by Renée Jaggér
“No.”
They uttered the word in unison. Then their eyes snapped open, staring straight ahead yet seeing each other—finally—in their peripheral vision. They felt their shoulders and hands touching, and each heard the other breathe.
Bailey looked at the wizard. After a second or two, he looked back. She put her arms around him and held him close, feeling him tremble.
“Jesus,” he almost hissed. “That was unpleasant.”
“Yeah,” Bailey agreed in a far softer voice than usual, “it was. Do me a favor, and don’t ask me about it this time.”
Another shudder went through him. “Sure, in exchange for the same.”
“Deal.” She squeezed his hand.
They sat like that for some time, until at length they calmed down and found the strength to stand up. Roland went first.
“I think,” he offered, “we need to get away from this fucking pool.”
Bailey had no intention of arguing with him about that. “Does this mean we failed the test?” she wondered. “Shit. Where’s Marcus when you need him? I’m starting to wonder if this is the actual test. Nightmare shit from the pool, then having to figure out what the hell to do next all by ourselves.”
“Probably,” the wizard grumbled. “He’d teach a toddler how to shoot by giving him a loaded submachine gun and turning him loose in a mall. Sorry, that’s a bit excessive, maybe, but I’m really starting to wonder what’s going on here.”
The girl furrowed her brow and said nothing. She understood where Roland was coming from, but she still trusted the shaman. He had his reasons, surely.
They climbed the ridge away from the shadowy lake and wandered off at a ninety-degree angle from it through a patch of swampy woodland that wasn’t too dense. If wraiths attacked, they’d have a second or two to react.
Nothing bothered them, though. It was like they walked through a land devoid of any life but them and the gnarled black trees, and it suited them just fine. While they recovered, they had no desire to share the Other with anyone else.
When they’d gone some distance, perhaps a mile, the woods thinned, but the trees grew larger. They towered over them, forming a great dome with their branches over a flat patch of earth overgrown with pale, snaky weeds lightly covered with a thin sheen of silvery mist.
“Hmm,” Roland quipped, “I like the looks of this place. Kind of cool. Want to stop here?”
“Okay,” she said. “And yeah, it’s interesting. Like a natural temple or something.”
They paused, doing nothing at first, then spontaneously starting to trade magical exercises—minor stuff similar to the electrical-circuit thing they’d done previously. It gave them something to do that felt constructive.
Different elements joined electricity and fire in the roster of things they could channel together. They played catch with a ball of mist, each keeping it formed into a perfect sphere and launching it at the other in a symmetrical rhythm.
“This,” Bailey remarked, “is kind of fun. It’s nice to be able to practice magic without a bunch of fuckheads trying to eat our souls or whatever.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Roland agreed. “Let’s spice things up a bit.”
After “catching” the mist-ball and throwing it back, he snapped his fingers and the vapor condensed into ice.
Bailey caught the frozen orb with her hands, then pitched it at him like a softball—electrocuting the water in the same motion. “Try this on for size,” she challenged.
Roland stopped the now-hazardous mass in midair and cracked it in half like a melon. He let the frozen pieces fall to the ground and held the electricity in place, a sparking agglomeration of ball lightning.
He glanced around. “Let’s see if we can set up a quadruple circuit. Like, I throw the current through that tree over there, then double it back to your left hand, then you throw it through that tree opposite us, then back to me. We’ll form kind of a figure eight.”
The girl hesitated. “Won’t that kill the trees?”
“Not necessarily,” he replied. “Well, I don’t know. If it hurts them, we can stop. Wouldn’t want to destroy the place.”
“Amen,” agreed Bailey.
The wizard stretched the floating ball of lightning into a thin bolt and cast it into the first of the trees he’d indicated. He took a second to “feel” the structure of the mighty plant, and then the bolt zapped back toward Bailey.
She caught it with her left hand and tossed it toward the other tree. Once it struck, she struggled to do as Roland had done—sense the composition of the target so she could loop the electrical charge toward Roland.
But she screwed it up. The current shot out of her in both directions.
“Hey!” Roland exclaimed, stumbling back as he barely saved himself from a nasty shock. Meanwhile, the tree sparked and smoked where the bolt had struck.
Bailey blushed. “Crap. Sorry. Guess I should have asked how the hell you use a tree as a relay before we started.”
The wizard stood up and brushed himself off. “You just move the electricity through the water and sense the positive and negative charges in it, the same as with any other living thing,” he stated as though this were obvious. “Though trees and humans—or werewolves, close enough—are pretty different.”
“Well,” the girl shot back, “I’m still getting better. Hell, we both are. Magic is starting to come easy, even in this godforsaken place.”
“Indeed,” Roland agreed. “Let’s take a short break, then wander back toward that hill by the lake. If Marcus is back by now, he might expect us to be there.”
Neither of them was keen to be anywhere near the pool, but they were both more than ready to return to Earth. The easier it was for the shaman to find them, the quicker that would happen.
Time passed; as usual, their minds could not determine how much. As tired as they were, it was all too easy to fall into a complacent stupor. Had their senses and their alertness been sharper, they would not have been as shocked as they were when they rounded a clump of gnarled trees and came to a relatively open patch of muddy ground not far from the hillock and the lake.
Standing before them was a welcoming committee comprised of ten or twelve men. Neither of the pair recognized any individuals amongst the group, but Bailey pegged them as Weres.
Blinking and coming to a halt, Roland demanded, “Who the heck are you guys?”
An old bearded man with broad sloping shoulders stood near the front of the crowd. “We are the Juniper Pack,” he stated in a deep yet wheezing voice. He looked not at the wizard, but at the werewitch. “You must be Bailey Nordin. Is this correct?”
In Bailey’s head, danger signals went off, but she kept her cool. “Yeah. I’ve heard of you guys. You live in the mountains somewhere south of us. Never been down there. Why are you here?”
Ignoring her question, the old man straightened. He carried a tall wooden walking staff and had been leaning on it. “Why have you taken to pursuing the study of magic without sending word to the Were community in the region or me? Some say you’re a loose cannon, which concerns us.” His bushy brows lowered over his eyes.
Something flared up within the girl, and she planted her fists on her hips, sticking out her jaw. “Who the hell wants to know? What business it is of yours, anyway? I haven’t done anything to your pack. Getting pretty damn tired of people thinking all my business is their business.”
Roland winced. He’d probably been hoping she’d handle this more diplomatically.
The elderly man frowned, and the younger Weres behind him—all tough-guy sorts in furs and leather and camo—bristled with tension and hostility.
“My name,” said the leader, “is Estus. Shaman to the Junipers. I felt a disturbance not long ago, and word has spread that you’re the cause of it. You also beat up two boys from my pack recently. Granted, they were wayward delinquent sorts and should not have been in your town to begin with.”
Bailey’s gut clenched. He was referring
to two amongst the large gang that had ambushed her and Roland when they’d come back from Seattle.
“But still, as part of a larger picture, it disturbs me,” Estus went on. “And there’s word that you, having burned all bridges in your hometown, now seek to move farther afield and set yourself up as both alpha and shaman over some other pack.” He did not specify which pack he meant.
“What?” Bailey scoffed. “That’s total bullshit. Where do you hear that crap?”
Even as she said it, she flashed back to her vision beside the pool. She tried not to shudder.
One of the young bucks stepped up. “From a reliable source.” He glared at her from under a heavy brow.
“Yeah, well,” she snapped, “maybe they ain’t so reliable after all. The only thing I’m doing is trying to learn to control my goddamn magic so there isn’t trouble with anyone else and I don’t hurt my damn self. Then I just want to live quietly at home. That’s all.”
The force and conviction of her words must have had some effect since some of the Weres now looked uncertain, and Estus at least was considering what she’d said.
“Does this mean,” the old man inquired, “that you’ve committed to the path of the shaman?”
Bailey hadn’t expected that. “Not exactly, but that’s, uh, on the table. Right now, like I said, I’m just trying to make sure I know what the hell I’m doing.”
Estus pointed his staff at Roland. “Why is he here? What business does he have with you, or us?”
The wizard brushed his hair back. “Well, I happened to be in the neighborhood, so I—”
The old man cut him off. “The training of a shaman amongst the Were people is a private affair, and only those who are of the Were should participate in it. There is no reason for his kind to be here.”
Narrowing her eyes, Bailey threw up her hands. “His kind? He’s a magic-user just like you and me.”
The shaman shook his head. “No. Wizards and witches are humans who have the gift. They are not Weres, and their understanding of magic is far different than ours. They don’t use it the same way we do.”
Mentally, Bailey had to admit the second part was true, although she said nothing aloud to acknowledge it. Instead, she remained defiant.
“Well, too bad,” she snapped. “Roland’s with me. Neither of us is out gunning for your position, if that’s what you’re afraid of. We’re just trying to figure out how to use our own powers so we don’t accidentally kill ourselves or someone we care about. And he and I are in it together, so get used to it.”
Estus was grim. “We will see. If you’re going to be this bold, you ought to be able to back it up.”
Before Bailey could demand to know what that meant, the shaman turned to his pack.
“Jim, Carlos, Robert, and Shaun.” He indicated the four with his chin.
The four young Weres sprang into action, growling with rage, two of them half-shifted into their wolf forms. Their dark shapes lunged from multiple directions, surrounding the two interlopers.
Roland sighed. “Crap.”
He raised a hand, summoning a concussive wave of force that intercepted the first Were, knocking the young man out of the air in the middle of a high leap during his transformation. There was a yelp, followed by a low grunt and a heavy thud as he struck the damp earth and rolled toward the pack.
Bailey had already jumped forward, readying another cone of electricity and feeling as though she might shift into her lupine form at any moment.
“Leave him alone! This is between you and me!” she shouted at the Weres. To Roland, she added, “Stay out of this! It’s my fight.”
The wizard took a step back, looking concerned and skeptical, but he did nothing else. For now. Bailey knew that if she were in serious danger, he’d help her.
The nearest of the four Weres blundered straight into the expanding, short-range field of weak red lightning that Bailey created. He stopped in place, still in human form, but bristling with extra hair as his muscles spasmed. Bailey ended the spell, releasing him to topple to the ground. She quickly stripped off her pants and shirt and toed off her boots before she lost more clothes to another transformation, since she knew it was coming. It would be very embarrassing to be naked in the Other after this was over.
The other two who were still on their feet, wolves now, piled into her from both sides. Without even thinking about it, she glided easily into her alternate form.
There was the change of perspective as she switched from two legs to four, the weird sensation of sprouting fur, and the incredible increase in her powers of sensory perception. Then the two other werewolves were on her, and there was no room in her mind for anything but combat.
Sleek, hairy forms struck at one another. Fanged jaws gnashed, and claws swiped out and down. It did not seem like the Juniper warriors were trying to kill or seriously maim her, only humble her.
She responded in kind, shouldering them aside, tossing them into trees with her mouth by the scruffs of their necks, scratching them across the hide but not deep enough to threaten serious injury. She left bruises and the occasional cracked rib, but that was all.
In what seemed like seconds, it was over. Jim, Carlos, Robert, and Shaun lay gasping and battered on the surface of the bog, and Bailey, breathing deeply in and out, still stood. Her body shifted back into human form.
It’s easier here and now, she realized. Somehow the progress I made controlling my magic helped me with changing form, too.
Estus stood back, gazing at her with a mixture of wariness and, she was pretty sure, admiration.
“Impressive,” the old man stated. “But this test is not through. Let the wizard join you, then the two of you will fight all the soldiers of my pack.”
Fatigued though she was, Bailey grinned as an extra wave of battle-lust swelled within her. “Bring it on.”
Roland stepped up beside her, his face pale but his jaw set, as all ten of Estus’ followers charged them. “This ought to be interesting,” he commented. “I’m assuming we’re still in nonlethal mode, so—whoa!”
Two Weres, already in beast form, changed direction abruptly, and suddenly their jaws slashed toward his legs. He hopped back, stumbling, and with swiping motions of his hands directed kinetic blasts at them from multiple directions, knocking them around like toys.
Bailey plunged into the rest of them. She’d shifted by the time she was airborne, and she could feel her greater size and strength—she recalled her brothers telling her when she’d changed during her confrontation with Freya that she was the biggest wolf they’d ever seen.
Conscious thought fled the battlefield. There remained only the brute instinct of pure animal combat, yet she tried not to lose control. Her jaws clamped, her claws thrashed, and she shouldered aside some Weres while stomping on others. Bruises and cuts were dealt to her, and she gave the same in return, throwing her foes around and smashing them as needed.
But somehow, she restrained herself from tearing off limbs, pulling out guts, or ripping out throats.
Her pain and fatigue started to show through the frenzy created by adrenaline and bestial rage, but by then, one by one, or sometimes two at a time, the other wolves collapsed. Soon, she and Roland stood alone.
Estus watched all this with a dark expression, though not without grudging respect. “You have good control of your powers, both sorcery and shapeshifting. And you did not hurt my boys more than needed. That, at least, is somewhat encouraging. Your reputation as out-of-control rogues may not be deserved after all.”
Bailey was already shifting back to human form and she huffed. “Thanks.”
Roland just gave the old man a thumbs-up. His brow dripped sweat.
The shaman leaned on his stout wooden staff as the fighters of his pack climbed back to their feet around him. “Let’s now discuss how to—”
He stopped, his face snapping toward the crest of the hillock beyond them. Bailey looked at the same time, as did the Weres who hadn’t been pummeled
badly enough to impair their senses.
They had visitors. Three figures dressed in leather—women, all of them—had strolled over the promontory and now stood looking down at the group.
Bailey nudged the wizard, who was just noticing them.
“Roland,” she whispered, “do you recognize them.”
He’d gone pale and was cringing. “Yes, I do. I’ve never seen them before, but yeah. And they’re exactly who you think they are.”
She frowned. “Shit."
Estus faced the trio. “Who are you? Something about your aspect seems familiar, and I sense hostile intent. Our business is none of yours.”
The woman in the lead, who wore her hair in a tight bun, smiled in a mirthless way that raised the fine hairs on Bailey’s neck and arms.
“That,” she began, “should be our line, not yours. We are here for Bailey Nordin. Step aside.” The voice was laced with a European accent—French, or perhaps Belgian or some such. She took two steps down the slope, and her assistants followed at her elbows, half a step behind.
The old shaman straightened his aged body and puffed out his chest. “I know who you are. The Venatori. You are not welcome here. You’re not Weres. You have no right to extend your authority over any of our people. Go back to managing the affairs of human witches on your own continent.”
The lead witch tittered. “We are not on your continent, either. The Other is open to any being of sufficient strength and knowledge who can find it, and we far exceed you in that regard, old man. Stand aside or pay the price!”
By now, most of the Juniper bucks had regained their feet, and perhaps half of them looked ready to fight again if need be, taxed as they were. The other half looked like they might collapse to the ground again at the first sign of serious resistance.
Bailey had to do something. “Hey,” she called. “There’s no reason to fight here unless you make us. Nobody needs that. I was just discussing with the shaman how I’m not interested in taking anyone else’s crown. I’m just trying to learn to control my powers so I don’t hurt anyone I care about. That’s all. If you ladies are worried about me, don’t be. I’m no threat to you. Go home, and don’t worry about it.”
