The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  The spirit’s voice, in the middle of repeating its booming warning, crackled, warbled, and faded as the blue light that constituted its form began to break apart into a mist of twinkling stars.

  Villalobos shrieked, “Destroy it!”

  The witches separated their attacks, each hurling the weapons of the occult at the disintegrating patches of silver light, breaking it up into smaller and more disorganized forms until it dissipated altogether.

  “Hah!” Madame laughed. “Continue down these steps. That entity should have known better than to stand before us.”

  She knew it hadn’t been completely destroyed since it seemed to be a variety of spirit, arguably like a poltergeist, whose existence was tied to the temple. But they’d overwhelmed it with so much destructive power that it would need time to reconstitute itself.

  In the meantime, they pressed on.

  The soft bluish glow that suffused the pyramid’s interior shifted to a dark, menacing indigo, and the silver sheen became a bright, pure white, like a spotlight. A sound much like the howling of wolves began to drift through the air. The temple was sounding its alarm.

  Villalobos felt an abrupt sense of draining and confinement. It was likely that the wolf-souls maintained here had activated a magic-suppressing spell. She doubted it would have much effect.

  The Venatori rounded a corner in the staircase and came to a hall of pillars and statues, where, suddenly, the atmosphere came alive with manifestations of lycanthropic heroes and other legendary souls, all of them frenziedly attacking at first sight. There was something robotic about the process, similar to the way a body’s immune system sporadically damages itself in its drive to repel invading pathogens.

  The witches were forced to slow their pace, but they did not halt. They were working together like an oiled machine. Their magic had been weakened, but they were experienced at using it efficiently. Arcing streams of magenta plasma cut through all comers. Their enemies’ defenses melted.

  “Madame,” asked Holopainen, the keen-minded young Finnish recruit, “have they thrown everything they have at us at once?”

  Villalobos detonated a controlled sonic boom between two ghostly werewolves, who shattered into astral dust. “I think not. It is probably like this throughout the entire temple.”

  Chapter Nine

  Bailey walked down the cramped hallway, barely able to see and having no idea what lay ahead. She was confident that they’d chosen the right path and therefore didn’t expect to stumble into some god-awful doom, but the trials couldn’t have been over yet.

  Will followed her, with the lone Silver Star warrior among them coming third, and Will’s South Cliff in back. Nothing seemed to be coming from behind them, and they hadn’t heard the click of a door blocking them off, either.

  The hallway bent around to the left, and Bailey discerned a rectangle of pale light ahead. The hall opened into a chamber. She hastened toward it, and the excitement amidst the four of them was palpable. Electric.

  They emerged into a broad hall much like the one at the bottom of the first staircase, where they’d faced the initial test. It was smaller and far less ornate, though, with no statues or friezes, only unadorned pillars to support the high ceiling.

  Bailey halted so suddenly that Will stumbled to keep from crashing into her. Then he and the other two Weres froze also, not due to anything about the chamber.

  Loitering in the broad hall were seven young men, all of them familiar. They looked up as the newcomers stepped into the room.

  “Ha-ha!” Roger laughed, his voice ragged but joyous. “We knew you’d make it. The blue wolf told us to sit and wait, so we figured you were tied up, but that you’d be along any minute now.”

  The Weres nodded to each other, called one another’s names, clasped hands, or embraced, everyone congratulating their fellows on having made it this far. Then they stepped back to discuss what had happened.

  Bailey began, “Tell me how you all ended up here.”

  The guy who’d run off first started by apologizing for his hasty action, hanging his head in sheepish embarrassment.

  Bailey put her hands on her hips. “You’re forgiven. Just don’t do it again, or next time I’ll leave you in the haunted-ass labyrinth with the shifting walls and the werebears. Fair enough?”

  “More than fair,” he agreed.

  He went on to explain that he and the two men who’d followed him had become hopelessly lost within minutes of their ill-advised attack on the fleeting shape. They never found what they had been chasing. In fact, they never found anything; they’d only wandered for what felt like an entire day or more, through the trackless, claustrophobic maze, struggling not to panic and arguing about whether they should press on or wait for rescue.

  Finally, they had blundered upon a small opening in the far wall that led them into a tight, dark corridor that had emptied them right next to the very place they now stood.

  The Were shrugged. “After that, we figured we’d made it through, and that the best thing was to see if you guys would show up. We needed a break, anyway.”

  Roger’s burly companion, the wrestler, stepped up next to relate how he and the other three who’d been separated by the trap wall had gotten here.

  “It’s a pretty boring story, to be honest,” he muttered in his deep, gravelly voice. “We wandered around for a little while, then we found what I’m guessing is the doorway that guy just mentioned. Came through it, bumped into these assholes, then sat down after the wolf spirit told us to hang out.”

  Bailey slowly exhaled and shook her head. “I was worried sick about you all. We thought about going back and combing the entire maze for your asses, but it seemed like we should press on through and beat the next trial first. After all, it’s not like this place is trying to kill Weres. Our ancestors might have high standards, but they want us to succeed.”

  Everyone agreed.

  Roger, who still had his wits about him even though his condition was gradually getting worse, added his two cents. “We’ve been through some serious shit. I feel like we’ve learned more life lessons or timeless wisdom or whatever you want to call it than I have in the last five years.”

  “Yessir,” Bailey confirmed. “I think that’s the idea. And for the most part, we managed to do it together. No more splitting the party. There’s no telling what’s in store for us next, and it’s going to take all eleven of us to complete the trials and get back home safely.”

  As if on cue, a faint rumble went through the walls and everything changed. It was subtle; the quality of the light became darker and more brooding, and the smell or vibe of the place grew hostile.

  Will threw up his arms. “Oh, hell.”

  The light, turning a deep indigo that resembled the color of a nasty bruise, thickened at the center of the hall and their guide, the spirit in lupine form, reappeared. Bailey prepared to address it and hear what it had to say, but something strange gave her pause.

  The spectral wolf was not looking at her but seemed to be surveying the entire chamber without seeing any specific individual. It was looking through them at the temple beyond. It had already begun to speak, as though it were a preprogrammed hologram that had been triggered by an alarm or a time-delay.

  “Brethren,” it began, and the voice echoed more than usual, suggesting that it was speaking in multiple parts of the building concurrently, “the sanctity of this place, our ancestral temple, has been violated by trespassers. They are members of the species called witches, who have shown themselves by their actions to be enemies after they were clearly warned to stay out.”

  Bailey felt as though her stomach had fallen out of her body, but the fear and nausea were fuel to a growing fire of anger and determination.

  The reverberating and impersonal spiel continued. “They have come here bearing ill intent toward our kind, and they have partaken in forbidden violence just outside the temple walls, upon sacred ground where none may assail our people. Now they invade this holies
t of sanctuaries, and they must be driven off or destroyed. Let no measure be withheld, no matter how extreme!”

  Bailey’s jaw dropped as the realization struck her.

  Violence just outside the temple walls. They attacked Roland and Fenris. I’m sure Fenris is okay, but what about Roland? Could they have gotten him alone, away from our god? Did he escape? Did they capture him? Or is he...

  She blotted out the last thought, refusing to consider it unless there was no other option.

  For the moment, she had other problems.

  A bone-chilling sequence of howls rippled through the subterranean space like a siren before an air raid. Out of the interplay of blue light and black shadows, phantasmal forms were beginning to appear. The entire temple was about to go ballistic to fight the Venatori.

  “Guys,” Bailey shouted, “we need everyone together and thinking clearly. It’s the Venatori, and they’re here for me. They’ll have to go through the entire temple to get here, but we all know they’re not to be fucked around with.”

  “Yeah,” Roger grated, “but neither was that bear-thing. Hope they run right into him.”

  As they took defensive stances, the werewitch remembered something else, and her spirits sank further.

  Before they’d come in, Fenris had warned her that Roland couldn’t accompany them because he was not of werekind. The temple, he’d pointed out, would react to any intrusion by another race and would not be able to distinguish friend from foe.

  “Oh, shit,” she breathed. Hurriedly, as lycanthropic guardian wraiths materialized around them, she related Fenris’ warning to the rest of them.

  Will kicked a stone column. “Great. That’s just fucking great. What do we do now?”

  The big wrestler held up his hands, palms facing heavenwards. “Fight.”

  Shifters of the past burst upon them from the walls, the floor, and the ceiling, their shimmering forms taking on a solid aspect as they blindly attacked. Many were in wolf form; others charged on two legs as humans; and some leapt in monstrous intermediate shapes, employing the best of both worlds in their defense of the sacred structure.

  Bailey called, “Stay near the center!”

  As she’d predicted, the majority of the guardians sprang out around the edges of the chamber, the better to surround any intruders they might find. It was instantly clear that the spirits did regard Bailey and her Weres as intruders, so powerful was their indiscriminate fury. They roared and foamed at the mouth.

  The werewitch conjured a ring of lightning that encircled the chamber. Almost half the guardians blundered into it and howled momentarily before dissolving into sparkling mist, but so many had emerged that those remaining posed a serious threat.

  The living Weres held their line against the onslaught of semi-corporeal dead. Most of them had shifted and fought fang and claw, although others remained humanoid to strike higher, with fists and shoulders.

  Bailey had not experimented much with psionic magic, but she did her best to weave a spell that would steel the resolve of her comrades, helping them maintain formation and avoid succumbing to either berserker rage or sputtering fear. She needed them tough and alert but in control of themselves.

  They took few injuries as the ghostly wolves tried to swarm them, and what hurts they received were mostly superficial. Another quarter of their adversaries went down.

  Then the temple seemed to learn from its mistakes and a wolf nearly the size of the legendary alphas they’d fought in the earlier chamber appeared in their midst, knocking Bailey aside and cutting their formation in half.

  Then the battle became a raw and random melee as everyone strove to get back together but kept having to fight off the spirits’ disorganized onslaught.

  Bailey used her magic as safely as she dared, tossing blasts in looping patterns that hit their foes from behind so as not to catch her Weres in the crossfire. She also summoned it to erupt from the floor or ceiling rather than appear in a straight line.

  When magic wouldn’t work, she shifted, once more forcing herself into a smaller, more nimble form so as to be less of an obvious target. She pounced into the fray, using speed and trickery rather than brute force.

  The battle proceeded, give-and-take. Bailey’s pack was being gradually worn down through minor wounds. They meanwhile defeated dozens of the spirits, but the majority of them were replaced by others or possibly reconstituted themselves from the arcane mists.

  A lull came upon them. Only a handful of guardians remained, although it looked like half a dozen more were coalescing out of the incandescent light. She thought about plowing into the next hallway but had no idea what would result from attempting the next trial while the temple was still on red alert.

  Frustrated, Bailey realized that the ruling spirit, the wolf-phantom who had spoken to them and guided them, was still present in some capacity.

  “Why are you doing this?” she cried out. “We’re on your side. Can’t you see that? Stop attacking us, and together we can all fight the Venatori!”

  “Everything here that is not of this place,” the spirit replied, ignoring the finer points of her questions like a scolding adult brushing off a child to lecture them, “is now a potential threat to the unfathomably long line of ancestral wisdom reposing here. The millennia of information and knowledge and magic, the precious secrets of the entire lycanthropic people, cannot be put at risk of either destruction or being divulged to the Venatori.”

  The voice’s tone was loud, cold, and harsh. It was speaking with its full authority and had cast off any semblance of gentle or personable speech.

  “Though it saddens us to put down our own, you too must die, Bailey Nordin, and your friends with you if that is what it takes to protect the sanctity of this temple. We must not risk the prospect of you being compromised by them. The things you have seen here can never be learned by our enemies.”

  Will gaped. “What? You can’t do that!”

  Bailey grew numb inside. She knew that, at times, being a leader meant sacrificing her own interests for the greater good, but this was beyond what she’d had in mind.

  “Unless,” the wolf-spirit added, “before any of you leaves this temple, you survive and they do not.”

  The final proviso hung heavily over their heads. The spectral guardian wolves forming along the walls hesitated.

  Bailey breathed in and nodded slowly. “Yeah, we’re gonna take the second option. Just you watch.”

  * * *

  Madame Villalobos did not possess the raw power of some senior witches, but she more than made up for it with her incredible control over coven-minds, particularly once she’d been able to fight with a certain group of witches for a short time and got to know their idiosyncrasies.

  She didn’t need to speak, and in fact barely needed to think, in order to influence two of the six to focus on defensive shielding and redirection while she and the other three continued to obliterate the temple’s denizens.

  “Leave!” a half-substantial brutish man cried out, bearing down on them with an axe that seemed to be made of moonlight. “Intruders! Violators! Go! Go or die!”

  Villalobos flicked her hand and turned the phantom warrior to ice, freezing the arcane substance that had given him form. Then she shattered it with a sonic-telekinetic blast, melted the fragments, and dispersed the remaining vapor throughout the hall.

  Over and over, similar engagements played out. The fighting was intense but relatively one-sided.

  Mentally, the Holopainen girl spoke. Madame, should we rotate between offense and defense? I get tired if I have to maintain a shield for too long.

  Villalobos frowned. Yes, but not until I say so. Keep holding the shield.

  They had bulldozed through the first hall and come to the second, where the totemic symbols on the pillars began acting like automated turrets, spewing forth deadly blasts of silvery fire. Blocking them was a simple matter, but they created so much interference that it looked as though Holopainen and the other girl
would be busy shielding for quite some time.

  Then, instead of the usual riffraff, they were attacked by the gargantuan shades of what must have been the werewolves’ legendary heroes. A flicker of uncertainty crossed the mind of the coven, but Villalobos held them together and concentrated her fire on the more dangerous adversaries.

  The first two hero-spirits vaporized, although they took more punishment than the regular ones. The third was stronger still, and it managed to crack through their shield, momentarily knocking two witches against a pillar and disrupting the coven-mind.

  Fighting off the instinct toward fear, Villalobos created a sphere of intense sonic pressure around the huge wolf’s head while also summoning a blazing fire beneath its haunches. That confused it and did enough damage for the rest of the sorceresses to regroup. With their combined power, they pushed the beast away and then blasted it into oblivion with a storm of raw arcane force.

  There came a calm in the eye of the proverbial hurricane. The temple seemed to have temporarily exhausted itself by trying to stop them and failing.

  “Onward!” Villalobos decreed. “Bailey will have noticed the commotion. She must not escape!”

  Pressing forward, it occurred to them that the chambers they passed through must have been intended for specific activities. They got no sense of this during their invasion, though, just an ebb and flow of random hostility from the lycanthropes’ ancestral powers.

  Time passed, maybe stretching into hours, as they came to a vast labyrinth, which they were able to navigate through a combination of remote viewing and scrying spells and careful echolocation. Still, it slowed them down far more than Villalobos would have liked.

  Monstrous bears appeared twice, and it took the witches a moment to realize that they too were shifters. Villalobos had heard of werebears but never seen one. The ursine brutes made for stiffer opposition than regular wolves. The first one ambushed them, slashing the arm of a junior member badly enough to interfere with her spellcasting. They had to beat a momentary retreat.