The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  They stepped out of the cool rushing void between one end of the purple gateway and the other and found themselves on the rocky ledge rising from the middle of the vast, swampy dark lake where they’d been last time. Marcus hadn’t told them what to expect yet, but the mere fact they were here suggested that more interactive dream visions were on the agenda.

  Bailey said as much to her teacher.

  “Yes,” he confirmed. “You made progress last time, but there are a couple more tests. They are much like the ones you dealt with before, and the same rules apply. Anything that happens in the spirit realm will have direct consequences for you in this one and on Earth—anywhere your body can exist. Do you understand?”

  She put her hands on her hips and inclined her head. “I do. And even though it wasn’t exactly pleasant last time, I dealt with it. Let’s get it over with.”

  “Soon,” the god-shaman replied, but rather than admonishing her impatience, he seemed pleased by her enthusiasm since a smile crept to the corners of his mouth. “For now, relax.”

  She reclined on the damp rock. Roland sat beside her, while Marcus again conjured a cozy orange campfire and brewed the strange hallucinogenic drink in a stone mug. It seemed odd that a deity would need to go through the motions of a primitive procedure to produce the stuff. She would have thought he’d just be able to conjure it. But perhaps the fire and the stone vessel served some ancient symbolic purpose.

  Roland took her hand. “You’re going to do great, and we’ll be here to keep an eye on you.” His eyes went distant. “I ought to be back in town keeping an eye on all that, but it seems like having me around helps you. When you’re the queen of the wolves or whatever, make sure to shower me with riches and titles and honors, all of which I deserve.”

  She ruffled his hair and pushed his head away in the same motion. “Shut up. Cocky bastard. The reason you’re good to have around is that it inspires me to be less of a dick than you are.”

  The quip came out sounding harsher than she’d intended. “Sorry. That was a joke.”

  “Oh, I’m aware.” He didn’t look offended, although he immediately put his hair back in order. “I don’t think I’m that much of a dick, though. Well, metaphorically speaking, anyway. If we’re talking literal—”

  “No!” Bailey cut him off, biting her tongue to keep from breaking into a goofy smile. “We’re not.”

  Not yet, anyway, she mused, then stopped thinking too hard about that.

  Fenris ignored their discussion and turned to the girl, holding the stone cup with its steaming liquid. “Drink. And take care. You know what’s at stake.”

  She accepted the beverage, raised it to her lips, and felt the world around her melt into blackness.

  After an indeterminate amount of time that might have been a few seconds or a few months, she woke up standing on her feet in a misty and featureless blue-black void, much like the one she’d been in before.

  A chill of dread struck her—not because of any particular foreboding element, but because there was nothing. That meant that anything might pop out, perhaps something even worse than what she’d previously seen.

  The blue-white fog began to coalesce into figures, landscapes, and activity, a solid and living scene.

  There were vague humanoid forms that moved slowly at first, then faster. Then came rolling land and roads and trees and buildings and something that suggested a sky. It was horribly familiar because it was Greenhearth two days ago, during the siege of the Venatori.

  Bailey recognized herself and Roland by the sheriff’s station. Above them on the ridge was the witch Rhona, surrounded by her aides. This time, though, things were different.

  “No,” Bailey murmured. “Wait.” She reached out to herself and her companion.

  The other her, the phantom her, and the phantom Roland were unaware of their nemeses. Blindly and stupidly, they walked into the sheriff’s office. Behind them, the witches descended. Rhona’s group surrounded the building, while onlookers drifted by and watched them with deer-in-the-headlights expressions of slack-jawed curiosity.

  “No!” Bailey cried. Although she knew abstractly that this was an illusion, something about the imagery was intensely real.

  She felt like she was trapped and invisible, forced to watch an alternate version of a reality that was truly happening. A Greenhearth where no one knew what was coming and blindly stumbled into the slaughter.

  Then the second wave of witches arrived, the reinforcements. They joined the first group, and a small army began the attack. The station went up in flames before any of the people within—including her and Roland—could react or defend themselves. Random blasts of magic leapt out at the bystanders, cutting them down and tearing them apart. Screams echoed and smoke wafted.

  And Bailey could do nothing.

  She struggled against the blockage, the unseen limitation that had been placed on her ability to act. Frantic rage welled up as the building slowly burned down and the witches continued to blast it, occasionally pausing to murder anyone who showed up.

  Soon the walls collapsed, and within the ravaged shell of the station sprawled the corpses of Browne, Jurgensen, and Smolinski. The other Bailey and the other Roland had severe burns and abrasions and were on the verge of collapse, weakly trying to defend themselves as the sorceresses closed in.

  Then a storm of magic fell atop them, and the Venatori cackled in victory.

  “No!” Bailey screamed, loud enough that it echoed. The sound shattered the barrier around her.

  Suddenly, she could act again—at the price of being inserted into the scene, where her alternate self had just been.

  She was on her knees, burning ruins around her. Her enemies completely encircled her and laughed at her misery.

  Rhona smirked and jeered. “Surrender, and we might let you live.”

  All at once, she realized that she was the one who had failed—not the hapless spectral doppelganger, but the real her. She had lost everyone she cared about. They were all dead around her, the whole town having been annihilated.

  She sprang to her feet, volcanic with anger, forgetting her panic and weakness. “How dare you! I’ll never fucking surrender to you!”

  The very fabric of reality tore asunder as she channeled more magic than she’d ever managed before, more than she would have thought possible. A tidal wave of elements and arcane essence and invisible forces descended upon the witches, wiping them out of existence.

  Avenging the slain.

  Then it was over, and she awoke in the swamp, gasping. The placid face of Marcus and the worried eyes of Roland hung over her.

  The shaman was first to speak. “What happened?”

  She told him. Even talking about it was painful-not only the horror of the vision, but also the sense that it had only occurred because she’d screwed up. It had seemed like the kind of illusion that would only manifest after a failure on her part.

  Fenris only offered a calm nod. “Good,” he praised her. “It’s just like a wolf to keep fighting no matter how unbalanced the odds are or how overwhelming the opposition seems. The vision showed that you will never give up and that you possess hidden reserves of power. You used them to gain retribution for those who were killed and neutralize the threat. If it had been real, those witches would not have harmed any other settlements after your town.”

  She sighed and shut her eyes for a moment. “Yeah. True. I didn’t think of it that way. Just seemed like it never should’ve gotten to that point.”

  Her teacher went on. “You must realize you’ve been holding back. The power you called upon in the vision exceeded any you’ve ever employed, and it was unlocked by your anger. Good, righteous anger, justified by the innocent people of your town who were wrongly killed. A shaman must be able to tap into that kind of fury when it’s needed. It can provide a tremendous boost and turn the tide of a seemingly hopeless battle. But you must be in control of it. Power like that can’t just be thrown around willy-nilly whenever y
ou feel mildly threatened.”

  She rubbed her eyes. “I understand. I’m not sure I want to be that angry. Ever. But I guess it’s good to know I can still win, even in a god-awful situation like that.”

  Roland chimed in, “I think the visions are testing how you respond to worst-case scenarios. You’re right in that it shouldn’t come to the point of things being that terrible, but it helps to have a notion of how you’d deal with it. Just in case.”

  “Makes sense,” she acceded.

  Marcus had gone back to the fire and was reheating the remaining broth in the stone cup. He offered her the mug again. “Drink. You have at least one more trial. Then we’ll see.”

  She didn’t know what that meant, but she sucked in her breath, took another swig, and returned to the realm of darkness.

  This time, it seemed that the period of formless black was over quicker. The nightmarish illusions took shape almost as soon as she realized she was no longer in the Other. The vision that presented itself was not as dramatically violent as the previous one, but in some ways, it was even worse.

  Roland was a captive of the Venatori. He was on his knees, bound hand and foot, his head bowed and his mouth gagged. He occupied a lighted square of tile floor within a dim stone hallway with arches and tapestries, like something in a medieval castle or a cathedral.

  A procession of witches was lined up before him and moving past. Bailey knew who they were, although they were now dressed in dark burgundy robes rather than leather suits. Each had a curved silver knife and a chalice that looked like it was made of bone.

  She tried to reach out, to warn him or free him, but once again, it seemed like she was locked away someplace where she could only observe.

  One by one, the witches approached the captive wizard, cut him somewhere on his body with their knives, and took a little of his blood in their grisly cups. He winced with each slash and seemed to sag after a dozen had bled him, growing weaker with each wound. He was dying.

  Then Bailey saw herself. She was thousands of miles away—still in Oregon, while Roland was a prisoner in France. She was leading her Weres, managing them and aiding them, organizing the lycanthropic community in the Pacific Northwest. Doing a good job.

  And yet, she was doing nothing. Nothing for Roland.

  “No, goddammit!” she protested.

  In this vision, the Venatori had succeeded in part of their goal. They’d failed to kill her and they’d been repelled from the United States, but they’d claimed a prize to take home with them.

  She gaped in horror as Roland, now infinitely far away, slumped to the floor and turned white.

  Suddenly she was furious that the spirit world would dream up a thing like that. It was mocking her, forcing her into a scenario she would never accept in real life.

  So she rejected it altogether. The imagery vanished like a cloud of smoke dispersed by a strong wind, but Bailey didn’t stop there. She refused to let it reform into whatever nightmare it saw fit. Instead, she repainted the scene.

  In accordance with her will, the mists returned and formed a new scene. In this one, Roland was still a captive within the castle of the sorceresses somewhere in Western Europe. But this time, everything else was different.

  Bailey was still a leader of wolves, and she led them on a daring rescue mission over the American continent, then the Atlantic Ocean, plunging into the homeland of their foes. They located the mysterious estate in France and prepared to assault it.

  Grimly satisfied with her handiwork, the girl watched as she commanded her Weres to scout, neutralize sentries, and finally storm the great hall, killing the witches before they could drain her beloved and losing none of her warriors in the process.

  Then she picked up one of the fallen silver knives, and with it, cut the wizard’s bonds. He rose to his feet again, and she embraced him. Then they kissed with a passion that was almost as embarrassing as it was beautiful while the wolves cheered. They were victorious.

  Bailey felt herself crying with relief and joy. Then she blinked, and the spirit realm was gone. She was sitting up on the ledge with the shaman and the wizard beside her, and tears stung her cheeks even in the Other.

  “Oh, gods,” she gasped. “It’s over. We…I did it. I think.”

  Marcus raised an eyebrow, and Roland was curious too. She told them everything except the kissing part; she somehow felt she ought to leave that out.

  When she finished, Roland, of course, had to toss in his two cents. “Well, glad to know I was saved by a girl. Thanks, though. I appreciate it.”

  Ignoring him, she looked at Fenris.

  The deity, father of her kind, did not speak for a while. He only looked at her with a neutral intensity, crouched before her, and sat back on his haunches, seemingly deep in thought.

  She couldn’t take the delay anymore. After all I just went through, she thought, I damn well deserve an answer without a lot of dramatic-ass pauses.

  “What does it mean?” she asked. “Tell me.”

  Marcus took a long, slow breath. “It means that you are my apprentice.”

  The words hung in the air, and she discovered she didn’t mind the dramatic pause after all.

  “Oh.” She gulped. “Well, shit. That’s great.”

  He smiled. “Yes. Yes, it is. Well done, Bailey. You have passed the last of the tests, and now your true journey toward being the High Shaman begins.”

  There was a twitter of annoyance in her gut at that. She’d forgotten she wasn’t a full apprentice.

  “In that last vision,” Marcus continued, “not only did you use the skills you’d learned up to this point, but you also showed great mental fortitude and creative, out-of-the-box thinking. Not many would have come up with the idea to, we’ll say, rewrite the script of the vision to suit your goals. With that triumph, you have completed the spiritual development necessary to move on.”

  Roland clapped her on the shoulder. “See? I knew you could do it. And of course, saving me was the final and most important thing. I’m flattered.”

  She squinted at him. “Yeah, yeah. Keep flattering yourself, because that wasn’t my intention. I do kinda like you, though.”

  “Awww,” he shot back. “I mostly tolerate you too. Just kidding. I’m truly, sincerely, legitimately overjoyed for you.”

  He wasn’t jumping up and down, but he meant it. She could tell. There was a kind of warm, beaming energy passing between them.

  Fenris raised a hand, fingers outspread, and began counting them off as he summarized all that had occurred.

  “You’ve shown you can perform as a shaman. You didn’t compromise or allow yourself to be corrupted by the temptations of excessive bloodlust, greed, apathy, or fear. You’ve demonstrated compassion as well as ferocious courage in the face of adversity. Finally, you’ve shown me that when necessary, you can break seemingly unbreakable rules if that’s what it takes to succeed. Truly amazing, Bailey. My congratulations.”

  She blushed. “Thank you, Fenris. You’ve been a great teacher. I wouldn’t have come half as far without you. I mean, you are a god and all, but still. You know how to talk to a simple country girl in a way she can understand. I don’t think most deities could do that.”

  He let out a dry chuckle. “Thank you, too, for sticking it out. And now, I think the two of you need some time to rest and talk. This has been trying for Roland too, given how much he cares about you. I’ll take my leave. You’ll see me again when the time is right, however. Just be watchful. The next phase of the conflict can’t be far off.”

  * * *

  After a short search, they’d found what might well be the coziest spot in the whole of a distinctly foreboding dimension.

  Roland snapped his fingers as he looked around. “You know what this reminds me of? That motel room we got in Portland our first night out of Greenhearth. Which was…shit, the first day we knew each other, wasn’t it? I still think about that. Going out for dinner. Walking through the park and all. Perhaps it doesn’t
seem too exciting or glamorous, but it was nice.”

  Hearing him say that, something within her melted. In a good way.

  “It sure was a day that changed my whole life,” she responded. “And y’know, please don’t think I blame you for all the crap that’s happened. It wasn’t your fault. I wouldn’t trade it for, well, not knowing you.”

  She tried not to blush as Roland reclined on the thick carpet of surprisingly dry moss. The magical flame they’d conjured for lighting bathed the whole of the little cave in warm light. She slipped her feet out of her boots, not caring if they smelled sweaty.

  After Bailey’s confirmation as an apprentice shaman, Marcus had stepped through a portal and closed it behind him with no further words. Shrugging, Bailey and Roland had drifted over the swampy lake and the woods surrounding it before coming to a more pleasant stretch of forest that they felt was the right place for them to unwind.

  The trees here were more gray than black, and they’d sprouted a little bit of greenery, as though spring had come to this spot while the rest of the Other languished in a dead and misty winter.

  The cave’s entrance lay between two thick trunks, mostly hidden from sight by the twisting wood as well as a hanging curtain of vines. Within, the stone was clean and covered with emerald moss.

  Roland wasn’t looking directly at her, but he seemed cognizant of everything going on around them, peaceful though it was.

  “I wouldn’t trade it either,” he stated. “You’re the most interesting person I’ve met, and I’d feel…incomplete without you around. I mean that. I’m aware that I’m a smartass a lot of the time, so do me a favor and believe me when I say I’m being sincere.”

  “Hmm.” She considered, making an exaggerated thinking face. “I guess I could do that much for you.”

  “Good.” He loosened his collar. “Since Fenris said that thing about me being your consort, I couldn’t help thinking what a good idea that was. And certain other comments I’ve made… Those were sincere in a way, too. Not that I think you’d be surprised to hear that.”