seemed, in some ways. Like, the more I think about it, I was seeing my destruction at my own hands. I was trying to destroy myself in turn. Is that what it’s like when magic gets out of hand?”
The wizard considered her question for a moment. “Sometimes,” he responded, “though in my experience, it’s never been quite that dramatic. I had the benefit of good instruction from a very early age. Not to mention, wizards and witches have a well-established network of protocol and tradition.”
He blinked as though embarrassed. “Not to say werewolves don’t, but it seems like magic isn’t the main focus of your society since so few Weres are born with the gift.”
“Yeah,” she reassured him. “I knew what you meant. Were culture is more about… I don’t know. Well, sticking by your pack and your family, which is good. But also a lot of stupid shit, like girls being expected to marry before they’re twenty-five. Anyway, I have to admit I’m scared.”
Having said that, she looked at the ground and swallowed. “Never thought I’d say that aloud to anyone, except maybe Gunney.”
Roland gave her a warm smile. “It’s okay, Bailey. I’m pretty goddamn scared too at this point. I mean, look at this place! And the Venatori getting involved. There’s a lot of crap going on I never thought I’d have to deal with, but I’m not complaining. Meeting you was worth it.”
Before she knew what she was going to do, Bailey embraced him. She held him tight, and he held her back. She’d been worried for a second that she might kiss him if she looked up, so she forced herself to keep clutching him.
He didn’t object. “Magic is dangerous, yes, but you will not destroy yourself. I can promise you that. You’re too strong for that to happen, and if I can help, I will. Whatever ends up coming at us in the days and weeks to come, we’re going to kick its ass into next year. Or better yet, the next half a century, so we don’t even have to think about it again until we’re septuagenarians.”
Now she did look up at him with a puzzled squint. “The hell?”
“People who are in their seventies,” he explained. “Like how an ‘octogenarian’ is a person in their eighties.”
“Oh.” She released him and sat back, trying not to laugh. “’Octo’ means eight. Right, I get it now. You could have just said ‘until we’re old,’ though. Would’ve been less work.”
He shrugged. “I have a reputation to maintain.”
They got to their feet, having recovered some of their energy, and climbed the slope. They felt that the elevated hillock above the lake was the best place to wait for Marcus. They linked arms as they walked up the narrow path.
Someone was moving around above them.
“Huh,” Bailey commented. “Marcus didn’t take long, did he? Then again, I can’t tell how much time passes in here. Maybe he went to Florida for a few months.”
They crested the top of the ridge.
“Hey!” a voice burst out, shrill with anger. “Get your filthy hands off him, you stupid slut!”
Bailey and Roland stared open-mouthed at the three people they were least eager to see. They were certainly not anyone they had expected to encounter in the Other.
Roland glared. “Hi, Shannon. You were never much of a navigator, but it appears you’re lost. I suggest you go back the way you came and figure out the rest once you’re back in Oregon.”
“Shut up, Roland,” she snapped, leering at him with her uncovered eye. As usual, a fuchsia forelock obscured the other.
“Yeah!” Callie added helpfully.
No one spoke, but Bailey subtly shifted the position of her feet, anticipating that at
any moment, magic—or fists—would be doing the talking.
Chapter Nine
Shannon held up a hand, palm outwards. “Okay, wait,” she said, her words rushed.
Bailey smirked and exchanged glances with Roland.
It wasn’t lost on the witch, and a tremor of fury went through her. “No, goddammit, don’t you dare act all cocky suddenly! We are not afraid of you if that’s what you thought. We just thought maybe you were capable of listening to us for ten seconds instead of acting like a couple of dumb animals.”
Bailey gritted her teeth. “I like dumb animals.”
Roland nudged her. “Yes, Shannon, and Aida, and Callie. We can talk if you’re somehow willing to be reasonable, finally. Like, you’ll be negotiating your return to Seattle and the beginning of a new era in which you leave us the hell alone.”
“Hey!” Callie bellowed. “Shut up! She wasn’t finished speaking.”
Snorting, Bailey turned to Roland. “Okay, this isn’t working. Let’s just waste them.”
“No!” Shannon insisted.
Aida pouted. “We only wanted to warn you of something…because we care.”
Roland crossed his arms. “Another warning. Fine. What is it?”
Swallowing and flexing her purple-clawed hands, Shannon told them, “The Venatori are after you. Both of you, I think. You remember who they are, right? You haven’t gone native in her little hick town, have you? Anyway, they actually approached my car and told us to go home. That’s how crazy they are.”
Bailey, too, crossed her arms. “If you’re still driving the same thing as last time, I’d say you’re the crazy one.”
“We’re not!” Shannon snapped. “And didn’t you hear what I said?”
“Yes,” replied Roland. “We already knew. A little bird told us, et cetera. But thanks, I guess.”
Shannon took a step forward. “I think you owe us a little more gratitude than that, especially since I think you’re lying about this ‘little bird.’ Without us, you’d have no idea. You’d walk straight into—”
Aida suddenly leaped forward into the lull created by Shannon’s distracting speech and launched a fireball at Bailey.
Or at least, she tried. A huge flare of light appeared, and an initial swell of flame, only for it to fizzle into little more than a few sparks and a puff of smoke before it had crossed half the distance between the two women.
Bailey nevertheless fell into a battle stance and bared her teeth. “What the hell? You attacked me after you asked for a truce to talk things over! Fuck you!”
All three witches looked crestfallen as Roland yelled at them. “That’s pretty goddamn low. And even if you three remember how to get here, it’s clearly been a long time since you’ve tried to use magic here, hasn’t it? Bit shorter for us.”
Then, while their would-be attackers panicked, it was Bailey and Roland who pressed the attack.
The wizard summoned a cloud of acid rain—nothing massive, just enough to get their attention—while Bailey moved in, startling them into thinking she was going to launch a physical assault, only for her to summon clumps of mud from the earth and pelt them about the legs and midsection.
Screaming in unison, the witches were about to simply cut and run. Then Shannon grabbed the arms of her accomplices and some kind of arcane communion seemed to pass between them. They stood their ground, refocusing while Shannon used a weak magic shield to block Roland’s shower of acid.
Crap, Bailey thought. Just when I thought we’d finally get to curb-stomp these hos once and for all and be done with it.
She decided she would go for a physical attack after all.
A faint light was playing about the eyes and heads of the trio; they must have been linking their powers. Perhaps that was something female witches knew how to do when acting as a coven that Roland had never even tried with anyone until he’d met Bailey.
The werewitch moved toward Aida—she was the one who’d just tried to vaporize her, after all—intending to kick her down the hill, hoping it would break up whatever combined spell they were casting. She lunged, ignoring how tired she was, and her foot lashed out with the weight of her body behind it.
It struck something solid yet invisible in midair.
“Fuck!” she exclaimed, the impact rattling the bones of her leg and throwing her off-balance. She rolled back toward the wizard to keep from tumbling down the hill.
Roland, for his part, was trying to condense his acid cloud into a solid opaque vapor, trapping the witches and blocking their sight, but they kept dispersing it in places. That led to a bizarre struggle as green mist coalesced, then dissipated, becoming lost amidst the benign white mist of the Other.
Bailey, not knowing what else to do, hurled a lightning bolt at the cluster of sorceresses. It pierced their shield, but moved slowly, giving Shannon time to seize it.
“Oh, that was cute,” she jeered. “And you’re still trying to copy me. Lightning is my thing.”
Shannon hurled it back.
The bolt, now glowing fuchsia instead of red, struck Bailey’s outspread hands, and she barely managed to redirect it into the woods off to the side, where it destroyed a black tree and scattered sparks, smoke, and flame across the bog. The electricity seemed weaker than it had during their battle with the witches in Seattle, but it was strong enough to cause collateral damage.
Here, though, there were no other people around to get hurt and no bystanders who might see. All bets were off.
Bailey let out a ragged sigh. “Nothing’s ever easy.” She reared back to strike again.
* * *
Marcus spread his hands, a gesture that tended to put people at ease, even as he kept his face serious but unthreatening. To his left, the sun had just sunk behind the row of pines upon the hill.
“You see,” he went on, “although my goal was for her to be an asset to us—all of us—I worry that she might be a loose cannon, after all. A potential danger to the entire Were community in the Pacific Northwest.”
His audience consisted of about fourteen Weres, presided over by a broad-shouldered and grizzle-headed old man. This was the Juniper Pack, longtime inhabitants of an obscure mountain hollow a ways south of the Hearth Valley.
Marcus had recently learned this particular pack had a shaman. The man didn’t advertise his services or abilities. If he had, he’d probably already be dead by now. But as it was, it was better for him to be alive.
The old shaman looked at Marcus. “You’ve interrupted us at an important time,” he pointed out in a wheezy voice that belied his powerful appearance. “So we will do you the courtesy of assuming you’ve come to us with something even more important. Tell us more about the girl’s abilities. If she’s a threat, we should know what we face.”
Marcus nodded.
The Junipers, or at least their pack’s warrior-types, had been in the midst of a ceremony whereby the old shaman selected one to become his apprentice and successor. Their alpha needed guidance, and the old man named Estus was past retirement age for the position.
In a way, it was fortuitous. They’d gathered in this scrubby little high-altitude grove to discuss a matter that was vital to their pack’s future. Thus, they were already mentally receptive to any information about threats to that future.
“Yes,” intoned Marcus, “you deserve to hear the whole story. She’s a werewitch, as you might have guessed—not only a rare case of a female demonstrating the potential to be a shaman, but her magical abilities are on par with those of a human sorcerer. She does not yet have full command of her powers, but she is reckless and quick to anger. Given to tantrums and wild expulsions of power, exactly the sort of thing we don’t want to happen in a heated moment. I’ve done all I can to teach and restrain her.”
On he spoke in this vein, and the Junipers all listened with growing concern. He had them now. They would do as he suggested.
The idea, of course, was to convince them—without being too obvious about it—that Bailey was hazard
ous enough to warrant a full-fledged attack. A preemptive strike, as it were. Such things were often done in Were society, especially in the backwoods areas that still held to the savage old ways.
Estus rubbed his scruffy silver beard. “I see. Tell us, though, Marcus…do you think she’s coming our way? The Hearth Valley is over the mountains a ways, although it’s true that a rogue shaman or witch can disrupt things a long ways beyond their hometown.”
Marcus pretended to be taken aback by the question. “I know not, to be sure. But she has spoken of a desire to go south. To get away from Greenhearth, she said, and perhaps find a new home in one of the southern hollows, where few people know her, and opportunities are ripe.”
Half the young bucks behind the old shaman bristled at this. Marcus had stopped just barely short of telling them that Bailey intended to challenge them or their pack alpha, and that she regarded their pack as a potential conquest.
Estus furrowed his thick brow, scowling toward the darkening sky. “If that is true, then yes, we could have a great disturbance on our hands. The thing to do, I think, is to confront her as soon as possible. Not with violence, but with words—a warning that our pack will not have its solidarity broken up by some interloper who lives along a highway to Portland.”
The other Weres laughed at the remark. Their settlement was so remote as to make Greenhearth look like a cosmopolitan city by comparison. It was a point of pride for some lycanthropes not to engage with the modern world any more than necessary.
“That,” said Marcus, “is probably the best thing we can do.”
The other shaman nodded. “Where is she now, then? We can go to the Hearth Valley if we have to, but it’s not our territory. The local Weres might think we’ve come to challenge them, and if we tell them the truth—that we’re only there for Bailey—some might turn out to be friends of hers and warn her about us in advance. It might be better to confront her when she’s on neutral ground.”