The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus
Page 110
Sucking in her breath, Bailey hurled herself through the dark doorway into the temple. The other Weres had begun to descend the great staircase that led down into the subterranean trial chambers, and she urged them to hurry.
The group rounded the corner as the stairs angled to the side and emerged into the broad hall where the Bailey recalled facing the first trial. She was somehow unsurprised when a silver-blue light coalesced in the center of the chamber into a luminous figure shaped vaguely like a wolf.
“Welcome, Bailey Nordin!” it greeted them. “And Alfred Warner. Be at peace during your visit. You may study, meditate, or train as you see fit.”
The girl glanced at Alfred and saw that his mouth was hanging open in shock. He quickly bowed his head in reverence.
“Thanks,” she said on behalf of them both. “We wanted to bring the whole pack through the maze as a training exercise. Don’t need to go through any of the other trials again, though.” With a wave of her hand, they all marched across the stone chamber toward the door on the far side.
The specter gazed at her, and she felt a bit guilty. They were using the temple’s guardians to do their dirty work and act as their meat shields, but it wasn’t as though the Venatori could kill the immortal spirits of the shamans of the past.
At least, she didn’t think so.
Then footsteps thudded above and behind them and the guardian spirit vanished, only to reappear again as a multiplicity of snarling wolf’s heads that filled the whole chamber.
“Intruders!” it bellowed. “Violators and desecrators, unwanted foes! Remove yourselves from this holy place, or face the wrath of all weredom!”
Bailey hastened toward the black passage at the other end of the hall. “Move,” she urged her allies. “Faster.”
It had begun.
Chapter Eleven
“Oh?” Roland inquired, raising an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that? Russell, let’s make certain she’s sure.”
The huge werewolf growled as his jaws closed harder on the witch’s arm. Screaming and mewling in pain, but mostly in fear, the woman blurted out, “Yes! Yes, it is true. The Inquisitor, Madame Jarvis, and Madame MacLachlan are the only other ones here. The rest of us were all recalled for something. I do not know what. They are waiting on the ridge to the west. If I do not contact them soon, they will begin to destroy the town.”
The group all stood around her, watching grimly, four of them bandaging wounds or drinking water to rehydrate after having lost blood. The supercilious leader of the four, named Kasia, and one other knelt on the living room floor. The remaining two lay dead in the dining room. There had been no deaths among Roland’s allies.
The wizard glared at her. “How soon? And are the two of them legitimately powerful enough to wipe out Greenhearth by themselves?”
“Ah,” Kasia blinked as she wracked her brain, “perhaps sixty minutes? I have lost track of time since you attacked us. And yes. They are among the strongest witches in the entire Order.”
Roland nodded. He was nearly positive the young woman was telling the truth, though he wished she weren’t. The news was not encouraging. But it was better to be apprised of the truth than to walk into a difficult fight filled with overconfidence.
“Great.” He sighed. “And like I said before, the Inquisitors’ reputation suggests that they’re nothing to fuck around with. Still, only two of them. This little town has repelled small armies twice before. By rights, we should kill both of you to be safe, but we’ll let you live if you behave yourselves. Once your mistresses are dealt with, you can always say you barely escaped with your lives, the usual crap.”
The other woman had given no indication of how she felt, but Kasia, like many stuck-up bullies, had proven to be a complete coward once at her foes’ mercy, which was convenient. Roland suspected she’d cooperate to save her skin. That just left the silent underling to keep watch on.
Mr. Holmquist, who’d taken a nasty plasma cut to the upper arm, asked, “What do we do now?”
Roland covered the prisoners with a cone of silence before he answered. There was an off chance that one of the captive Venatori might be able to slip a psionic warning to their superiors, so it was better if they heard nothing whatsoever.
The wizard turned toward his allies. “We have approximately fifty-five minutes to raise a small army and take out the two bosses. The good news is that we spoke to enough people on our way here that we should be able to manage it. I can break the enchantments on the ones who were magically dazed. I think. Otherwise, we’ll have to make do. We can’t allow Bailey to come back to a volcanic crater where her home used to be.”
On that much, at least, they were in agreement. But arguments quickly broke out over whether they should risk a direct assault disguised as a diplomatic effort, or try baiting the Inquisitor into following them into the woods, or try intimidating her into leaving.
Roland neutralized the anti-sound cone and questioned Kasia further.
“They are waiting and watching,” the witch reported. “On the stony ridge over the road that comes in from due west. They chose that spot because there is no way to approach them except by going straight up the road.”
“Figures,” Kurt grumbled. “Can’t they make it easy, just this once?”
“I know,” Dante added. “This is my first time fighting them and I feel like it’s been frickin’ forever. Still, we gotta do what we gotta do.”
After another salvo of discussion, the group agreed to simply assemble as many people who could fight as possible and march most of them straight up the ridge, as a “show of unity” that would conveniently double as an assault force. A handful of Weres would try climbing the cliffs to either side of the ridge to provide minimal flanking when the battle broke out.
Charlene stretched her arms and flexed her hands. “I cannot believe we’re doing this shit. It hasn’t been boring, I’ll say that much.”
The group marched out of the house and into the town. Dante and Charlene collaborated on a radar-like shield spell that would maintain itself a given distance above and around them while also alerting them to any magical activity with a psionic alarm. They’d have warning if the Inquisitor tried to attack them prematurely.
But no one did. Unmolested, they collected the patrolling Weres they’d spoken to earlier, and a few others besides, their numbers swelling to the strength of a military platoon. Toward the end of their jaunt, they headed toward the sheriff’s station.
Sheriff Browne and his deputies came out to meet them with solemn faces, hands clenching their guns. They listened in silence as Roland rapidly summarized the situation.
“We’ll come,” declared the Sheriff. “Gettin’ mighty tired of dealing with these witches every couple weeks. If Bailey thinks she can put a stop to the problem altogether, then it’s worth the risk. You all remember to leave us some room to shoot, though. Rifles and pistols don’t work the same way as magic and fangs.”
Dante couldn’t help himself. “Wow, really?”
Browne glared at the boy. “Watch it, son. We don’t like smartass out-of-towners here, even if they are helping us keep from being turned into charcoal.”
The group pressed due west. Another man armed with a carbine and two more volunteer Weres from somewhere to the northeast joined them. They had around forty warm bodies in total, enough for a military platoon, not too shabby against only two adversaries.
Or so they hoped.
As the force approached their destination on the west side, Roland caught a glimpse of Doug, the Were who’d been taken prisoner. He was still hanging helpless in midair, although the witches had moved him back into the woods, which was why Roland hadn’t been able to see him earlier.
Well, at least he’s not dead yet. Hell, is this going to work? Are we going to accomplish anything except getting half the town killed?
Then he recalled that the entire town was going to get stomped if they did nothing, anyway.
The ridge rose to the ri
ght of the western side road, but Roland couldn’t discern anyone standing on it. Then, a moment later, two figures appeared on the street, right before it crested over the ridge’s far side and vanished into the forested hills. A pair of women, one in black, and one in reddish-brown.
Roland amplified his voice to the level of an announcement, figuring it made more sense to begin the discussion himself.
“Good evening,” he began, his voice ringing over the slopes. “We have come, all of us, to negotiate the terms of your departure.”
One of the witches’ voices came back with a sputtering laugh. “Negotiate! Oh, that’s lovely.” Judging by the Scottish accent, it was Madame MacLachlan, the telekinesis specialist who’d led the attack on Greenhearth a month-ish ago. “You don’t have the high ground, let alone the firepower, so the negotiations won’t take long.”
The other woman, the Inquisitor, spoke then with an accent Roland couldn’t quite place. “We will leave with Bailey’s brothers. If you refuse us, you will all die, and this town will be burnt down.”
Murmurs of fear and anger went through the massing group. The wizard hoped that the Weres who’d agreed to climb the ridge from the far side were almost in a position to attack, since he was inclined to agree with MacLachlan that the discussion would be brief. Neither of the Venatori seemed in a mood to talk much.
“Well,” Roland responded, “what we wanted to say was more like this. We hereby unanimously declare that the Venatori Order can fuck right off out of the States, out of the affairs of normal witches as well as all werewolves, and certainly right the fuck out of Bailey’s hometown, leaving her family in peace.”
MacLachlan started to snort again, but Roland cut her off.
“And, by ‘her family’ I mean more than just her close blood relations. It means all the Weres here and all the people who call the Hearth Valley their home. And me, of course. Oh, and definitely that guy you have floating up there, Doug. Release him too by gently floating him back down to the ground, none of the sarcastic lawyer shit where you let him fall and say that counts as ‘releasing’ him. Do everything I said, and you’ll get back to France in one piece. I’d say that’s fair.”
The Scotswoman shook her head in disbelief. The other, Madame Jarvis, only arched an eyebrow, her face coolly disdainful. With a flick of her hand, Doug wafted downwards and slowly came to rest in the grass of the ridge.
“There,” she stated. “As for the rest, our terms stand. The brothers come with us. You may have many people with you, but do you think it is enough to overcome me?”
As Roland had expected, their adversaries were refusing to budge. He breathed deep, steeling himself.
“Only one way to find out,” he said.
At a snap of his fingers, a swarm of ball lightning appeared a couple of yards behind the two witches, blazing toward them. At the same moment, the Weres all shifted, growled, and launched themselves up the street.
The Inquisitor easily blocked his projectiles despite how close he’d conjured them and them coming from the back, and the other sorceress was raising her hands to attack.
“Shields!” Roland barked.
Dante and Charlene wove a thick, powerful barrier over the group, a mobile one that advanced with the charging wolves and deflected the multi-pronged stream of fire that MacLachlan tossed at them. But she was already using her off-hand to pull an entire section of rock out of the ridge, preparing to roll it down the hill at her attackers.
Roland knew he had to trust his friends’ shield and the other witch girl's abilities, to deal with the boulder. Jarvis was about to strike, and whatever she did, it was guaranteed to be devastating.
The wizard harried her with psionic fear pulses and arcane spears from all directions, but the Inquisitor shrugged them off. Then she moved her right arm in an overhead motion as if swinging a sword. Which, in a fashion, was exactly what she did.
A plasma blade the size of a radio tower split the air and descended toward the group. Eyes bulging in shock, Roland threw up the strongest shield he could summon, but it did little more than slow the arc of death slightly and alter its course. Charlene had managed to roll the boulder into a slight ravine, but Jarvis’ attack could not be neutralized.
Screams went around the street as Weres, witches, and normal gun-toting townsfolk scattered to the sides or ran backward. The wolves out in front were too close and simply barreled forward, trying to maul the Inquisitor before the blade struck.
Magenta light, flames, and chunks of asphalt flew up amidst the deafening crash and deadly heat. Roland had jumped toward a natural alcove in the cliff to the right, and the shockwave, hot wind, and debris from the impact drove him hard against the rock. He forced himself back out into the open the instant the worst was over, though, since they had no hope in the fight without all of their casters working together.
As he leaped forth, though, something occurred to him. The giant plasma blade had, he realized, in fact been a bunch of smaller blades chained together. The Inquisitor may not have had the raw power he feared, but she was certainly creative at finding ways to maximize the effect of basic spells.
In a frenzy, he began throwing every piece of offensive magic he could think of at the two Venatori, allowing himself only enough rational thought to avoid striking the Weres who circled, lunged, and pawed at the witches. Otherwise his existence became like that of a thunderhead in the middle of a storm.
Nothing had touched the witches at the top of the road. But for all their power, the sheer number of wolves circling them, and the furious onslaught of magical attacks, kept them pressed down. At first, Jarvis and MacLachlan had scarcely broken a sweat, but now both were deep in concentration as they fended off the nonstop harrying.
Still, their power was terrifying.
MacLachlan swept her arms around in wide, flailing circles, tossing lycanthropes through the air to crash against stone, trees, or broken asphalt. She telekinetically picked up chunks of the devastated road, loose stones from the cliff, and entire trees, hurling them like catapult payloads at the endless waves of attackers. Some fled or went down wounded, but they didn’t stop.
Jarvis fought in a more controlled way, carefully managing the strikes against her and counterattacking at unexpected moments with blasts that Roland and the other witches found almost impossible to block or redirect.
The street and its surrounding hills had become a war zone, and the chaos of the melee was such that the wizard did not know if anyone had been killed yet. Gunshots sporadically cracked amidst all the other noise as Browne and the other cops fired when it was safe.
The Venatori were forced to engage more frantically. For all their magical skill, they lacked the physical enhancements of Weres and were no stronger than normal humans in close combat. MacLachlan, at one point, accidentally knocked Jarvis off-balance with a clumsy percussive spell, and the Inquisitor destabilized the other witch with a blast of icy wind.
Roland glanced at Doug. Though Jarvis had lowered him to the ground, he was still subtly bound with invisible arcane cords. Yet his eyes were alert, and Roland sensed a vitality in him, as though he’d spent his imprisonment resting and recovering. Everyone had forgotten about him.
And he was positioned in such a way that, if freed, he could pounce on Madame Jarvis’ head, given the proper opening.
Before Roland could do anything, MacLachlan seized a huge pine tree, uprooted it, and swung it sideways like a colossal club at a cluster of three Weres. The wizard struck the tree with lightning, shattering it into smoking pieces that still knocked two of the wolves around but probably saved their lives. The third one came down almost on top of the Scotswoman.
“Fuck this!” she cursed, barely swiping the wolf aside. Then a firebolt tossed by Dante streaked past her cheek.
She turned and ran, using magic to amplify her speed, flying when necessary, and disappeared behind a wooded rise. Roland saw a faint glow of deep purple, suggesting she’d opened a portal to escape.
“You fools!” the witch barked. “This was your last chance. Even if you kill me, I will take half of you with me! And there are far more Inquisitors than I, who will return for revenge!”
Charlene cawed back, “Yeah, big talk for someone who’s surrounded!”
Roland sent his mind out toward Doug and sensed the pattern of the spell that kept him bound. With precise surges of counter-enchantment, he unraveled it cord by cord. One of the Were’s legs twitched free.
I hope he realizes what I’m doing and what an opportunity he has, the wizard fretted. If he doesn’t, Greenhearth’s population is going to end up a lot lower before we have a shot at victory.
The last arcane cord fell away, and Doug slowly moved all his limbs in place. His eyes were focused on the Inquisitor, the back of whose black-haired head hovered just in front of and below him.
He shifted, surging with adrenaline despite his haggard state, and pounced.
The big furry shape crashed into the witch, who failed to see him coming. Shouts went up as the group realized what had happened. Roland and seven or eight others converged on the sudden struggle. Then Doug was flying back, an ice spear through the center of his torso.
“No!” Roland cried out.
But Jarvis had been too badly hurt and disoriented to recover in time. Other wolves bit into her limbs, pulling her off-balance.
Then the wizard grabbed Dante, Charlene, and the other girl, and the four of them launched a circling blast of concentrated fire and plasma at the Inquisitor’s chest. The lycanthropes scattered as it struck, and screaming, Madame Jarvis was incinerated. The noise of battle died down as her ashes fell across the street.