The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  “I do,” she shot back quickly, swallowing past a sudden lump in her throat. She grabbed him and hugged him for a second time.

  After a moment, Roland started to wander over, and Bailey released the old man. She spun the keys around her forefinger.

  “Okay, then,” she proclaimed, “time for a test drive. Is it okay if I leave the Tundra here?”

  He nodded. “Sure, just bring it around back if you’re gonna be gone for more than a few minutes so you’re not blocking anyone out front.”

  “Deal.”

  * * *

  A local construction company had given the sheriff a discount on repairs to the building, and volunteers from the church had also lent a hand. When Bailey and Roland pulled up in her new car, the ravaged back wall was mostly replaced, although they weren’t putting a window in this time. The rest of the station still had burn scars and other minor or cosmetic damage, but it was structurally sound.

  Browne came out to greet them as they got out. He was still walking with a cane. His Magnum was holstered at his side, and he had a loaded hunting rifle slung over his back.

  Bailey wondered if he could shoot straight from a standing position with his side and leg injured like that, but he was as tough as anyone else in Greenhearth.

  She waved. “Morning, Sheriff. Thought we’d check and see how things are going. So far, it’s been quiet in town.”

  He gave a curt nod. “Yes, it has. Almost too quiet. The main repairs are just about done. Smolinski’s fine. I’m trying to get the new deputies up to speed, although they’re men with decent heads on their shoulders who at least know how to shoot straight. Jurgensen’s funeral is in two days.”

  Bailey bowed her head. The sheriff had relayed the last bit of information in the same even-toned, no-nonsense way as the other tidbits. That was how he was, but she knew he was even more torn up inside than she was. Jurgensen had served the town for almost twenty years.

  “I’ll attend,” she stated. “Is it okay if I come in?”

  Again he nodded, more by thrusting out his chin than anything else. “Sure. Just watch your step.”

  Roland came along as she followed Browne into the lobby. The front doors had been replaced as well. The crude metal looked like hell, but at least it would function and offer halfway decent protection.

  Within, the building had the typical look, feel, and smell of a structure undergoing renovations. Tarps, raw plaster, dust, and cans of sealant were everywhere.

  The sheriff informed them of a couple more things as they walked toward the back room where the witch Rhona had briefly been held.

  “Still no word from our mysterious friends in the federal government,” he said. “They probably have another thousand or so forms to fill out before they can set foot in town, just in case someone’s jurisdictional toes get stepped on.”

  Roland frowned. “Could be. Usually they can override other agencies and departments, from what I’ve heard, but the scale and scope of what’s going on might be what’s causing the delay.”

  Browne glanced at the wizard, then resumed his slow trek. “We’ll see. They ought to at least return my calls. I’m on the cusp of calling in help from other towns, even if it would be the kind of help that, shall we say, would be surprised to learn what we’ve got going on.”

  The wizard snapped his fingers. “You should tell that to the Agency. Their primary purpose is to contain all knowledge of the supernatural, so the threat of outsiders finding out there’s a gang war between shapeshifters and spellcasters might light a fire under their asses.”

  “I did,” said Browne, “but thanks for the advice.”

  They came to the rear chamber, where Smolinski was monitoring some kind of radar-type device while a workman outside painted the new wall. There was still a small hole in it near the top. They’d run out of material and would plug the gap later.

  The deputy sighed. “Nothing. I wonder if they’re trying to freak us out by making us wait as long as possible. Psychological warfare and all that.”

  Rather than responding to the comment, the sheriff turned to Bailey. “Where’s your friend Marcus? Haven’t seen him lately.”

  “I’m not sure,” she answered. “He comes and goes. It’d be good to have him around, though.” Then she remembered what he’d said at the memorial service—that he couldn’t directly intervene without drawing too much attention to them all. Images of Freya and Baldur popped into her head.

  Something changed in the air. It was subtle, like a shifting of electromagnetic current or a drop in air pressure when one drives up a steep mountainside, and the light overhead flickered.

  Roland tensed, blinking and looking around.

  Bailey felt her gut clench; something was wrong. “What is it?”

  “A spell,” he replied in a hurry. “It was latent in here the whole time, but they masked it well. A trigger that would go off like a silent alarm when we returned and weren’t on our guard. It’s tied to the consciousness of the witch who cast it—that Rhona chick—so she must still be alive. And she has to be able to see the vicinity of where the trigger is located.”

  Sheriff Browne’s eyes slowly widened. “They’re here.”

  Bailey bolted back down the hall toward the front entrance.

  “Bailey!” Roland cried out. “Get back here. It’s too dangerous! For fuck’s sake!” His feet pounded the floor behind her.

  She’d already reached the door and flung it open, her left hand prepared to cast a shield spell at an instant’s notice, her eyes and other senses searching everywhere at once.

  The streets were lined with female shapes, most clad in distinctive outfits of dark leather, although some were in normal civilian clothes, all of them facing toward the sheriff’s station. They were positioned in clusters at strategic vantage points throughout the town. Quite a few of them stood on the roofs of nearby buildings. It was as though all had winked into existence within the last minute or two.

  Bailey didn’t know how many might be behind the station, blocked from sight as they were, but judging by what she could see, there had to be at least fifty witches in total. Her jaw slowly fell open.

  Standing on the roof of the store across the street, gazing straight at her, were two who stood out. One was Rhona, grinning in a vicious, shark-like way. Her trap had worked, and she was looking forward to revenge.

  The other had to be the leader of the expedition—a tall woman with strawberry-blonde hair who radiated power.

  “Fuck,” Bailey muttered as Roland came up beside her.

  Wolves howled and the patrolling packs and sentries rushed toward their enemies, their shock giving way to rage.

  Rhona waved. “What is the matter? You look so surprised!”

  The redhead beside her flicked her fingers. “This might be a proper fight for once,” she said in what sounded like a Scottish accent, her voice magnified to echo throughout the valley. “Kill every last one of the werewolves. Flatten the whole bloody town if you have to.”

  Although she knew they’d block it, Bailey hurled a beam of burning plasma toward the pair atop the store. Then she slammed the door shut as all hell broke loose. Roland had already covered the front of the station with a glowing green shield.

  “Well,” he remarked as screams and crashes and crackles of fire and electricity raged outside, “this is bad, don’t you think? Where’s a god when you need one?”

  Something exploded outside the door and the front windows shattered, smoking chunks of asphalt and concrete flying in to scatter across the floor.

  Bailey gritted her teeth. “We don’t need one! My Weres can take them out, and I’m personally gonna dismantle those bitches!”

  Outside, lupine howls transformed into screams of agony as things burned and shattered, and the handful of cops in the station readied their guns.

  Chapter Sixteen

  So much happened so quickly that Bailey, acting mostly on instinct and reflex, could barely keep her conscious mind up with i
t all. It seemed as though time had slowed down to accommodate the sheer volume of chaos and violence that had erupted.

  Bailey ran from one end of the station to the other more times than she could count in a couple of minutes. Out front, the windows were blown out, and she poked her head and arms through them just long enough to throw deadly spells at the witches outside, barely avoiding their counterattacks each time.

  In back, the sorceresses had found the weak point near the repaired wall and blasted it apart again, undoing the days of labor it had taken to fix it. Far worse, the poor construction guy who’d been finishing up the job lay dead outside, his body torn up and smoking from plasma spears or lightning.

  The cops were all firing through the door-sized hole in the wall. A single witch lay dead as well, out in the street where they huddled, but there were far more where she’d come from. Bailey sent a wave of ice-cold wind in that direction, hoping to slow or disorient the attackers enough for Browne and his men to fight back.

  Then she was out front again, helping to bolster Roland’s shield and aiding him in tossing arcane counteroffensive measures toward the women in the road or on the surrounding roofs.

  “This isn’t working,” Bailey protested. “We can’t defend this building with that many of them positioned above us. I’m going out. I’m the one they want anyway.”

  Outside, she could hear the bestial sounds of lycanthropic attacks hitting home—heavy bodies moving at speed, snarls, and thrashing. The Weres were doing their part, but they were having to break through the thick circle of witches, cut off from Bailey, Roland, and the officers.

  The station was a trap, and they’d sprung it.

  “Bullshit!” Roland frothed. “If you go out there, you’re going to be dead in, like, eight seconds.”

  “No,” she stated. “I’ll be past them in four seconds. Then I’ll lead a charge of Weres, and we’ll break their fuckin’ lines down the middle and regroup with you guys.”

  Not waiting for his response, she shifted into wolf form and jumped out the window.

  Unsurprisingly, ten or more blasts of magic converged on her the second she was outside, but she’d expected as much and had shielded herself. Through great force of will, she even made it colorless, so it took the witches a moment to realize she was shielded. Their attacks were deflected, stalled, or fizzled out before they touched her.

  With powerful leaps, she landed on top of the nearby bank, scattering a couple of the Venatori who’d taken positions there, then moved across other roofs, interrupting the activities of the witches on them, and in one case even knocking a sorceress off. She fell screaming and flailing onto a parking meter, breaking her spine and spilling blood on the sidewalk.

  Then she was past the skirmish line, and half a dozen wolves were converging on her position. It had taken six seconds rather than four, but close enough.

  Still in beast form, she growled at the lycanthropes who’d rallied to her and motioned for them to go back the way she’d come. Snarling with rising bloodlust, they followed, and together they smashed into the Venatori line from the rear.

  Elemental and arcane magic flew in all directions, Bailey blocking or redirecting it where she could. One of her Weres fell dead, but the others trampled or ravaged a cluster of witches before them, the bodies rolling through the streets. Then they loped toward the sheriff’s station.

  As Bailey passed, the apparent leader of the witches, with Rhona at her side, jumped down from their perch, drifting softly to the asphalt near the center of town and drawing their allies closer to them. The Scottish woman gestured, and two parked cars shot into the air and then rocketed toward the wolves.

  Most of them scattered in time to avoid the one, while Bailey magically caught the other in midair, set it on fire, and then dropped it on her foes. The commander stopped it mere feet from herself and instead chucked it a quarter-mile behind her toward a group of wolves who’d come from that direction. The flaming wreck crushed at least two of them.

  “Goddammit,” Bailey raged, changing back to human. “You guys circle around them. Draw fire and strike when you can, but don’t risk yourselves. We need more Weres fighting together.”

  Looking around, she realized that while the majority of the enemy were grouped in the middle of Greenhearth, other small groups of witches were prowling around the edge of the town, acting as skirmishers and harriers, preventing many of the werewolves from joining the main battle.

  On the plus side, Roland, Browne, and the deputies had grouped together near the front door of the station, well-protected by the wizard’s shields.

  There were three Weres approaching the melee from a side street. A single witch appeared behind them, drawing their attention with minor electrical shocks, and they turned to attack her.

  “No!” Bailey cried, running, still in human form but magically boosting her speed and distance, to cover them from behind.

  A storm of magic came from the central coven. It would have incinerated them all had Bailey not conjured a shield at the last instant, which she combined with a telekinetic reflective force that turned half the deadly mass back on its casters. Witches dodged or blocked, with one failing to do so. Lightning, fire, plasma, and acid engulfed her, and she fell apart in a mass of blackened bones.

  The three Weres she’d just saved looked at Bailey with wide eyes. They’d killed the witch who’d distracted them, but they knew they owed her their lives. She motioned them on, telling them to fight smarter.

  For a moment, as wolves converged on the battle and started acting according to strategy, it seemed like Greenhearth might be getting the upper hand over the Order’s troops. That was when Marcus stepped out of the shadows beside Bailey as she paused for a second’s rest.

  “Can you help?” she asked immediately.

  He shook his head. “I cannot. Not directly, anyway, without bringing the wrath of the other gods down on us all. We don’t want that. But…”

  He opened a portal behind him and seven or eight werewolves streamed out, falling upon a formation of witches who’d moved toward Bailey in a growling, thrashing mass.

  “…I was able to recruit more warriors to our cause.” The god smiled sardonically.

  Bailey breathed. “Better than nothing.”

  “And,” Fenris added, “I saw you risk yourself to save those three a moment ago. You’re doing exactly what you need to. Keep fighting and keep leading!”

  Then he was gone.

  Bailey rejoined the battle. The moment of their community’s advantage was brief, however.

  At the four points of a square around the town center, glowing amethyst portals opened and out poured witches. Two leather-clad Venatori emerged from each, and following them were other non-Order witches, ranging in number from two to six—local sorceresses they had recruited to their cause, brought in as reinforcements to the already massive force of witches assaulting the town.

  Bailey motioned four big Weres over to her. “We’re gonna charge those new arrivals,” she said. “Take out the ones in the leather catsuits first. They’re stronger and more dangerous. I’ll lead since I’m the one they want most. It’ll draw most of the fire away from you guys. Got it?”

  They did. Taking a deep breath, Bailey shifted again into her wolf form, then bounded toward the cluster of smirking women near the closest of the purple doorways.

  She narrowly dodged a fireball, then crashed into one of the two Venatori, a pair of the Weres with her attacking the other while the remaining two wolves pounced on the lesser witches.

  One of the lycanthropes took a nasty burn on the hip and leg, inhibiting his ability to run or pounce, but he could walk stealthy enough to act as a lookout or lie in ambush. As for the witches, all lay dead and bloodied on the street.

  “We lost the element of surprise,” said Bailey, “so we gotta be more careful with the next group.”

  This time, she circled around the pack, summoning magic as needed while in her wolf shape to repel or di
stract the lead witches as her Weres took out the lesser ones. One of them leapt at a Venatori soldier, only to yelp and slump dead to the ground, a magenta plasma-blade stuck through his mouth and out the back of his skull.

  Bailey roared and pounced on the witch, ripping her head off in retaliation and spitting it out. The remaining non-Order sorceress fled screaming toward the main group near the Scottish leader.

  Bailey saw that the Venatori controlled most of the town’s territory and that far too many lupine forms lay motionless in the streets or against walls, or otherwise torn and burned and blasted beyond all help.

  They were slowly losing. They simply didn’t have the numbers to repel such a powerful force of invaders. The average witch was a match for the average werewolf, and most of their nemeses were full Venatori, each as powerful as a small coven of lesser channelers.

  She sought out Roland and found him still working with the cops who’d emerged from the deathtrap building to protect them from magical attacks while they counterattacked with simple but effective bullets, dropping a witch here and there with well-placed shots.

  “Roland!” Bailey called. “I’m sorry, but we need to do this together with magic. My wolves can only do so much.”

  “Do it here, then,” he demanded, gritting his teeth as he tried to repel five different kinds of arcane blasts at once and also struggled against unseen waves of fear, despair, and confusion. “If I leave this spot, these guys are all going to die.”

  The cops and deputies clearly heard him but they didn’t react, focused as they were on firing, taking cover behind streetlights or piles of rubble, and reloading.

  Bailey almost panicked. Anywhere she tried to go to redirect her own efforts, she left someone weaker, while the Venatori seemed just as strong as they’d been at the start of the fight.

  From the sky came a growling, buzzing roar, and Bailey shot a glance at the heavens, expecting something like a lightning storm or a swarm of meteors to descend upon the town. What she saw shocked her to momentary stillness.