The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  Bailey frowned. “Well, if we can’t understand how the gods think, we sure can’t expect to understand all that shit. And the reason Fenris is here is to train us seems pretty damn obvious to me. Or train me, at least. He’s taking an interest in us. His ’children,’ as he’d say.”

  “I suppose,” the wizard murmured.

  They trekked up the gentle slope into a rocky, brambly area. Up ahead was a hillock that looked familiar, probably the one that rose above the Pool of Dark Reflections.

  Bailey turned things over in her head, examining them from different sides. “If Baldur is concerned about Fenris, why doesn’t he just find him and talk to him? Why ask us? Plus, he said something about deciding we weren’t a threat to the gods. Maybe the Asgardians have been drinking the same Kool-Aid as those dumbass packs that thought I was gunning for their alphas.”

  “I don’t know,” Roland admitted.

  They continued toward the hillock. It wasn’t the first place they’d seen in the Other—that was an even swampier area, far distant from here—but it was the first place they’d come with Marcus by their side, and where they’d begun their serious training. It seemed like the best place to wait for their teacher.

  Neither of them had any desire to descend toward the black pool.

  When they were about halfway up the hill, another portal opened at the crest. This one resembled the others they’d see: door-sized and filled with a slow-moving, luminescent purple liquid.

  “Well, there he is,” Bailey remarked.

  “Finally,” Roland added.

  But the first individual to step out wasn’t Marcus. And he was followed by nine others.

  Under his breath, Roland grated, “Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

  The wizard had recognized the new arrivals as Weres. To Bailey, it had been even more obvious. She seldom failed to know her people when she saw them. They were not, however, anyone she’d met before.

  The first man to come through, she immediately pegged as the group’s leader, and quite possibly the pack alpha. He was a little over six feet tall, with a bulging gut but plenty of muscles to go with it. He had a trimmed beard and a ponytail, both dark brown but streaked with silver. She guessed his age at forty-five or so. He was arguably a bit past his prime, but he still looked formidable.

  The others were younger men, ranging from about eighteen to thirty-five, and many of them took after their boss in being bearded and wearing their hair long. All were noticeably dour and dressed in heavy clothes of gray or black.

  Roland waved. “Oh, hi. We were just planning on leaving, so you guys can use the Other without us getting in the way. Happy training.”

  The shadow of a sardonic, crooked smile was briefly visible on the alpha’s face. He crossed his burly arms over his broad chest, and behind him, his troops fanned out to block the way to the portal.

  “Actually,” the man said, “we came for you.”

  Alarm bells went off in Bailey’s head and she stepped forward, preparing to negotiate, explain, and threaten if need be. To her surprise, the troupe seemed totally uninterested in talking.

  They shifted in unison, and ten big iron-colored wolf-beasts stood before the pair. Then they attacked.

  “Fuck!” Bailey exclaimed as the alpha lunged for her. She pivoted to the side, speeding up her movements through subtle telekinesis. “No, goddammit! We’re just here training! What the hell are you doing?”

  Roland snorted. “They’re trying to kill us, obviously! I’ve had it with this shit. Take ‘em out. They’re your people.”

  Two wolves jumped at him, their jaws open and trailing drool, and the wizard launched himself twenty feet into the air before floating backward. He kept his hands outstretched to ready a spell, but was hesitant to strike.

  Bailey likewise tried to steer clear of the wolves’ attacks without hitting back. “Knock this shit off! I’m a shaman’s apprentice, and I’m here for training. He’ll vouch for me. I don’t even know you guys!”

  The reply she got was a snapping pair of jaws coming toward her face. She ducked back, seized the wolf around the neck, and hurled him aside, using a bit of magic to send the creature flying farther than he would have otherwise. She also slowed his descent so he didn’t break his legs on impact.

  “I’m not an enemy!” she shouted, her frustration near the breaking point. If they didn’t cease immediately, she’d have to retaliate. “I’m training to be a shaman to werekind under Fenris himself! Haven’t you heard? Do you realize what that means?”

  A lycanthrope crashed into her from behind. She lost her balance, but by the time she fell to what would have been her hands and knees, she was standing on four legs. Black hair had sprouted all over her body, which was now elongated and lupine, and her eyes glowed red. She growled.

  Bailey launched into them, nimbly dodging their brutish assaults and shouldering pack soldiers aside. She pounded their furred breasts with her paws, sweeping their legs out from under them and wrestling them to the ground by the scruffs of their necks.

  But she didn’t break limbs or spines or rip out guts or throats.

  Roland, watching how his partner in crime fought, picked up on the hint that this wasn’t meant to be a battle to the death. He adjusted his tactics accordingly, conjuring magic that would stop, slow, disorient, and possibly injure the Weres, but nothing that was likely to kill them.

  A few were charging at him now, so he raised a wall of ice in front of them. It was not so thick that they risked cracking their skulls open on impact, but thick enough that crashing into it, or through it in the case of the biggest one, left them reeling and dizzy or crumpled in shock and lightly bleeding from minor cuts where the ice fractured.

  Then he conjured a tornado made of equal parts wind and pure telekinetic arcane force, which scooped up three of the Weres, and spun them in disorienting circles before tossing them into patches of thick, gnarled roots.

  With the herd thinned some, Bailey turned her sights on their alpha. She watched the lead wolf closely, her eyes and brain working rapidly to process all pertinent information and timing the way he moved. He was strong and skilled, but not as fast as he likely used to be—and not as fast as she was.

  Bailey pounced. Her wolf body, large as it was, passed nimbly under the alpha’s claw-swipe and she knocked him over, her jaws clamped around his throat. She growled as loudly as she could.

  Within a second, the fighting had stopped. The other werewolves had all turned toward their leader, now helpless and an instant from death if Bailey chose to kill him. Roland too drew back, still alert but not casting spells for the moment.

  The girl shifted back into human form. Doing so gave the alpha an opening to strike, and he could have bitten her leg off if he was fast enough. But he didn’t, and once she was comfortably back in her usual shape, Bailey put her foot on his throat.

  Then she threw up her hands. “Okay, this fight’s goddamn over. Now, will everyone please calm the hell down?”

  A few low growls emerged, but mostly the wolves looked like they’d lost the will to continue the battle.

  “See,” Bailey went on, “I just beat your alpha. If I can do that to the strongest of your pack, imagine what I could do to the rest of you. And it looks like Roland was handling you all pretty well, too. None of you are dead. We don’t want to kill your asses, even though you earned as much. Now, how about you tell me why the fuck you attacked us?”

  Beneath her boot, the alpha shifted back to his human form, now naked. She removed her foot from his neck and allowed him to scooch back and sit up. His pack warriors followed his lead and changed back as well.

  Roland let out a half-sigh, half-groan. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” he quipped. “It’s been a long day. Or a long segment of eternity, whatever applies to this bizarre place.”

  Cautiously, the two factions gathered their shredded clothing, keeping eyes on each other, and reconfigured their positions so Bailey and Roland soon were on one side of the hillt
op and the strangers on the other.

  The alpha stood near the front and regarded the pair with heavy-lidded eyes. He was clearly in some pain from the exertions of the battle, combined with how hard Bailey had slammed him into the ground.

  “We came here to seek you out on the advice of another pack. Neighbors of ours and friends. Their apprentice shaman told us he had reliable information that you—Bailey—were a threat that had to be dealt with. That you were plotting against our pack and that the shit you’ve been pulling lately is bringing a lot of attention from those European witches. The same ones who murdered the Junipers’ shaman.”

  For a second, Bailey wanted to double over with grief. Her victory over the Venatori outside of Greenhearth had been rendered bitter by the discovery that they’d killed old Estus.

  Then she got angry.

  “God-fucking-dammit,” she shouted, and the Weres tensed, half-expecting her to start fighting them again. She didn’t, though; that wasn’t the kind of rage that consumed her now. “How many fucking times do I have to go through this shit? The Junipers were the first pack to come after me because someone gossiped that I was gunning for their alpha. You’d think that if people heard about what happened to their shaman, they’d also have frickin’ heard that I made peace with them and they agreed that the rumors were a crock of shit.”

  The alpha across from her looked almost embarrassed.

  “And then,” she went on, “the Eastmoors came after me, and one got himself killed, even though I sure as shit didn’t want it that way. Them too—they’d heard this crap about me wanting to take over the whole damn Pacific Northwest. Who the hell is spreading this shit? Dan Oberlin’s friends? If that’s the case, why is anyone listening to a bunch of scumbags who were kidnapping Were girls right out of their own towns? For fuck’s sake!”

  Roland put a hand on her shoulder. Feeling it there, she started to calm down and slowed her breathing deliberately, deciding she’d ranted enough. They both waited for the mysterious pack to respond.

  The leader cast his eyes to the side for a second, then inhaled and puffed himself up. Bailey grasped somehow that he was contrite. Ashamed, even, although he had to save face in front of his men. She’d be willing to meet him halfway as long as he tried to be reasonable.

  “Let us introduce ourselves,” he said. “My name is Alfred Warner, and we’re the Whitcomb Creek Pack. West side of the Cascades between Salem and Eugene. We were acting on what we thought was accurate information in the interest of our pack like anyone would. It wasn’t personal. And we appreciate that you didn’t try to kill any of us.”

  His words, she saw, had the effect of calming some of his followers, who looked like they still had half a mind to try ripping her head off.

  She nodded and crossed her arms. “Okay. Fair enough. But who gave you that information, which obviously wasn’t accurate? Like I said, this is the third time someone’s tried to take me out, based on slander. All I’m trying to do is learn to handle my powers and become a decent shaman. No bullshit.”

  Alfred frowned. “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you that. Only so much we can share without breaking the bonds of friendship we have. Different packs, different people. You know how it is. Different shamans we’ve got mutual loyalty to. We’re not from your town, and we don’t owe you any counter-information that might lead to reprisals against our cousins.”

  He said that in a somber, borderline-apologetic way, softening the impact of his words, although she suspected he wouldn’t budge if she pressed him on it.

  Before she could respond, he continued. “But I will say I no longer believe what I’d heard. You’re tough and have an attitude, but your heart seems to be in the right place. You refrained from killing any of us, even when you probably could have, and now here we are, talking things out. That tells me you’re honest about trying to be a good shaman. You care about the welfare of wolves in general, not just your pack, your town, or your base of knowledge.”

  Roland fidgeted, confused by the man’s direct way of speaking. On some level, he still didn’t understand the rules of werewolf society.

  Alfred smiled. “So, if you ever swing by our neck of the woods, I owe you a drink.”

  He turned around and motioned for the younger men to follow him. They all trudged toward the portal they’d come through, which still stood open.

  “See ya,” one of the bucks called as though they were old friends. Then the ten of them filed through the gateway. Seconds later, it vanished.

  Roland shook his head slowly. “Well, that was an adventure. I think. What just happened?”

  Bailey scowled. “Dumbass. You heard him. Some dickhead lied to them, so here they came. At least they were smart enough to believe me once I had the opportunity to talk to them. End of story, aside from the matter of who this guy is who sent them after me.”

  “Yeah,” the wizard agreed. “That part bothers me. Their neighbor pack’s apprentice shaman? And these are people you don’t even know?”

  The girl stared into the distance. “It doesn’t make any sense, but we’ve got to figure it out. And I know just the man to ask—if he ever shows back up.”

  Chapter Five

  Fortunately, it wasn’t much longer when Marcus, at long last, reappeared.

  He didn’t step out of a portal; rather, he emerged from the nearby forest and then walked, slowly and casually, up the hillock toward them. Whatever business he’d been on, it must have been something within the Other, rather than back on Earth.

  “You know,” Roland commented to Bailey, although he was sure Marcus could hear him, “the other ones tend to be a little more dramatic with their entrances.”

  Bailey flicked his ear. “Yeah, and also more likely to ‘test’ us with random acts of combat twenty seconds after they show up. At least Marcus had the decency to ask if we wanted his help first.”

  The tall man, still wearing his bulky hooded coat, crested the rise and stood before them. “What are you talking about?”

  Roland laughed and rubbed his forehead. “Hoo, boy. Have we got a story for you! Two of them, in fact.”

  Marcus looked at Bailey. “Tell me.”

  The delayed emotional impact of all that had transpired hit the girl all at once, and as soon as she opened her mouth, the words rushed out. “Yeah, we’ll tell you, and then we’ve got a shit-ton of questions for you as well. Goddamn, Marcus, how does this stuff even keep happening? And where the heck were you? Don’t leave us alone in here again! Weres, witches, and now even gods are all coming after us.”

  “Yup!” Roland chirped, a wild gleam in his eye. “Gods. Ha-ha. Crazy, right? Armies of ghosts. The divine sort, not the native rabble. Things just keep getting more interesting.”

  The shaman held up his hands, blinking within his hood. “Slow down. I don’t understand what you’re talking about. You’re safe now, so just take a deep breath and start from the beginning. I can’t help you if you don’t explain things clearly.”

  Somehow, the man’s demeanor helped them calm down. Even despite their confusion and suspicions, the simple fact that he was willing to listen while they talked it out made it easier to discuss.

  They told him how they’d reconvened by the campfire, only to encounter Baldur shortly after they’d left. How the god wanted to know what they were doing and saw fit to test them in battle against a host of warrior spirits. Hearing this, Marcus’ face was grave, but he only nodded and waited for them to go on.

  They then described how they had been attacked by the Whitcomb Creek Pack, in much the same fashion as the Junipers and Eastmoors had come after them previously. They relayed how disturbed they were that this mysterious apprentice shaman was spreading rumors that they needed to be taken out.

  Through it all, Bailey was mostly curious and hurt by the implication that she was doing something bad, despite her just wanting to grow into her responsibilities and stand up for her people.

  Roland, on the other hand, seemed borderline para
noid about the entire situation. He also didn’t miss the opportunity to wonder why Baldur was so curious about the doings of his Asgardian kin.

  Fenris, wearing his imposing yet unremarkable human form, gave a final nod as they concluded their story. “I see,” he rumbled.

  “Good,” Roland said curtly.

  Bailey just gazed at her teacher. First of all, she had to know about Baldur and what it meant for their relationship as master and student.

  Marcus seemed to sense that and addressed it immediately. “First, I understand your concern about my cousin’s visit. It stems from a long and complicated history of what you might call ‘family business.’ There’s almost no way for me to explain it to mortals, but I can reassure you it won’t happen again. Freya and Baldur have both conducted their tests, and the results have been in your favor.”

  “Okay,” Bailey replied, although his words didn’t make her feel better. “It worried me because it almost sounded like he, Baldur, thought you were doing something wrong.”

  Marcus shook his head, frowning into the shadows. “I have never been on very good terms with my family, thanks to my connection with werewolves. The Norsemen of old fought them at times, regarding them as sources of strife and chaos, and people they banished from their societies were treated as ‘lone wolves’ whom anyone might slay. Taking the Were people as my children has made me the…black sheep, you might say, in Asgard.”

  A smile of sardonic, almost vicious amusement spread across his face at that.

  “Pardon me,” he added. “The irony of it! The god of wolves, comparing himself to a sheep.”

  “Oh, ha,” Bailey commented. “Right, right. I guess that clarifies things somewhat, but I still feel like we’re in more danger than we already were.”

  The shaman waved a hand. “I will take care of it. It’s not your concern anymore. My family will, if necessary, hear me out and learn to leave us to our own affairs.”