The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  “Now,” Roland went on, “think about the concept of kinetic force. That’s the energy tied to motion that is necessary to do the work of moving something from Point A to Point B. You probably learned about it in science class back in high school. Or if you ever watched kung fu movies, then chi is more or less the same thing. Well, part of it. Chi also refers to…never mind. Just think about the energy it takes to move something.”

  Squinting, Bailey wracked her brain for the information he’d referred to. She vaguely recalled something along those lines from physics. She didn’t understand all of it, but she got the gist.

  The wizard stepped into her field of vision, though not directly between her and the garbage pail. He spread his arms wide and looked skyward. “The universe is your partner. It wants to help you because you can do the stuff it’s made possible. So, with that in mind,” he stepped back, “toss that thing off to the left. Move it.”

  Bailey inhaled, grunted, and swiped her arms to the left, imagining herself as a Jedi using the Force to throw some droid around, and then thinking of how Kevin back home would react to that.

  Nothing happened.

  “Damn,” she muttered. “I think I got distracted.”

  “It’s possible,” Roland said mildly. He didn’t seem surprised or disappointed. Magic must have been one of those things that everyone failed at the first time. “You kind of need to be focused, but not too focused. Like, you’re not distracted by anything, but you’re not trying too hard or forcing yourself, either. If that makes sense. A flow state.”

  The girl returned her attention to the trash can, but under her breath, she grumbled, “That is a little more theory and philosophy than I would have liked.”

  Over the course of the next half hour, they spent fifteen minutes trying to throw the pail, and another fifteen trying to see if she could exert any sort of telekinetic force on Roland—not moving him in any specific way, but seeing if he felt any sort of “push.”

  Nothing.

  “Shit,” Bailey quipped, trying not to sound as frustrated as she felt. “Maybe telekinesis isn’t my thing. Or maybe the test was wrong, after all.”

  Roland scratched his neck. “We’ll try something else, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll see what the shaman says. I really, truly don’t think the test was giving us false results, though.”

  Ten minutes later, they were in the middle of trying to ignite a flame on Bailey’s fingertip when Roland suddenly stumbled back a couple of steps, his eyes widening and his motions jerky.

  “What?” Bailey gasped, alarmed and wondering if she’d hurt him. She’d been concentrating on heat, and she had the horrible notion that she’d just combusted one of his internal organs or something.

  He plunged his hand fiercely into his left pocket, and with a sinking feeling, she realized what was happening.

  “The coin,” he snarled. “They fucking found me again.”

  The witches. Roland had enchanted a coin to vibrate as an alarm when Shannon and her two minions drew close. He and Bailey had caused them to crash their car and hosed them down with a broken fire hydrant back in Portland, hoping it would get rid of them for a while. And it had, but not for long enough.

  While Bailey looked south and east, Roland, scanning the north and west, saw the familiar and hated silver 2011 Jaguar XKR. It was barreling toward them at such speed that Shannon must have used magic to accelerate it, or they would have heard the engine before now.

  And based on his quick calculation of its trajectory, it was aiming its front end directly at Bailey.

  Chapter Seven

  There was no time for magic, only a split second in which crude physical action might save her. Roland lunged and piled into Bailey, who was just spinning around to see the car, and they both tumbled toward the corner of the lot.

  The Jaguar sped past, brushing them only with the wind it created by its motion. It swerved wildly to avoid crashing into the nearest building, then the brakes shrieked and the tires smoked as it rattled awkwardly to a halt a couple of hundred feet down the road.

  Bailey hit the ground hard but remembered to roll. The impact shocked her, and she knew pain would follow; it was a question of hoping she hadn’t broken anything. Roland groaned beside her.

  Both sprang to their feet to see the trio of sorceresses piling out of their car and strutting toward them. They came to a stop at the opposite corner of the empty lot.

  Shannon DiGrezza was predictably front and center. Her hair was still a bright fuchsia-burgundy color and draped over one eye, though her slim frame was now covered by a deep purple shirt, a glossy black jacket, and black-and-silver track pants instead of the silver dress she’d worn before.

  She extended a hand, which was curled into a fist save for her index finger. It extended its long violet nail toward Bailey.

  “You!” she raged. “We haven’t forgotten your ass, you little slut. Think you’re a great driver, do you?”

  Following her initial outburst, Shannon’s voice lowered from a screech to its more restrained usual register, becoming haughty and insinuating. “Someone like you does not belong with Roland. That’s not just our opinion, it’s a basic fact of nature. He’s just using you to get away from us because he hasn’t accepted reality yet. But this time…”

  Up stepped Aida Nassirian, the tallest and darkest of the three, whose black hair was pulled into a high ponytail in a golden ring. She currently wore a black women’s business ensemble with gold trim.

  “Don’t worry,” she purred in her vestigial Iranian-Armenian accent, “we will take good care of Roland. You, on the other hand, we will not care for at all.”

  Callie McCluskey pounced forward then. She was a short, curvy blonde, the youngest of the three. Today she was wearing black capris, blue and white sneakers, and a white coat tied around her shoulders over a blue sports bra.

  “You’re dead this time, you dumb bitch!” she bawled loud enough to be heard two blocks away. “We’re not playing around anymore!”

  Roland swallowed. He had been preparing a spell, but something about the witches’ demeanor rattled him.

  “I think they mean it,” was all he said.

  Bailey almost wanted to run, but the fight or flight instinct is a two-pronged fork, and her other natural urge was to take the heads off all three. She was pretty sure she’d get her chance momentarily.

  In unison, the trio stepped forward, extending their arms, and light and matter burst forth in a dizzying show of elemental power.

  “Shit!” Roland exclaimed.

  Shannon had thrown a bolt of lightning, Aida a ball of fire, and Callie a cluster of ice, all at the same time. The three deadly masses spiraled around each other as they advanced like Ouroboros, bent on annihilation.

  Bailey leaped aside, realizing with horror that Roland wasn’t doing the same. Instead, he raised both hands as if readying himself to catch a football and deflected the triune blast aside, faint greenish light shimmering around his hands.

  The fire and ice and lightning went diagonally into a nearby vacant liquor store, blowing the roof off in a shower of burning or half-frozen fragments.

  All at once, the anger that had been building toward these three came back—the sense that they had no right to be doing this. Roland had made his wishes clear, and Bailey hadn’t done anything to them until they’d started fucking with her.

  Now they were trying to kill her, and in their malice, they seemed to be willing to risk killing Roland too, while they were at it.

  Shannon had tossed another flashing purplish lightning bolt, this time at Roland, who’d blocked it in the air about four feet in front of him and seemed to be trying to wrest away control of it and turn it back. Green sparks flew where his otherwise invisible power had hold of it.

  The witch turned her head to her cronies. “Now! Get her!”

  She was stalling Roland, then, while Aida and Callie finished Bailey off. The other two sorceresses raised their hands.

 
; And then it happened—again.

  Bailey surged into the fray, her body changing as it moved, growing and warping. Her senses came alive, crackling with power, her clothes shredding under the unexpected assault of bulging muscles and bristling fur.

  “What the shit?” Callie exclaimed.

  She and Aida threw blasts of frost and flame, but Bailey sprang away from them, the heat and cold passing over and under her as she bounded onto the corner of a building and launched herself off just as fast.

  Then, her instinct to maim and destroy running amok, she was on top of the witches. Callie ran screaming aside, and Shannon, having canceled her lightning bolt, essentially threw herself across the lot with a sudden burst of telekinetic magic.

  Bailey’s paws descended on the shoulders of Aida, the tallest of the three, and slammed her to the ground.

  “Bailey!” Roland called. Then there was a brilliant flash, and miniature sonic booms resounded in the air as he found himself again fighting the other two.

  Aida screamed and brought her hands up over her face as Bailey clawed her and stomped on her. At one point, the sorceress raised a hand to try casting a quick spell, either a bolt of force or another fireball, but Bailey knocked her arm aside with her snout hard enough that she might have cracked her wrist or forearm.

  She could not quite bring herself to bite the woman’s head off, though. She wanted to, but…

  Then Caldoria shouted, “Eat this!” and a burst of sound and gravity struck the giant black wolf hard in the side.

  Whimpering, Bailey was knocked aside, pain spreading across her body as she tumbled to the pavement. By the time she bounced off it, she had shifted back into a mostly-human form, her body shrinking and her black fur receding.

  Her mind had raced ahead of the situation. She forced herself to stand, and her concentration was already at work—on the residual magic that she’d just been struck with. Maybe, in her current heightened state of consciousness, she could apply what Roland had just tried to teach her.

  The advancing forms of Shannon and Callie came into focus as Bailey thrust out her hands, trying to throw what remained of the spell back at them.

  To her surprise, the lingering pain ended all at once, and a few sparks of power crackled around her fingertips. Then it vanished.

  “Hah!” Shannon cawed. “You’re attempting magic? What do you plan to use it for? Getting the mud out of your jeans?”

  “Yeah!” Callie added. “Or the, uh, cow shit!”

  Before Bailey, gritting her teeth, could remind the pair that there weren’t any cows in Greenhearth, a green light flashed, and Caldoria, squealing in anger, was blasted aside, crashing into the very trash can they’d been trying to move earlier. She slumped into it, and nothing further was heard.

  Shannon spun to face Roland. “How dare you! You could have hurt her!”

  “Oh, shut up, Shannon,” he barked. “You just tried to kill Bailey. Fuck off!”

  The witch trembled with wrath. “Don’t you talk to me like that!” Already her hand was out, forming what looked like a hideous smoldering mass of magical napalm.

  Bailey, unable to think of anything but Roland on the receiving end of that, jumped at the remaining sorceress.

  This time there was no flowing shift into wolf form, but there didn’t need to be. Bailey as a human was enough to get the job done.

  She tackled Shannon, hitting her hard in the side, then stuck her foot between the witch’s legs. That knocked her over, causing her to gasp as the blazing spell winked out in her hand. Then all at once, Bailey’s knees were on the woman’s narrow chest, and her fists were driving into her face.

  Roland ran up beside her. “Whoa! Bailey, that’s enough. Easy.” He looped his arms under hers and pulled her up and off the witch.

  Shannon lay unconscious, sprawled awkwardly on the pavement. Her face was badly bruised and her nose was broken, trailing blood onto her expensive-looking jacket.

  Bailey, chest heaving, spat once on the ground next to her. “Maybe she can use some of her goddamn money to get her nose bone replaced since the rest of her is plastic already.”

  Behind her, Roland made an abortive coughing, possibly-laughing sound as he dragged her back.

  “Yeah,” he murmured, “right. But come on. We need to get out of here.”

  Sirens wailed in the distance, growing closer.

  * * *

  For a brief instant, Bailey had the strange sense someone was watching her, but when she spun and looked back toward the empty parking lot, there was nothing. The sorceresses had all been flattened, and no bystanders had turned up yet. She pivoted back toward Gunney’s car.

  Then her eyes fell on the silver Jaguar.

  “Hey,” she piped up, “Roland.”

  “Yeah?” the wizard asked, looking back over his shoulder at her.

  She smirked a little. “Let’s take their car.”

  “Uh,” he started, “no, I don’t think so. Let’s just go. Why the hell would you want to do that, anyway?”

  “Think about it. We already did it with that piece-of-crap Beamer the city Weres were driving, and that worked out okay. Taking the Jag would stop your lovergirls from following us.”

  Roland’s tongue seemed to be wandering around inside his mouth as he thought it over.

  “Also,” Bailey continued, “we’d have more mobility. You could drive it while I drive the Trans Am, so we could split up and throw people off by taking different routes to the same place without using your car; that kinda thing. And it would make another fine addition to Gunney’s scrap heap. Don’t tell me the thought of that doesn’t give you a warm, fuzzy feeling.”

  “Well,” the wizard admitted, thrusting his hands into his pockets.

  Bailey was extrapolating on the possibilities in her head at the same time. “Or I could just keep the damn thing as a backup, at least until the Tundra’s fixed. At least that way, I’m not endangering Gunney’s baby. Hell, I already feel bad driving the thing like this. He lent it to us, knowing that we were going on a potentially dangerous errand. He’s probably weeping himself to sleep, half-expecting we’ve destroyed it by now.”

  Seeing her Tundra—which she’d all but brought back from the dead and fine-tuned to her specifications—get so badly beaten up had been downright painful. She could imagine how Gunney would feel about damage being done to the Trans Am. Bailey could only dream of owning something so beautiful.

  Roland’s eyes focused, and he took his hands out of his pockets. “No,” he stated in a flat voice. “I’m sorry, but there’s something you forgot about. Shannon probably cast spells up and down the whole thing. It would take a while for me to detect and remove them all, and in the meantime, she could probably track us more easily. It’s not worth the risk.”

  The girl frowned. He was probably right, but she didn’t have to like it.

  “Besides,” said the wizard, “I have another idea. I need more time to think it over, but I promise to tell you once it’s a little more, uh, percolated or whatever. For now, we need to flee the scene of the crime. And by the way, you do realize you’re naked?”

  The sirens were louder.

  Bailey’s face turned bright red. “Yeah, fine,” she grumbled and hurried toward the car. Roland grabbed her boots and shredded clothes and followed.

  * * *

  Agents Townsend and Spall, lying on the roof of a nearby building, again lowered their binoculars, the movements almost perfectly synchronized. Both men sighed at the same time.

  “Practically a disaster,” said Townsend. He put his binocs into their case. “I think this might be the end of our luck. The last straw, the final thread on which the Sword of Damocles hangs before it falls directly on our asses.” He valiantly refrained from commenting on the naked wolf-girl.

  Spall shook his head, likewise stuffing away his viewing apparatus. He, from some dimly remembered impulse of gentlemanliness, also chose to ignore Bailey’s nudity. “Far too close a call. This sort of
fuckery cannot continue any longer. It’s getting harder and harder to make up bullshit stories about the so-called ‘gang wars’ raging across the PNW.” He sighed. “But it is our job. Maybe we should take a vacation until this is all over?”

  Townsend stared at him, then they both turned to gaze at the parking lot. The Trans Am was fleeing the scene even now, and the building that had gotten its roof blown off was still burning. Based on what they’d heard in their earpieces, the fire department was on its way, as well as the police.

  Townsend grunted. “We’ll let the local fuzz perform the initial collection, provided those fucking witches don’t try to ensorcell them into letting them go. Then I think it’s time we intervene directly and put a stop to their shenanigans.”

  Spall made a throaty grunt. “Yes. As soon as their guard is down, I think we need to arrest them. They’ve gone too far this time. Their pursuit of the wizard and the were-chick is goddamn ridiculous. Too much risk of blowing the lid off things. Too many normal citizens who might have gotten glimpses of the supernatural.”

  Both men had been lying on their bellies to keep a low profile. Now, in unison, they rolled to opposite sides and stood, walking behind the boxy cabin that enclosed the roof’s staircase to keep out of sight of the street below.

  “Hmm,” Townsend wondered out loud. “The only question is what the fuck to do about Bailey Nordin. She’s clearly at the center of all this; everywhere she goes, it’s like she’s a magnet for trouble. And yet she generally isn’t the one starting it. That puts a different spin on things.”

  “Mmm, yes,” Spall agreed. “Mostly she reacts. She’s not the one exercising malign volition here. Those three bitches down there and all those were-criminals are the real problem. But that wizard keeps dragging Nordin to places where they’re likely to stir up problems one way or another, based on the current evidence.”

  Both men stood in silence for a minute or so, adjusting their ties, belts, and cuffs. They’d already noted that the Trans Am was heading south. The cute couple would probably end up spending the night in Tacoma or Lakewood or Olympia. They made no effort to pursue.