The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  After regrouping, they collaboratively pushed the creature against one of the walls, telekinetically holding it there as they passed before summoning a two-meter thick wall of ice to keep it from following them.

  The second werebear succumbed easily to the same trick. Then the coven had its momentum back, coming at last out of the maze and into a smaller room with a dais and two doorways with inscriptions above each.

  Here, Madame called a halt.

  Perrault asked the collective consciousness, What do those runes say? They seem indecipherable and are outside any record or knowledge of ours.

  It is a trick, Villalobos replied. A test of worth. I presume that both lead to the same place, but one path is longer and more arduous. The spirits probably want their shamans to take the harder path out of a trite desire to build endurance. Since we cannot tell which is which, split up. I will take Holopainen and Marguerite through the left passage. Perrault, you take the other two through the right.

  Doing so was risky since it split the coven-mind, but they didn’t have time to check both passages. Each trio went their separate ways.

  As Villalobos led her followers down the left-hand corridor, they heard heavy stone slam into place. She spun and saw that the portal behind them was still open, meaning that the one into which Perrault and the others had gone must have been sealed off.

  Then, disturbingly, there was a chorus of female screams.

  Villalobos forced herself not to start cursing or worrying. The last thing she needed right now was for Holopainen and Marguerite to get scared. Instead, she drove them on. Three witches were the bare minimum to confront a were-shaman of considerable power, but it would have to suffice.

  “Keep moving,” she snapped. “The coven persists despite the loss of peripheral members. The only thing that matters is finding the werewitch and dealing with her once and for all.”

  * * *

  Bailey had decided they ought to press their luck by continuing through the temple. At the very least, the spirits seemed to have granted them a deferral of hostilities until the situation with the Venatori was resolved. No one had yet been into the long hall beyond the one where they’d all recongregated.

  Once they pushed into it, Bailey stopped, throwing her head to the side and struggling not to punch a wall. “Oh, for fuck’s sake! I can’t believe this shit!”

  Stretching on the other side of the bottleneck chamber they’d been in was what seemed to be the second half of the temple’s labyrinth.

  The other Weres didn’t take the revelation with much joy either. Some slumped in near-despair; others thrashed in sudden tantrums. She couldn’t blame any of them.

  One made a choking sound. “We’re never going to get out of here, are we?”

  “Yes, we are,” Bailey urged. “It’s just gonna take a little longer than I thought.”

  There was another thing, though. She noted it, and the others did, too: noises, the sounds of feet approaching them from behind, and smells wafted on the stale air toward them.

  The Venatori had almost caught up.

  Bailey led them into the cluster of passages, but around the first bend in the main hallway, she stopped. An idea had popped into her head.

  “Okay, change of plans,” she said softly while conjuring a thick shield behind them in hopes it would mask any sounds they made. “There’s no damn point trying to outrun pursuers in the middle of a maze. Instead, we’re gonna ambush them and deal with them right now. The spirit kinda said we have to do it anyway, and it sounds like there’s only three or four. We can take their asses, especially with the element of surprise on our side.”

  “Good,” Will remarked. “I’m itching to let all this aggression out on someone. Might as well be them.”

  Bailey nodded. “Just don’t jump the gun. Do exactly as I say.”

  They didn’t have much time, but the Weres positioned themselves in strategic spots out of easy sight, while Bailey hurriedly prepped all the magic she’d need to make their ploy work.

  First and most obviously, she cloaked them all. It was highly probable the advancing sorceresses had the talent to pierce through a basic illusion, but the idea was to not give them the time to realize that an illusion was even present.

  Next, she conjured a sphere of lightning and held it in stasis within the cloaking field so its light and crackling noises were stifled.

  Finally, she made ready to toss a phantom echo that would, if they were lucky, deceive the Venatori into hurrying after them—straight into the trap.

  Moments passed, and they listened as magical combat took place behind them. The witches must have run into another contingent of guardians back in the bottleneck hall. Then the sounds faded and the mortal footsteps again came closer.

  Sweat trickled down the girl’s brow as she maintained the necessary magical effects. The seconds seemed to stretch to hours.

  The witches were only a few paces from the corner. For a split second, Bailey waffled on whether to spring the ambush at once, before there was any chance of their nemeses detecting the ruse, or whether to wait.

  Her indecision made the choice for her. She held off until they’d taken a couple more steps.

  Flinging out her hand, she released the aural mirage. The sound of Weres bounding over a stone surface echoed a ways down the hall to the right, opposite the T-intersection where she crouched.

  A woman’s voice shouted something in either French or Spanish; Bailey wasn’t quite sure. Then the steady footsteps pounded into a full run, and three leather-clad witches rounded the corner.

  “Now!” Bailey howled.

  Ten werewolves pounced on the sorceresses from both sides, seeming to emerge from thin air as the cloaking illusion melted away, and the captive bolt of lightning flew up toward the ceiling before descending onto the women's heads. The dark-haired woman in the lead screamed in shock and rage.

  Bailey flung herself into the fight, scarcely comprehending what happened next, except for fleeting images of two Weres spinning in midair after being caught in a telekinetic cyclone, and one witch collapsing as the wolves tore her throat out.

  The apparent leader slashed at Bailey with a plasma blade, but the werewitch rebuffed it with a small, concentrated shield that threw the woman off balance.

  Before she could retaliate with magic, Will Waldsbach seized her from behind, her eyes briefly flashing with indignant disbelief as he drove his knee hard into the small of her back and twisted her head sharply around. Her neck snapped, and she slumped to the floor.

  Bailey shouted, “Take the last one alive! Do not kill her!”

  She imbued her voice with psionic command, and half the Weres seized up mid-attack. The others grabbed the remaining witch by all four limbs, and one in wolf form kept his jaws around her throat, the fangs not digging into her jugular or windpipe, but poised with the points upon her skin.

  The battle was over in what felt like mere seconds. They’d won, and Bailey noticed, the sapphire quality of the light suggested that the wolf-spirit was watching them.

  But Roland was still in danger. There wasn’t much time.

  “Okay,” Bailey said to the captive, her voice fierce, “do you speak English? And don’t even think about lying to me.”

  The sole survivor was a young woman who looked more or less Scandinavian, and her strange accent reflected that. “Yes. I surrender if you will spare my life. Do you need information? I have much that you might wish to know.”

  The werewitch stared her down. She was obviously frightened, but not to the point of groveling; instead, she appeared to be trying to open negotiations, albeit from a position of weakness.

  Bailey nodded. “Yeah, information. Start talking. Just don’t think for one second that I won’t tell him,” she gestured to the Were holding her by the throat, “to snap your head off if you fuck with me.”

  The young witch quickly inhaled and then began. “Not all of us entered this temple. We came into the Other with seven. Madame Villal
obos sent one back—with Roland as prisoner after we overcame him.”

  The two women stared into each other’s eyes. Bailey halfway respected the nerve of the Scandinavian, though the thought of Roland in the Venatori’s clutches instantly dispelled any goodwill she might have.

  “Let her go,” she told her Weres. “Carefully.”

  The wolf released her throat, and the men released her limbs. The witch stood up straight.

  Bailey pounced on her, launching her fist into the leather-sheathed stomach and then backhanding the woman across the face. She fell against the wall.

  “There’s more,” Bailey insisted, “isn’t there? All you told me was enough to catch my interest. Now spill the rest before I flatten your head against that wall. I want to know where Roland is, where they’re gonna take him, and how many are with him. Is the one witch who went back the only one watching him? I kinda doubt it.”

  She advanced.

  The sorceress held up her arms in a gesture of self-defense, but even with her lip bleeding, she remained cryptically defiant and calculating.

  What the fuck? I have this bitch at my mercy, and she’s acting like we’re equal partners discussing a trade deal or something. What’s her ace in the hole? What crap is she playing at, delaying me while help comes? Stalling us while her friends take Roland back to Europe?

  The witch said, “I do not know any of that. I am a low-ranking assistant. I am afraid that you killed the woman who would have known, Madame Villalobos. All I can tell you is what I already–”

  Bailey lunged at her again, kneeing her in the side before grabbing her by the shoulders and slamming her into the stone. “Horseshit! You tell me the rest!” Her fist moved again, pummeling the woman into the wall. “You got about ten seconds before I beat your ass to death! You understand that? You...”

  Then Will and Roger and their lieutenants were all around her, laying hands on her shoulders, pulling her away. The Scandinavian enchantress had collapsed into a sitting position, bleeding and barely conscious.

  “Bailey!” the alphas urged. “Bailey! Come on, it’s not worth it.”

  She stepped back, allowing them to put hands on her shoulders and stop her from killing the witch only with a tremendous conscious effort.

  Will looked her in the eyes. “Hey. We need you. Keep your cool, okay? You’re supposed to be our leader. I mean, how would us assholes get through the rest of this with you going crazy? Don’t let this chick throw you off your game.”

  The werewitch took big, heaving breaths and blew them out. The words of her friends started to accumulate in her mind, calming her down and driving out the red haze of anger. “Yeah,” she gasped. “Okay. But Roland’s still out there.”

  Roger caught her eye. “We’ll get him back. Yeah, he’s technically a witch, the male version, but we swore we’d help you. If he means something to you, and if you need him to help you lead us, then so be it. When this is over, we’ll rescue him.”

  “Yeah,” the big wrestler added. “I mean, he seems like a decent guy. Kinda scrawny, though.”

  Bailey looked around and saw assent on the faces of everyone assembled. They were unified in agreement; they were with her.

  “Thanks,” she commented, suddenly abashed. “Glad I have you dumbasses keeping your cool, too. Now let’s move on.”

  One of the Weres flailed a hand at the crumpled figure against the wall. “What about her? Didn’t the spirit say we had to kill all of them?”

  The girl’s gut clenched up at the conundrum. The spirit had said that, but she’d also given her word that the witch would be spared if she talked. She’d only half talked, in truth, but Bailey couldn’t bring herself to just murder the young woman while she was borderline helpless.

  “You,” she intoned. “You can hear me, can’t you? You should never have come here. I’m not going to kill you, but I’m not responsible for your being in this place, either. So if you want to live, you better run the hell back the way you came before the temple starts spawning ghost wolves again, because I don’t have the power to override its defenses.”

  The witch struggled to her feet and began hustling toward the bottleneck hall behind them.

  Bailey called after her, “And one last thing. Quit the fuckin’ Venatori. If I ever see you in Oregon again, or on sacred wolf ground, I will finish what I started here.”

  As the sorceress fled, the lycanthropes moved back into the maze, once more turning right at the intersection.

  To their surprise, the chief guardian spirit, back in the form of a blue wolf, was standing there and waiting for them.

  “Congratulations,” it proclaimed. “Bailey, you exerted good judgment by listening to your alphas and lieutenants, and even continued to inspire them when things grew difficult. And though we ofttimes doubt the wisdom of mercy, we will suspend the temple’s defenses and allow the witch to flee, provided she does not betray the arrangement. You may proceed with the trials unimpeded.”

  The werewitch rubbed her eyes, allowing herself to fantasize about a strong cup of coffee. “Yippee!”

  She didn’t know what would come next. And after it all, they still had to save Roland.

  Chapter Ten

  It was difficult to say why or how the idea came to them, but the Weres agreed that the second labyrinth was smaller than the first.

  The wrestler—Bailey took a moment to recall that his name was Jim—shared his thoughts on the matter.

  “It’s like when a woman, uh, you know, is with a big guy. Afterward, other big guys start to seem normal. That’s how it is with the maze.”

  “Bullshit,” Will laughed. “First of all, you’re not that fuckin’ big, except your biceps. Second, that fails as an analogy because it’s about how things seem bigger or smaller, based on what you’re used to. This maze is smaller than the first one. That’s not the same thing.”

  Bailey tried not to crack up. “I’d be the one to judge all this talk of size if I didn’t have appearances to maintain with you animals. Of course, if you try to explain it to me in too much detail, I’ll kick your ass regardless that I’m an inch shorter than the smallest of you.”

  Roger snickered at that. “Oh, man! I really need to get healthy again since that sounds like the kind of ass-kicking I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Ha-ha,” Bailey said. “Don’t think I won’t come into the hospital to finish you off.”

  In the back of her mind, though, she thought of Roland. Not knowing what was happening to him, except that the Venatori had taken him, was unbearable. She also couldn’t know how many of the witches would be guarding him, or how powerful they might be.

  But the prospect of finding him and having him in her arms again spurred her on, and with the whole pack together, they seemed to be navigating the maze at a stunning speed.

  Their only delays came from the temple’s occasional attempts to distract or divide them. It had no new tricks up its sleeve yet, and they were familiar with the old ones.

  The will o’ the wisps—sounds and images that appeared fleetingly on the fringes of their perception—could do nothing to break the pack unity they’d developed. None of them were stupid enough to fall for the same ruse twice, and they stuck together despite the eerie distractions.

  Rounding a corner, they found themselves suddenly in combat with another werebear, though this one was slightly smaller than the first.

  “Shit,” Bailey snapped as the monster bore down on them. “Everyone get clear! These things are slower than we are, and this time, we got the full eleven.”

  The extra three Weres, not to mention the memory of how they’d defeated the first bear, made all the difference.

  The hulking creature was dangerous enough that Bailey had to concentrate on the fight, but it didn’t take long. She blasted its face with magic while her wolves harried its sides and legs and posterior, and when it seemed stunned, Jim moved in, still in human form, and knocked it off-balance. Then the others piled on top of the bear and savaged hi
s head until he gave up and lay on the floor, half-dead and gasping.

  Bailey beamed with pride. “Nice work. You guys are improving, and I guess I am too. We win. Let’s move out!”

  For all that they were growing exhausted, a crazy exhilaration comparable to a second wind while running sustained them. There was a sense that they’d nearly reached the end.

  As they piled into the next hallway, keeping a tight formation, their spectral guide manifested again, back in the form of a wolf’s head floating above them.

  “Your skills at overcoming the labyrinth have improved threefold,” it stated. “You have all recognized that there is no real limit to growth and have made past learning the foundation of further learning. That is key. And you, Bailey Nordin, have presided over these successes. You may yet make a fine shaman.”

  The werewitch smiled, though she kept it tasteful, discreet, and professional. No reason to gloat in front of a demigod protector-entity.

  * * *

  The quality of the light and the smell of the air changed as they entered a long, straight, clean hallway. It was nothing like the shift that had accompanied the Venatori’s intrusion, however. This change was pleasant.

  “Hey,” Will wondered, “are we getting closer to the surface? It doesn’t feel as, I dunno, heavy and dark as it did.”

  Bailey chewed on a lip. “I don’t think we’re any higher than we were, but something does feel different in a good way. And—oh, damn. Look up ahead.”

  Most of them had seen it—a pale light far down the corridor, streaming out from a central point in a cluster of rays. As they approached it, Bailey felt her spine tingling and her suspicions rising, and she sensed the others felt likewise. It was possible they were on their way into the jaws of another trap or illusion.

  Closer and closer they got, and the light grew brighter until it bathed the hallway in a stark white glare. It was blinding by the time they reached the square doorway from which it emanated.