by Renée Jaggér
The two sprang to their feet at the same time and bolted.
Ahead of them, a black tree bent over, its branches reaching toward their faces.
Roland had paused to look behind them, and Bailey left him to the task while she summoned lightning to strike the suddenly-hostile tree. Thunder split the air and the dark wood fell asunder, halfway reduced to charcoal.
The wizard groaned. “I don’t think we can outrun her. She has too much control over the landscape. At least we got her away from the pond.”
The werewitch turned back. “Fight it out, then.”
As a wet, mossy head crested the ridge, arm-thick vines and roots sprang from the earth around them, rapidly forming a net, then a dome closing in on them from all directions. Huge spines like lances grew inward, aiming toward their flesh.
“So,” Bailey asked, “fire or ice? I’m fine with either.”
Roland contemplated the question for a second or two before answering, “Fire. It kills things, guaranteed, whereas some creatures are merely sent into suspended animation or hibernation by being frozen.”
Bailey shrugged. “Okay.”
In unison, they turned and stood back to back, facing toward the encroaching dome of deadly plants. They extended their arms, channeled or generated heat, and unleashed hell.
Wide swathes of the vines burst into flames. Bailey focused on generating more heat, causing the fire to change color from yellow to green to blue and reducing most of the thorn wall in front of her to a pile of bleached white ash.
Roland, meanwhile, strategically hurled exploding fireballs at the parts of the lattice that directly threatened him, blasting the giant spikes before detonating the wall’s foundation. It tottered, and he gave it a telekinetic push so that it fell over and away from him, burnt to cinders.
With the constricting dome obliterated, Aida was revealed to be about two hundred feet away, still shambling slowly toward them. Writhing vines and shuddering waves of moss expanded from her, and she leaked black fluid onto the ground.
Bailey still had control of her wall of fire. She moved it around, finishing off the last of the thorny lattice, then pushed it toward the swamp witch, raising the flames higher to block the deadly spores that now shot at them from the mouths of carnivorous plants. Aida had animated more hybrid creatures from the hill, but she was clearly faltering.
Roland willed a bolt of lightning to fall upon the witch from the sky, paralyzing her and kicking up a great cloud of steam. Then, as Bailey lowered her mass of fire and kept it advancing toward their foe, the wizard tossed a few more exploding fireballs her way.
Aida screamed as she was engulfed in a blaze of heat and smoke and plasma. The few plants she still had control of wilted, even the ones outside the reach of the flames. Her bodily form was breaking down; she was dying.
“Damn you!” her inhuman voice wailed. “I’ll be back. The bog will remember!”
The wizard extended both hands in front of him like a character in a fighting game. “Remember this,” he said. A raging, almost nuclear fireball, blue-white with intense heat, appeared between his palms, and he cast it at what remained of the witch’s chest.
The blast sent a tremor through the ground and gave off so much heat that Bailey and Roland staggered back from it, shielding their faces. When the worst was over, they saw only a pitiful heap of ashes in the center of a blackened circle of ground.
Bailey glanced at the wizard while both caught their breath. He looked as tired as she felt.
“Wanna take a break?” she suggested.
Time had again passed, but not too much. There was still no sign of Marcus, and Roland was having none of it.
“Fuck this shit,” he snapped all of a sudden and stood up from the cozy position they’d settled into. “I am completely sick by this goddamn point of waiting for a god to come rescue me from this place. I’m a good wizard. No, a fantastic wizard. I’m opening a portal, and we’re going home.”
Bailey blinked, then smiled. “Yeah, I’ll second that. This is getting old. I could use some damn dinner, even if our stomachs don’t work the same way here.”
She hoisted herself to her feet. “And if anyone can figure out how to get back through the veil between worlds or whatever it is, it’s you.”
He beamed with pride. “But of course. I’ve been watching how our divine friend does it and taking mental notes. He showed me a thing or two as well. I was able to widen that portal the Venatori were using during the battle on the hillside. Granted, opening the doorway seems to be the hard part. Different mindset and skillset from what I’m used to with tricks or combat.”
“Tell me,” Bailey asked. “I’m curious.”
He explained, acknowledging her pointers and questions as he went, that it seemed to be a matter of feeling the arcane makeup of the realm in which they found themselves, then visualizing their destination before finally parting the fabric of reality at that very point. It made sense to her in a general way, although she knew it would prove easier said than done.
Roland inhaled and flexed his hands. “Okay, then. Let’s see how this goes.”
For several minutes he meditated, concentrated, and hummed faintly under his breath. Then he extended his hands slowly and deliberately before clapping them together and parting them to each side.
The air tore open, disclosing a shimmering mass of purplish liquid. The portal was thin and faint, more of a weak gash between worlds than a proper gateway.
The wizard’s brow furrowed, and a bead of sweat rolled down his cheek as he tried to seize the door and force it open wider. For a second, it seemed he’d succeeded—the purple mass broadened near its middle. But then the top and bottom sections collapsed in on themselves, and the whole thing folded inward and faded.
“Shit!” Roland exclaimed. “I lost it. It requires you to focus on multiple things at once in a way I’m not used to. I got close enough, though, that I can probably do it in a couple more tries.”
Bailey scratched her chin. “I’ll try. Wouldn’t hurt to have two people on the job, after all.”
The wizard shrugged. “Sure, why not? Go for it.”
The werewitch drew a breath, closed her eyes, and did what Roland had described: feeling the nature of the Other and pulling up images of the point in Greenhearth she wanted to return to. She visualized the patch of forest near Marcus’ hut in the foothills just outside town.
She reached out and tore through.
A portal appeared, larger than Roland’s but jagged and unstable. The purple liquid surface resembled a lake during a windstorm. For a moment, she almost lost control of it, but then, remembering all she’d learned, she stabilized the edges and flattened the surface. The result was less a neat doorway than the mouth of a cave or tunnel, but it held.
Roland coughed. “Well, then.”
Bailey could hardly believe it. She grinned, then she turned to the wizard, gently elbowing him in the ribs.
“We can let you try again if you want. You know, to heal the wound in your ego or whatever before we dive in.”
He grimaced for a second, but his usual laid-back confidence returned quickly enough. “No, that’s fine,” he said. “I’m just happy to leave. And of course, I’m happy to plunge into your tunnel anytime.”
She looked fast, stepping toward the portal so he wouldn’t see her blush. The bastard had done a good job of coming back from her barb.
Now they just needed to know if the portal went where it was supposed to go. Roland pressed in behind her as she stepped through, and the faintly illumined arcanoplasm, like melted amethyst, closed around her with its familiar chill.
Chapter Seven
Both the werewitch and the wizard were mildly surprised to discover that more than two days had passed since they’d last seen Earth. They knew time passed differently in the Other, and it had seemed like their most recent training session had been exceptionally long, but they’d never been in a parallel universe for this long.
&nbs
p; “Shit,” Bailey murmured as they stood blinking in the woods. It was a cloudless day, and shafts of bright sunlight filtered between the trees, hurting their eyes after the endless gloom of the Other.
Roland snapped his fingers. “There must be some kind of direct relationship between time in there and time out here,” he pointed out. “Since I know we were in there for longer than before. We might not be able to perceive the speed at which it passes, but the Other doesn’t cause time to move backward or anything like that.”
The werewitch nodded as she examined the area for any sign of Fenris, but he didn’t seem to be around. “True. We’ll have to keep that in mind. Anyway, I don’t see the old man, so let’s go back to my place, how about? He knows where to find us when he finally shows up. And if he gets mad at us, well, at this point, it’s his own damn fault for not checking in.”
“Agreed.” Roland almost smirked. Clearly, he enjoyed having Bailey on his side for something like this, given his objections to Marcus’ training methods.
They started to walk, but they were far enough out in the forest that getting to the Nordin house might take as much as an hour, which seemed excessive.
So they levitated. Once both were airborne, Bailey focused on keeping them that way, and Roland wove a cloaking spell as they flew over the treetops and down the slopes. The town was unaware of their presence in its sky as the buildings hove closer.
It was late afternoon when they reached the family’s backyard. Bailey, allowing gravity to regain some of its hold on them but not all, lowered them to the damp grass beside the pole barn while Roland terminated the cloaking spell. To a casual observer, it would have looked like they’d snapped into existence just then.
Bailey put her hands on her hips. “Don’t usually approach the house from behind. Well, make lots of noise as we approach so Jacob can hear us and they don’t get startled. Unless they’re not here.”
Roland ran a hand through his hair. “The ground’s too soft to stomp on properly, but I’ll see what I can do as far as sloshing through mud and swishing the grass nice and loud.”
The back door opened when they were about halfway across the yard, revealing Jacob, whose eyes were wider than usual.
“Hey there. We were getting worried. And why the hell are you coming from that direction?”
Bailey shrugged. “We took a shortcut.”
“Okay, whatever,” her brother countered. “Just want to make sure that some demon didn’t replace you guys while you were in that…place…and send doppelgangers after us. Especially since I just got back from a short trip of my own and brought some fried chicken with me. Bit early for dinner, but I didn’t think you’d complain.”
Roland quipped, “Hell, no. I think we forgot what food even is. And if no one’s made coffee yet, I’d say it’s a Russell kind of day for it.”
Russell appeared behind Jacob as the wizard spoke. He was almost half a foot taller than the other Nordin boys at six foot seven and the darkest and least talkative. “That bad, huh? Okay, fine.” He walked into the kitchen toward the coffee pot.
Kurt, the youngest of the brothers, was waiting for them, leaning against the wall in the short hall between the living room and dining room. He was Jacob’s height, but slightly thinner and smoother of face. “Who are you people? I can’t remember seeing you around these parts.”
Bailey flicked her hand and sent a puff of wind that messed up his hair. “Shut up, Kurt. Take pictures next time and mount them with a damn caption if you need to.”
After the werewitch and the wizard took a few minutes to use the bathroom and freshen up, they all sat down to an early dinner.
“Jacob,” Bailey said, “just wanna commend you on getting the biggest bucket of chicken they had along with the extra sides since I’m pretty sure I’m about to eat half of this entire feast. That way, the rest of you won’t starve, splitting the rest.”
Kurt narrowed his eyes. “We’ll see about that. Just try it.” His hand leapt out with surprising speed and deposited a breast onto his plate. “Your fiendish sorcery is no match for my highly-developed reflexes.”
Jacob leaned back in his chair. “See that? Kurt finally got his hand on a breast. Might be years before it happens again.”
“Silence,” the younger boy snapped, hoisting a mug of Russell’s coffee, which was strong enough to be hazardous to small children and the elderly.
After they’d all destroyed a healthy initial portion of the food, conversation welled up. The brothers mentioned that their dad had stopped by, but was currently out meeting with the leaders of their pack for some official function pertaining to the full moon.
“Oh, right,” Bailey recalled. “They only do it every season now. Used to be every moon.”
Roland waved a hand. “That’s the modern world for you. People have jobs to go to and Netflix series to waste entire days watching. Makes it hard for even werewolves to do wolf stuff under the glare of Luna.”
Jacob half-frowned. “You got that right. Speaking of which…”
The girl inhaled; she knew this was coming—the discussion of their training and everything that had happened on her and Roland’s end. It would be good to talk it over with her family, but part of her didn’t want to dwell on it right now. She’d rather decompress and talk about something fun instead of feeling obliged to deliver a progress report.
She leapt in with, “We haven’t seen Marcus in, I dunno, a while. Again, we can’t judge time in there. But he never showed up, not even when frickin’ Baldur did. Let alone when that other pack popped in. And we never know if that shit is part of the training process or random weirdness that even he couldn’t have predicted. I know I can handle it in the end, but it’s wearing me down, honestly. All the uncertainty and chaos.”
Her shoulder slumped at admitting that. But thankfully, she had deflected the discussion.
Roland quickly added, “I second that motion. After we’re done eating, I might have to stumble out to the pole barn and sleep for about twelve hours.”
Russell made a low grunting sound. “Tell him.”
Before Bailey could ask him to clarify what that meant, Jacob agreed. “Yeah, Marcus—or Fenris, if we’re supposed to call him that now—needs to know he can’t just leave you guys dangling, even as tough as you are. I mean, yeah, sometimes when you teach someone something, they need to figure things out for themselves, but it’s different when gods are showing up left and right and some Weres still think you’re the bad guy in all this.”
The girl shook her head. “Pack politics never end. If I do end up as this great and mighty shaman, I’m probably gonna have to mediate that crap. I guess someone has to, and at least I can bring a different perspective to it.”
“Right,” Kurt remarked. “You can remind them of that other monthly cycle, besides just the moon.”
Russell threw a thigh bone at him, but he caught it.
“See?” Kurt beamed. “Reflexes.”
“You know,” interjected Jacob, “that reminds me. Something else I wanted to tell you, and it kinda relates to the pack politics stuff.”
Bailey spread her hands. “Okay, shoot.”
Jacob had taken a bite of chicken while she responded, and he spent a moment chewing before he was able to speak. When he did, he gestured vaguely with the half-devoured drumstick in his hand.
“Those assholes running the trafficking ring?” he began. “The cops finally caught the rest of them. Well, most of ‘em, anyway. There were stories about it on the news and stuff. They captured the ringleaders and most of the surviving foot-soldier guys, as well as—they’re pretty sure—most of the buyers. They said something about how it was possible, at least partially thanks to ‘disorganization in the wake of a conflict with a concerned citizen.’ Meaning you, obviously. But yeah, everyone’s talking about it.”
Roland burst out laughing. “Concerned citizen! Ha! They don’t want to admit that Bailey and I blew the doors off the operation for them to walk in and d
o the rest. That’d make them look bad, plus it might encourage the average schmuck to start taking the law into their own hands, and then there’d be chaos. Oh, that is rich!”
“Hey, now,” Kurt jumped in. “At least Sheriff Browne sent us a thank-you card and some donuts. Remember that? Those were damn good donuts.”
The wizard frowned. “I must have been sleeping. You guys ate them all while I was asleep, didn’t you?”
“Okay,” Bailey interjected. “Thanks for your input and all, but let’s get back to the main subject matter here. Jacob, you said everyone’s talking about it. What are they saying?”
He shrugged. “What I just said—that you were the one who made the whole thing possible. It kinda silenced the last of the dumbasses who doubted you, y’know? Like, I don’t think there’s much of anyone in the valley at this point who still believes those stupid rumors about you.”
The girl nodded. “That’s good. The valley isn’t that big, though. It ain’t the whole world. Those guys from down south obviously did believe the rumors. Where were they from again? Roland, do you remember?”
“Uh,” he replied, squinting, “some creek. Whitcomb Creek, that was it. Between Salem and Eugene.”
Kurt rubbed his eyes. “Word travels fast. Well, you said you told those guys off, so they’ll tell everyone else downstate, right?”
Bailey took a swig of coffee. “That’s the hope.”
The eldest of her brothers rubbed his stubbly chin. “Yeah, clearly the dumbassery isn’t over with yet. We’ll talk to some other guys to see if there’s any other rumors spreading or anything coming down the grapevine. It’s been a couple days now, and a lot can happen in a short time.”
Roland acknowledged him with a raised spoonful of mashed potatoes. “True that.”
For a minute or two, no one spoke as they finished the last of their meal and debated whether to get up.
“So,” Kurt burst out, “how about them Seahawks?”
Russell frowned. “Fuck the Seahawks.”
