The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  Roland piped up. “What about the pack that jumped us? Bailey said she’s never even met those guys. Why would they still be gunning for her when we already demonstrated to those previous groups that Bailey isn’t trying to take over their leadership?”

  Marcus gave a shrug of his wide shoulders. “It’s hard to say, but the overall situation concerned me from the beginning. Revealing yourself and your powers would naturally draw attention. And now that I’ve revealed myself? Well, that has lent you legitimacy, but in other ways, it might have made it worse. The lofty invariably attract the jealous and the envious.”

  The wizard’s eyes rolled. Not in sarcastic skepticism, Bailey noticed, but in thoughtfulness. What Marcus had just said was a near-perfect description of what Roland had gone through as a kid.

  The shaman went on. “Someone ambitious, who perhaps feels threatened by your rise—this other shaman’s apprentice, perhaps—might have decided that he can make a name for himself by targeting you. Maybe he thinks that with you out of the way, Bailey, he can take your place, and have the honor of training under me. Or he might legitimately believe the paranoid gossip that you plan to depose all other shamans and alphas, despite what’s happened recently.”

  Bailey nodded. “That makes sense. Oh, also, the Whitcomb alpha Alfred mentioned something about them worrying that I’m attracting the attention of the Venatori.” Her face fell. “I guess he was right about that, but the cat’s out of the bag. I never meant to let it out, and I don’t know how to put it back in.”

  Marcus laid a hand on her shoulder, and some of her stress melted away. “I will do more to shield you and hide you while you’re in the Other. In that much at least, I admit fault. Otherwise, don’t trouble yourself with these things.”

  “So,” Roland asked, “what should we do?”

  The god of wolves smiled grimly. “Keep training.”

  * * *

  Thirteen women stood on a low ridge lined with mossy pine trees and looked down on the little settlement. They made no effort to hide since they knew they were well-concealed.

  “Cute,” remarked Madame MacLachlan as she surveyed the premises.

  It was a werewolf community disguised as a mobile home village in the middle of the rustic area near the Capitol State Forest, south of Washington’s capital of Olympia. The strawberry-blonde witch had to admit it was clever. By concentrating all their people in the area within a single trailer park, the Were pack was able to hide in plain sight, separate from nearby human towns, without needing many people who could be trusted to maintain silence.

  Of course, it was also a cheap, low-class place, exactly what she would expect of American lycanthropes.

  One of the apprentice-level witches she’d brought turned to her. “When do we strike, Madame?”

  MacLachlan didn’t look at her. “In a minute or two. Just need to check for traffic.”

  She sent her mind out to scry for oncoming cars who might witness what was about to happen. There didn’t seem to be any since the trailer park was located on a back road that few people would have cause to take unless they lived there.

  Another young sorceress fidgeted. “Just give the word, Madame. We are ready.”

  MacLachlan ignored her. It was mildly annoying to have the grunts pressuring her, but at least it meant they were enthusiastic.

  She’d picked them out of the Venatori’s lower ranks on the basis of obedience, motivation, and destructive skill. Any who’d expressed hesitation, she passed over and chose someone else instead. All twelve of them wanted to be here.

  MacLachlan didn’t particularly, but she wasn’t about to disobey the Grandmistress. At least, not in the grand scheme of things. She had rather different ideas than Madames Gregorovia and Dorleac seemed to about how the situation should be handled. MacLachlan felt now was the time to send a message.

  They’d used a powerful but convenient teleportation spell to send themselves to a small coastal town in British Columbia, a location the Venatori had used before when they had business in the region, then stowed away on a cargo ship bound for Tacoma, near Seattle. From there, it was a simple matter to slip past the authorities and secure transportation that would take them south into Oregon.

  In fact, since they’d made such good time, MacLachlan saw no reason why they shouldn’t make a few stops along the way. They could use a nice training exercise for the new recruits.

  MacLachlan pointed at the trailer park and ordered, her tone casually amused, “Attack.”

  The young witches dashed forward, spreading out in a crescent formation, a skirmish line that would quickly wrap around the settlement and then engulf it. Once they were beyond the danger of friendly fire, they started tossing lightning bolts at the metal siding of the mobile homes.

  MacLachlan watched from a hundred meters back, encasing the little community in a soundproof magical dome as small thunderclaps rang out. The first of the frightened werewolves burst out of their homes, confused and panicked. Many had half-shifted into their hideous lupine forms, some with burnt fur from the havoc the electrical blasts had wrought.

  The primitive beasts attempted to fight back, and MacLachlan supposed it qualified as a brave attempt. But even with the Weres’ superior numbers, it was a massacre. The Venatori had the element of surprise, combined with powerful magic that far exceeded mere shapeshifting. It was an unfortunate but necessary exercise.

  There was one casualty. The apprentice who’d asked when they were going to attack had taken a nasty bite on the leg and now writhed and moaned in pain on the ground. Healing the wound wouldn’t be too difficult.

  A single survivor slipped past the twelve—a middle-aged woman, still in human form, her eyes rolling wildly as she stumbled across the sward toward MacLachlan. She didn’t even see the Venatori woman.

  The sorceress stepped forward. “Can’t allow that, I’m afraid.” She gestured at the woman, who folded to the ground and didn’t move again.

  The leader strode up to her followers. “Fine work,” she said, momentarily ignoring the screams of the injured young witch. “Just like I said—dead easy. They didn’t even know what hit them, but the rest of them will know that they cannot strike at us and fail to pay the price.”

  The witches nodded grimly. A couple of them, who hadn’t seen real violence before, looked a bit sick, but they’d get over it. It was all for the cause, after all.

  “And,” MacLachlan added, holding up a finger, “we’re thinning out their ranks. Fewer of the bastards to deal with later when the shite hits the fan.”

  She reflected with grim amusement on Madame Gregorovia’s nonsensical statement about avoiding an escalation of hostilities. Might as well hit hard and hit first, and win the war before they had a chance to lose it.

  The new girl, the one who’d said, “Just give the word,” smirked. Her name was Rhona if MacLachlan recalled.

  “Is this the best werewolves can do?” she mused.

  MacLachlan glared at her. “Don’t get overconfident. This was just a warm-up for those of you who don’t have much experience. Our main target is Bailey Nordin, who’s a far cry from these oafs. She killed at least two of ours, and they were witches of decent caliber. That’s the whole reason we’re here.”

  The younger women nodded and saluted, even Rhona.

  “And,” their leader went on, “she’s no ordinary lycanthrope. She’s a werewitch, a rare combination with access to magic on par with our own, even if she’s too green and stupid to use it with the same level of finesse that we do. But the plot thickens…”

  Most of them had already been briefed on the situation, but a few were last-minute replacements. It would benefit them all to hear a clear assessment as a group and help forge the coven-mind toward their ultimate goal.

  “She’s got a male witch with her, probably her lover, who’s also quite powerful. For a man, anyway. He might be training her in the proper use of the arcane. Plus, there’s this mysterious shaman she’s made contact with.
I have no doubt that we will win in the end, but we must take this chore seriously. Those of you who don’t, risk ending up like Madame Lavonne.”

  That was clear enough. By handing them an easy victory, she had allowed them to apply their skills in a “real” situation, but now it was important to ensure that they didn’t get cocky.

  She didn’t want to terrify them, though, so she refrained from mentioning that the so-called shaman might be a god. Possibly.

  “Come, then,” MacLachlan ordered. “Burn all the houses. The authorities will assume someone left their coffee pot plugged in for too long or something, but the conspicuous pile of bodies will make people nervous all the same. Just what we want. And at our next stop, we’ll give the Weres a little advance warning before we eliminate them. You’ll have the opportunity to confront their kind in something more like a fair fight.”

  The witches went about their task, and soon the entire trailer park was blazing. There was no way to hide a conflagration of that size, and sirens approached.

  As the Venatori took their leave, MacLachlan reflected on how lopsided the whole conflict was likely to be. Her group was only the advance force, the shock troops. Madame Gregorovia had promised to send reinforcements soon.

  Once the Scotswoman informed her of how things had “accidentally” gotten out of control, the council would have no choice but to send even more. Soon MacLachlan would lead half the Order’s army to victory.

  * * *

  A lone man stood and watched the fires grow. He noted the direction the thirteen women went—southeast, of course—but his attention was mainly focused on the carnage they’d left behind and the small bleeping device in his hands.

  “Damn,” Agent Townsend muttered. “That’s about all there is to say, isn’t it? Just…damn.”

  He’d gotten there too late to intervene in any meaningful way. Besides, he’d had no idea they’d planned to do this. Even by the Venatori’s standards, what had just happened was beyond the pale.

  He could have grabbed a gun, leapt in, and played the hero. He might have been able to toast one or two of them before they reduced him to a splotch on the ground—just like the late Agent Spall.

  The witches would move on with their mission anyway, and the whole trailer park would still be dead and in flames. Then there wouldn’t be anyone to report on their movements or coordinate an effort to stop them.

  Townsend took a deep breath. Watching the Weres get slaughtered hadn’t been fun. However, he knew that, under the circumstances, he’d done the right thing by keeping himself alive to fight another day.

  The gadget he held before him sort of resembled an old Game Boy Color from the 90s. He remembered when the damn things had first come out. Of course, the Agency device bore no resemblance to a Game Boy in function, only in form.

  Specifically, it noted concentrations of magic in carbon-based material. Arcane expulsions tended to react with blood, hence the many magical traditions, especially the blacker sort, that employed blood as the main component of their rituals. There were significant concentrations of witchcraft in the stains that now littered the destroyed trailer park, and he’d managed to document most of them before the whole place went up in flames.

  Having documented that magic-users were responsible for the massacre, he’d soon be able to bring the full force of the Agency—with the strength of the entire U.S. government to back it up—to bear on those responsible.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. “This would be easier if I wasn’t alone. I’m not used to this shit, Spall. Didn’t you consider that? Asshole.”

  Saying that out loud, if only under his breath, made it feel like someone had just kicked him in the stomach, but once it passed, he felt a little better. The device in his hands finished its beeping as the sirens grew louder, then stopped. The fire department was here.

  Townsend ran a hand through his thinning hair and stood up, preparing to speak to the local authorities and take command of the situation. It would be best if he waited in the shadows and arrived on the scene after the firefighters and cops had a chance to “control” the situation.

  Of course, this time, he’d have to do one hundred percent of the talking.

  “Don’t worry, Spall,” he whispered. “You might have been a dumbass at the end, getting yourself killed, but your heart was in the right fuckin’ place. At least you got two of them. I’ll get the rest. Send ‘em straight to hell so you can finish dealing with them.”

  He was looking forward to it.

  “Nah,” he chided himself. “Just a duty that has to be done. A categorical imperative. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

  In the war to come, it was possible other agents would end up dead, too. But then, the Agency had never sought this. They weren’t the ones who’d started it. All the bloodshed, starting two weeks ago, was the Venatori’s fault.

  Townsend would make damn sure that all of it got pinned directly to their asses.

  As the fire truck pulled up, he breathed in and out a few times, clearing his headspace in preparation for being an emotionless professional when he spoke to the locals. Professionalism was important. Especially when he had to admit that the whole goddamn thing was now personal.

  * * *

  Nicolas Jezak, apprentice to shaman Fred Grotowski of the Shashka Pack, stood staring with eyes that were wide but somehow blank and hollow with the horror of what he was seeing. A faint tremor of anger went through the ropey muscles of his lean frame.

  His teacher didn’t have time to instruct him as often as he’d like, so the training was going slowly. As such, Nick had plenty of time to do other things on the side, such as accompany another shaman, Marcus, on a little sightseeing tour.

  The older man extended a hand toward the smoldering crime scene. “You see?” he said. “This is the kind of thing that’s already begun to happen, and I’m afraid it’s going to keep getting worse until things change in a major and important way.”

  Nick’s voice was almost raspy as he swallowed the lump in his throat and asked, “What happened? In the name of fucking Fenris, how did this happen?”

  The shaman had taken him through a shortcut in the Other to view the scene unfolding south of Olympia, Washington. The two of them crouched inconspicuously in the forest shadows near what used to be a peaceful little trailer park.

  Three of four entire square acres had been reduced to charcoal. The inky-black smoke was still rising in places, even after the fire department had drenched the whole place with water. Now cops and paramedics milled about.

  They were loading many, many body bags onto stretchers. Putting them in the back of a cargo truck, even.

  Marcus sighed. “I might be able to show the final moments of some who died here, a holographic projection of sorts. It would shed light on the nature of the tragedy. But if we do that, I don’t think we’re going to like what we see.”

  Nick clenched and unclenched his bony fists. “I already don’t like it. Show me.”

  “As you wish,” replied Marcus, sadness in his voice.

  He concentrated, recited a brief chant, and spread his hands before the awful scene. That darkness was falling now somehow made it worse since it obscured the details and left too much to the imagination.

  A disc of light, purplish-silver in hue, spread on the ground before them like a perfectly circular pool of water. Within it, a movie of the past played out.

  They both watched in disgust as screaming, snarling, terrified werewolves piled out of burning mobile homes, their bodies distorted by half-finished shifting, as sometimes happened when a Were was in a bad state of mind. Magical lightning and fire flashed all around. Men, women, and children collapsed in heaps. In the end, fire consumed everything.

  Nick looked away, waving his hand, and Marcus snapped his fingers to dismiss the scrying. The images vanished and left only shadows behind. Somehow, the scry had been unable to reveal who had perpetrated it. They only saw the victims, probably because
they were the ones whose psychic residues were most strongly tied to the location.

  The shaman watched, unspeaking, as the younger man doubled over, holding his breath as he struggled not to vomit. After about two minutes, he stood back up, crossing his tattooed bare arms over his chest.

  “Whoever did this,” he stated, “is going to pay.”

  Marcus nodded. “It’s tragic that it’s come to this. We have to act before similar tragedies befall other Weres all over the Pacific Northwest. It won’t be easy, though. Whoever did this, it was clearly someone with a great deal of magical power.”

  “I can see that,” Nick snapped. “It would be helpful if we saw who the fuck it was, but I think I can narrow it down to one or two likely possibilities.”

  The shaman said nothing.

  Nicholas Jezak, as near as Marcus could tell, was a channeler of above-average ability. His powers weren’t extraordinary, but they were enough to pose a legitimate threat to most opponents. Rather than raw power, the apprentice’s chief assets were his connections and his persuasive ability, possibly the sign that he was gifted in psychic magic above all else. It was a useful skill for someone who already had a surplus of friends.

  He was also impatient with the glacial progress of his training and hungry for an opportunity to advance himself more quickly.

  Knowing this, Marcus wasn’t surprised in the slightest when Nick asked the next question.

  The younger man stared into the shaman’s eyes, his jaw trembling with the tension of the muscles along it. “Where is she?”

  Chapter Six

  “I should have known,” Roland grumbled, “that the son of a bitch would send us back here. Sorry. Am I allowed to call a god a ‘son of a bitch?’ I don’t think he’s around to hear, but you never know with supernatural beings who are multiple orders of magnitude above us on the scale of…everything.”