The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  The smell of the American sorceresses was stronger down here. Lavonne did not sense the presence of anyone else, meaning Bailey and Roland were unlikely to be in the immediate vicinity. However, they might be useful for pointing the Venatori in the right direction.

  There was something else, too. They seemed bereft of one of their number.

  Lavonne and her cohorts found them hiding in a circle of tree stumps near a large mass of boulders and low rocky hillocks. Both of them—the reddish-purple-haired one who was clearly the leader, and the short fair-haired one. The tall, olive-skinned brunette was nowhere to be seen.

  “You,” Lavonne said.

  Shannon snapped to attention. She and Callie were nearly unconscious from fatigue. In a panic, they’d fled from the dark lake, too weak to open a portal home. They had needed a place to rest for a while until that magic could be summoned.

  “Oh, crap,” Shannon gasped. Callie just stared.

  Lavonne smiled and gestured for them to stand. They did, but not through their own efforts. Magical forces seized them and bore them to their feet, like jerky puppets trying to obey gravity forced upright by pulling their strings.

  “We warned you,” Lavonne began, “to abandon your pursuit of the wizard and the werewitch. Obviously, you did not, but that has been fortuitous since you’ve led us to them. Well done.”

  The girls looked terrified—Shannon also looked furious—but neither spoke, yet.

  The witch to Lavonne’s left spoke. “Tell us where they are, or we will make you exceedingly sorry.”

  The one to the right joined in. “We will have the information from you one way or another. This is your chance to give it to us the easy way.”

  Shannon bowed her head, looking for a moment like she was about to cooperate. Then her arm shot up and a crackling bolt of magenta lightning leaped toward Lavonne.

  The older witch flicked a finger, and the bolt somehow twisted back on itself, striking its caster in the stomach.

  “Aw, fuck!” Shannon cried, dropping to her knees and convulsing in pain as her muscles seized up and her hair smoked, the ends of it burning off.

  Callie’s eyes bulged in horror.

  “You,” said Lavonne. “You look more intelligent than your friend. Tell us where Bailey is. Now.”

  The blonde girl stammered, her hands shaking. “Uh, I, ah, I don’t know. Somewhere back, um, that way? I have no—”

  Lavonne made a pinching motion, and an invisible force seized a handful of Callie’s hair and ripped it out of her skull by the roots.

  “Oh, God! Shit! What the goddamn hell?” The young woman collapsed, clutching the bloody patch on the side of her head.

  Again, the Venatori group leader flashed them a tight, professional smile. “There is more where that came from. Much, much more. We are patient when we must be, but we do not like having our time wasted. Cooperate now—or suffer endlessly.”

  The Americans exchanged quick looks. Lavonne judged it mostly desperation, but there might have been resolve as well. Most likely, they were agreeing to give in for now and then try some other stupid, useless plan later.

  Shannon turned to the Venatori, her eyes blazing. “Go fuck yourselves. If you’re so great and mighty, find them yourself. We’re under no obligation to help you.”

  Lavonne stared at them, galled, but almost impressed. She wondered if the girls were trying to protect Bailey and Roland (or at least Roland), or if, more likely, they just wanted to stop the Europeans from claiming the wizard.

  The three leather-clad witches looked around. The one on the right noticed something and pointed it out to her leader.

  “Ah,” Lavonne remarked. “Over there, just beyond that boulder,” she pointed, “is a cave where some other sorceress, perhaps, imprisoned a slew of utterly horrid creatures. Let us go have a look. All of us.”

  She made a small gesture with her hand, and Shannon and Callie rose into awkward positions, floating alongside the Venatori as they casually strolled toward the nearby hill. Lavonne ignored the girls’ crude, moronic curses and threats.

  After a moment, the mouth of the cave hove into sight. There was a faint and shimmering white curtain before it. It was mostly transparent, though, and behind it, they all could see a roiling mass of…things.

  Much like the mist-demons they were, but somehow worse. They seemed formed less of fog than of foul subterranean vapors, and their forms were almost unrecognizable, yet hideously nightmarish. Faintly, from behind the barrier, the witches heard keening cries of unnatural hunger.

  The Venatori stopped, and Lavonne floated the two younger witches a few paces ahead, allowing them to hover about eight feet in front of the cave opening. They both stared at what lay beyond the arcane curtain.

  “Now,” said Lavonne, “tell us where we might find the wizard and the werewitch. They are ours. This is a fact you must acknowledge. Abandon any notion that you will somehow triumph over us. You can see that such an idea is pure nonsense. We are asking you for the last time. Do not squander your chance.”

  Shannon’s mouth opened and closed as abject terror overwhelmed her colossal ego. Callie, on the other hand, still pawing at the maimed portion of her scalp, flashed angry eyes at her tormentors.

  “Um, how about no?” she spat. “At this point, I hope that Roland melts your asses into—”

  Lavonne sheared open the magical barrier with one hand and cast the blonde girl into the cave with the other.

  She screamed as she landed hard on the stone within, the shimmering white barrier closing behind her as the unspeakable entities closed in. The remaining four women watched as the writhing creatures blocked the girl off from sight, her screams piercing the air, then fading as if she were being taken far away. Finally, there was silence.

  Shannon burst into tears. Her narcissistic façade had cracked beyond any hope of maintenance. She broke down, robbed of anything but self-preservation.

  “I’ll tell you,” she sobbed. “Don’t kill me. Please. I can’t die in here. No one would know what happened to me. I-I’ll cooperate, okay? Just don’t.”

  “Where?” Lavonne insisted. “Where are they?”

  Shannon told them.

  “That was, uh, a while ago,” she said. “Not very long. It’s hard to judge time in here, okay? But they were exhausted. They’re probably still there. Please, let me go. You can have them. Just…”

  Lavonne snapped her fingers, and Shannon fell from her midair hover to the ground, grunting and sprawling when she collided with the rock. Her face contorted with pain, and her wet eyes squeezed shut.

  The fuchsia-haired sorceress dragged herself to her knees. When she opened her eyes, a doorway of deep purple light glimmered almost directly in front of her.

  Lavonne tittered. “You are free to go. Free to go far, far away from us and our business.”

  Shannon scrambled on hands and knees into the portal. Once she vanished beyond it and was safely back in the mortal world, Lavonne dispelled the doorway, confident that even Shannon DiGrezza would not be stupid enough to attempt to come back into the Other anytime soon.

  The three Venatori turned around, staring back the way they’d come and beyond—toward the Pool of Dark Reflections.

  * * *

  Bailey and Roland sat together, leaning against one another, unspeaking for the moment. They were no longer atop the raised plane near the lake. They had descended the slope and now sat on the shore before the pool.

  It made no sense. The black water had killed Aida and nearly killed them, but there were rules in the Other, and they were beginning to make sense.

  The pool, whatever its true nature, only spawned the mist creatures when too much magic was channeled nearby. Smaller, subtler acts of sorcery only resulted in strange visions, like Bailey’s duel against her own reflection.

  And right now, neither of them felt like using any magic at all.

  “Hey,” the girl said. “This occurred to me last time we were in here, but I don’t t
hink we discussed it.”

  Roland raised his eyebrows. “What?”

  “All this time,” she elaborated, “we’ve been in here, we haven’t had to eat or drink or even pee. Makes me wonder what else is different. Hell, did I ask about that before?”

  The wizard shrugged. “I can’t remember; so much has happened lately. But yes, it does seem like our biology isn’t functioning the way it would back on Earth. It’s strange, because we’ve been sweating from the exertion, so you’d think we’d need to drink water to replenish the moisture. But I don’t feel thirsty at all.”

  “Me neither.” Actually, having said that, she found herself picturing a nice glass of ice water. Sounded good right about now. Not necessary, but she wouldn’t have minded one.

  She banished the thought. If they didn’t need to drink, dwelling on beverages was nothing more than a distraction.

  “So,” she went on, “do you think there’s something along those lines that Marcus means for us to figure out, too? Like, we haven’t slept, either, but I’m pretty sure we’ve been here now for days. Could be.”

  “That, too,” said Roland, “is hard to say. Based on what I read and heard about the Other when I was younger, there was a vague consensus that the laws of nature were more like guidelines, and that the human experience within the place was highly subjective. In other words, it’s different for everyone. But I wonder, how could it be personal when both of us are experiencing the same thing right now?”

  Neither of them could answer that one.

  Bailey gave it a shot, regardless. “Maybe, since each of us is part of the other’s perception, as long as we’re together, we’re, like, collaborating to create the experience. Right now it’s our reality, but if it was just me, it’d be my reality. Something like that.”

  “That could be,” Roland acceded. “Again, even though I’m awesome, I’m not an expert on this place or its inner workings.”

  “Eh,” Bailey countered, “I don’t know about awesome. You’re pretty good, at least.”

  He sighed. “Gosh, thanks. Seriously, though, you might be on to something. And it’s odd that this lake has drawn us back to sit by it, even though…ugh, it’s not a nice place.”

  She could tell he was thinking about Aida. Bailey still didn’t know the whole backstory of what had gone on between him and those three witches, but he’d known them personally in some capacity before Bailey had ever met him. And now she was gone—probably dead, or worse than dead.

  He snapped out of it, though. “What you said makes me wonder if the mere presence of another person alters the Other’s reality. If so, what would happen if we tried channeling next to the water here, like your vision earlier? Would it be different if you had me around?”

  Bailey started. She had no desire to go through that again, but the wizard had made a good point. And Marcus had, she recalled, had made sure to isolate her before the experience.

  “Shit,” she breathed. “I think you’re onto something too. I just, well, I worry that that might make it worse. Like, we might hallucinate that the other is god-knows-what and then try to kill each other.”

  Frowning, Roland rubbed his chin. “It’s one of the many risks we incur by being here, but Marcus isn’t back yet, and I feel like we still have more to accomplish. If all else fails, I can try to open a portal back to Greenhearth, but I’ve never done that before, so there would be significant risks. Let’s try the pool again and see what happens.”

  Bailey took a deep breath. “Okay, but if I end up wringing your neck, it’s your fault.”

  He scratched his nose. “Deal.”

  Holding hands, shoulders touching as they sat, they turned their gazes toward the sable water and concentrated on magic, trying to draw their powers slowly and deliberately through the pool.

  It didn’t take long.

  Bailey suddenly felt as though she were sitting there alone. She couldn’t feel Roland against her side or his hand in hers, nor could she see him out of the corner of her eye. The entire universe seemed to have shrunk to her and the black pool.

  Then the surface bubbled and a form rose out of it. She tensed up, the déjà vu of a nightmare repeating itself almost making her sick. At the same time, she’d defeated the doppelganger the first time. She could do it again if she had to.

  But this time, everything was different.

  The dark reflection of herself, the evil doppelganger-Bailey, was far less frightening and seemed weaker. It hesitated to attack her; cringed, really.

  And then Bailey lost it. She couldn’t stand herself being that weak, so she attacked it.

  The doppelganger tried to fight back, alternately raging and pleading, much the way Shannon was fond of doing. Surging anger compelled Bailey to fight even harder, to totally dominate this pathetic creature and stamp it out of existence, to kill and crush and destroy.

  The reflection reeled under the girl’s assault, a mixture of blasts of magic and mundane physical thrashing. The fight became a massacre, a one-sided act of violence on Bailey’s part—her revenge for the tougher fight earlier.

  Is this what I was so afraid of? she mused, laughing at the notion. Given her strength and power, there was no reason to fear. No, others should fear her.

  The doppelganger, badly burned and beaten, stumbled to its knees, and Bailey punched it in the face. She then jumped on top of it, stomping it into the ground, and it was gone. She’d won. She’d removed the wretched creature from reality.

  The world spun, and her vision seemed to perceive different sights, far from the pool. She saw herself as the pack alpha to end all alphas, the ultimate badass conqueror before whom all fell to their knees. She saw bloodshed and heard screams caused by her.

  She saw herself doing whatever the hell she wanted, when she wanted, with no one strong enough to oppose her. She laughed and jeered and bared her teeth in savage grins of triumph, heedless of the effects on the rest of the world.

  Could she really leave responsibility behind? Was it possible to grow so powerful that the rules and standards of basic decency no longer applied?

  She saw herself answering that question with a resounding yes, and thrilled to say so, tearing her way through a world that could not resist her.

  She saw her town destroyed and in flames. She saw her brothers and Roland struck down, dead or dying, and other pitiful humans wracked with pain and fear. Her body lay twisted and broken in the center of the hazy scene of carnage, and above it, beings of incredible power—greater even than hers—duked it out for supremacy, as though her actions had convinced the gods to descend from on high.

  “No,” she gasped.

  She saw herself, crying with the anguish of abject guilt for having the power to stop all the horror but choosing not to. And then she saw nothing, the world fading to black.

  * * *

  Roland struggled. Every move he tried to make, the weight of his power dragged him down. It was like possessing a hammer large enough to smash anything in the world to bits but barely being able to lift it.

  Figures were advancing. He knew and yet did not know who and what they were. Their faces were obscured and their identities were beyond his perception, but minor details like that didn’t seem to matter.

  He knew that whoever they were, they had arrived to punish him for sticking his head up too high. They were the people he had always known would come after him—the monsters who punished naughty children.

  He tried to summon his powers—his vast, oh-so-special arcane potential—and found it unavailable. The years he had pretended to be weaker and more average than he was had compressed into a ball and chain that left him all but defenseless.

  He wasn’t allowed to use his powers. It would draw too much attention, and someone might get hurt. People would envy and resent him. Best to just shove it down into a deep dark hole, downplay its existence, throw a rug over the trapdoor where it was hidden.

  Now they were coming, and there was nothing he could do to stop them.


  “Goddammit,” he moaned. “You all lied to me. I’m useless. Look at me. I can’t do anything.”

  Mist-demons dragged Aida, whom he’d known, albeit only as an acquaintance, for years, past him to her doom. He couldn’t stop it, but already that faded as he saw Bailey lying helplessly on the ground before him, reaching up for help, as they closed in.

  By now, the advancing figures were somewhat clearer. They were the Venatori—that much he knew—but they were more than that. They were everyone who’d ever warned him about what would happen if he rocked the boat. They were the judgment of the entire ancient society of witches and wizards.

  They were coming to kill both him and Bailey.

  A purplish-magenta blast—no particular element, just raw magical plasma—seared past him, singeing the hairs on the side of his head. Then other such bursts shot toward him and toward the powerless form of the girl at his feet.

  Struggling to move his limbs, he barely managed to defend them both, deflecting the attacks from Bailey and absorbing the ones thrown at him. He retaliated in kind, hurling bolts of green magic at his adversaries, who now seemed to number in the hundreds and had surrounded them on all sides.

  Back and forth they fought. Roland held his own at first, but slowly, inexorably lost in a battle of attrition. Horribly, it seemed that Bailey had died at some point and he hadn’t even noticed. The vibrant girl had been replaced by a corpse while he was distracted.

  “No. For fuck’s sake, no!”

  Then one of the searing beams tore through his lower abdomen along the side, scattering boiling droplets of blood and charred bits of his guts. There was no pain, just the unbearable realization, while darkness closed in, that he had failed.

  Chapter Eleven