by Renée Jaggér
A few of the men laughed, but nervous strain underlay their voices.
Velasquez was well aware that his people needed a confidence boost, and sooner rather than later.
Dammit, Bailey! he thought. Why aren’t you here, fraternizing with the troops? Be a good goddess and move your ass.
Footsteps approached behind them, and Velasquez turned.
It was Townsend, walking with the aid of a cane, looking older and paler than his former understudy recalled, but otherwise like his old self again.
The room cheered.
Townsend waved with a smile, but it was replaced by his standard grimace after a second or two. “Hi,” he said. “Looks like you’re having some trouble.”
* * *
“All right,” Loki concluded. “Now to enact, ah, Phase One, as you people would put it. Simply call Fenris and have him come to you. Say it’s urgent.”
Bailey wasn’t so sure. “You’re putting a lot of faith in my acting skills, you know.”
Loki shrugged. “Yes, but you’ve proven to be an excellent thespian so far. We know you won’t let us down. Tell Fenris what happened. Not all the details, natch, or that you understand what’s going on, but enough for him not to question your motives or reasons for being here. Show him the devastation, the bodies, the trail. Say you’re looking for Balder out of pure concern for his safety but haven’t found him yet.”
Bailey inquired, “Yeah, and then what? What if he gets suspicious, or what if he knows you came and talked to me right before I called him?”
Loki shrugged. “Oh, he won’t. Probably. And if he does, you’re smart enough to figure it out, aren’t you? All speculation aside, I anticipate that he’ll come to you of his own volition once you inform him of the situation. Leaping to your aid, or so it seems, and also seizing the chance to spirit you into battle against the forces he has gone out of his way to assemble. Like he did not long ago, remember?”
She did. Together they’d slain small armies of frost trolls and platoons of dark elves. She still didn’t understand how this could be. How could Fenris be working with the monstrous species while participating in the slaughter of their warriors? Loki had explained the politics of it, but it made no emotional sense to her.
The god of mischief finished up his spiel. “I believe that Fenris will stoop even to betraying his allies in the course of achieving his aims. He’ll happily sacrifice them for the sake of powering you up and then sacrificing you, allowing him to survive and reign beyond the end of the universe. So, if you would, please call him. Balder and I will take our leave.”
The girl agreed. She couldn’t think of a better plan. If nothing else, she’d be able to see how Fenris reacted to the news of Balder’s injury and go from there.
Loki helped Balder to his feet, and the pair took their leave through the portal the mischief-lord had come through. The purple light of the doorway winked out.
Bailey stood alone in the thick, shadowy forest. Daylight was waning; it would be pitch black soon. She inhaled slowly and raised her arms, sending out streamers of her divine and arcane consciousness toward her would-be mentor, the wolf-father.
“Fenris,” she intoned. Then, louder, “Fenris! I have need of you. Come forth, god of werewolves. Aid me! Manifest!”
She imbued her words with magic and sent them echoing throughout the dimensions of the known universe. She could not recall if the incantation was correct, but it ought to be close enough. He usually heard her when she called for him.
The astral reverberations fell still and quiet, and there was no sound in the forest at first, except for the slow beating of Bailey’s heart.
Then a glimmering amethyst-hued doorway opened in the air to her side, much like the one Loki had used. Out of it stepped his son.
Fenris looked at her. As usual, his face was mostly veiled by his hood, but she noted that the tilt of his head and the subtle twist of his mouth suggested he was more perplexed than anything.
“Bailey,” he began, “what is the matter? I have been busy patrolling the borders of Asgard against any attempts by the monstrous people to breach their treaties with us. Is it something serious?”
It pained her to realize that if it hadn’t been for all the evidence she’d heard previously, she would at this moment have no reason to suspect Fenris of lying to her.
“Yeah,” she replied, “pretty damn serious. I came here looking to see if Carl wanted to help out with some stuff and to touch base with everyone, but the castle had been attacked, and everyone but five people had been wiped out.”
She relayed the tale of what happened, keeping most of the details accurate though a tad vague. Obviously, she left out the parts involving Loki and Balder.
The wolf-god grimaced in a way that was moody and severe even for him.
“It comes as no shock. I had feared something like this might happen since there is unrest all across the dimensional boundaries. We foolishly assumed that the training grounds would be safe due to the presence of so many demigod-level beings and the constant presence of skilled guards and trainers, but it wasn’t sufficient. Come, we must halt the dark elves’ invasion. They are moving on many fronts. I was preparing to inform you.”
Though Bailey had half-anticipated this—Loki had said to expect as much—somehow the idea that the elves were attacking multiple places simultaneously came as a mild shock.
And that was only the dark alfar. What, she wondered, were all the other monstrous species up to?
“Goddammit, I thought we’d negotiated a settlement or a ceasefire with them. What the hell is happening to the world lately?”
Fenris’ answer was ominous. “That will remain to be seen. In this specific case, the dark elves are making a massive push against us. They’ve congregated in numbers too great for most to resist. There is no guarantee that we will be able to stop them, but we must try. Come, and we will begin to retaliate against them. Be careful, Bailey, but don’t hold back, either. This might be the biggest conflict we’ve yet been involved in.”
She nodded. “We’ll do whatever we have to do to protect the realms. I’m with you.”
The tall man smiled and turned away from her to dismiss the portal he’d entered by and conjure a new one in its place. He seemed relaxed.
I think I’ve succeeded in convincing him I’ve got his back. He doesn’t suspect me. I hope. But let’s see how he reacts to a little something else.
“Oh, also,” she remarked as Fenris opened the gateway, “I was looking for Balder. I ran into him briefly. He was wounded with a magic arrow or something and told me to leave him be. He went back to Asgard, I think, to have the other gods remove it. He was pretty messed up. Seemed confident he’d be okay, but I’m worried.”
Fenris stiffened, and he did not reply immediately. He turned around.
“Balder was attacked as well?” he mused. “That is disturbing. I fear for him too, since there are accursed arrows in the universe that can cause tremendous harm to gods as well as lower beings. Do you have any leads, any evidence as to who or what might be responsible?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Aside from the dark elves being all over this forest, naturally. I don’t know anything beyond that.”
“Well,” said the wolf-father, “if Balder is returning home, he will get the help he needs and likely survive. Now, follow me.” He stepped through the portal.
But, Bailey speculated, how much longer will he survive? And what am I walking into?
Chapter Six
The homeworld of the dark alfar was not a pleasant realm. Nothing about it was soft or reassuring. Bailey had been here once before, briefly. It hadn’t been high on her list of places to visit again.
It was a desert of red rock and orangish-brown dust, of small jagged mountains and mysterious cavern complexes, with sporadic boulders eroded by the wind and weird petrified trees and vines breaking up the desolate monotony. Overhead, the sky was masked with low, thick clouds the color of slate.
Bailey couldn’t recall if this was the exact place she and Fenris had come to on their previous excursion or somewhere else since it all looked pretty similar to her. She asked the were-god.
“No,” he said, “this is not the location we came to before. It’s closer to the edge of their realm, with some overlap with the Other. Not far, in fact, from the dark forest where you called me. It also seems that your human friends in the Agency sent people here quite recently. And yet...”
There were no signs of human intrusion. No footprints, relics, or the markings of any significant fighting. No bodies, either. It was as though the spot had been undisturbed for decades.
“Huh,” Bailey mused. “As if everything wasn’t weird enough already.”
It was quiet as they advanced toward an area with a greater than average concentration of dark openings to the underground, but it wasn’t long before a low noise combined with a rising vibration brought them both to a halt.
They stood, neither moving nor breathing. They only listened.
The ground was rumbling. So many bodies were moving around beneath them within the bowels of the rock that it qualified as a seismic event, a minor earthquake.
“Uh,” Bailey piped up, in a louder voice, “we have a problem here, Fenris.”
“I know,” he growled.
From the cave mouths all around them streamed black-armored, white-haired archers and swordsmen, their collective hissing battle cry like the descent of a giant tidal wave toward a hapless shore—hundreds of them, with hundreds and thousands more streaming out behind them. The earth emptied itself of their numberless horde.
Bailey punched the ground, conjuring an expanding semicircular wave of water that grew in size and power, becoming a tidal wave that smashed into the first of their foes. It drove them back in rolling heaps, washing them away.
She pushed the torrential waters toward a cluster of cave openings and then froze it, trapping dozens of alfar within the ice and blocking a paltry few of their points of egress to the surface.
But more were coming, not only from other caves but from hidden places aboveground. Forty at a time leaped down from a low, jagged line of cliffs and hills, while scouts and sentries sprouted from behind what looked like every single tree, rock, and bush across the visible landscape.
Fenris retaliated with huge gales of wind and by seizing the rock beneath their feet in sheets an acre wide, turning the ground itself over like a revolving trash can lid and dumping elves back into the subterranean depths from which they’d come.
They screamed and growled and arrows from their bows blanketed the sky, colliding uselessly with the two deities’ hastily-conjured shields.
But for every dozen they forced away, incapacitated, or destroyed, another three dozen rushed to meet them.
“Bailey,” Fenris shouted, “we can’t win here. Not now, not without serious and needless risk. We must flee and get reinforcements!” He shifted into his hulking house-sized wolf form and stomped on elves, flung them aside, and batted groups across the stony plain.
The werewitch created a field of static electricity a quarter-mile across. Fifty or so elves ran into it and froze, their muscles seizing. It wouldn’t kill them, but it would hold them off for a bit.
“No objections here!” she yelled. “We need to clear a place to warp out, though!”
She selected a spot off to her right that seemed less dense with adversaries than anywhere else in the wasteland and detonated an expanding wave of concussive force. Elves flew head over heels through the air or were driven straight back, leaving a broad circle empty of them.
Fenris and Bailey bounded into the cleared zone. The wolf-father was more experienced at conjuring portals, so he worked on that while Bailey surrounded the two of them with a dome-shield. A thousand furious alfar crashed into it, gnashing their teeth and waving their scimitars.
A purple doorway appeared at the center of the safe zone. Fenris, back in human form, made a sharp beckoning motion and plunged into the astral murk. Bailey gave one last glance at the army they’d failed to defeat before she followed him out of their domain.
* * *
Bailey stumbled through the portal, more disoriented than was the norm for her, and the recession of the dizzying cold left her staggered in the grass of her backyard. They had landed a short way behind the pole barn, at the edge of the Nordin family property before it ascended into the forested slopes of the Cascade foothills.
It was dark; she guessed close to midnight. She’d left Earth at dusk. It had been afternoon at the training grounds, so that combined with the differential passage of time in the Other had disoriented her.
Fenris leaned over her to close the gateway the instant she was clear of it. “They don’t possess the magic to follow us,” he pointed out. “But they know the longer route to our worlds. It’s only a matter of time until we have to deal with all of them.”
“I don’t doubt it anymore,” Bailey muttered.
Mentally, she added, Because you riled them up.
They turned toward her home, walking past the pole barn, and the girl watched and listened. Half the lights in the house were on, and she could clearly hear the sounds of many people moving about and talking. It was as though her brothers had decided to throw a party. It didn’t seem too festive, though. She suspected it was another war council of local Weres.
As the pair strode toward the back door, the girl thought of something.
I told my brothers about the situation with Fenris, but how much did they tell other people? Do they have any way of knowing that we need to play along for now? All it takes is one moron to get huffy and wonder what Fenris is doing here, given what we know about him, then the entire plan is down the shitter.
She turned to the wolf-father and put her hand on his arm. “Fenris, could you wait here a sec? I want to assure everyone I’m okay and kinda ease them into what’s going on. No offense, but usually when you’re around, that means there’s trouble.”
His jaw tightened for a split second, but he nodded. “I understand, but we don’t have much time to waste. Please hurry.”
The werewitch rushed ahead, pulling open the back door and intruding upon a group of over two dozen people who’d filled the kitchen, dining room, halls, and living room. She also saw and heard signs of more folks out in the front yard.
Jacob, sitting at the head of the dining table, waved to her. “Bailey! Hey, we just got some people together to talk about what we’ll do if we have to fight against—”
“Yes,” she shouted, her voice loud and sharp, cutting him off. “That’s great, thanks. We can use all the friends we can get.”
She glared sharply at her brother and everyone else present, raising a finger to her lips and pointing surreptitiously behind her with her other hand.
She added, “Yeah, fighting the monster invasions from all these fucking parallel worlds. Me and Fenris beat up a lot of them a couple weeks back, but it wasn’t enough. Now there’s a whole horde of the sons of bitches headed straight for Earth. That’s what I came to talk about, but it looks like you are way ahead of me. I see plenty of familiar faces.”
Her brothers had summoned several of the strongest and most prominent pack alphas, as well as their lieutenants and other respected fighters, from amongst the Weres of the Hearth Valley, plus from some packs farther afield. All were men who’d been with her before and during the war against the Venatori. In particular, she noted Will Waldsbach, who’d been her strongest supporter among the lycanthropic community besides her own family.
She glanced aside, looking through the dining room’s doorway into the living area in time to see her fiancé stride in, with Dante and Charlene trailing behind and beside him.
“Ah,” Roland greeted her, “there you are. We were just discussing whether to try looking for you, calling you, or praying to you. How did things go?”
She frowned. “Could’ve been better. Was I gone for only a few hours or a whole day or more?”
Dante, a wizard not dissimilar from Roland though perhaps three or four years younger, raised a finger. “Twenty-seven hours, almost exactly,” he observed. “If it had been three, we Seattleites wouldn’t have made it here in time.”
“Right,” she muttered. “Good point. Okay, well, Fenris is here to help out and explain to everyone what the current situation is, and then we’ll take volunteers. There’s a battle coming, and it’s better if we fight it sooner rather than later. On their turf. We’ve done enough fighting in this town.”
Some of the assembled witches and werewolves looked confused, and Bailey knew why. They didn’t understand why Fenris was suddenly their friend again. She gave them sharp looks and repeated her pantomimed motion to stay silent.
Then she leaned out the back door and motioned for the wolf-father to come in.
The tall, broad-shouldered man in the hooded coat greeted them only briefly before he set to summarizing the looming threat of the dark elves’ invasion. Pleasantries had never been his strongest suit.
While he spoke, Bailey examined the team her friends had assembled, and she was impressed. Numbers-wise, they were as nothing compared to droves of dark alfar she’d escaped, but fifty or so committed and powerful individuals were nothing to scoff at. In addition to the various Weres, Roland and Dante had also summoned a number of talented witches, whose extensive magical abilities Bailey could sense.
Since she’d ascended to godhood, the arcane gave off a smell that never went away.
Fenris told them all, “We are facing a scenario of total war—a full invasion by an entire race, not merely an organization, as was the case with the Venatori. The numbers of the dark alfar make those of the sorceresses’ Order look insignificant in contrast. We must move quickly and retaliate with immediate and overwhelming force. There can be no holding back, no hesitation, no fighting at anything less than your full ability, yet we have to be disciplined, organized. Bailey and I will go over an outline of our general strategy, and I will take us to a place where we can use the terrain and a modicum of good timing and good luck to our advantage.”