The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  “All right,” she announced to the five, “I need to go look for them. Stay here for now; later on, we’ll send someone to check on you. The place should be well-stocked with food and water, and you can all get some rest. I’ll put a shield around it that they’d need another god to break through.”

  She said her goodbyes and left, then proved she was as good as her word. Raising her arms, the goddess of both Weres and witches summoned a multi-layered magical barrier of massive thickness and incredible power that encased the keep like a solid crystal dome. It would hold for four or five days, she was confident. That ought to be enough time.

  Inhaling slowly, she turned toward the section of the forest where the one she sought had last been seen.

  Chapter Four

  His boots tramped down the earth and the grass and the weeds and his hair flew out behind him, occasionally brushed by the grasping branches of the dense trees. Sunlight filtered through only in pale and narrow shafts; mostly, the forest was as dark as dusk.

  Balder stopped, willing himself to breathe as softly and shallowly as he could. His right hand clutched at the magical arrow embedded in his right shoulder. Its barbs were gradually transmitting a poisonous plasma into the ether that served him as blood, but he dared not pull it out. If he did, the arrowhead would explode, discharging all its power at once, making things worse, if not killing him in an instant.

  If he left it in, there might still be time.

  He listened; the woods had gone quiet again, though he’d strongly suspected that his pursuers were still following. They must have stopped when he stopped, knowing they’d be easier to hear otherwise and planning to gain on him little by little each time he moved. They knew he was wounded, lost, and alone, and that his strength was flagging.

  The god of beauty had taken a dozen and a half trainees into the forest to further their education in fighting in the woods. If the rumors about Fenris’ planned uprising were true, they might well need it. He’d come to the training grounds without consulting the council. They had been busy at the time, and they’d spend far too long discussing things and deliberating.

  So, Balder had simply taken action.

  And now his trainees had scattered, he might well be dying, and he’d been chased deep into the woods, beyond the farthest reaches of the trainers’ obstacle courses. It was possible he was approaching the bounds of another realm within the Other, a wilderness unknown to the gods.

  He started running again, summoning his divine powers of perception to guide his path, but his inner vision was clouded. The arcane toxins of the arrow were interfering with the functions of his mind, and an obscure property of the enchanted forest was making things worse. Ironically, the disorienting quality was part of why it was a good place to train young god-beings and demigods in forest-based combat scenarios.

  As his feet resumed running, he faintly heard all the other feet that were still chasing him.

  Onward he fled, dizzy, pained, and tired, trying to bear back toward known territory but never breaking out of the labyrinth of trees into anything that looked familiar. His pace slowed. They’d catch him soon.

  Balder gritted his teeth, turned, and put his hand on the hilt of his sword. There was no longer any point in fleeing. He resolved to face them and make a stand—a last stand, perhaps.

  The gaps between the trees came alive with dark, slender shapes, moving with a sinewy grace that was somehow unnerving; snakelike, in a way. They were humanoids, lightly armored in black, with pointed ears, skin of dark purple, and hair of pale silver-white. They stared at him hatefully with their glossy, oversized eyes.

  He was totally surrounded. Any narrow avenue of escape would take him between two of his foes, and more probably lurked farther back in the shadows. There were as many in sight as the trainees he’d led earlier, and the sounds suggested another half-dozen or so.

  Four held black bows raised, with arrows nocked and ready to fire. For some reason, they did not shoot.

  Instead, six of their warriors advanced with drawn swords. The blades were long, though set in one-handed hilts, as well as narrow and slightly curved. The way they held them bespoke centuries of skill, for the swordsmen among the dark elves were legendary.

  But Balder was a god of battle as well as beauty. He drew his rapier, and the long blade shone with blazing white fire.

  Three of the elves gasped and squinted, unaccustomed to such brightness, and Balder seized the initiative. He pounced.

  With a strangled cry, for his shoulder pained him, he drove the point of the blade into the nearest elf’s throat, wicking it aside in the same motion toward the face of the second. The first dropped to his knees, clutching his bleeding neck, as Balder engaged two more at once with quick feinting strokes.

  Rather than dogpile him for a quick kill since they’d risk losing at least one or two of their number, the swordsmen hovered around the wounded god’s periphery, jabbing and lashing with their nimble weapons like men with poles tormenting a cornered bear.

  Balder flung himself at two who’d stumbled too close together; his rapier knocked aside their scimitars and he crashed into them, bowling them over. One was dead with the rapier’s point in his heart before the other could recover, but the remaining fighters attacked him from behind all at once.

  A curved blade cut into the golden-maned god’s side, and he grunted in pain, stumbling back, as more swordsmen joined the fray, grinning cruelly as they observed the flagging strength of their lone opponent.

  Now he had two debilitating wounds and faced nine instead of six.

  He raised his burning sword before his face. “Come then! Pay for the right to say you’ve killed me!”

  They charged. Willing, it seemed, to purchase his destruction at any price.

  * * *

  Bailey had opted to hunt through the woods on four legs instead of two, her sword lashed to her back all the same with a magical cord. Her wolf body carried her over roots and between gnarled trunks faster than she could move in human form, and her senses were heightened. Tiny details of great significance leapt in front of her eyes, ears, and nose.

  She’d passed beyond the edge of the known training grounds when she came to the site of what had to be an ambush. Bodies were sprawled throughout a circle of trees, all dead. Balder was not among them.

  Arrows were embedded in wood or earth. What looked like sword strokes had split sections of bark asunder, and odd burn marks suggested that powerful magic had been used here.

  But something was odd. The corpses numbered only ten. The boy in the keep had told her that Balder had taken almost twice that number on his training excursion. It was possible he’d been mistaken, but Bailey didn’t think so.

  She continued through the forest, sensing and recalling that magic was disrupted by the nature of the place. She’d have to be careful, especially since her nose picked up the trail again with ease, and further scars of magic and weapons confirmed what the aromas had already told her.

  Dark shapes materialized out of the shadows. They moved at a steady but unhurried pace, focusing on something ahead of them and confident that they’d find it. Bailey made out five or six goblins, seemingly led along by a trio of thin humanoids who were about her height. Their black armor and long white hair identified them as dark elves. They had moved to strike beyond the borders of their wasteland homeworld.

  Bailey snuck up behind them, then stood up and shifted back into human form. She cleared her throat loudly, following it with “Excuse me!”

  The hunting party spun to face her, brandishing their weapons. “Who are you?” one of the elves hissed. “Are you...”

  “Probably,” she replied. “What’s going on? You hunting squirrels?”

  One of the goblins squealed, “Shut your mouth! Go away, you! Die!”

  Ignoring it, the apparent leader of the elves sneered. “None of your concern, girl. You look familiar, yet we are here merely to secure our borders, which have expanded into unclaimed territ
ory. We will forget we saw you if you turn back now.”

  Bailey glanced past them and saw traces of the trail she’d been following.

  She put her fists on her hips. “I’m afraid I can’t do that because my own squirrel-hunting activities are taking me in that direction.” She gestured. “We could always split the squirrel between us.”

  One of the elves fired an arrow at her faster than she would have thought possible, but she’d expected as much and flung herself aside while covering her front with a shield. The arrow glanced off it at the point it would have entered her face.

  The other creatures attacked.

  Bailey unslung her sword and drew it in a flash, cutting the first goblin in half. Then she conjured a torrent of water that pushed back two goblins and two elves, freezing it solid so they were trapped in a cocoon of icy spikes that pierced their bodies in multiple places.

  The last elf, the archer, shot at her again, and she caught the arrow telekinetically, turned it around, and launched it into the chest of another goblin. By then, she was airborne, her sword hacking down at the bowman’s head.

  One goblin remained alive, alone amidst the bodies of his fallen comrades. Bailey didn’t move against him; she simply held her sword out from her stomach, ready to swing in any direction, and stared into the small creature’s eyes.

  Trembling, he first dropped his jagged sword and then fell to his knees. “Lady! Great lady, please. No kill! I tell you what want to know. Please!”

  “Okay,” she said, advancing two slow steps and lowering the sword. She kept it ready to bring up again at an instant’s notice but figured it would behoove her not to actively threaten the goblin. He was terrified of her.

  She blew a breath out through her nose and spoke. “You heard what I asked the elves. Tell me everything you know, especially about Balder. And about what your plans are, and who sent you here, and why.”

  The goblin’s ability to speak in ways comprehensible to human-like beings was limited, and the fact that he was hysterical didn’t help. By asking him to clarify things and parsing her way through the gibberish and broken diction, she pieced together most of what she needed.

  Balder was indeed here, first and foremost. Under the leadership of an elite band of dark elf warriors, they’d been sent here to track him down and finish him off. The goblin didn’t know who had given the order at the very top, and he didn’t seem to care, either. As his fear subsided, it was replaced by an increasing wave of vicious excitement.

  “Ragnarök!” the beast exclaimed, his green-lipped mouth breaking into a grin. “Is coming—is here! Promised to us! It will come!”

  Bailey raised her sword an inch. “Promised by who? And when is it coming?”

  “Soon! Now! Very soon!” the goblin shrieked, ignoring the first question. “Asgard fall down! Gods all die! They dead, over, gone. Age of monsters is coming. Is here! We slaughter all! You die!” He bobbed up and down on his feet, too caught up in his sudden surge of enthusiasm to consider his position.

  Bailey had heard enough.

  She whacked the goblin on the head with the flat of her blade, drawing a sharp cry of pain from the creature, then kicked him into the nearest tree. He slumped, unconscious, probably injured. She couldn’t bring herself to execute him outright while he was unarmed and had surrendered, but if he died later, she couldn’t honestly say she cared much.

  Jogging on into the forest, Bailey picked up the trail easily enough. Both the elves and the goblins were agile and stealthy in their ways, but the dark elf homeworld was mostly a rocky desert, as she recalled, and the goblins were too numerous and undisciplined. Neither was able to move through the dense forest without leaving some sign of their passage.

  Not to mention, nothing could hide its smell from the nose of a wolf.

  Soon the girl sensed she was getting closer to her quarry. Up ahead were the noises of sporadic combat, almost like a duel or a training session, which puzzled her. It didn’t sound like an all-out battle.

  The foliage parted before her, and she saw an area where the trees were not quite as dense, as well as a dozen lithe, dark shapes in a slowly-moving circle around a familiar figure, who grunted, gasped, and struggled against them.

  Her eyes bulged, and while gripping her sword in her right hand, she threw out her left.

  Undulating homing bolts of plasma, bright reddish-pink, snaked out from her spread fingers, cutting through tree branches and masses of leaves and vines, finding their mark in the backs of five of the elves closest to her. The humanoids screamed or groaned as the projectiles seared through their spines and hearts, toppling them all at once.

  Half of those who remained turned toward the new arrival, raising their swords, while Balder strove against the few who were engaging him with renewed vigor.

  Bailey lunged at the first elf to challenge her. “Bastards! You’re toying with him, aren’t you?”

  The curved blade of her adversary was fast, but not fast enough. She knocked it aside with a lightning-quick thrust and skewered him through the upper chest, then kicked him aside to engage the others.

  Everything became a raging melee of violence, and both elves and tree branches seemed to fall at random. The world spun, then Bailey and Balder stood alone in the small glade.

  “Oh,” Balder gasped, “Bailey. I didn’t think there was any chance that—”

  She’d been grinning at seeing him still alive, but before they could celebrate, they were interrupted. The woods ahead of them abruptly bristled with black-armored shapes, shorter greenish forms beside their hips and waists, and curved swords for all.

  “Shit on a shingle,” the werewitch cursed. “I’m not hurt, so I’ll go out in front.”

  Balder struggled to raise his rapier in a fighting stance; he switched the blade to his left hand so his shoulder would not pain him any more than needed. “Be careful. Beware of their arrows!”

  One of the elves let out a dry, rasping chuckle. “We would rather not shoot you, though we will if we must. We have the opportunity to collect the heads of two gods instead of one, and the sword laughs with greater delight when it can shear through the neck of an opponent who still fights and strives. Beheading a foe felled with an arrow is not the same.”

  Bailey snorted. “If you want to handicap yourselves, fine with me.” She raised her sword and detonated the stretch of forest where the white-haired humanoids had gathered.

  The explosion projected its heat, light, sonic percussion, and kinetic force straight upward at the goddess’ command. It did not resemble an expanding dome or sphere, but a tight rising column of fire and fury. The dark shapes of trees, elves, and goblins who’d been reduced to unrecognizable cinders showed through the yellow and white mass, then it faded.

  When the smoke cleared, two elves and four goblins remained. They stared, open-mouthed, at the black circle where their comrades had been.

  “Okay,” Bailey stated, “that evens up the odds, I’d say. I hereby promise to fight fair from here on.”

  The six monsters howled in rage and lunged toward her.

  She met them head-on, her longsword clashing with scimitars and knocking aside spears, its magically-augmented blade cleaving flesh and armor. Both elves and two goblins fell.

  The last two of the smaller creatures rushed past the girl to attack Balder, whose rapier impaled the skull of the first, then he kicked the other into a tree before stabbing it through the heart.

  “All right,” he panted, “we’ve won for the time being. Please, help me to rest against a tree. I need a respite.”

  Bailey rushed to the god’s side and took his good left arm, finding a trunk shaped in a way that he could lean his lower back and hips on it without irritating his wounded shoulder.

  The girl examined the arrow. “I should pull that out. You can’t heal properly if the damn thing’s still in there, right?”

  “No,” Balder urged, holding up a hand. “You must not. It’s a trap, a trick arrow. If removed, the he
ad will explode and suffuse the whole area with magic. Not only energy attacks but a variety of curse that can insinuate its way through barriers. It could do us both serious harm. I am already weakened; I might die at once or be left so depleted by the blast that a single warrior of the dark alfar could finish me off. It is too dangerous for you as well as me.”

  Frowning with concern, Bailey retracted her hands. “Okay, but we need to get you some help and fast. Do you think you can make it through the woods out of here? If not, I might be able to, well, levitate you and float you back, something like that. Or try to open a portal, though it seems like magic is wonky in these woods. Most of mine worked well enough, but it felt strange, like it didn’t want to work.”

  Balder nodded. “Yes, they use this forest to train the recruits in fighting without magic. And the arrow has properties that have...interfered with my arcane sensibilities. I cannot see except with my eyes or summon any great spells.”

  The girl waited for the deity to recover a bit, then asked, “Who did this to you? Dark elves and their pet goblins, obviously, but who ordered it?”

  “I’m not sure.” Balder’s lungs heaved, and he stood up straight again with difficulty. “I have no idea how they could have gotten so close without alerting me to their presence. This jungle is an easy place to sneak up on some beings, but I am rarely ambushed. Whoever did this knew what they were doing and was aware of how to get through my defenses.”

  A cold tingle of dread crept down the werewitch’s spine. What Balder had said reminded her far too much of what she’d heard from the trainees at the castle earlier. It confirmed the suspicion, bordering on certainty, that the attack was an inside job.

  Balder went on. “The arrow came out of the trees; I never saw who fired it. And then they attacked, the alfar and their allies. Worse yet, nearly half of my students joined them. The effects of the poison on my mind acted swiftly, and I could not respond fast enough. It was all so shocking. Ambush and betrayal at once!”