The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  Heading out again, they opted to move in a staggered line, with the first four consisting of Bailey, Will, one South Cliff, and one Silver Star. In the rear group were Roger, the big guy who’d helped Bailey wrestle the bear, and two others. That way, if they were attacked from a dark corner, they could not all be surrounded at once. One group, if threatened, could expect the other group to rush in and flank their adversary.

  They’d traversed only two more corners when Bailey became aware that she’d made a terrible mistake.

  Behind her came the dreadful and sickening sound of heavy stone grinding against stone, and a tremor went through the floor and walls. She spun around and saw the sides of the corridor shifting—two stone slabs reconfiguring their positions in the space between the two groups.

  “No!” Bailey cried, flinging herself toward the revolving wall, but she was too late. It slammed in her face like a trapdoor, and the rear quartet’s cries of alarm were instantly muffled.

  Will and the others were by her side as she felt around the edges of the monolithic slab and kicked at its base, helplessly looking for a mechanism that might reverse the trap. She found none.

  One of the Weres raised a hand. “We can probably meet back up with them around one of these corners. Can’t be far. Uh, unless both these corridors funnel us in opposite directions.”

  “Yeah.” Bailey grunted. “Everyone, stand back! I’m going to knock this wall down. You guys on the other side—if you can hear us, get clear! I’m gonna blast it.”

  The other three wolves scattered, and Bailey backed up to the opposite wall. Then, sucking air between her teeth, she unleashed a magical projectile against the thick mass of stone.

  Lights flashed as the spell took the form of a spear made from heat, electricity, kinetic energy, and gravitational force. It struck the wall in the center and simply vanished.

  Bailey stood blinking. Rather than dissipate or fizzle as magic usually did when it was useless, the arcane lance appeared to have sunk into the stone as though the wall were an insubstantial illusion. But that couldn’t be the case. Bailey had just put her hands on it a moment ago, and it had been as solid as steel.

  “What the hell?” someone behind her marveled.

  Mentally clamping down on the frustrated rage welling up within her, Bailey tried another conjuration—a narrow cyclone of cold wind, dust, and freezing gases. It too was absorbed by the wall.

  She let her breath out in a long, slow sigh. “That’s not gonna work. It might actually be a good thing that this place is protected against magic users flinging their stuff around, including werewitches as well as hostile species. Now we’re split into three groups. Goddammit.”

  Will laid a hand on her shoulder, his touch strong but gentle. “No way to go but forward. If all else fails, the four of us might be able to complete the trials, and then the temple will let everyone else go, maybe? I don’t like it either since we’re supposed to look out for our packs, but someone has to get through this maze.”

  “Yeah, I agree.” Bailey turned to the remaining pair. “Onward, my friends. This place hasn’t beaten us yet.”

  With the hallway that stretched ahead fading into near-total darkness, blacker even than the gloom they’d pushed through so far, she had to admit that it was making a hell of an effort.

  Chapter Eight

  Bailey stopped, and it occurred to her that her mouth was hanging open. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  They’d found their way out of the labyrinth, having come down the darkest hall yet to a chamber beyond, rather like the ones they’d passed through during the earlier trials.

  What they had not done, though, was find the rest of the Weres. Bailey’s group consisted of a grand total of four.

  The room beyond the corridor was square and noticeably smaller than the two before the start of the maze, although still equal to a large living room or a good-sized lobby. It was barren of pillars or statues, containing only a stone dais, off-center toward the far end of the space. The dais was rectangular, and looked as though two things were meant to stand on it side by side.

  Beyond the platform were two doorways leading to shadowed paths beyond. An engraved sign was affixed to the wall just above each door. The inscriptions were in a strange runic language, yet her brain was somehow able to translate the words into English. It was a side effect of the place’s magic, she guessed.

  The sign over the left door read ONE SPEAKS TRUTH, whereas the right door’s sign read ONE SPEAKS LIES.

  Will made a breathy grumbling sound beside her. “Who? No one’s speaking. Do they mean the damn hallways?”

  Bailey glanced at him. “So, you can read those things too, huh? That sure as hell isn’t the Roman alphabet, but the temple seems to process it in a way our minds can understand.”

  “Weird,” one of the others said behind them.

  The werewitch was about to open a discussion as to whether they should try the room or turn back to keep searching the maze for their companions when a sudden manifestation drew their attention forward.

  Out of the air in front of them, two forms shimmered into existence like moonlight breaking through the clouds at night. They were tall humanoid figures composed of bluish-silver phosphorescence, translucent like ghosts. Their eyes were brighter than the rest of them, much like the wolf spirit who’d guided them thus far. Bailey wondered if they were simply another form worn by the same entity.

  They looked like shamans or perhaps alphas from long ago, clothed in rough yet splendid ancestral garb. On the left was a man who seemed darker-complected and beardless, vaguely Native American, although it was difficult to determine which tribe or time period he represented. He seemed ancient enough to have been of the first humans to wander the Cascades, whose forefathers had come over the Bering Strait from northeast Asia.

  On the right was a man with lighter features and a full beard like a Viking’s, but he too appeared to have come from too far back in antiquity to be recognizable. Some proto-Germanic chieftain from before the Roman conquests, perhaps, whose great-grandchildren were among the Norse raiders who first came to America from the other direction.

  The dais was positioned in such a way that in order to try either of the exits, Bailey and her Weres would have to squeeze around the pair. Or go through them.

  In unison, their tones harmonized like a single reverberating voice, they spoke.

  “Greetings, Bailey Nordin. We have been expecting your arrival. You must proceed, but to do so, you must choose the correct path. We are the guardians of the true doorway. Determining what is true is a task that falls to you.”

  About what I expected, she thought. More riddles and clever tests where nothing is what it seems.

  “Okay,” she acknowledged, glancing again at the signs behind the two apparitions’ heads. “So, which of you is telling the truth?”

  The voices spoke in unison again. “I am.”

  Beside her elbow, Will hung his head and scratched his ear, his jaw muscles twitching as he clenched his teeth.

  The spirits then separated. There was now a subtle barrier in the light that had previously flowed between them. More surprisingly, they took on the aspect of material flesh. Bailey suspected she could touch their knees; if not, it was the most convincing illusion she’d ever seen.

  The one on the left was first to use his singular voice. “I am the voice of truth, and the other speaks only falsehood as is his nature. If you are wise and perceptive, the message of the signs will guide your way.”

  “No,” interjected the spirit on the right, “I am the voice of truth, and he is trying to deceive you, according to his mendacious will. The signs do not lie, but your mind must weigh their message properly.”

  Grimacing in concentration, she looked again at the inscriptions above the doors.

  The one that says Truth is above the left-hand door, she recalled, but there’s no reason to assume it’s that simple, is there? Could be a trick. Then again, switching them around
would be too damn easy. There’s got to be something else going on here, like a third option that hasn’t occurred to me yet.

  Will inched forward, holding his head high and puffing his chest out as though he were about to leap into battle. Bailey tensed, preparing to restrain him if need be.

  “This is bullshit,” he protested. “There’s no way to figure it out. We might as well just flip a coin. I think one of you guys needs to tell us. If you don’t want to cooperate, we’ll make you talk.”

  Bailey put a hand on his arm to tell him to calm down, but then a blue light winked into existence behind and between the pair of guardians, taking on the shape of a wolf’s head.

  “If you attack them or offer them harm,” the guardian spirit warned in its familiar echoing voice, “it will nullify the trial, and you will forfeit your efforts. A test of intellect cannot be won through force. We shall discover, Bailey, your wisdom and judgment as a shaman’s apprentice, and the ability of your alphas and pack lieutenants to lead intelligently. Proceed.”

  It vanished with a flash, although the chamber remained faintly illuminated by spectral moonlight. The two ancient men stood unmoving and silent.

  “Right,” Bailey murmured, extending her arms and essentially pushing Will behind her. “We’ve got to do this through logic and deductive reasoning and that sort of thing. I wasn’t too shabby at that in school, so we’ll play the game according to the rules. Give me a minute to think.”

  The first thing that popped into her head was that when she’d asked them which was telling the truth, the phantoms had answered. There was nothing to suggest they wouldn’t answer further questions.

  “So,” she queried, “are the signs above your heads correct?”

  “Yes,” they replied at once.

  That’s a start, she mused, but it’s not the same thing as a nice, easy solution.

  She pointed to the right, toward the indigenous-looking shaman and the sign reading ONE SPEAKS TRUTH. “If that sign is true and you’re the liar, then you can lie.”

  The man did not respond.

  She pointed then to the left, toward the quasi-Teutonic shaman and the sign reading ONE SPEAKS LIES. “And if that one says ‘liar’ and you say yes, then you’re telling the truth about being a liar. Which means you’re not the liar because you told the truth. But you have the ability to lie.”

  Bailey’s voice trailed off as her brain hit a bottleneck, struggling with the warped rationale behind the encounter. She would keep trying to parse out the details in more clarity, but all she knew for sure was that one could be trusted and one could not.

  Then a silvery light pulsed behind the guardians and four wolf spirits appeared at the corners of the room, snarling and moving in to attack.

  “What?” Will exclaimed. “How did we screw it up?”

  He and the other two Weres tangled with the first two apparitions to reach them, which had tangible forms despite their ghostly appearance. Bailey struck the other two with a looping chain of lightning, and they vanished in clouds of sparkling steam.

  Her Weres tossed the remaining ones back and she electrocuted them as well, dispatching them to whatever place they’d come from. Silence returned to the room.

  Will moved toward the dais. “Those assholes aren’t playing fair. Time to play by their rules.” His teeth were bared.

  “No!” Bailey grabbed him and pushed him back against the wall with the flat of her forearm. “No, Will. It’s part of the test. Distraction and provocation to make us fuck up. Just stay calm. I know I can figure it out.”

  Simultaneously, the two guardians spoke again. “Correct.”

  The voice of the wolf-spirit echoed above them. “Yes, Bailey. This is a game of questioning. You may inquire of the guardians as many times as you like, but each time you fail to choose a doorway after receiving an answer, more wolves will appear to punish your slowness of mind.”

  “Fine,” Bailey gritted out. She wracked her brain and decided to try the simplest, most direct tack she could conceive.

  Looking at the pair on the dais, she asked, “Which is the true and correct path?”

  Both men pointed toward the doorway on the left. “That one.”

  She rubbed her chin. “But one of you is lying. Shit.”

  A moment later, four more wolf-wraiths jumped out of the corners. Her team was ready this time, and Bailey vaporized them almost instantly, with her three companions needing only to hold one back until she could electrocute it.

  With the brief battle over, Will came up to Bailey’s side and whispered something in her ear. Listening to him, her brow furrowed in disapproval, but after hesitating for a few seconds, she nodded.

  The two shamans stood and watched.

  Bailey hung back as the South Cliff alpha stepped forth to speak in her stead.

  “Hi,” he said. “You guys greeted Bailey, but you didn’t greet me.”

  “Greetings,” they responded instantly, then their voices separated again.

  The one on the left introduced himself. “I am called Chuslum.”

  The one on the right did likewise. “And I am known as Gisli.”

  Bailey wondered which had given his true name and which a false one, but according to Will’s plan, that wasn’t the point.

  “Okay, thanks,” Will acknowledged, and he was about to continue when the wolf-spirit interrupted him.

  “Have you reached a decision, or shall you face another attack?”

  Will held up his hands. “Hold on a second.” He looked at the duo on the platform. “So, discounting what I’m saying to you now, was the last thing I said a question?”

  “No,” said the left-hand sentinel.

  “Yes,” said the right-hand sentinel.

  Will grinned evilly. “Hah! I didn’t ask a question, I just greeted you and made a statement. You told us your names without being asked.”

  Bailey patted him on the back. “Will, you’re a frickin’ genius. Looks like we know which one’s the liar.”

  Will blushed. “Thanks. Okay, wolf-spirits, we figured out which one to trust, but we haven’t, uh, chosen a path yet.”

  They braced themselves for another assault, half-wondering if the opposition might get stiffer since they’d dispatched the first two waves with relative ease. But no ghostly Weres appeared.

  Instead, the echoing voice intoned, “You have earned the right to ask a second question.”

  Bailey let her eyes drift shut with relief before she posed her next inquiry. “Okay, then. Which is the true and correct path?”

  They paid attention only to the guardian on the right, the one who’d called himself Chuslum, and he pointed to the left-hand doorway.

  “We’ve made a decision,” Bailey announced. “Thatta way.” She flourished a hand toward the doorway with ONE SPEAKS TRUTH above it—the more immediately obvious choice had, after all, been the correct one.

  Then both of the guardians lost their guise of material flesh, becoming specters of light once again, then shimmered out of sight, leaving the way clear. Bailey, Will, and the other two guys tramped toward the left-hand path.

  The guide’s voice addressed them. “Congratulations on your resourcefulness. And Bailey, you did well to listen to Will’s idea, despite him being wrong about certain things before. The truly wise leader listens to other viewpoints since one never knows who might have the answer.”

  Will chortled. “Damn right.”

  As they started down the next hallway, which was narrow enough for them only to walk single file, Bailey wondered where the others still were. Inexplicably, something told her they should press forward. That the key to getting everyone out lay in moving ahead.

  But she didn’t like the thought of the remaining seven being lost in the maze. Even if they weren’t in immediate danger, fear and despair might be slowly driving them mad.

  “I’m sorry, guys,” she murmured under her breath, “but we will get back together and get out of here, one way or another.”

>   * * *

  Madame Villalobos led the way, alert and cautious but without fear. She knew herself to be a witch of exceptional talent, especially with subtler magics, which were far beyond the crude ways of lycanthropes. One of their holiest sites it might be, but it was unlikely to have much in the way of defenses that could stop her, especially when she was supported by five others of respectable ability.

  “Keep watch on all corners of this place,” she told her followers, “and do not allow us to be hindered. Werewolves might be intimidated by the spirits they call holy, but to us, they are nothing but obstacles to be cleared.”

  Perrault backed her up. “That means no restraint, except insofar as we don’t want to bring the temple down on our heads, so no explosions of that size. Anything other than that level of force is permitted.”

  The four junior witches smiled, looking forward to an exercise in almost unlimited aggression.

  They’d gone a short way into the pyramid and were preparing to descend a great staircase when a silver-azure light coalesced out of the air before them, taking on the aspect of a giant wolf’s face. It glared at them and opened its mouth in warning.

  “Come no closer!” it bellowed, and its voice reverberated through the wide, dark space with thunderous volume and unadulterated wrath. “You are not welcome here. You defile this place with your alien presence and your foul intentions, the stench of which is readily apparent. Turn back now or face swift and merciless retaliation.”

  Villalobos smiled. “I think we have heard someone say that before…or am I mistaken?”

  Perrault turned to the other witches. “Show this thing what ‘swift and merciless retaliation’ means.” She sliced the air with her hand, pointing at the phantasmal wolf.

  All six of the sorceresses unleashed torrents of potent, concentrated magic—swirling bolts of death in multiple elemental flavors combined with the aggregated will of the coven-mind, which refused to be opposed. The wolf-spirit tried to retaliate with a blazing beam of silvery moonlight, but the magenta blasts of the Venatori caught it, then reduced it to nothing and pressed on toward its caster.