The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  For a second, it appeared that he would turn to her and answer. Then a great wind came up—one that exerted no force on her, only on the vision—and whipped the blue light and dark fog into oblivion, leaving only a clean black slate.

  Silence and nothingness. Bailey, confused and unreasonably frightened, trudged slowly forward. No direction was any different from any other; she might as well have been in deep space.

  She saw something out of the corner of her eye, turned, and spied two figures ten paces away. One was a shifted lycanthrope who was familiar as a member of her species, but she could not discern its individual identity.

  The other was a woman dressed in the strange leather outfit of the Venatori. Seeing her, Bailey tensed, but the face above the armored clothing was curiously young and innocent.

  Both of them were badly hurt. The wolf had had a third of its hair and skin burned off and broken its leg in a fall. The woman seemed to have taken a great gouging blow to her abdomen and might have been holding her guts in with her hands.

  “Help me,” the witch begged in a wispy voice. “Please.”

  Bailey stared at the mismatched pair. “What happened?”

  “This wolf attacked me,” said the young woman. “It needs to be put down. I only acted in self-defense. Kill it before it hurts someone else!”

  The wolf, for its part, whimpered in pain. Then it turned its eyes toward the injured woman and growled, essentially leveling the same accusation at her.

  Bailey froze, not knowing how to react or who to believe. Her instinct was to take the side of her own kind, the children of Fenris. However, she’d just come from a brawl with Weres who’d had few compunctions about turning on her, picking a fight for no good reason.

  It was impossible to assign guilt, and she couldn’t bring herself to destroy one or the other, fearing that putting either figure to death would be reckless, callous, and unforgivably stupid.

  And if she saved one, they might turn around and murder the other.

  Then both died. They slumped and melted into the fog.

  “No!” Bailey screamed again. She’d taken too long deliberating; both had been slowly expiring of fatal wounds. “That wasn’t fair. I should have saved one of them. At least one! Right?”

  She kicked, and the aroma of sweat and peat and burning wood filled her nose. She felt muddy, weedy earth against her back. Her eyes flicked open.

  Bailey was back on the little island in the marshes of the Other. A fire burned to her right, and Marcus and Roland stood over her. She gasped and sat up, trying not to cry.

  The shaman knelt beside her. “Tell me what happened.”

  She did. The details were distinct in her mind, like something she’d really experienced. It was not analogous to the way a dream grows muddled as one wakes up and then slips away altogether.

  And her right hand had a slight electrical burn.

  Marcus nodded slowly, his face somber and placid. “I see,” he intoned. “Believe it or not, in the last vision, you were right and did what you ought to have done.”

  She squinted at him. “How is that possible? They both frickin’ died!” She felt awful, as though someone had stabbed her with a hypodermic needle filled with acid.

  The tall man gave a sad shrug. “You can’t save everyone. By acting rashly to take sides in a fight that wasn’t yours to begin with, you might have condemned someone without need or justification. Instead, you let things take their course. They attacked each other; neither was innocent, and both died of their stupidity.”

  She frowned and bowed her head. “In a way, that makes sense. It’s just so…ugly and cruel.”

  Roland’s hand was suddenly squeezing hers. She squeezed back.

  “Sometimes,” said Marcus, “the world is like that. But you’re not done yet. We need to send you back to finish your task.”

  Her stomach clenched. She’d rather fight the Shashka pack again than deal with this shit. But Fenris had undoubtedly trained countless other shamans before her. She would do as he instructed.

  The tall man raised the stone cup to her lips again, and she took another swig. The world darkened and faded, and a moment later, she stood once more in the world of black shadows and blue mist.

  Another battle was raging now across the plains of darkness. A veritable horde of werewolves, a legion of them, streamed across the ground. All had shifted, and their jaws grinned with crazed wrath, much like what she’d seen on Nick’s Shashkas while his berserker buff was in effect. They plunged headlong into the fray, hides bristling, saliva trailing behind them in the wind.

  Their opponents were witches interspersed with a few wizards, magic-using humanoids all and on the defensive. There were thousands of them against tens of thousands of lycanthropes, and it was a massacre. A figure at the center of the great horde stood on a raised moving platform like a palanquin or maybe a chariot, directing the slaughter.

  Some of the sorcerers had given up and fallen to their knees or were trying to run away. The wolves paid no heed and tore them apart.

  “Stop!” Bailey exclaimed. “You can’t do that!”

  In front of her, a huge lycanthrope was about to pounce on a pair of wounded and helpless women. She jumped in and tackled the wolf, knocking it aside, and slammed its head into the ground with her forearm. Then she sprang to her feet and made toward the leader.

  The blue light of the apparitions grew brighter, and the figure on the central platform turned.

  It was her.

  The girl sucked air into her lungs, hissing defiance at the reality of what she saw yet somehow unsurprised. She flashed back to her first vision beside the Pool of Dark Reflections when her doppelganger had emerged from the black waters and fought her.

  “You again,” she growled. “This is not how we do things.”

  The shadow-double saw her now, and the chillingly familiar face split into a savage grin. “Yes, it is,” she stated. “I’m the caretaker for our people. I’m leading us to absolute safety—a world without enemies.” She laughed.

  Bailey lunged toward the clone, knocking barreling wolves out of the way as she went. “No. This is wrong. We defend ourselves if we have to, but we don’t just go around killing everyone.”

  Part of her wasn’t sure she believed that, though. Part of her found the sight of the battle thrilling and understood the doppelganger’s words. To preemptively destroy their foes was to remove the possibility of being destroyed.

  But it wasn’t right.

  Bailey jumped onto the platform, which was a kind of wagon drawn by half-changed werewolves like the ones used by ancient warlords on rampages of conquest. At once, she found herself grappling with her shadow form, the version of her that wanted to bring this about.

  The doppelganger spat in her face, insulted her weakness and naiveté, tore her hair out, and gouged her eyes.

  Bailey responded in kind, clawing the shadow’s face, kicking its legs and stomach, and shouting at it to give up and shut up and go away forever. They traded magical blasts of telekinetic force and ice and burning plasma, but nothing got through the other’s defenses. All around them, the massacre continued as wolves fought and killed.

  Soon Bailey found herself grappling with the doppelganger, their arms entwined, her fist a foot away from the leering face she refused to recognize as her own. She remembered then how she’d defeated the leader of the last Venatori band, the one time she could think of when killing had been the right thing to do.

  The essence of her magical power formed a long spear blade of red light that protruded from her fist, cleaving straight into the face of the shadow-clone. It shrieked and dissolved into a wispy mass of fog, which blew away and was gone.

  Then Bailey was at the reins. The nearest Weres looked up at her.

  “Stop,” she commanded. They slowed down.

  She drew a breath and shouted, “Stop!” This time, most of the wolves in sight halted or hesitated, looking at her.

  “STOP!” she howled.<
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  Then she woke up, sweating and thrashing as Marcus and Roland laid hands on her shoulders and spoke in low, soft voices.

  “It’s okay,” said Roland. “It’s over.”

  Bailey gasped, blinking and rubbing her eyes, glancing around to make sure the vision was gone and she was safely back in the Other with her friends. “Yeah,” she panted. “Over…”

  The men helped her to her feet, and Marcus’ hand never left her arm. He turned to Roland. “Leave us. Fly over the swamp in that direction and wait on a rocky hill you find there. I will fetch you when we’re ready.”

  “All right,” he muttered, though clearly, he’d prefer to be there to help if needed. He jumped into the air and floated off between the slimy black trees.

  After Bailey had had a moment to catch her breath and calm down, Fenris asked, “What did you see? What did you do?”

  She didn’t want to talk about it, but she did.

  When she came to the end, she felt better. Putting it into words, and now safe from the hideous sight of her dark clone, it seemed as though she’d won some kind of victory. Maybe.

  To her surprise, Marcus smiled. “Good. Bailey, I’m proud of you.”

  She looked away for a second as a lump formed in her throat.

  “Congratulations,” the shaman went on. “You demonstrated self-control and initiative in tandem. I’m training you to be a leader, and a good leader requires those two things. You are meant to stand above them and command them, but in a way that demonstrates self-discipline, wisdom, and good judgment. A good leader is not a monster, flattening everything she sees and acting on cruel whims. A reckless war overextends the pack’s resources, leaves them open to flanking strikes, and makes too many enemies. War is only to be waged prudently and in self-defense. The total elimination of one’s enemies ultimately creates more problems than it solves.”

  Bailey nodded, her eyes tired and heavily lidded. “I understand, Fenris.”

  She did not tell him that there was another reason she’d stopped the killing in the vision.

  Roland. Witchkind were his people just as wolfkind were hers. He was proof that they weren’t all bad and didn’t deserve total destruction, despite the actions of those like Shannon DiGrezza and the Venatori.

  She had no desire to inflict pain on the families of the people she loved.

  Chapter Eleven

  Marcus had offered Bailey a short break, and she’d insisted on speaking to Roland alone. The shaman had not objected, and she’d left him there while she floated to the rocky hill where the wizard had, it seemed, been waiting for her.

  “Oh,” he quipped as she landed, “there you are. What did your Jedi-Master-slash-deity have to say about whatever it was you saw in there? If you don’t mind talking about it. I have to confess I’m curious.”

  She sighed and embraced him with a sudden motion. “You suck at being serious, you know?” she observed. “But lately, things have been a little too serious, so that’s okay with me.”

  “Thanks,” he replied.

  “Anyway, he said I did just fine, so that’s encouraging. And yeah, I’ll tell you all about it.”

  She released him after a moment. Then, on a whim, they flew off the rock and over the trees and landed on relatively dry ground closer to the places they’d seen before.

  They strolled aimlessly, and Bailey recited her visions. This time, she told of them in slightly less detail because she didn’t feel like going through it all again. She summarized the main points.

  “Interesting,” the wizard mused, his eyes getting that distant look as he turned things over in his mind. “I suppose it’s good to know that you don’t think it would be smart to become the furry version of Adolf Hitler or Genghis Khan. Frankly, it’s even better to know that Fenris approves of your choice.”

  “Yeah,” she murmured, not sure what to say. “It’s just that…that thing I fought? It was me. It was part of me. It’s not…impossible for me to be like that. You know?”

  He nodded. “I do know. Remember when I told you about how everyone fawned over me as a kid? I took advantage of that, sometimes more than I should have… and many a time, I pictured myself doing a lot more and a lot worse. If I’d wanted to, I could have screwed everyone over and come out on top, but I chose not to. That’s the important thing. Everyone has the potential for evil. It’s just a question of whether we act on it.”

  She couldn’t think of anything to add to that. If Marcus had spoken the truth about her eyeing him as her…consort, she’d rather have a man who was smart.

  A portal opened about twenty feet in front of them.

  “Goddammit,” Roland blurted before anyone came through. “This had better fucking not be—”

  Three women stepped out of the purple shimmer, and the wizard and the werewitch fell into fighting stances. But they’d never seen these three before. They wore familiar-looking leather pseudo-armor getups, yet spoke with American accents.

  “You’re going down!” the apparent leader shrieked, her eyes giddy with excitement. She was a mixed-looking lady with curly dark hair. “Tamara,” she added, “kill the male.”

  Everything happened at once. Bailey, acting reflexively on the emotions she’d just been digesting with regards to Roland, lashed out with her fist and slugged the lead witch in the face. As the dark-haired lady squawked and reeled back, her accomplices hurled spells.

  The one called Tamara swung a flat plane of highly pressurized water like a giant scimitar blade at Roland’s neck. He blocked it and struck it with lightning, causing the sorceress to scream and convulse as sparks flew from her body.

  The third of the witches swatted Bailey with a telekinetic blow, sending her tumbling through the grass. Then she summoned a globule of what must have been poison or acid and flung it at the werewitch.

  Bailey jumped twenty feet into the air and the deadly liquid passed beneath her. She streaked downward, furious that these idiots would attack her after all she’d just endured and intending to stomp them so deep into the soft ground they’d have to gradually dig themselves out.

  Although the witches weren’t as powerful as the Venatori they’d encountered before, they weren’t incompetent, either. The third witch seized her friends by the arms and the trio vanished, reappearing farther along the sward and jeering at them.

  Roland stared at them. “Who are those ditzes? They don’t seem like Venatori soldiers, but they’re not anybody I know personally, either. I wonder if Shannon hired them or—”

  Before any answers could present themselves, Fenris appeared.

  The tall deity, still in his human form, descended from somewhere in the sky and crashed to the earth about halfway between the two groups with the force of a small meteorite. Roland and Bailey fell on their asses from the shockwave, and so did the witches.

  Fenris reached out and summoned an actual meteor, which fell, blazing and shrieking, through the sky toward the spot where the three witches sprawled.

  “Fuck!” shouted the curly-haired leader. They threw up their hands to block the deadly mass of fiery stone and managed to slow it and divert its course to the nearest bog, but that required all the strength of the entire trio, leaving them open to another spell. Even initiating coven-mind, their magical abilities were no match for a god.

  Marcus hurled three spears of purplish-silver plasma. The witches screamed briefly before they were knocked back and impaled, their corpses twitching and smoking in the grass. The deflected meteor sent up steam as it sank into a nearby pond.

  Roland whistled. “Okay, then.”

  Bailey just stared in shock. The sorceresses had tried to kill them, but Marcus’ increasing ruthlessness was starting to bother her.

  The tall shaman turned back to the pair. “How dare they?” he remarked, his voice lower and more gravelly than usual. “I didn’t think they’d be this bold or this stupid.” He saw that the portal was still open, so he slammed it shut and dismissed it with a swipe of his hand.

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nbsp; The werewitch and the wizard climbed to their feet. “Venatori uniforms,” Roland observed, “but we have no idea who they were.”

  Marcus stood but didn’t look at them, advancing instead to examine the witches’ bodies. “Such a small band,” he said. “After the difficulty they had subduing the two of you with a full squad, they ought to know better. This was a feint to gauge our strength.”

  Bailey and Roland flanked the shaman as he glowered at the women’s corpses.

  Bailey added, “They sounded like Americans. Aren’t all the Venatori European?”

  Roland responded, “Mostly. They’re based in Europe, but they do have a few members from other continents. Still, I wonder if they’re…emergency volunteer deputies. Something like that.”

  Fenris kept his eyes on the trio of sprawled forms, and Bailey realized he was performing some kind of magical reading on them.

  “Yes,” he stated. “They are not full members. They were given the distinctive outfits and sacrificed as expendable pawns to provoke us and determine how we’d react. A heartless tactic, but a clever one.”

  Roland coughed. “Compassion isn’t a quality the Venatori cultivate. It’s strictly relegated to that one kid from Captain Planet. Remember that show?”

  “No,” Bailey replied.

  Marcus silenced them with a wave of his hand. “And there’s more. There’s a latent spell surrounding them, transmitting visual signals to their handlers—the real Venatori.” He made a crushing motion with his hand. Nothing seemed to take place, but Bailey guessed he’d just canceled the spell.

  “So,” the girl surmised, “they just saw everything that happened.”

  “I’m afraid so,” the shaman confirmed. “These three were unwitting pawns, meant to be slaughtered. And so they were. Sane people who saw that would flee, but the Venatori will interpret it to mean that they need more firepower if they plan to confront us.”

  Bailey shuddered. The witches who’d attacked recently had been nothing to take lightly. And was the Order crazy enough to declare war on a deity? Then again, they probably didn’t know who Marcus really was, just thought him an extremely powerful were-shaman.