The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus
Page 59
“And given the old ways, many will not accept a female shaman, no matter how deserving she is of her position and how strong she is, even though in history, werewitches have been stronger than any of the male shamans. That was why they were burned at the stake, although you are better positioned in this day and age to lead your people because females as leaders are more accepted worldwide. It will be up to you to find your place.”
She stood, saying nothing, her mouth hanging open. “I-I’m not sure what to say. I mean, I’ll probably end up saying yes. But for now, I think I need some time to—”
Then she and Marcus turned fast and sharp toward the bushes down the slope. They’d heard movement; they were not alone.
Nine or ten humanoid figures stood up. In the faint moonlight, Bailey quickly pegged them as the out-of-town Weres she’d seen in the crowd earlier. They must have snuck away from the emergency scene, through dense woods and over jagged cliffs, to spy on Bailey and Marcus.
One of them, a large young man near the front, spoke. “Hey!” he shouted. “We heard all that!”
“Well,” Bailey retorted, “you’d be deaf if you didn’t. Who are you guys again? And why are you in Greenhearth?”
One of the others spoke up. “Eastmoor Pack! And we’ve heard about you.”
Her jaw clenched.
The apparent leader took a couple of steps forward. “You can’t pull this shit on us,” he declared. “We already got a pack alpha. Some weird hybrid werewitch isn’t gonna preside over us. When the hell was the last female shaman, anyway, the fuckin’ Dark Ages?”
Admittedly, Bailey didn’t know the answer to that last question.
The Were continued, gesturing sharply at Marcus. “And who is this guy? I never seen you or heard of you, and suddenly your ass has the goddamn authority to appoint shamans and tell them they’re gonna be the fuckin’ Empress of Weredom? What does her pack say about this shit?”
On some level, Bailey understood where the loudmouthed Eastmoor guy was coming from. However, he was being an aggressive asshole about it, and she was sick of assholes.
Marcus, staring at the young man, only said, “Be silent and go away.”
The Were pounced, but he had a few yards to cover with his sudden attack, and Bailey was faster. She caught him, half-shifted into wolf form, and pivoted him in midair to send him crashing into a tree. Its trunk cracked, and the young man slumped and rolled a few feet to collide with a boulder. He wasn’t dead, but his attempt to challenge them was over.
“What the fuck?” the other Weres raged. Someone bellowed, “Get them!”
Half of them changed into wolves. The others remained in human form, the better to assault the pair with a mixed force.
But they never got the opportunity. Even Bailey was stunned into outright stupefaction by what happened next.
The man who called himself Marcus threw off his disguise—not merely the baggy, hooded coat he’d worn, but his mortal form. It fell away from him like a veil of silk, and where a craggy middle-aged man had stood was a wolf-human hybrid at least twelve feet tall, surrounded by a radiant aura of dark purple and bright silver, with eyes like miniature full moons.
“Oh,” Bailey gasped. “Oh my.”
“I,” the creature boomed, “am your god. I am Fenris, son of the witch-king Loki and father to all werewolves. Every prayer you’ve uttered or oath you’ve made was sworn to me since you first suckled at your mother’s breasts. You would challenge and attack me?”
He pivoted, lashing out with a clawed hand at the warrior who’d just tried to pounce on him. The injured, half-conscious Were exploded. Not into large pieces, or even into fragments, but into fine red mist. The vapor that had once been his body wafted on moonlit air and then settled amidst the forest.
Bailey clapped a hand to her mouth and the Eastmoor Weres stumbled back, visibly shaking. Wolves, normal ones, howled somewhere in the distance, and dogs and coyotes joined the chorus.
Fenris spoke again. “If anyone has the authority to select the next High Shaman,” he rumbled, his voice seeming composed of a dozen mighty werewolves speaking at once, “it is I. Clearly, I have been away too long since your respect is lacking. Bow down! Bow to your deity, and bow before Bailey Nordin, whom I have personally trained to lead you.”
Flabbergasted, Bailey watched as the Eastmoors slowly fell to their knees and inclined their heads and torsos toward her. She could feel their terror, mingled with resentful anger, confusion, and awe.
And then a rush of triumphalist ecstasy hit her. She had won. As of this moment, she was above and beyond all the stupid fucking bullshit that the lycanthropic community had tried to foist on her throughout her life. The god had given her permission to live free of their idea of what she “had” to do.
She could be what she was obviously meant to be—a shaman—and no one would ever again harass her by mentioning her impending twenty-fifth birthday. She could remain single until she was forty, sixty, or a hundred.
Or she could marry Roland. If she wanted to.
Breathing deep, she turned back to Fenris but saw Marcus standing there, his grizzled face calm and almost amused.
“I, ah,” she began, “I accept. How could I do otherwise? And, hell, what am I supposed to call you now?”
He chuckled, much to her surprise. “’Marcus’ will do, but remember my true name.”
“I don’t think it would be possible to forget.” She shook her head. Encountering Freya was one thing, but Fenris was their god. Her mind hadn’t accepted it yet.
The tall man came closer and put a hand on her shoulder, his wrathful demeanor gone again. He looked at the Eastmoors.
“You may go,” he told them. “And feel free to spread the word.”
Someone near the front replied in a shuddering breath, “Yes, Lord.” They ducked back into the bushes and scampered back down the mountainside toward their distant home in the dry hill country east of the Cascades.
Marcus turned back to Bailey. “I’m glad you’ve accepted my offer. But remember, things will only get harder from here.”
Her nostrils flared at that. “Seems like they’ve been hard enough already.”
His voice held a surprising undertone of kindness and warmth. “Yes, it’s been trying. Even for me. I think, though, that we’ve purchased a respite. The witches are defeated; we won’t have any more trouble from them right away. Your friends still live, while the Venatori have suffered a major loss. Take this time and go home to your family. Tell them what’s come to pass and recover. Go.”
He gave her a gentle push. She stumbled down the slope in the direction the Eastmoors had gone, though she’d need to double back to the south to get home. Somehow, taking the long route through the wilderness seemed like the best way to go tonight.
The girl looked over her shoulder once briefly. Marcus still stood there and watched her. She turned away, dropped the blanket, shifted form, and bounded into the forest.
It was a beautiful night. The moon was almost full, and she’d never before had the luxury of running through the woods in wolf shape under peaceful circumstances. She’d only shapeshifted during combat. It was almost depressing when the short journey came to an end.
Standing before her house, she stood up and shrank back into a woman, marveling at how smooth and easy changing had become. There were lights on in the house, so her brothers must have been waiting for her. Maybe her father was home, too.
As she stepped up onto the porch, the door opened, and Jacob stepped out. He stood there for a second, blinking dumbly at her, and then seized her in a giant bear hug.
“Ow,” she complained. “I’m okay, but you’re on the verge of changing that if you don’t stop crushing me.”
“Bailey,” he gasped, “you have no idea how worried we were. It looked like the end of the goddamn world out there.”
He released her just as Russell and Kurt appeared behind him.
The girl, the shaman, looked them over, and put her h
ands on her hips. “Not the end of the world,” she told them, “but the beginning of something else. Have I got a story for you dumbasses! Better break out some beer.
“And get me some goddamn clothes!”
* * *
Shannon DiGrezza sat on the dingy bed in the cheap motel room she’d rented, hugging her knees to her narrow chest and crying into the hem of her dress. She was probably ruining it, smearing magenta eye shadow all over the material, but right now, she didn’t care.
She could probably have rented a nicer room if she’d looked harder, but she wanted to punish herself with this shithole. Her entire world had collapsed. What difference did it make?
Never again, she knew, would anything be the same. She’d had a plan, and she had always, always believed things would work out. She always got what she wanted sooner or later. Always.
But now that was impossible.
She might still be able to get Roland. Possibly. But even if that little victory was open to her, it was soured by all that had happened.
Her two best friends were dead, or possibly worse than dead. Shannon would never get to share Roland with Aida and Callie, spawning the most powerful coven in America from the three of them, as she’d planned to do.
She had broken down in front of those European whores. They’d humiliated her. She wouldn’t forget that. It was certainly not in her plan.
And somehow, even if she got to see the day when Roland was at her side and all the pieces of shit who’d wronged her were dying in agony, she sensed that he, the beautiful wizard she’d always assumed was secretly in love with her, would still be thinking about Bailey in his off-moments.
“They’ll pay.” She sniffed as the worst of the sobbing subsided. Idle chatter came from the stupid sports program on the TV, which she’d cranked up so no one could hear her crying. “All of them. I swear revenge. In the name of fucking Freya, I will destroy them all.”
Saying it out loud made her feel a little better, and in her head, she ran through all the people she meant when she made the vow.
The Venatori, obviously, the ones who’d killed Aida and Callie. Those wretched skanks would suffer more than her friends had, and their organization would regret ever setting foot in the Pacific Northwest. Witch history would shudder to think what had happened to them.
Those ugly, boring, middle-aged men from the Agency who thought they had the right to arrest her and threaten her and tell her what she could and couldn’t do. She’d shove their sunglasses up their asses, then fuse their rectums shut. Or something like that.
Roland, even. She still wanted him, more or less. But he’d gone along with all this shit, and he would have to go through the same kind of pain she had. He’d do some serious penance before he could hope for the peace and plenty that awaited him as her husband, and then he’d fall on his knees and thank her for setting everything right.
Last of all, Shannon swore vengeance on the little bitch who’d almost singlehandedly started the whole shitstorm, who had now ruined everything.
Bailey Nordin.
Note from Renée
March 18, 2020
You made it! Here we are again at the end of this, my third book! Thank you so much for reading this far.
Storm the cat decided to be a creep today. He sat on top of his cat carpet jungle-thing, where his food is served to keep it away from Josey-fiend, looked me straight in the face, and pushed off the bowl. Then he climbed the curtains, sat on top of the rod, and proceeded to wash himself in massive unconcern.
Jo watched him the whole time, at first passively, then with a doggie grin, egging him on.
What is this, Annoy the Human Day?
Speaking of annoying the human, my car blew a piston, so it’s time to replace old faithful. What am I going to get, you might ask?
Well, I am cogitating that. I need something that can handle ice and snow and mud and rain. Lots of rain. Most importantly, I need something that can handle Labradoodles covered in ice and snow and mud and rain. I also need high clearance, because some of my fave places are accessed via dirt roads—which is where said Labradoodle picks up her adornments.
So she and I are going to trundle over to the Jeep dealer in
I’m just that kind of rebel.
Wish me luck. Jo and I are heading out.
But before I go, I want to thank my advance reader team, especially John, Rachel, Kelly, and Larry, for their amazing insight and patience in making this book the best it can be!
I hope you enjoyed Bailey’s and Roland’s third adventure. Bailey and Roland will be back. And if you get a moment, drop me a review, please. Those are the lifeblood of any writer. We appreciate you!
Until next time,
Renée
Were War
Were Witch Book 4
Chapter One
A young woman in jeans and boots and a flannel shirt tied at the waist stood upon a brambly hillock amidst a landscape drawn from a disturbing dream. No wind seemed to stir the gnarled branches of the ancient black trees, nor did the slate-colored clouds move much across the deep purple sky, yet it seemed like a breeze lifted the girl’s brown hair.
She looked out across the boggy, mist-shrouded wastes of the Other, the parallel world formed of the residue of other worlds’ magic.
Here I am, she thought. I was told that things would start getting better. That being a shaman would make my life less dangerous, and that I’d finally have the chance to get the hell away from trouble for a while.
A dark shape like the silhouette of a huge bat or a pterodactyl streaked across the sky, but she barely registered its presence.
How was I supposed to know that the trials to become an apprentice would be a million times more likely to kill me than anything else I’ve done? And I’ve had people trying to take my head off for a while now.
She sighed and steeled herself as the hulking figure across the hill from her raised his hands, which were crackling with the power of deadly spells.
Magic, she concluded. Ain’t it a bitch?
The man attacked.
At first, a vertical line of dark purple light appeared in front of him, as though it were about to streak toward her in the form of a fiery beam, but then it spread to either side, protecting him as a shield.
Simultaneously, a crackling bolt appeared behind her. She’d expected some kind of trickery, though, and her sharp lycanthropic senses picked up the change in the air in an instant. She launched herself straight up and let the bolt pass under her. It struck the man’s shield instead, where it sparked massively before fizzling out.
While airborne, Bailey summoned her counterattack—a gout of flame that erupted from the earth beneath her opponent’s feet, combined with similar blasts that came in from the sides just above his head. The idea was to catch him as he jumped away from the first strike.
Instead, he shielded himself from below, dissipating the flames so they resembled a giant orange flower, then rolled forward. His coat started to smoke but didn’t ignite as the horizontal firestorms crashed and exploded just above the point where he’d been standing.
“Shit!” Air rushed past Bailey, and the ground sailed up to meet her. She fought its pull, slowing her descent and coming to rest in the upper branches of a tree. By the time her feet found their perch, she was tossing a spiraling mass of lightning and ice at the tall man.
He spun to face her and caught the blast with one hand while hurling electrified plasma at her with the other.
Although her body was strained, Bailey’s mind felt lucid, focused, almost calm. The Other naturally tended to impose limits on magical expenditure, sapping the power of spells, but for a sufficiently experienced channeler, there were ways around it.
Distributing
her energy as efficiently as she could, she caught the man’s plasma bolt and threw it back. She also maintained her hold on the mass of death hovering in the air just in front of his position, trying to force it back to engulf him.
The two concentrations of arcane power blended, eventually becoming a sort of spherical vortex of multicolored light and matter that bulged and twisted as each combatant sought to gain control of it. Random lances of blended elements shot out from the central mass here and there.
One went safely below Bailey but struck the tree she stood in. She clamped down on her sense of alarm as the blackened wood exploded in a shower of fragments, dropping her to the ground.
Striving not to get too self-conscious about it, she kept control of the magical vortex even as she fell and rolled. Her opponent moved it back toward her, but she didn’t lose it.
Once she was able to stand back up, she sent a rippling tremor through the earth toward the man, knocking him off balance, although he maintained his hold, too. He looked at her, his eyes visible even through the storm of magic.
Marcus raised a hand. “Hold,” he commanded, the terrible force of his spells dwindling and growing quiet.
Bailey allowed her attacks and defenses to dissipate as well, although she remained on guard. She might have to renew them at any moment, since that, too, might be part of the tests.
But no further assault came. “Let us call it a draw,” said Marcus.
Drawing ragged breaths but unbowed, Bailey put her fists on her hips. “I guess that’s one way of admitting I’d have beat your ass sooner or later if we’d kept going.”
The tall man almost smiled. “Perhaps you might have, just maybe. But for now, let’s just say that I feel you’ve continued to progress at the pace you should. We’ve done all we can for now.”