The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  “But,” he continued, “you don’t worry about every single one of them at the same time. You deal with them by being smart, taking your time, and pinpointing the issue at that particular moment. Then you tackle that one. And if there are any others, or if the first one contributed to something else, you move on to that one. One thing at a time. A smooth, methodical process. If you can apply that to everything in your life, things will work out in the end. Trust me.”

  Slowly, the young woman let her breath out. “Thanks, Gunney. I mean, in the midst of frickin’ battle, you kinda have to do everything all at once, but I guess that would fall under ‘specific details.’ In terms of the overall situation, yeah, you’re right.”

  He wiped his hands on his overalls. “I’m always right.”

  Chapter Twelve

  It was about ten in the morning. Rhona breathed in and out through her nose, flexing her hands and adjusting her leather armor as a ripple of excitement went through her body. She could hardly wait.

  Today was the day the werewitch died. And Madame MacLachlan had put her in charge of the first phase of the assault.

  There were eleven of them, enough to qualify as a full coven and a magically portentous number. It was also more than the paltry half-dozen who’d confronted the American pair previously. Their orders were to wear down the girl and her wizard companion and to destroy any other local resistance until reinforcements could arrive for the second wave of the attack.

  To Rhona, that sounded ridiculous and inefficient. It made more sense to simply kill them both—or wound the wizard and possibly capture him—and be done with it. She knew they could.

  And the rewards she’d get for Bailey’s head! She would advance more quickly than any other woman in the history of the Order.

  They stood on a winding and bumpy side street that descended out of the hills and led into Greenhearth via a sparsely settled corner of the town to the northeast. It was the fastest way into town since MacLachlan’s force had detoured east of the werewitch’s home to eliminate a pack living out in the rugged semidesert beyond the mountains. Madame was awaiting more witches, who ought to be arriving presently.

  “Rhona,” one of the lowest-ranking new recruits asked, “should we remain cloaked?”

  The lead sorceress smiled. “No. I want them to see us coming. I want the entire town to see. Now, move out.”

  They descended.

  * * *

  Bailey and Roland walked from her house to the Bristling Elk, where they planned to do some volunteer repair work, followed by a meal.

  “So, Roland,” she asked as they strolled past the sheriff’s office and a small bank, “did you have any place like that in your neighborhood in Seattle? Like, a local place where everyone went to eat to the point that it was, you know, an institution in everyone’s lives?”

  He stroked his chin. “Not quite, although there were certainly popular bars and restaurants. This town is small enough that I can see how you’d all be attached to the Elk, since it’s practically the only place to eat here, aside from the Subway. I swear, Subways are everywhere.”

  “Yeah, well,” she riposted, “everyone here has been to the place, and all the regulars are locals. Smashing up the Elk is like, I dunno, desecrating the damn cemetery. It’s not our fault the place got attacked, but with me graduating to shaman, we have a responsibility.”

  She’d also asked the South Cliff pack to stand guard over the place and help with the repairs when and where they could.

  Maybe if they got lucky, the Whitcombs would send some money. She wasn’t going to force the issue, though. If the establishment’s proprietor and morning bartender, old Maury Fitzpatrick, wanted to ask for restitution from them, it was between him and the pack.

  The slate-colored clouds overhead were heavy and thick as they reached the traffic light in the center of town. It might rain, but in the Pacific Northwest, that was pretty standard.

  “So,” Roland asked, “what do you—” He stopped abruptly and turned northeast, blinking, then leaned forward and scanned the horizon.

  Bailey halted too. “What is it?” Tension boiled from her core to her extremities, readying her for whatever might come.

  The wizard’s nostrils flared. “Hmm. Probably nothing. A slight disturbance, but could just be a bird flying too close to something Marcus is doing in the hills or some crap like that.”

  They relaxed for about five seconds before a line of figures appeared on the street above them on the crest of a low hill.

  “Oh, hell,” Bailey groaned.

  A female voice, speaking with a heavy accent, pierced the air. “There she is!” Someone else repeated the alarm in what sounded like French.

  Roland didn’t wait to see what the Venatori intended to do. He surrounded them both with a powerful shield-bubble. Half a second after it enclosed them, purple blasts of lightning and plasma streaked down from the ridge and fizzled against the translucent green surface.

  “Goddammit!” Bailey raged. “They’re attacking us right in the middle of town! We’re gonna have people fleeing and asking for status as fucking war refugees.”

  She cast out her hand, and a bolt of lightning of her own descended from the sky to strike amidst the witches. One of them caught it with a weak and hasty shield, but the bolt did not die against it. It did slow enough for the sorceresses to scatter, half of them to either direction, before the deadly electricity crashed into the asphalt and dissipated.

  A couple of grocery shoppers emerged from a nearby store, screamed, and ran down a side street. Someone’s car alarm went off as the Venatori began haphazardly chucking fireballs and blazing magical lances. Chunks of buildings and asphalt from the street were kicked up in the general chaos.

  Bailey summoned a powerful wind to push the witches back and then caused it to swirl in a minor cyclone, disorienting them without doing further damage to the town.

  Roland swiped out his arm. “Back that way, toward the sheriff’s station. We’ll force them to abandon the high ground by chasing us. We might even get some men with guns on our side.”

  They jogged west. “That always helps,” Bailey conceded. Involving the cops meant that some of them might get hurt or killed, though.

  Roland maintained the shield and tried to hit the Venatori task force, which looked to be about a dozen strong, by sending psionic waves of confusion and befuddlement. A handful of them slouched, stumbled, or tried to cast spells and failed.

  Bailey, meanwhile, kept pumping offensive magic at them, forcing them to abandon attacks in favor of protecting themselves.

  When they reached the sheriff’s office, it occurred to her that these weren’t the heavy hitters. They were mid-range witches, probably low-ranking Venatori soldiers since even the least of their Order tended to be superior in talent to the average rustic sorceress. They were skilled enough to pose a threat, but not on the same level as the leader of the band they’d fought in the hills days ago. She’d nearly killed them both, along with Gunney.

  The witches also did not seem to have formed a coven-mind yet. Bailey wondered what they were waiting for.

  Then the doors of the station burst open and out came Sheriff Browne, his tall, heavy frame ready for action and a massive .357 revolver in his hands. Beside him was his right-hand man Officer Jurgensen, who was holding a semiautomatic pistol and had a rifle with a scope slung over his shoulder on a strap.

  The sheriff exclaimed, “What in Sam Hill is going on?”

  His answer was an especially large napalm-like fireball hurled in his general direction by one of the witches.

  Officer Jurgensen almost dropped his pistol. “Jesus Christ!”

  He and Browne ran for cover, the sheriff moving astonishingly fast for his bulk. The blast struck the asphalt about twenty feet in front of the doors and spread a broad patch of flame across it, although it fizzled out in a puff of black smoke shortly thereafter.

  The sheriff had already come up from his hasty dodge and was ai
ming his revolver at the attackers. The air cracked as he squeezed off a potshot, distracting the Venatori long enough for Roland and Bailey to crack through their shield and put them on the defensive with magic blazing in from multiple directions.

  Then, as the witches struggled to defend themselves, both cops opened fire.

  Four gunshots rang out in quick succession—three from Jurgensen, one from Browne—and the sorceress on the right of the formation screamed and contorted, a faint reddish mist appearing in the air around her before she topped to the ground.

  “Ha!” Browne roared. “Take that, bitches. Lead has a magic all its own!”

  Jurgensen holstered his pistol and raised the rifle. “Dunno about you, Sheriff, but I’m gettin’ pretty tired of all those goddamn weirdos coming into our town and messing everything up. You hear?” He raised his voice for the benefit of the Venatori, although they might not have heard him over the crackle of lightning and the rumbling of the earth. “Greenhearth isn’t just a stomping ground for this shit!”

  The less experienced among the witches quailed at the death of one of their own. Thus far on their rampage through the backwoods of the northwestern United States, they’d only encountered occasional injuries from foes who were poorly equipped to fight back.

  In a blind act of lashing out, one of the women conjured a torrent of plasma knives that rained down on the positions of the two officers.

  “Oh, crap!” Jurgensen scrambled to secure his rifle as he ran toward the rear corner of the station, narrowly avoiding a half-dozen of the searing purplish blades.

  Browne wasn’t so lucky. Older, heavier, and slower, there was only so much he could do, so he fired another shot at the Venatori while struggling to dodge the attack. Burning knives grazed his stomach and left thigh.

  “Gah!” he cried out, falling to his knees but then squeezing off a fourth round that sent the witch who’d injured him ducking for cover. Jurgensen ran up to his side and the sheriff bellowed, “Call the packs. All the locals. We need backup, and it needs to be Weres or guys of ours who are in the know. Got it?”

  Jurgensen was ashen-faced. He helped the sheriff most of the way back to the doors, then ducked inside. Browne remained behind to keep shooting. This time he hit a witch in the leg, and she shrieked and fell over sideways. She tried to control her magic, but most of it winked out.

  Meanwhile, Bailey and Roland were getting the upper hand at first, but the Venatori had good positioning and seemed able to reconjure their shields with surprising ease.

  Roland looked crestfallen. “Those chicks aren’t that skilled. They’re low-rankers. It doesn’t make any sense. They must have some kind of artifact with them that bolsters their defenses.”

  “Maybe,” said Bailey. “They weren’t in a coven-mind before, I don’t think. They might have just done that.”

  The wizard frowned. If that was true, it meant their opponents were more formidable than they’d guessed.

  Officer Smolinski emerged from the station as well, firing a shotgun at the witches until it was empty and then drawing his pistol to plug away. Only once did he wound one of their foes, and then not fatally.

  The battle was reaching a stalemate. Bitterly, Bailey reflected that she might have been able to crush them with larger and more volatile spells, but that would endanger the town and its people.

  Then the packs showed up.

  From three directions they came: west, northeast, and southeast. Their warriors streamed through the emptied streets, picking up speed as they rushed toward the battle. Their human shouts became animal snarls as most of them shifted. Wolf-beasts leapt into the fray.

  Operating as a unit, the witches were able to notice and respond faster than Bailey would have liked, but they seemed shocked, and the power of their individual attacks weakened as they were forced to divide their strength among more targets.

  Here and there, wolves fell and died, but Bailey and Roland were able to neutralize most of the Venatori’s attacks. With grim satisfaction, they watched as the lycanthropes swarmed over the witches, knocking them over and ripping out their throats.

  It was an awful sight, but under the circumstances, Bailey could not object. Those women were threatening to destroy the entire community.

  There was only one left, a tall, athletic witch about Bailey’s age, with brown hair in a Dutch braid. Madly, frantically, she fought on, hurling fire and concussive force in all directions, slashing with a sword blade of magenta plasma at anyone who got close. She was surrounded by enraged werewolves.

  Bailey shouted at the top of her lungs, “Take her alive! We need her alive.”

  Roland encased the witch in a shield-bubble, neutralizing her attacks while also protecting her from the pounces of three overzealous Weres, who got stuck in the shimmering greenish light and flailed drunkenly as they then sank through it slowly, back to the ground.

  To the werewitch’s surprise, the young woman conjured another plasma blade and tried to carve through the shield, still trying to get at her target.

  “Goddamn,” Bailey marveled. “She’s nothing if not determined. Roland, I think we need to knock her out or something. The rest of you stand down unless she gets through and threatens one of us.”

  “Okay,” the wizard said. “You hold her while I try a little something.”

  “Deal.”

  As Roland canceled the shield, Bailey created her own, smaller and tighter to hold the desperate young woman in place but leave her head exposed.

  Then the wizard, contorting his fingers, caused a mingled mass of vapors to coalesce in front of the witch’s face. She tried to turn away and hold her breath, but Roland kept the pungent cloud where it was until the woman had no choice but to inhale. She slumped listlessly against the shield, and her eyes rolled back in her head.

  Bailey nodded. “Nice. What was that?”

  “Chloroform,” Roland reported. “That stuff that people in movies put on rags and then hold over someone’s face. I don’t think it lasts very long, though, so let’s tie her up or something.”

  The bloodlust was draining out of the lycanthropes at this point, and although they still looked like they wanted to bite the witch’s head off, they cooperated with Bailey’s will. Someone brought cord and duct tape, and soon the woman was trussed from shoulders to ankles with her hands also tied behind her back. Bailey insisted on leaving her mouth free, though, since she wanted her to talk.

  Then Officers Jurgensen and Smolinski lent a hand in carrying the prisoner back into the sheriff’s station.

  “All right,” Bailey announced to the crowd of wolves, “I’m gonna question her, and we’ll get to the bottom of what they’re planning. I can’t thank you all enough. You’ve done damn well, coming to our aid like this. I’d like to ask some of you to stick around, at least on the edges of town, and keep an eye on things. The rest of you can go home.”

  Some few of them looked almost cheated, as if they’d expected to annihilate their enemies and howl in triumph over the bodies.

  Of course, there were still multiple corpses in the street. A siren was sounding, even as the local paramedics arrived to deal with the carnage.

  The Weres scattered, and Bailey and Roland followed the deputies back into the sheriff’s station. As soon as she stepped through the door, Browne, reclining on a chair in the lobby with an open first aid kit in front of him, hailed her.

  “Bailey. We have a spare pair of cuffs, the special kind we used to keep Oberlin and his boys from shifting. I’m no expert on these things, but we think those ought to keep our guest from trying any more shenanigans.”

  Roland gave an appreciative nod. “That will probably work, or at least make things more difficult for her, interfering in using her hands to direct the arcane. If all else fails, she doesn’t seem to be all that strong, so I should be able to contain her.”

  “Good.” The sheriff grimaced. “Christ, we just had a gun battle in the streets of Greenhearth. People are dead. We don’t need
any more of that kind of thing.”

  Bailey walked over and laid a hand on the man’s big shoulder. “Thank you, Sheriff. You’ve always been good about…working with us. Looking out for the Weres. I’m sorry this happened, but frankly, we weren’t the ones who started it. Now we’ll deal with it as best we can.”

  He gestured down the hall. “You can start by getting some answers out of that lovely lady we brought back, so we have some idea what to expect next and can plan accordingly.”

  The captive witch was being held in a secure room near the back of the building. The room had a window, albeit one with bars over it. Jurgensen had clapped a pair of the anti-magic handcuffs on her, and Roland stood careful watch.

  Bailey looked into the young woman’s eyes, which burned with hatred and a noticeable twinge of madness.

  “All right,” the werewitch asked, “what is your name?”

  “Rhona,” she replied. “You do not need to know any more than that. You only need to know you will die for defying us. Nothing you can do will save you in the end.”

  Bailey could tell that this would prove to be difficult.

  For twenty minutes, they interrogated her, posing both obvious questions and ones that were indirect. They taunted or provoked her to try to get her to blab information unwittingly, threatening her with being processed by the dreaded American criminal justice system.

  Nothing worked. Rhona remained defiant. The one thing they could glean was that the Venatori intended to make further attempts to kill Bailey, but beyond that, they could get none of the details.

  “Shit,” Bailey rasped. “Can’t we just, I dunno, stick a fork in her thigh and twist it until she cooperates?”

  By now, Browne had joined them. He glared at the girl. “No, Bailey. Even though she’s a foreign enemy combatant—and wounded a sheriff, I might add—she’s still got basic rights. We cannot torture a suspect.”

  Bailey frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. “I guess you’re right. Damn. Kinda surprised I suggested that. The stress must be getting to me.”