Winner Takes All (Were Witch Book 9)

by Renée Jaggér

  “Goddamn!” Bailey exclaimed. “I had no idea.”

  Keeping up the act was difficult, mostly in that she could scarcely believe he would lie in such a shameless fashion, but also because it was so hard to believe. It rekindled both her doubt in her course of action and her hope that he might be innocent after all.

  What if Loki was the one who set us up? He’s a devious prankster and was always kind of a supercilious prick, to be honest. But there’s the holographic footage. The confessions. I know they were real. I accepted it, and I’m kidding myself by trying to deny it. Dammit, Fenris, why did you do this? I wanted to—

  The wolf-father cut off her ruminations with his coughed-out exhortation. “Please, help me. We may be able to stop it if we act without delay.”

  “Okay,” she responded. “How?”

  He glanced around the chamber, which seemed darker than Bailey remembered it. “We must enact a counter-ritual together. Two gods will split the difference of the unleashed energies; neither of us will perish, and that will confound the prophecy. Stand there.” He gestured to the spot on the central red sigil where he’d been chained a moment ago.

  The girl took her place as instructed.

  “Good.” Fenris stood beside her. “We can ward each other for protection if any of the remaining deities try to intervene.”

  Remaining? Bailey thought. He’s aware, then, that some of them are dead. Or so he thinks.

  The wolf-god raised his big, callused hands. “Stand still and wait. Thank you, Bailey. Thank you for everything.”

  As he unleashed his magic upon her, there was a tiny, barely-perceptible change in his expression—a cruel and savage twist at the corner of his mouth.

  The goddess of Weres and witches caught the surge of his power, the amalgamation of the dark, destructive energies he’d built up here. She stopped it, blocked it, precluded it. Red and blue sparks and flames erupted between them as her divine might resisted his.

  “Thank you,” she yelled back, “for taking your place, you mean? For putting up with more lies than I can count? For dying so you can do every fucking thing you just accused everyone else of doing?”

  The magical impact of her resistance was such that Fenris stumbled back a step. He blinked and gawked, and as the magic threatened to spiral out of control, he diverted it in the form of a dark-purplish bolt that struck the chamber’s wall near the ceiling and produced smoke and debris from the impact.

  Bailey stepped forward. “I know everything, Fenris, and I mean everything. You were the one who set this up. You only trained me, raised me up, freed me, so you could put me up as a sacrifice and get to be king of whatever comes after the end of days. Carl helped you, and he’s dead for his trouble. The monsters you duped were defeated. And there’s something else I know that you don’t: you can’t win.”

  Fenris recovered from his initial shock and stood up straight, towering over her, his eyes lost in the darkness beneath his hood. His mouth was once again grim and unfeeling.

  “Perhaps you do know, but you were born a mortal, and you will do what every mortal must. Die.”

  The man was gone, and the beast attacked.

  A monster the size of a house bore down on the girl, its fur bristling and its fangs and claws moving in for the kill. Its eyes glimmered with psychotic fury. The low animal cunning it had relied upon was cast aside and only the creature remained, reverting to its natural tendency toward pure, mindless destruction.

  The girl shifted to meet him. She grew instantly to the same size as her opponent, confronting him for the first time as a beast of matched and equivalent power. Their forelegs lashed at one another; their foaming jaws snapped at eye and throat and belly. Awful snarls and howls filled the chamber.

  As they locked together, wrestling and thrashing, ripping and clawing, another battle took place conterminously with the physical one. Their magical wills clashed, striving against one another, with neither able to win a clear advantage.

  Levels of arcane and divine force that could have sundered or repaired whole worlds smote and crackled. Fenris attacked the werewitch with all the wild energies he possessed and the primordial powers of destruction he’d invoked.

  The girl retaliated with the knowledge and might of the other gods and with the things she’d learned from them or from the many peoples of the universe. Everything from the subtle elemental lore of the frost trolls to Coyote’s instruction in the finer arts of hand-to-hand combat returned to aid her.

  The noise and furor of their battle echoed and shook the walls. It was likely obvious in its terrible wrath to anyone in the floating palace.

  Fenris growled in both physical and mental forms, “Aid me!”

  The eight disciples advanced from the walls brandishing daggers and swords, ready to wound and distract Bailey to ensure their master’s victory, but their magic had been drained, and they were slow.

  Columns of light came down through the ceiling and struck places on the floor ahead of where the acolytes moved, and the gods of the council appeared in the flesh.

  The disciples gasped. Fenris, catching sight of them out of the corner of his bulging yellow eyes, howled in rage and bit down on Bailey’s neck as she kicked his legs and groin and clawed his chest.

  The deities easily overpowered the weakened demigods, binding them with powerful magic and thrusting them aside.

  The two giant beasts, both gods of wolves, separated and circled each other, their teeth and claws bloody.

  Like I said, Bailey asserted, speaking with her mind rather than her voice, I had a surprise waiting. Loki and I set you up, returning the favor. You and Carl killed their illusions, not the real things. They all live, even Thor. He and I sent the World Serpent back to hell. Destiny itself has been changed, and the end of the world is canceled.

  Fenris responded with a psychic message of his own, but not in words. It was no more than a discordant noise representing the unadulterated desire to kill. He pounced.

  Bailey dodged to the side. Rather than strike him with fang or paw, she hit him with an invisible tendril that locked into his chest.

  If she could drain his power, there would be no way he could perform the ritual. He could sacrifice neither her nor himself.

  Fenris recognized her game instantly and resisted, blocking the conduit. He was the one who’d taught her how to do it, after all, and he retained enough of his intelligence to think fast. He bowled into her, slamming her into the ground repeatedly with his forelegs while she bit his limbs and kicked viciously at his underbelly.

  Balder called, “Bailey! Remember, I gave you a tool for this moment. It’s time!”

  The sword.

  The girl shifted back into human form, heedless of her sudden nakedness. Smaller, she rolled between Fenris’ legs and vaulted into the air, extending her hand. The sacred blade flew from its place in the wall, where she’d left it between a demigod’s shoulders, and found its way to her grip.

  Fenris lunged. Recalling every piece of information she’d ever acquired about the art of combat and processing it all at once, the girl made a gamble, intending to end the fight.

  She calculated her speed and how much time she had. She calculated Fenris’ velocity and trajectory and the space closing between them. Between him and the sword. She remembered all the dumbass bar fights she’d been in, and the tricks Balder and Coyote and Fenris had taught her, and her mock fights at the academy.

  Somehow, she positioned herself so the colossal fangs and claws missed her, as well as the bulk of the great furry body and the crackling streams of dark magic emanating from his eyes and mouth. Her body stood perfectly in the place where none of them hit.

  But she did not miss. The sword’s blade pierced the bottom of the monster’s jaw, pinning his mouth shut.

  Fenris made a horrible low gurgly squawking sound, and his eyes bulged.

  Bailey maintained her grip as she had against Jörmungandr the World Serpent, but this time she channeled the stolen power
into herself, or into the substratum of Asgard, bleeding Fenris’ evil essence and weakening him until he was less than a god.

  The sword can’t kill him outright this way, she recalled, but it can bring him down to the point where I can.

  Her body appeared clothed in light as the other god’s power drained and flashed through the room. Fenris shifted back into human form, mutating in halted steps rather than changing instantly, with the blade still lodged under his chin.

  She knew it was over; Fenris’ power had been broken forever. He was reduced to the level of a mere mortal wizard, ineligible for sacrifice. She retracted the sword and he fell to his knees, once again a hooded man, though he looked smaller and thinner. He clutched his hands to his bleeding throat.

  The gods watched. Bailey stood before him, the light about her body having coalesced into shimmering white robes.

  “Bailey,” said Loki, “you mustn’t kill him here. The ritual is still in effect. It would consider him an inadequate sacrifice, and we’d have a partial Ragnarök. Bring him outside.”

  She seized the former wolf-father by the shoulder and dragged him out of the throne room. The deities and the imprisoned demigods followed. With no magical beings nearby to draw upon, the sigils in the chamber went dead, and the dark powers that Fenris had called up dissipated into eternity.

  Everyone stopped in the main entrance hall of the palace. The friends Bailey had left behind were still there, alive and unharmed. Tyr had shown up, too.

  The god of justice proclaimed, “By all the laws and codes of honor of our world, which shall not come to an end, Fenris must die for his crimes. Bailey, we feel you should carry out his execution.”

  The girl’s powers had advanced to such a lofty point that she felt distant from the goings-on. Her head was in the proverbial clouds, but she brought herself back and focused on the defeated figure before her.

  Fenris had fallen to his knees. He raised his hands and drew back his hood, exposing his grim, craggy face. He breathed in and coughed blood, then spoke.

  “I accept your judgment,” he stated.

  The girl stared into his eyes. “Why, Fenris? Why did you do this? I would have rather had you as a friend than an enemy. You were like a third father to me. Did you ever truly understand us? Mortals, I mean, and Weres, who are more like humans than gods. We followed you and loved you. Did you love us back?”

  The former deity of her people narrowed his eyes. He seemed somber and confused.

  “I was not made to love. Observing you, I think I understood it in part. You were my greatest project. You succeeded beyond anything I could have hoped. Too well. But destiny decreed that I was not to sit on the council despite my wisdom and power. I was only to be an outcast and either win my own world or perish in the attempt. Now fate has played out. My end is nigh. I would rather have no one finish it than you.”

  Bailey looked down and closed her eyes. A lump formed in her throat, but she swallowed it at once. Pangs of regret went through her, nearly robbing her of her dignity before all the people watching.

  Her mentor’s mistake had been to care only about the world to come—the new one he felt should exist. Anger had blinded him. He hadn’t accepted the world as it was or appreciated the good that was already in it.

  She had.

  “Goodbye, Fenris,” she said.

  Bailey swung the sword. The tall man’s head rolled from his shoulders into a corner, and the broad-shouldered body stayed perched on its knees for a moment before toppling over. Then both erupted in a cascade of dark-indigo-purple light flecked with moonlight-silver before fading into pools of shadow that sank and were gone.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Odin’s throne room had cleaned up nicely, she decided.

  The magical sigils had been removed from the floor, the bloodstains scrubbed out, and the damage to the walls repaired. For obscure reasons, it was brighter and airier as well, despite the absence of windows.

  Odin still slept and could not attend, but the other gods summoned the full regalia so as to perform their induction ceremony in style.

  The Honor Guard of the Palace of Asgard was present in regal dress, lining the walls as well as the long red carpet that formed a path to the dais in the empty throne room. Trumpeters blew majestic notes on their golden horns as the gods of the Nordic pantheon filed in.

  Coyote and Thoth were there too, though they originated from other pantheons. Their long friendship and collaboration with the Asgardians and important places on the council more than entitled them to attend.

  Behind them came Bailey “Nova” Nordin, resplendent in a dress of shining mail and a slim circlet-crown. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been dressed so elegantly. The trumpets blew another fanfare as she walked down the carpet toward the platform.

  She took her position next to Freya, whom Loki had hidden when Fenris had moved against her. The goddess of sorcery seemed calmer, perhaps due to knowing she’d have her council seat back soon.

  Balder and Loki took the floor, raising their hands for attention as the hall grew silent.

  “We have splendid news,” said the god of beauty, “Bailey is hereby confirmed as a full member of the Nordic pantheon. The werewitch goddess, the Lady of Wolves and Witches. The portfolios of stewardship over both peoples have been unified within her. Thus shall she reign in the place formerly occupied by Fenris Wolf-Father.”

  The trumpeters blew another triumphant note.

  Loki spoke next. “She is a goddess in multiple forms and shall reign across multiple modes of existence. We recognize them all, relieving her of her seat on the council but accepting her input, allowing her instead to reign on Earth, her original home, and the place where she is able to do the most good.”

  Cheers and applause went around as the two gods lifted Bailey’s hands in the air. The other deities came up to congratulate her. Coyote with his subtle, good-natured smile of secret humor. Thoth with his air of old and dignified wisdom. The recovered Thor, his old boisterous self again, with Mjölnir back on his shoulder. Tyr, handless but proud and stern. And Freya, severe-faced but calm and gracious.

  Bailey took the floor next. “Thank you all,” she began, “for your help, and for your faith in me. I never would have thought I’d have made it this far or achieved so much. I didn’t achieve it alone, that’s for sure. As a member of the pantheon, I promise to work with the other gods to deal with major problems, and I’ll see to it that werewolves and witches aren’t at each other’s throats but that both work together for the good of the world.”

  She felt like it wasn’t much of a speech, but everyone cheered anyway. It said what she felt needed to be said.

  Loki sidled up to her. “Where will you go next? We have no immediate need of you. I suppose it’s pointless to ask, in truth.”

  She grinned. “It is. I’m going home.”

  A quarter of the town had crowded onto the Nordin family’s property.

  People were distributed equally between the front yard, the backyard, and the house, though most of them kept drifting out back, where the grills were set up. People drank beer, laughed, ate, and talked. It was the official first day of autumn, warm but with a cool edge to the breeze.

  Bailey mingled freely. She was in jeans and boots and a t-shirt, and it was strange to think she’d been outfitted in the universe’s finest formal wear not long ago. She was looking forward to peace and quiet in the near future, but for today, she was happy to schmaltz it up with so many familiar and beloved faces.

  “See,” Kurt began, as Sheriff Browne looked at him with a skeptical half-frown, “you could start deputizing Weres and have your own werewolf militia as an auxiliary to the police department. Like, we handle the supernatural stuff, and you deal with normal shit. Imagine the possibilities!”

  The sheriff made a grumbling sound. “I’ll think about it. Last thing we need is a bunch of vigilantes, but this town has a way of attracting trouble.”

  Bailey waved a h
and. “I’ll head off as much trouble as I can, so it becomes a moot point.”

  Kurt pretended neither of them had spoken. “And, see, since we’d operate outside of the normal law, we could lower the drinking age for members!”

  Jacob threw a crushed beer cup at him, which ricocheted off his younger brother’s head. “Shut up, Kurt. You can wait ‘til you’re twenty-one like everyone else instead of concocting an elaborate boondoggle to trick the sheriff into letting you get plastered.”

  Agents Park and Velasquez snickered at that, while Townsend smirked as he sat behind them at an old picnic table.

  Velasquez said, “Your brother’s creative. That’s potentially a good thing.”

  “But,” Park added, “they should lower the drinking age. I was in the Army at nineteen, but for some frickin’ reason, it took another two years before I could buy a beer.”

  Browne shrugged. “Talk to Salem. Or Washington. All I do is enforce laws, not make them.”

  Gunney had loitered at the edge of the crowd. He’d never been entirely comfortable at parties; he was more at home in his shop or behind the wheel. Still, there was no way he was going to miss the current one. Bailey went over and gave him a hug.

  “Thanks for showing up, you greasy old coot.” She pushed a beer into his hands.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he retorted. “Thanks for making me come, you trouble-making female canine-type entity. I think there’s a word for that.”

  She laughed. “Shut up. Save that kind of talk for the pit. This is a family gathering.”

  He snorted. “I suppose it is. But thank you for keeping all the things that go bump in the night from destroying my damn shop and my yard out back time and again. End of the world would have taken a lot of fine cars with it.”

  Bailey bumped into Will Waldsbach, who was completely shit-faced, and patted him on the back before directing him to the water cooler. She was glad he was okay. He stumbled into a conversation with Tomi, the full-time evening waitress at the Elk, who was equally drunk and feeling flirtatious.