The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  Gasps went around the diner. The normal humans of Greenhearth were aware that lycanthropes lived among them, and silence on the subject was a long tradition. News like that was more shocking to them than if they’d had no idea about such things.

  Bailey gawked. Things were on the verge of going completely out of control.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” she urged. “I haven’t killed any Weres. I’ve been here the whole…time.”

  As the words left her mouth, she realized she had inadvertently lied. She and Roland had been in the Other. For all anyone else here knew, they might as well have been in China.

  Or in Washington.

  Nick shook his head and narrowed his eyes. “No. We’re ending you right now.”

  Patrons screamed, knocking over chairs as they rose from their seats and made for the doors. Bailey’s four new friends closed protectively around her and Roland, and half of the wolves of Shashka shifted form to attack.

  Chapter Nine

  People became wolves, and the formerly peaceful diner became a melee. The quartet of South Cliffs hadn’t been kidding when they’d pledged Bailey their allegiance since all of them changed into their beast forms and hovered around the girl and the wizard.

  The civilians scattered, shouting for someone to call 911 as the Weres from Nick’s group pounced on their targets. The others, still in human form, advanced more slowly from all sides.

  Bailey had already sprung up, her chair falling and sliding behind her, where it got tangled in the legs of one of the Shashkas. He tripped and knocked his face into a booth seat.

  Roland was up too. “For fuck’s sake! We can’t even eat a nice greasy brunch without this shit happening anymore!” At a flick of his hand, one of the bounding wolves mysteriously tripped on a table and sprawled into the opposite wall, missing Bailey’s head by at least five feet.

  Seeing the wizard do that, Bailey remembered they were in public on Earth. In the damn Elk on a busy day. They couldn’t afford to toss around hyper-destructive magic. This fight would come down to the subtler sorts, abetted by fangs, fists, and muscle.

  One of the Shashka men, a guy in his early twenties who had to be at least six foot four, took a swing at her, but for all his strength, he was clumsy, and the girl easily ducked his crude roundhouse. Her knee shot into his groin at the same time her fists pummeled his stomach, then she’d slipped her foot behind his ankle while piling her weight against him. He stumbled and fell, by which point she was bounding back up into the fray.

  Another man had been momentarily caught between a failed strike at one of Bailey’s South Cliff wolves and a second strike at Bailey. His hesitation was all she needed to sock him in the jaw and drop-kick him into a booth seat.

  Then a shifted wolf pounced on her. She blocked its claws and whipped her head back from its drooling mouth, pushing it upward. One of her allies, also in beast form, grabbed the wolf by the scruff and hoisted him off, then the two animals became a rolling tangle of furry limbs.

  In the second it took Bailey to get her bearings, two more Shashkas in human form charged. She thrust out her hands and created a weak wave of concussive force, just enough to stagger them. One dropped to his knees.

  The other was less affected, so Bailey elbowed him in the face. His nose crunched and he blundered backward, holding his hands to his face to the stave off the blood flowing from it.

  Someone else hit her from the side, and for a few moments, all was pandemonium. She lashed out with her hands and knees and feet, never staying in the same place for more than a split second, pounding on anything within arm’s reach.

  She caught fractured glimpses of people swinging chairs and breaking them over each other’s heads, wolves gnashing their deadly jaws at each other, and injured men crawling free of the brawl.

  And Roland, dancing atop the half-walls that divided the booths and kicking Weres in their faces.

  The wizard knew he couldn’t risk burning the diner down, and it occurred to him that he’d lately grown overly reliant on magic of the pyrotechnic sort. Their training in the Other and their arcane battles against the Venatori had left him out of practice at using sorcery to augment himself as an empty-handed fighter.

  But his skills and knowledge came back to him quickly enough. He manipulated gravity to his benefit, deftly using the furniture and layout of the dining area to stay out of reach of the humanoid Shashkas and leap away from the lunges of the ones in wolf form.

  He levitated hard plastic drinking glasses into his hands, then threw them, enhancing their velocity and guiding their accuracy through magic. They shot into the Weres’ faces or testicles, or struck them in the backs of their knees to make them stumble.

  He directed wolves and men to trip into vacant tables and spill silverware, only to find forks and knives embedded in their limbs, perfectly stuck in just such parts of their anatomy as to hobble them in a fight without crippling them or making them bleed to dangerous levels.

  And when all else failed, he simply jumped into the open air and guided his fists like heat-seeking missiles into snouts, kidneys, or solar plexuses. Then he was airborne again. If an average person was watching, they’d think him a highly-skilled martial artist or perhaps a gymnast.

  Will and Leo and the other two former friends of Dan Oberlin did their part, proving their bravery mere minutes after they’d sworn friendship to Bailey and Roland. Rallying around the werewitch and the wizard, they flattened most of the Shashkas who assaulted them and held a defensive position in the far front corner of the dining hall.

  But they were still outnumbered five to one.

  The six of them might have had a fighting chance against the twenty intruders if it weren’t for Nick. Though supposedly only an apprentice shaman, he quickly demonstrated that his magic was nothing to be trifled with.

  Thus far, he’d been tossing streams of invisible force into the melee, subtly wearing down the South Cliffs with a level of precision and control beyond Bailey’s skills, or even Roland’s. Now, with his targets out of reach but his allies by far the more numerous, even though a few had been hurt badly enough to be taken out of the fight, it was time to try something different.

  Nick clasped his right hand over his left fist and held it in front of his chest, and a tremor went through his body as his powerful shoulders shrugged forward and his head angled down. A faint aura, colored like tarnished silver, began to emanate from him, then the same shine appeared around the wolves of his pack.

  As the shaman began to chant, the Shashkas renewed their attack with almost double the speed, power, and ferocity they’d displayed thus far.

  “This is bad,” Roland exclaimed, pointing out what was fairly obvious to them all as he tried to hold two Weres back with a transparent magical shield. “He’s buffing them somehow. It’s pure were-shaman stuff, whatever it is, so it’s not magic I’m familiar with.”

  The song Nick had begun to sing was loud and heavy and guttural, like a battle hymn Vikings or Cossacks or Scythian horsemen might have intoned centuries prior. In time with the primitive yet mesmerizing notes of the chant, glowing runes appeared in the air before him, rotating in a circle.

  And his warriors went berserk.

  Bailey was suddenly charged by two Shashkas who came out of nowhere with incredible swiftness, and all she could do was block their attacks with her arms, augmented with subtle protective magic. Her friends had problems of their own as the enemy Weres pounced, so she strove against them alone.

  Leo took a nasty paw-strike to the chest, bruising and perhaps cracking a rib or two and drawing blood from a pair of lacerations. Grunting and sputtering, he backed to the rear of the fight. He was still able to prevent the Shashkas from flanking the rest of them, but he was in no condition to help with the main struggle.

  The rest of them were wearing down under the ferocious onslaught as well. Unless help or a miracle arrived, there was no way for the six from Greenhearth to win this fight as it now stood.


  Bailey pushed back against her pair of snarling attackers, bowling one over and getting the other tangled up amidst his fellows since too many of them were trying to strike at once to manage a disciplined frontal assault.

  Roland grunted as he fended off another attacker. “I’m going to have to use magic that might get us in trouble,” he gasped. “Not much choice at the moment.”

  Bailey’s anger surged through her in waves of heat and cold. Her teeth ground together, and her fists wanted to knock down stone pillars or put holes through trees.

  “That’s it,” she snarled. “Enough is fucking enough!”

  * * *

  Agent Townsend stood at the center of the open floor on the highest story of the Agency’s Western Regional Headquarters. It was an unmarked office building, tall but not a skyscraper, in glossy black. It stood just outside of Reno, Nevada, a location deemed appropriate for overseeing all three West Coast states plus the next four to the east, as well as the western portion of Montana.

  Besides, Nevada was the traditional state in which to place facilities of the less-publicized portions of the US government.

  Townsend’s hands were clasped behind his back, and he stood ramrod-straight, his shoulders thrown back and his tie perfectly aligned with the edges of his jacket. His dark glasses covered his eyes and his mouth did not move, but a shining pearl of sweat was slowly working its way down the side of his head. Two glaring floodlights were aimed directly at him.

  Just beyond the lights, at a desk on an elevated platform, were the silhouettes of two dark figures. The bosses.

  “Agent Townsend,” the left-hand one began in a high, rapid voice, “the data you’ve collated is convincing as well as alarming. But before we can authorize any kind of large-scale action, we needed to hear your verbal statement in person.”

  The right-hand one added, “Standard operating procedure.” His voice was slow, deep, and monotonously deliberate. “We must hear you out. Make your case, sir. Do not bother repeating the basics. We’ve read your report.”

  The agent inhaled deeply through his nose, then opened his mouth.

  “Sirs,” he began, “we have a situation on our hands that threatens to upend everything we’ve striven for continuously these last few decades. Not years, decades. If we were to examine all possible outcomes and place them on a scale of best-case to worst-case scenarios, the halfway point would still be well into territory that we would describe as catastrophic.”

  The bosses were silent for a moment, then Left asked, “Are you sure that this is an objective assessment, Townsend?”

  “You’re not allowing your feelings for the late Agent Spall to get in the way?” Right added.

  Townsend was too well-disciplined to react in a blatant way, but he allowed his face to settle into a deeper grimace.

  “This,” he answered them, “was the best and most objective view I could produce after employing the recommended procedures for emotional decompression.”

  “Good,” said Left.

  “Go on,” said Right.

  He breathed in again and adjusted his posture by an inch or so.

  “It is my belief that the Venatori, rather than merely pursuing a feud, have gone off the proverbial deep end and are attempting to perpetrate a lycanthrope genocide, thereby eliminating one of the chief rival populations to the hegemony of sorceresses. Given the level of violence that’s already occurred, to say nothing of what else might be coming in the very near future, I am forced to remind our organization that our responsibilities are not only to clean up messes after they’ve happened but whenever possible, to prevent these sorts of fiascoes from happening.”

  The two dark silhouettes moved in a way that suggested they were looking at one another before returning their gazes to the agent.

  Left observed, “The most recent data do point to an unusually high level of homicidal activity by the recently-arrived group.”

  “Essentially a scorched-earth policy,” Right agreed. “Ruthless even by their standards. The facts thus far support your argument. Continue.”

  Townsend did.

  “To put it bluntly, we need to keep this from blowing up. It’s not just one powder keg, it’s multiple powder kegs, each of them buried right underneath the porta-potties at an electronic music festival. When it blows…”

  He sucked in air to give his lungs the necessary sustenance to finish the analogy.

  “…it’s going to be a raver’s wet dream of a surrealistic light show, combined with the mother of all shitstorms. Rain, hail, sleet, snow, and torrential downpours of fecal matter, all of it landing on us, the persons who’d then have to clean it up. I’m proposing we defuse the bombs before it gets to that point. Even if, to continue the metaphor, the people who planted the goddamn things are still here and need to be terminated.”

  Left fidgeted. “Very colorful, Agent.”

  “Be more specific, please,” Right admonished.

  Townsend unclasped his hands and made a powerful, sweeping gesture. He wished he were holding a gun right now. Better yet, a rocket launcher aimed directly at the murderous gaggle of imperious occultists who’d already turned Washington into something from a third-world war zone. That would be a better use of his time than standing here belaboring the obvious to the bureaucrats in charge.

  “Things are on the verge of spiraling out of control. We have an all-out war between wolves and witches in the making. You might say it’s already started. At the absolute least, we need to warn the lycanthrope community to be ready to defend themselves and take preventative measures, with our men ready to step in at a moment’s notice. Better yet, in my professional opinion, we need to mobilize and repel the Venatori’s invasion. Because that’s exactly what it is: a hostile incursion on American soil by foreign troops.”

  From the darkness behind the two glaring lights, there came the faint sound of breath being sharply drawn in.

  Townsend added one more remark. “To top it off, our girl Bailey is at the eye of the storm o’ shit. She seems to attract them, even though I reluctantly admit it’s not her fault.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “Your case is most convincing, Agent,” commented Left.

  Right appeared to nod. “We will deliberate and inform you when a decision has been reached.”

  Townsend frowned. “Pardon me, sirs, but when will that be?”

  The bosses replied in unison. “Soon.”

  * * *

  “That’s it,” Bailey snarled. “Enough is fucking enough!”

  Nick, consumed by the rigors of intensive arcane channeling, didn’t seem to hear her, though his bulging, glassy eyes stared vaguely in her direction. He didn’t react when she changed.

  The girl was drawn toward the floor and the earth beneath it, and a posture designed for crawling on hands and knees became one fit for running on all fours. Her body elongated, her muscles grew even more powerful, and dark fur sprouted from every inch of her skin. Her senses sharpened to an incredible degree, and a blood-hued sheen descended over her vision as her eyes began to glow red.

  The Shashka fighters who were still in humanoid form had just enough rational thought left to hesitate, then dodge aside as the huge she-wolf launched into the air, enhancing her already considerable speed and power with subtle magic.

  The shifted Weres were too deeply affected by their shaman’s berserker enchantment to take heed. A wolf almost as large as Bailey dove toward her from the side, its snout aimed at her abdomen.

  “Bailey!” Roland called. “Watch out!”

  The warning was unnecessary. With a mighty shove of her shoulder, she caught the beast on the jaw, her speed scarcely slowed. The big wolf was jostled back, yelping, two of its teeth cracked or dislodged. Then Bailey found a foothold on the edge of an emptied booth and pounced on Nick.

  He seemed to notice her, now that it was too late. The slowly revolving circle of glowing silvery runes pulsed and dimmed like a candle in danger of going out.
Then the massive lupine creature struck him in the midsection.

  Bailey felt the muscular solidity of the young man as her head and shoulders butted into him, but in human form, he was no match for her. The peripheral scenery of the diner whizzed past as they tumbled across the floor and out through the back door, finally coming to a stop in the rear lot of the restaurant.

  Already Bailey’s jaws had clamped on Nick’s shoulder, and she hoisted him to his knees. He was dazed, and his face was drawn with pain. In the middle of the motion, she shifted back to human form.

  Her jaws released him, but her hands made up for it. The left one twisted sharply in the rear collar of his shirt, and one finger dug into the skin at the scruff of his neck hard enough to draw blood.

  She panted with exertion, but also with rage, staring at him and struggling not to end his life there and then.

  “You got some fuckin’ balls, coming into my hometown!”

  Her right fist slammed into his groin. He groaned and tried to double over, but she held him firm in the same position one would use to cut a man’s throat.

  “My own diner! We were having breakfast, you fuck!”

  Again she punched him between the legs. “Correction, you had balls.” She jerked up with her left hand, raising him to his feet, although he staggered in her grip.

  Bailey reared back with her right hand, and Nick’s eyes shone with sudden terror as a ball of light formed there. Fire and electricity intertwined into natural plasma, an orb of burning death that she held only an arm’s length from his face. He was in no condition to counter her; she could boil his brains out of his skull.