by Renée Jaggér
“Well, they’re doing plenty of business so far. Makes me a little worried for the Elk, but once the whole valley has gotten past the novelty factor of the place, things ought to even out between all three of our restaurants.”
The mechanic laughed. “See? Economics again. Is this something Roland talks about that rubs off on you?”
“Nah,” Bailey replied. “He’s more into, you know, science and magical shit. I’m slowly getting him to appreciate all the technological genius that goes into motor vehicles.”
As they drove off to grab a six-pack of beer from the convenience store, her mention of magic made Bailey turn her mind to how well she was processing Loki’s infusion of power.
She felt better. Still weird, as though she were on an upper, but she was managing. Rest, food, and normalcy were helping. Soon, she’d head back to join her friends and allies in winning the latest battle.
But not yet.
Gunney took them to a lookout spot they’d discovered years ago—not a formal one maintained by the state or county, simply a part of the road up in the hills with a wide shoulder and a nice view. They sat and illegally drank alcohol in the vehicle, joking about which spells the werewitch could use to hide the booze if the sheriff or one of his men came by.
The day faded, and the man and the girl watched the sun go down. She hoped he wasn’t delaying the work at the shop on her behalf, but if so, at least they enjoyed the wasted time.
“Okay,” Gunney growled after a while, “that was fun. Thanks for dinner, by the way. Let’s get back to the shop, and then I suppose you need to get back to saving the world.”
Bailey’s Tundra pulled into the gravel lot in front of her house. Roland and Agent Velasquez were there waiting for her.
She’d been half-dazedly musing about all that had happened and all she hoped could happen after things were peaceful again, but on seeing the two of them, she remembered her pledge to leap to their aid if need be. She tensed and snapped to attention.
Neither man looked frightened or hasty, though. She parked next to them and jumped out. “Hey. Are things okay?”
“Yes,” said Velasquez, “but we’re ready to move out. Are you?”
“Yeah,” she answered him. “I’m a hell of a lot better. Needed time to digest my new powers, not to mention to digest some food.”
Roland raised an eyebrow. “What did you have? We were still operating on MREs, so I’m curious.”
She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “New barbecue shack, south side of town. I’ll take you there when it’s all over.”
Velasquez interrupted to hasten them along, and Bailey allowed him to. They knew there was important work to be done.
Roland opened a portal in the backyard and the three stepped through, emerging near the edge of the agents’ base camp within the canyon. The force were all on their feet. The Agency personnel held their dispersal rifles to their chests, with wrist tanks fully charged. The few remaining witches stood beside them, ready to offer combat support.
Agent Park strode up. “Glad to see you back, sir. Bailey, you ready to go?”
“Yep,” she informed him. “In fact, I’m better than ever, and since this might be the final push right here, before we begin, I’d like to say a few words if that’s okay with everyone.”
Velasquez adjusted his glasses. “Sure. We technically can’t refuse any request you make due to the whole divinity issue, but since you’re implying you’d like my permission, then yeah, you have it.”
She smiled at the lead agent. “Gracious of you, and yeah, I could force you to listen to me, but I’d rather ask first and hear what people have to say.”
He shrugged and awaited her spiel.
The girl cleared her throat and turned to the crowd. She knew she wasn’t the most eloquent of women, but by this point, she did have a certain amount of experience with public speaking.
“Right,” she began. “All of you have fought bravely. Some of you I met before on different missions, different battles. Fighting the Venatori, or in the earlier stages of dealing with these goddamn crone things. Others of you are new to me, but every one of you has done well. You know why we’re here: because this bitch, formerly known as Caldoria McCluskey, wasn’t content only to try and steal my boyfriend. Though she definitely did try that, since she’s an idiot.”
Low laughs went around the group.
“No,” Bailey continued, “she’s moved on to trying to steal everyone within the witch community. These replications of herself can only exist by sucking the magic and life essence out of other casters, and they’ve already killed way too many of our people. I say our, because I’m a goddess of both Weres and witches, and there are strong bonds of friendship between us lately. I hope that continues.”
Heads nodded. She was the only lycanthrope currently present, but they all knew what she was talking about.
The werewitch went on, “We’ve been lucky in a lot of ways. We caught the enemy before they were ready to fight, when mostly all they have is these weak, dumbass, low-level clones. They’re dangerous in a swarm, but we’ve kicked the shit out of them so far, and the fact that all we’ve suffered is, what, three injuries, means we’re doing something right. We need to keep doing it, and we will.”
Velasquez offered, “In other words, don’t get cocky. I want everyone taking maximum care and observing all the prescribed instructions.”
“Yeah,” Bailey acceded, “what he said. We got this, ladies and gentlemen. Not even one of us needs to die here, and we will achieve total victory. All the witches in Portland or elsewhere who died or gave up their powers to create these abominations, we’re going to avenge them and wipe this threat off the face of the Earth. Or the Other, close enough. Keep your eyes open, trust each other, work together, and we’ll be back home in time for a nice early breakfast. Let’s fuckin’ do this.”
Cheers went up, and her people pumped fists in the air. Roland smiled with a subdued appreciation. She might not have sounded as erudite as the people he knew in Seattle witch society, but she understood the red meat of how to talk to a crowd.
As the goddess stepped back and rejoined Roland, the lead agent stepped forward and went over the minutiae of their plan of attack with his men. Bailey listened to it, knowing implicitly that she wasn’t expected to follow it, but also that she’d best be aware of what they’d be doing. That way, she could fill in the gaps they left, cover their asses, and, of course, act as their heavy artillery.
She also went over strategy with Roland, Dante, Charlene, and the other three witches so everyone would be aware of what everyone else was doing and worked toward the same goal.
There was one thing left, though—the wild card in their proverbial deck.
Bailey turned to Loki, who’d been lounging at the far fringe of the group, watching in silence. He looked marginally better than he had before she’d left but still sickly and enervated.
“Hey,” she asked him, “are you well enough to participate? You said you might be able to help, but don’t risk yourself.”
“Oh,” the mischief-lord countered, “don’t worry, I’m quite all right. Mostly. And I do intend to help; I can just about manage a sneaky spell that will be of use to you. We don’t know what to expect beyond that bend in the canyon, but it’s likely to be far worse than what you’ve encountered so far, so I’m going to give you a little edge on the competition.”
As the girl narrowed her eyes, wondering what he could mean, Loki extended his long, narrow hands, and a light grew between them. At first it was fuchsia-pink, similar to the standard magenta tone of arcanoplasm but not identical. It deepened and darkened to an eerie yet majestic purple akin to the hue of a portal, though with an odd burgundy tint.
“The hell?” Bailey asked.
“Ooh,” Roland quipped, “a spell that’s new to me. This ought to be good. Please don’t do that thing where you say it’s ‘your little secret’ or crap like that, Loki. We have to know what this is.”
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The deity smirked. “And you shall, this one time. We’ll call it a special occasion.”
Agents Velasquez and Park approached them, figuring they ought to pay attention to what Loki was up to, as well.
Addressing them all, the god of mischief explained, “This sphere is a concentrated time dilation spell. It will function like a bomb, but not a destructive one. When I hurl it and it bursts, it will cause a...what’s that hilarious military term you people use? Snafu, that’s it. It will cause a snafu in the space-time continuum, but for certain beings only, such as our friends, the eldritch crones.”
Roland rubbed his hands together. “This is great. More!”
“Yes, yes,” Loki chided, “I’m getting to the rest. The expanding field will effectively put the specters into ‘slow motion.’ For a short while, anyway. Spells of this type cannot be made to last long, or they cause chain reactions in the fabric of the universe that can be highly unpredictable and unpleasant, but once we’re upon them, it will give you an initial advantage. They will move as if they’re in a drunken stupor, while you are able to plow ahead to the main goal or destroy them at your leisure.”
Velasquez, who’d been rather grim and humorless lately under the burden of command, grinned openly. “Nice! I’d say that’s as good as a bomb of the incendiary variety. Warn us before you pop it, though. Will there be any side effects for us?”
Loki pursed his lips as he thought. It occurred to Bailey that being sapped of power as he was, his mind might not be as sharp as if he were operating at full strength.
“It shouldn’t,” the dark-haired god answered the agent. “It will make a flash and perhaps a mild sonic pulse, but nothing overtly harmful.”
Satisfied, Velasquez had his men form up, and with Bailey at the head, they all marched toward the bend.
The werewitch breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth as she stomped across the stony ground. Roland walked at her left elbow and Loki at her right, the mystical purple glow of his time-dilation bomb casting the rusty red rock in odd wine-like hues.
Ahead of them, they saw that the angle of the canyon bent more sharply to the side than they’d anticipated. It was at least a forty-five-degree angle, maybe more, which made it impossible to see anything beyond.
Shit, Bailey ruminated. I ought to fly up into the air and observe it from above, but I’d be abandoning everyone else if they get ambushed. If they have some seriously big guns waiting, I could be captured myself. Let’s just continue with the plan as-is. How bad can it be up there? Those things aren’t that tough.
They came to the jutting shelf of rock that blocked off the rest of the gorge beyond the bend; all they could see were layers of naked reddish stone. There were faint sounds in the air, a low thrumming and a multiplicity of moans and whispers, but they weren’t noticeably different from the noises made by the crones and the anchor-nodes the mortals had encountered before.
Then they rounded the corner and stumbled into a massive fuckstorm of shit.
Someone exclaimed, “Oh, my God!” and even Bailey drew in a sharp, gasping breath.
The part of the canyon where the scanners had revealed the main energy signature was laid out in such a way that anyone coming into it would suddenly find themselves in a vast, open space, hidden from sight until they were within it. For all her seeming stupidity, Callie had chosen to place her main anchor in the one place in the canyonlands that had the best terrain advantage.
And the broad valley was crammed with hundreds of crone specters.
“Loki!” Bailey shouted, “throw it!”
The mischief god didn’t hesitate. While the droves of the undead spirits around them howled in rage and alarm, he hurled the purple sphere into their midst, seeming to retain active control of it as it spiraled out. It burst in the thick of a good hundred or so of them, creating a burgundy flash like that of a looming thunderstorm, combined with an odd muffled vibration-pulse that set their teeth rattling.
Bailey could hear the effects of the spell. The shrieks and rustles of the horde decreased in both rapidity and pitch, as though they had reduced the playback speed on an audio file, and their mad dash to destroy the intruders became an absurdly ponderous crawl.
The girl produced her sword, raising it first and then aiming it ahead of her. “Forward! Charge!”
The entire force barreled on. Bailey swung her enchanted blade left and right, hurling waves of nuclear flame and storms of arcane power, while the mortal witches manipulated shields, wind, and circles of ice to protect themselves and their allies while buffeting the crones away from them.
Meanwhile, bright green lines of dispersal energy streaked out of the rifles of the fifty agents, turning the ghost-clogged sky into a net of contrasting colors like a laser light show at a nightclub or festival. Though the specters were all but incapacitated, their sheer numbers meant there was no time to vacuum up their lingering essences. The only thing that mattered was destroying their ability to resist.
As Bailey ran forth, she saw that Loki had collapsed against a pile of stone.
“Loki!” she shouted, slowing to a stop. The agents slowed too, covering her with their guns.
The slender deity looked like he’d fallen unconscious, but he retained enough self-control to wave a hand at her. Go on without me, the motion seemed to say. Bailey’s gut clenched, but she had to trust him to know his own capabilities. She turned away and continued the charge into the valley.
With the first wave of the eldritch hags obliterated, their ultimate goal came into sight. There was no mistaking it.
Unlike the disgusting alien blue-black lesser nodes, the central anchor resembled a tower or castle made mostly of greenish crystal. It was close to a mile away in the werewitch’s estimation, yet with its size and the clarity of the air, they could see it easily.
It had to be the equivalent of five stories high, and the crystalline structure was the stuff of pure, condensed magic. Vague shapes, dark within the bright material, swirled beneath the surface. It looked somehow alive. Bailey wondered if the movements represented masses of energy, or if they were the protoplasmic forms of new Callie-clones about to be spawned.
Crying out with the strain of battle and the shock of being consumed by a fight they now knew would be far more difficult than anticipated, the force of fewer than sixty people plunged into the center of the horde. Specters moved toward them as if drugged. Loki’s spell had effectively removed their perceptual abilities from the current timeline, trapping them in another that was lagging behind, always too late.
However, as Bailey slashed, blasted, and burned her way through the hideous ghosts, it dawned on her that they didn’t know exactly how long the time dilation would last. She doubted they could make it all the way to the massive crystal before it ended.
A moment later, the bizarre gurgling chorus of slowed-down howls sped up and rose in pitch, abruptly back to normal. The roving masses of specters returned to their full speed, and they were pissed.
Roland threw up his hands. “Shields!”
He conjured one at once and the other casters joined him, either augmenting his conjuration or adding their own on the sides, or both. Translucent barriers of deflective and absorptive arcane force instantly came into being, protecting the mortals from the sudden onslaught of magical attacks.
Bailey used her sword as a focal point to channel pure heat in an expanding surge like a giant flamethrower, waving the colossal tongue of fire in front of her to incinerate the maximum number of adversaries. She also tried summoning a meteor shower to rain down on the huge green crystal, but something seemed to be blocking the attacks.
They needed to get closer.
She turned her head. “Roland, I need you for a second.”
“Uh,” he called back. He’d been separated from her by a good fifty feet in the chaos that had ensued. “I’m kinda busy here.”
The girl cursed; he was right. The rest of her friends needed him to keep them ali
ve, as he was their chief expert on defensive magic.
She returned her attention to the battle ahead and found that the air was going dark as dozens of crones, packed so tightly together they were like a single entity, flowed between her and the others, moving at terrifying speed.
“No!” Bailey cried out. “Goddammit!”
She recalled her earlier observation that the closer they got to the source of the problem, the more dangerous and intelligent the specters were becoming.
The swarm that had ambushed them had positioned itself so that Bailey could not unleash a super-powerful attack to neutralize them all without potentially overpowering Roland’s shield and injuring or killing her allies. The barrier he’d conjured was sufficient against the lower-middle strength blasts of the crones, but it probably couldn’t withstand a nuclear blast summoned by a deity.
Suddenly the shield died, and the snakelike line of crones flew away. Suspended in their midst was Roland, his mouth hanging open in shock.
Bailey screamed and flung herself at the spirits, throwing bolts of lightning and plasma that picked off a portion of them, but not enough to free her beloved. She swung her sword wildly, forgetting Balder’s training, damaging adversaries who came too close.
But Roland was gone.
Behind her, someone yelled, “Bailey! We need help!”
She spun and saw her remaining allies pinned down under the onslaught. The five casters were desperately trying to reconstitute a shield, while the agents fired their rifles again and again. Bailey summoned a horizontal wave of plasma fifteen feet off the ground that burned through the majority of the crones hovering over her friends. After that, they were able to get things under control.
But the majority of the horde still roiled in front of them, and it was advancing.
Loki appeared out of the crowd, staggering toward the werewitch, raising a limp hand to get her attention. She stared at him, her brain still trying to unravel what had happened.
The god of mischief gasped, “We have to get him back. Fast,” his voice sounded strained and hoarse, and he was paler than ever. “Not only for personal reasons, but because they’re going to use him.”