God Ender (WereWitch Book 6)

by Renée Jaggér

  The illusion functioned like a one-way mirror. Her position, and that of the wolves behind her, would remain hidden from the witches (at least at first) while she could still watch.

  The first of the witches marched into the massive stone chamber. Spirits were taking shape all over the floor and walls and ceiling, moving toward the desecrators.

  “You!” echoed the voice of the chief wolf spirit. “Leave now, or be destroyed utterly. We will not allow you in this, our sacred place!”

  A woman’s voice shouted something back in harsh, metallic-tinged tones of contempt, and the hall flashed with powerful, fast-moving sorcery that Bailey’s eye could not follow. The wolf spirit vaporized into a shower of silvery-blue sparks that were reabsorbed into the earth and air of the temple.

  But the place’s defenders had more to throw at them. Phantom wolves in both bestial and human form hurled themselves at the sorceresses with eons of frenzy behind them.

  Bailey held up a hand. “Wait,” she whispered. The corridor was too narrow for more than her and one other person, anyway, but she didn’t want any of her Weres jumping past her to start the ambush early.

  Three witches, all regulars, had advanced beyond the others to try to flank the cluster of angry spirits. A fast, sudden pounce-attack would catch them unaware.

  “Now!” Bailey shouted.

  She and the three wolves closest to her sprang out of their hiding place. Two converged on one of the witches while she and another wolf leaped toward another, and the third witch panicked and fled back toward her allies.

  Bailey and the Were next to her hurled the sorceress in their grasp behind a stone pillar, which offered them limited protection. The witch tried to fire off a flaming blast, but Bailey forced it back into the woman’s face, then speared her through the chest with plasma. Off to the side, the other two Weres had ripped the throat out of the witch they’d attacked.

  “Back!” the werewitch ordered. She and her fellows scampered into the corridor and moved on to the next chamber as shouts of anger and commands echoed behind them.

  It took only a moment or two for the Venatori to clear the chamber and advance into the corridor. The illusion was easily dispelled once they’d seen the Weres emerge from what looked like a bare wall. By then, Bailey and her pack were in the room beyond.

  This was the one where, during the trials, they’d had to face the animated statues of the great alphas of the past. Bailey suspected the Venatori would face the same test—except that she and her own alphas would, this time, fight alongside the heroes of old. They hid behind statues, pillars, and braziers, and waited.

  Witches streamed out of the corridor. Still the lights and noises made by the temple’s spirits wailed and buzzed their warning of doom. Inquisitors directed their subordinates to fan out and cover as much of the chamber as possible before any ambush could be sprung. As soon as they stepped into the great hall, the statues began to crack and their eyes to blaze.

  Giant wolves of stone became wolves of spiritually-enhanced flesh. The enraged alpha spirits, given solid form, fell upon the intruders with a bestial fury that chilled even Bailey’s blood. She waited for the first shock of their assault to stun the Venatori, then sent out a telepathic signal for her men to attack.

  Mortal Weres joined the immortal ones, lashing out and picking off two more of the Order’s troops before retreating. Huge and deadly blasts of magic filled the airy space and ricocheted off walls. One unfortunate wolf was caught by an arcing bolt of lightning and fell dead and smoking to the floor. Bailey’s heart ached, but there was no time for mourning. She called a retreat, moving into the next corridor as the Venatori struggled to subdue the legendary alphas. They lost at least one more witch before the Inquisitors blasted the guardians into dust.

  The pack had moved on. They came to the broad hallway at the beginning of the vast labyrinth that formed most of the rest of the temple.

  “Okay,” she told her followers, “Will and Roger and I and the others remember this place. Mostly. Follow us. Do not get distracted by anything you see or hear. The whole damn maze is full of illusions that’ll lead you off into a dead-end or a long-ass detour. There are a couple of werebears, too. Just run past them. The idea is to get our friends back there to split up, get lost, and lose numbers to attrition. The maze will do half our work for us.”

  They agreed and waited.

  At the first sign of the Venatori leaving the alpha-chamber, Bailey tossed a lightning bolt toward the entrance. A black-clad woman emerged and deflected it with ease, but it had gotten her attention. By the time the other witches joined her, the pack had fled around the corner into the random jumble of halls, intersections, passages, and false walls.

  The lycanthropes made good progress. Bailey remembered most of the turns she needed to take, and at the junctures that confounded her memory, the wolves who’d been with her before picked up the slack, guiding them in the correct direction.

  Sometimes they paused, waiting for the sounds or auras of their pursuers to grow stronger since they didn’t want to get too far ahead. The idea was to string the witches along, remaining slightly beyond their grasp. Shapes and noises occasionally flitted by to the sides, but at Bailey’s urging, her allies stuck with her and did not pursue them.

  Soon they came to the place where the bear shifter had surprised them during the tests. It was agitated, yet distracted. The temple going into emergency mode had whipped it into a frenzy, yet the Weres were not its target.

  “Keep moving!” Bailey called. “Stop beyond that bend up ahead.”

  They piled around the corner, leaving the giant snarling bear behind them. Bailey peeked out to wait for the Venatori to arrive.

  A cluster of witches stomped down the hall. The werewitch noted with satisfaction that the group was smaller than previously. Some of the Venatori had probably split off to chase the scampering illusions, been rerouted to gods-knew-where, or been killed.

  In their haste, the Order’s agents hadn’t considered that they’d encounter other creatures within the labyrinth. The one out in front almost crashed into the hulking bear, screaming as it mauled her. Other witches moved in to encircle and destroy it.

  Bailey swiped her hand, signaling her people to attack. Wolves streamed back around the corner and slashed at the sorceresses with their fangs and claws while the werewitch hurled powerful bolts of elemental magic at the heads of the Inquisitors. Two more regular witches went down.

  One Inquisitor blocked and dissipated the offensive spells while a pair of witches turned their fury on the ursine brute, detonating a plasma explosion in the center of his torso that blasted his extremities across the hall and reduced him to little more than a sizzling patch of atomic particles.

  With another hand-swipe combined with a mental command, Bailey took her Weres deeper into the maze, fleeing at top speed. They’d picked off still more of their foes, but the Inquisitors had vanquished the werebear with relative ease. It was impossible not to recall the difficulty she and her pack had had in subduing the beast the first time through.

  As such, open battle against their nemeses would be suicide until they’d further reduced the witches’ numbers and strained their patience to the breaking point.

  It occurred to the werewitch that they should eliminate the subgroups that had splintered off to chase the phantoms.

  “Hey. Any of you guys remember the way you went when those ghost sounds drew you off last time?”

  To her pleased surprise, one of them did, at least roughly. He led them through the twisting halls into a detour along the side of the maze until their delicate hearing picked up footsteps. Bailey motioned for everyone to flatten themselves against the walls just beyond an intersection, and she cast a basic but effective cloaking spell over them all.

  Figures stormed around the corner, moving at a trot and muttering in French or other tongues. One Inquisitor was near the lead. Her eyebrows shot up as soon as she’d rounded the corner, sensing that the set
up was wrong, and the Weres sprang their trap.

  Bailey shifted and pounced on the black-clad leader, conjuring a shield around herself with a plasma spike at the head that punched a burning hole through the Inquisitor’s body. The woman had time only for a clumsy burst of flame before she died. Off to the sides, lightning crackled and wind blew through the hall, but the wolves killed their enemies in seconds all the same. Five more went down.

  “Move,” commanded Bailey. “Back onto the right path. We need to stay ahead of the main force.”

  They succeeded, although on a couple of occasions, the Venatori grew close enough that Bailey feared they’d have to attempt open battle right there. Somehow, though, they managed to pull ahead again, and reached the end of the maze.

  They came to the smaller chamber dividing the first and larger portion of the labyrinth from the latter and smaller. Here stood the two stone daises on which spirits had appeared to confound them with riddles, but no specters materialized. Beyond the platforms were a pair of doorways with obscure signs above them.

  “Left,” said Bailey. “That was the right way. Correct way, I mean.”

  Will and Alfred went out in front, the other Weres took the middle, and Bailey brought up the rear, the better to shield against any magical attacks that might hurtle toward them. She caught only a brief glimpse of the pursuing witches before she backed around the corner and followed her pack into the second maze.

  Although they were tired, the shifters fought like a well-oiled machine, the parts working in conjunction to reach the goals of the whole. They executed more hit-and-run ambushes, picking off three more regular sorceresses, and they now outnumbered the Venatori force by at least two to one, and there were only two Inquisitors left. Bailey could have sworn she’d sensed more in the forest, but it was possible the temple had destroyed some of them.

  As the pack neared the end of the maze, the Venatori were strung out with frustration and anxiety, cursing in French or issuing crude challenges and insults in English. They were getting sloppy. They knew they were slowly losing.

  Abruptly, the pack took a wrong turn and crashed into the enemy group.

  “Shit!” Bailey exclaimed, hurling a mass of magic at the witches and feeling the arcane disruption as it crashed into an Inquisitor’s attack. She threw small shields in front of her wolves as they lunged at the other witches and sought to divide the force in two.

  Pure, desperate effort eclipsed her ability to think rationally about what was going on. Lights flashed, and howls, snarls, and screams echoed through the black stone halls. She saw half the Venatori split off from the others under the onslaught of her pack, while she remained in a tight formation with a handful of alphas and lieutenants who struggled against one Inquisitor and two regular witches.

  The regulars died under the shifters’ assault as Bailey tried to overcome the leader with a storm of six or seven different types of magic. The Inquisitor had trouble counterattacking, but nothing Bailey threw at her got past her defenses.

  Then her alphas, including Will, all pounced on the black-clad witch at once. She was battered against the wall and took several nasty claw wounds, but she retaliated with a static-sonic pulse that flung the Weres back, stunned and hurt but not dead.

  Bailey lunged at the Inquisitor. In the split second before they clashed, an idea popped into her head.

  I’m not just a shifter who can turn into a witch or a Were. I can be both at once. A werewolf is stronger than any normal human or any caster.

  Instead of fighting fire with fire, she used magic to augment her skill in melee combat. Her limbs lashed out with a speed and force unknown to most living things. She wrapped arcane shields tightly around her arms and legs and face, each punch or kick or headbutt coming in like a missile.

  The Inquisitor retaliated with an awful wave of electricity, radiation, supersonic noise, and psionic despair, but Bailey powered through it despite the agony and nausea that shot through her.

  By now, her wolves had rejoined the fray. One of them seized the Inquisitor’s ankle, and the brief distraction was enough. Bailey threw the woman into the wall with so much force she wondered if the stone might crack. The witch avoided death from the impact, but she collapsed to the ground, dazed and half-conscious. Will descended on her and ripped her throat out with his teeth.

  Bailey motioned for them to follow her. “Come on. We need to move. How many are left?”

  The other wolves, the ones who’d split the Venatori’s party, came back into sight, running at top speed. One shifted back into human form. “One,” he breathed. “The last one in black.”

  The Inquisitor appeared around the corner. Bailey raised a barrier at the same instant the witch filled the corridor with blazing death.

  The werewitch kept channeling magic into her shield, regenerating it as the Inquisitor’s massive attacks burned it away. Her wolves scampered ahead of her into the temple’s final chamber. The girl forced the shield ahead, turning the witch’s magic back on her, then ran into the room with her friends.

  It was the square all-white one where she and her pack had confronted their doppelgangers. The place shone with an intense light that was weirdly sinister, but no mirror-image phantoms manifested before them.

  The final Inquisitor burst through the door in a cloud of flame and lightning.

  “You are trapped like rats!” she bellowed. Her eyes were bloodshot. “Surrender! I will spare the rest of you if you turn Bailey over for–”

  Alfred Warner tossed a stream of electrified water at her face. “No deal,” he stated.

  The witch blocked it with ease, but the wolves nipped at her heels as Bailey struck at her with lightning and ice from above and below and manipulated the very structure of the floor to throw the sorceress off-balance. Then she hurled herself at their last foe.

  Again she wondered if she was crazy. The Inquisitor threw out a ring of concussive force to drive the wolves away, focusing her wrath on the werewitch. Bailey met her flurry of plasma blades in kind, and also kicked and lunged at the woman, using her shifter strength to her advantage. Magic crackled against magic, but it was a simple trip-kick to the woman’s ankle that finished her.

  She collapsed to the floor and wolves swarmed over her in an instant, tearing at her limbs and crushing her skull between powerful jaws. The only sounds were of snarling beasts.

  Gasping and trying not to faint, the werewitch slumped against the wall. Her remaining wolves panted and looked around. They could scarcely believe it was over.

  The alarm noises made by the temple faded away. They’d been going on for so long that the Weres hadn’t noticed them until they were gone. Bluish-silver light took shape near the center of the white chamber.

  “Bailey Nordin,” said the wolf spirit, “thank you for your help in defeating the desecrators. You have in a sense passed the trials all over again, a rare achievement. We shall now send you and your pack back to the clearing, including those who have fallen. Go in peace and health.”

  The spirit grew in brightness, and the lycanthropes covered their eyes as the white light engulfed them. After a faint dizzying tingle, they found themselves standing on the plateau again between the pyramid’s entrance and the forcefield of enchanted mist. The Weres who’d died in the fight were arranged around them in a circle.

  “We made it,” a voice behind Bailey gasped.

  “Not all of us,” she clarified, “but they died as heroes. We wiped out some of the Venatori’s strongest forces today. I think we need to honor them, and then we need to head back to our camping grounds and get a little rest. Finally.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Mr. Holmquist, despite being from Seattle, delivered the final eulogy.

  “Our friend Doug,” he concluded. “I never met him before today, but he died to save all of us, helping Weres avoid the same thing that happened to my son. We’ll remember him. We’ll remember everyone.”

  The crowd nodded. It was dark, but the Weres, using th
eir strength and excellent night vision, filled in the grave and left Doug in peace beneath the boughs of the pines.

  Against all odds, the two witches they’d taken prisoner at the Nordin house had remained crouching at the edge of town, where they’d watched the battle. Roland kept his word and released them.

  “Don’t come back, please,” he suggested. They nodded and hurried into the forest to teleport themselves someplace far away.

  The somber mood lifted in part as the massive group dispersed, with most going their separate ways back to their homes or businesses. The sheriff and his men remained on the west road to put up orange signs and cones, though few people drove that way anyhow since it lay off the highway.

  Roland, the Nordins, and the various Seattleites remained together. They drifted toward the Bristling Elk.

  Jacob sighed as the diner came into view. “I can’t believe those fucking witches ruined our food. We gave them our dinner, and that bitch threw it in my face!”

  Dante shook his head. “I know, right? Isn’t there some stereotype of the French being assholes?”

  “Hey!” Kurt protested. “Don’t be bigoted, you miserable redneck.”

  “Sorry,” said Dante.

  Charlene chimed in. “Yeah, Seattle is definitely a backwoods kinda place with lifted trucks and gun racks everywhere. Trust me.”

  As they stepped into the Elk, Roland kept silent, reflecting on the question of where his home was now. He’d lived his whole life in Seattle, but these days, Greenhearth was the place he cared about most. Still, he was glad to see residents of both towns coming together.

  Tomi saw them and asked, “What the hell was going on out there? Did we get attacked again?”

  “Kinda,” Roland replied. He summarized the situation, and the waitress blinked in surprise as she led them to a cluster of tables. The diner was closing soon, but Roland figured that they’d earned the right to a late meal after saving the place and the rest of the town from total destruction.

  As they waited for food and then tore in, the conversation turned into a verbal rugby match between species. No one wanted to talk about what they’d just been through or what lay ahead.