The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

The silence was total. Bailey wondered if she was supposed to say or do something. Her skin crawled, despite the odd sense of peace that had emerged.

  She suddenly worried that Marcus and Roland both knew what she was supposed to do, or say and that they thought it was obvious. What if, she wondered, they were just waiting for her to do it? Was she screwing up by not knowing?

  Just as she was about to ask the shaman for clarification, he spoke quickly, cutting her off.

  “What do you fear?” he asked.

  She blinked, mouth hanging open. It was a good question. She would have thought it would be easy to answer, but it wasn’t.

  “I-I,” she began, stammering, “I don’t know. Well, I fear…a lot of things. Failing, mainly, I think.”

  Marcus did not reply or nod or do anything. He just waited for her.

  “I’m afraid,” she stated, her soul feeling like it was uncoiling within her, “that I’m going to let everyone down. That I’m not good enough for this. I’m afraid of dying, honestly, but not just for my part. If I’m gone, then everyone else is at the mercy of my actions. Like I’m leaving a mess behind for them to clean up.”

  She cringed, worried that her way of putting it sounded stupid, but Marcus did not judge her. He just awaited the rest of her statement.

  “And,” she swallowed, “I’m afraid that if I don’t fail, what I have to do to succeed is going to turn me into a monster. I want to do this right. I don’t want to fail in either direction.”

  Then, finally, Marcus bowed his head before raising it again.

  “Good,” he said.

  Bailey was breathless, unable to believe that she’d somehow come up with the “correct” answer.

  “Those,” the shaman went on, “are good fears to have. They mean you care enough to be self-critical. You know you’re capable of making mistakes and being wrong sometimes. If you do make an error, you will desire to correct it. You are considerate of how your actions affect others, and knowing this ahead of time, you can fix many problems even before they happen.”

  She broke into a grin, trembling with relief.

  Roland took a few steps and patted her on the shoulder. “Maybe it wasn’t a beautiful, epic speech, but it sounded pretty good to me. And in this case, I agree with Marcus. The stuff you’re worried about indicates that you don’t need to worry too much after all.”

  Marcus gestured to Roland. “He speaks the truth. Instead of endlessly tormenting yourself with how your abilities can go wrong, reflect on how you can use them to do right. Accept what you are. And do with it what you can.”

  * * *

  Hours had passed, or what she assumed were hours in the mortal world. In the Other, it might have been days or weeks. Bailey sat on a comfortable slope of the hillock, near the top but slightly below it, her back against a tree that looked fairly dry.

  She’d spent the whole time having a talk with herself, and it was turning out to be a good conversation. Both sides of it were now in agreement that the strange destiny she’d found herself in—that of a werewitch—was not a burden or a curse, but an opportunity.

  Marcus and Roland had gone off somewhere, assuring her that they were nearby and still in the Other. Bailey didn’t wait for the shaman to return and advise her on the next step, not this time. Instead, she tried something.

  She concentrated on the strangely neutral temperature of the Other and tried to summon extra heat in multiple places at once. A fire—small, controlled, but bright—erupted about a hundred feet in front of her between two trees, near them but not quite setting them alight.

  Then a second flame appeared far off to her left, and a third to the right. Dispersing her consciousness between them, she willed them to rotate, orbiting her like planets around the sun. She stood and drew them closer as they circled her. She was protected by a moving barrier of fire.

  Marcus crested the hill. “Good,” he said. “I hadn’t seen you do anything like that before.”

  “I know!” she confirmed, smiling. “I think it’s finally all coming together. I don’t know, it’s like I’m not so afraid of it anymore that I either hold it back or it just all spills out.”

  She thought back to what Gunney had said about small, consistent steps.

  Marcus beckoned for her to ascend the incline between them. “Keep those fires spinning around you,” he instructed. “And add the other three classical elements. Then chain them together with lightning.”

  As difficult and complicated as it sounded, she concentrated, oddly confident that she could do it even with the Other tamping down on her full potential and bleeding out her raw power.

  And she succeeded.

  Water, as the opposite of fire, was first, and a stream of it rotated just below the flames. Then came earth, chunks of dirt and rock spun just inside the double helix of flame and liquid. Finally, the air through which the other three moved sped up, turning all the ingredients to a blur.

  “And now,” she whispered.

  Lightning struck her hand from the sky and she threw it out, seeing the bolts and sparks intersperse themselves so that the full power of nature encased her in a terrifying yet beautiful cyclone of force and matter and energy.

  Marcus projected his voice through it, as clear as if he were speaking into her ear. “Now release it in an orderly fashion. Return everything to the place you got it from. One element at a time.”

  The electricity dispersed, the winds slowed, the earthen fragments returned to the ground. Then the heat and moisture dissipated back into the atmosphere, and all was clear and quiet again.

  Marcus smiled warmly. “Impressive. Where you are now, I’d say you could—”

  The air ripped open, and three figures burst through it.

  Roland appeared behind the shaman. “They’re back again. For fuck’s sake! I thought you said they couldn’t find us for a while? I should have handled this crap myself.”

  Ignoring him, the shaman turned to face the witches, Bailey and Roland standing at each side.

  Of the trio of Venatori, two were the same ones whom Bailey and Roland had fought on the mountainside earlier today. That was encouraging; the cult must have been running short of agents if it had to send the same people into two consecutive fights.

  The third was another woman they hadn’t seen before. Their leader from the previous attack in the Other was still nowhere to be found.

  “Halt,” the third one commanded, even though they were unmoving. “This is your last chance to surrender and keep your lives. We have considered that neither of you need be destroyed, but you must submit to our judgment. And you,” she flicked her eyes to Marcus, “must leave and cease your meddling in our affairs.”

  The shaman gave a graceful bow, and to Bailey’s surprise and dismay, he backed away and sequestered himself amidst a stand of trees off to the side.

  He’s leaving us to do this ourselves, she concluded. It’s another part of the testing, isn’t it? He could probably blast them to oblivion if he wanted to, but…

  “Surrender!” the auxiliary leader repeated. “Your time is up!”

  “No,” Bailey stated.

  Everyone leaped into action at once. Five wills, five streams of destructive force of all kinds clashed in a great explosion of arcane violence at a point halfway between the two groups.

  Bailey staggered back from the power of the blast, but then she felt herself harnessing it, forcing the amalgamation of powers back toward the witches. One of them cursed in her native language, and all three stumbled backward.

  “Ha, ha!” Roland chortled. “Nice one. Oh, Marcus just showed me a little something, by the way.”

  He swept his hand, and the portal the Venatori had opened widened, becoming a vertical pit. He telekinetically pushed the witches toward it.

  They resisted, but by now, Bailey was summoning multiple elements at once, as she’d just done, forming a miniature solar system of rotating earth, air, fire, and water. The mass of natural forces closed on the sorcere
sses, and for a moment, the werewitch could taste a relatively easy victory.

  Then a white beam, thin and intense like the long blade of a heated knife, shot out from amidst the foreign witches and struck Roland in the side.

  “Ugh!” he shouted, his voice loud and ragged, and he collapsed to the ground.

  “Roland!” Bailey cried.

  She barely remembered what happened next. Knowing that the witches would probably finish him off if she didn’t neutralize the threat immediately, she somehow caused the mass of elements to rain down on the trio while at the same time, she shifted into her wolf form and pounced.

  And yet, it was not blind rage that moved her, but a rational assessment of necessity. She was in control.

  Another white cutting beam streaked out toward her, but she leaped over it, trying to concentrate on magic. Can I still cast in this form? She wondered. How did Estus do it?

  The change of bodies had affected her abilities, but somehow she gathered up her wrathful desire to protect the wizard and formed it into a wedge projected ahead of her, much like what the Juniper shaman had done. The witches’ attacks bounced off the barrier, and Bailey and her magical battering ram smashed into them.

  The women cried out and flew in different directions. Bailey stood up straight, returning hastily to humanoid form, and tossed lightning at all three Venatori simultaneously. It struck each and looped around between them, and a hostile circuit was established. Bailey realized she was draining their power.

  They were unable to counterattack, but after some moments, they caused the electricity to wink out.

  But by now, the two witches from the earlier fight had all but collapsed. Even the fresh one was tottering under the strain of an unwinnable battle.

  Marcus plunged into the fray, standing beside Bailey and extending his arms to finish the Venatori off. Spiraling waves of indigo magic struck the witches, and he telekinetically lifted all three of them into the air.

  Bailey blinked. “What are you doing?”

  The shaman hurled the women as a cluster down the hill—straight toward the black pool.

  “Nooooo!” the middle one, the witch most in control of her faculties, screamed. She thrashed in midair, but to no avail. She and her two companions vanished into the black water, which rose up to suck them under and blot out any evidence that they’d been there.

  Bailey watched, horrified and sick to her stomach, as silence settled back over the mist of the Other.

  Roland ambled up. “Why did you do that?” he asked the older man. The question was partially innocent, but there was a sharp undertone to it, bordering on accusatory.

  Marcus seemed unfazed. “To eliminate them,” he stated bluntly. “They won’t be bothering us again. You will not have to fear death at their hands, and they won’t be able to add their power to anything their leader does to destroy you.”

  Gritting her teeth, Bailey tried not to admit that the shaman had a point.

  “And,” Marcus went on, “to feed the Other. Magical potential can be sacrificed to that pool. It’s true that it’s a terrible fate for them, but no worse than what they’d planned for you. And there is a purpose to that dark lake, although I can’t tell you what. Not just yet. Not unless you commit to the path of the shaman. When you do, the revelation will be forthcoming.”

  She looked at the ground. “That’s not much of an answer. Makes me feel worse and more confused instead of better.”

  “I never said it would be easy.” Marcus was back to his stoic, almost icy demeanor now. The girl had hoped he would be warmer and kinder, as he had been by the pool.

  But then again, he’d helped them overcome enemies who wanted them dead.

  “All right,” she murmured. “I don’t like it, but I’ll trust that you know what you’re doing.”

  Roland was still looking at the shaman sidelong, almost suspiciously, but he held his tongue.

  Bailey turned her attention to the wizard, and suddenly she was alarmed. “What the hell are you doing, rushing up like this? You’re wounded! You ought to be lying down and waiting for help. Goddamn, Roland! Are you okay? I thought you might be dead for a second there.”

  “Well, I’m not dead,” he quipped, but his face was pale and strained. “And I do know a thing or two about healing magic. Remember how fast I recovered from getting my ass kicked after all those Weres jumped us?”

  Hearing that made her feel slightly better, but she still knelt to examine the wound.

  It looked like someone had stabbed him right above the hip with a thin and very sharp sword. The wound was small but hideous.

  “At least you’re not bleeding,” she observed. “And it kind of just went through the loose skin and flesh, I think. Doesn’t look like it hit your guts.”

  “It didn’t,” he assured her. “Still hurts like a bitch, though. Wait, sorry.”

  She stood up and ruffled his hair. “Don’t worry about it. But you be damn careful until you’re better, okay?”

  She hugged him carefully, and with weak and trembling arms, he hugged her back.

  Marcus stepped up. “I can repair the wound in part, though healing it fully would take too long. Even with time distorted in here, if we linger too long, the remaining Venatori will be able to plot their next move before we can stop them.”

  As the shaman knelt beside the wizard, keeping his hands over the burnt gash and channeling soft purplish light into it, he spoke to Bailey.

  “I think we’ve learned another important thing about your abilities,” he proclaimed. “In that fight, you attained something very close to full mastery, and the catalyst was love. Acceptance of yourself combined with the desire to protect those you care about is the answer to the question: why am I a werewitch? Why do I have these powers?”

  The girl blushed but recognized the truth of his words. “Well, I was always the protective type.”

  “Good,” said Marcus. “You have control now, an orderly flow of great power, even here in the Other. It’s barely limiting you anymore. And you have a purpose: the defense of your people. I suspect you will have to fulfill that purpose very soon.”

  Roland grimaced. “Uh-oh.”

  “What do you mean?” Bailey demanded.

  Marcus stood. The wound in Roland’s side did look better, although still a few days from “no big deal” territory.

  “I mean,” elaborated the shaman, “that the witches, if they can’t strike you down directly, might decide to strike elsewhere.”

  Bailey’s eyes bulged. “Open a portal now. We need to get back!”

  The tall, mysterious man was already doing just that. He cycled through his incantation faster than usual, it seemed, and another amethyst doorway spread before them.

  Bailey looked at Roland. “Can you fight? Will you be okay?”

  “I think so.” He sighed. “But I’ll be a lot okay-er after we’ve gotten rid of those goddamn people once and for all. They’re even worse than Shannon, aside from her fashion sense.”

  Marcus stepped aside. “Go. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Bailey didn’t hesitate. She ran through.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Marcus had opened the portal near his shed on the mountainside, Bailey realized. She had hoped he’d place it in her front driveway, but he’d probably meant for them to emerge in the woods and be able to inconspicuously rush down the slopes before entering the town since it was now nighttime.

  But something had apparently not occurred to him. The witches had found this spot. They knew about it.

  Bailey’s dash through the portal caused her to stumble once back on Earth, and as she caught herself and halted her momentum, she looked up.

  Before her was a scene from her nightmares. That it was too dark to see all the details made it worse.

  The leader of the Venatori, her hair cruelly bundled atop her skull, stood behind a man on his knees whose hands were tied behind his back. To each side of the chief sorceress were two more of their order. Th
ey’d brought in reinforcements beyond the original six.

  As Roland trudged up beside her, the man on his knees looked up from under his dirty baseball cap. It was Gunney.

  “He dies,” the lead witch intoned, “unless you turn yourself over to us. It won’t even require magic. I have a dagger pressed to his neck. Do anything other than what we tell you to do, and this filthy little man will go to hell.”

  Gunney held Bailey’s eyes. There was sadness there, but not terror.

  The girl wasn’t sure if she wanted to freeze, explode, or throw up. Her mind clamped down on her immediate panic and rage reactions. She had to think and fast. Roland, too, looked shocked.

  Behind them, Marcus started to step through the portal.

  The four auxiliary witches raised their hands, and as the shaman’s face emerged from the glimmering purple surface, they struck him with a powerful magic push. His eyes widened in surprise as he was blasted back into the Other, then the leader slammed the door once again.

  That brief distraction was all Bailey required.

  Her mind had already sought out the metal of the witch’s knife, and she struck it with so much concentrated heat that the woman yelped and fell back, the dagger flowing from her now-burned hand as a small torrent of molten steel.

  Before her followers could strike, Roland surprised Bailey by lunging forward, shouting, “Get them!” and hurling two shotgun-like spreading blasts of flares and magical blades at each pair of auxiliary witches.

  The werewitch was on all fours, bolting straight for Lavonne.

  Total chaos engulfed the forest glade, again lighting up the mountainside with fearsome colors and awesome sound, as both werewitch and wizard tapped the deepest wells of power they possessed to annihilate their enemies in this one final clash.

  Through it all, Gunney’s eyes rolled as he struggled to get out of the way, wishing he could help but incapable of doing anything but try to survive.

  Bailey piled into the nearest of the Europeans, clawing her shoulders and driving her back into a tree. The woman grunted loudly and struggled not to lose consciousness. By then, Bailey had jumped back toward the larger battle, half-transformed into a young woman again and was ready to tear the whole mountain apart if it meant saving Gunney and Roland.