The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  Holmquist put a hand on the wizard’s shoulder. “We need to prioritize Bailey’s brothers.”

  The second group of wolves they met, three in all, had run into the witches earlier but had been frozen in place after it was clear they knew nothing. They were afraid to incur the sorceresses’ wrath.

  “Well,” Roland told them, “there’s no way not to incur their wrath at this point. We need to find Jacob, Russell, and Kurt. Can you guys go look for Doug? He’s not hanging in the sky anymore. Be careful.”

  They weren’t looking forward to the task, but recognizing that it was all hands on deck, they bounded off into the trees, circling toward the western road where the suspended prisoner had last been sighted.

  The van rambled through the maze of residential streets and old farming tracks. Roland was thankful he’d lived here long enough to have learned the layout of the town’s periphery since it enabled him to approach the old farmhouse via a convoluted route the Venatori were unlikely to bother with.

  They neither saw nor heard anything untoward when Bailey’s neighborhood appeared before them. Roland drove up to the house, then around into the backyard. The Nordins would forgive him for the tracks the van put in the mud, given the circumstances, and it would be wise to hide the vehicle from anyone approaching from the road.

  All eight of the Seattleites piled out of the vehicle and inspected the house.

  Dante blinked. “The lights are on.”

  “Obvious,” Roland chided, “but true. If the boys are home, they’ll hear us approaching. Let’s go up to the back door, but be ready for anything.”

  This could be a trap, he thought. If Bailey’s brothers gave them the slip and are halfway to Portland or Salem by now, I’m sure they’d be just as happy to capture me instead.

  He shuddered, recalling an old horror story about what Venatori Inquisitors did to their prisoners, and led the way toward the house.

  The back door opened.

  “Oh, hi,” Jacob called. “Who the hell are all these weirdos?”

  All eight of them sighed with relief in unison, probably creating a light breeze.

  “Seattleites,” Roland quipped. “Don’t worry, they’re the good guys. Are Kurt and Russell here? And do you even realize what’s been going on?”

  The Were’s strong, stubbly jaw tightened as his face fell in dismay. “Uh-oh. Don’t like the sound of that. Come inside, tell us all about it, and have some goddamn coffee. Russell made it.”

  Roland gave a thumbs-up to his followers. “Russell makes really good coffee. Well, strong, anyway.”

  “Eeeew,” Charlene complained. “Coffee tastes like if you boiled socks and powdered chalk together in the aquafaba from a can of garbanzo beans.”

  “Yes,” said Roland, “that’s the point. In any event, I’m sure they also have water. Come on.”

  The whole group piled into the house.

  * * *

  Once everyone was inside, they all (except Charlene) had a cup of coffee and hurriedly conferred about what the hell was going on.

  “Bailey’s fine,” Roland reported as the brothers listened with silent intensity. “Last I heard, anyway. She’s in the Other, along with a bunch of pack alphas, lieutenants, and other shamans. She doesn’t know what’s going on back here. We’re trying to buffer her from having to deal with it to give her the breathing room she requires, since she and Fenris and the alphas are working on a plan to lure the Venatori’s goddess into a trap. From how they described it, they might succeed. I think we need them to. It might be the only way to stop those assholes once and for all.”

  Jacob lowered his head and massaged his brow with his fingers. Russell stared straight ahead, the muscles of his broad jaw tense. Kurt threw up his hands and let his mouth gape.

  “Wow!” exclaimed the youngest of the three. “Lure a goddess into battle and destroy her. That, uh…yeah. That’s something, all right. I suppose Bailey is going to be the one to kill her? I mean, it sounds like the kind of thing she would do, but usually someone a little saner would talk her out of it.”

  Uncomfortable fidgeting went around the group and Roland rubbed his eyes, mimicking Jacob’s expression.

  “Kurt,” the wizard began, “it sounds crazy, yeah, but then again, the whole situation is insane. Fenris knows his shit. I wasn’t sure I trusted him at first, but he’s always been helpful, and he’s almost always right. He believes it can be done, and he believes Bailey is the one who can do it. Last I heard, she’s resting and preparing before the actual battle.”

  Jacob looked up. “We should go there then and help her. She’s going to need all the backup she can get.” His brothers nodded with obvious enthusiasm.

  Roland held up a hand. “Wait. I agree that we should help her, but first, we need to deal with what’s going on right in front of us. The whole reason the Venatori are in Greenhearth is that they’re planning to use you guys as leverage against her.”

  The Nordins frowned, but the wizard could see he was starting to convince them.

  Charlene raised a hand. “Do you guys have anything to eat? Sorry, but I didn’t have lunch.”

  “Yeah,” Jacob said at once. “Let’s throw together a quick dinner while we talk about what to do next. We don’t have a lot of time, but all the shit we’re gonna have to deal with will be harder on an empty stomach.”

  Mr. Holmquist chuckled. “I agree.”

  The brothers set to cooking, throwing two trays filled with chicken tenders and potato wedges into the oven while mixing a quick salad for the benefit of anyone who wanted healthier fare (mainly the witches). They set both the kitchen table and the coffee table in the living room for all their guests.

  Roland ran back and forth, talking to them as well as Dante, Holmquist, Charlene, and the others about how best to defeat the Venatori. They considered simply waiting for the witches to show up and trapping them at the Nordin house, but that would increase the likelihood of bad things happening to other townsfolk in the meantime.

  Kurt had a good idea, though. “You know, maybe one of us—like me, even—should walk around in the middle of town with two or three witches as bait, with everyone else lying in ambush nearby. Then jump ‘em.”

  “Yeah,” Dante agreed, “that’s how we beat the first group. I think it could work again.”

  Roland scratched his nose. “Possibly. There’s another Inquisitor out there, stronger than the first one, so it would still be risky. But I can’t think of anything else that would–”

  “Hey!”

  Everyone’s gaze snapped toward the voice. Charlene was pounding down the steps from the second floor, having gone to the bathroom up there while everyone else took turns using the downstairs toilet. The girl’s eyes were wide with fear.

  “They’re coming up the street toward the driveway!” she exclaimed, her tone thin and strained.

  Russell grunted, “How many?”

  “Four,” the young witch reported. “None of them are wearing black, so I guess only regular ones? Still...”

  Roland blinked. “There should only be two or three regulars plus the other Inquisitor. They must have brought in reinforcements since they started scouring the town. Fuck. Uh, everyone hide! Except you guys.” He gestured toward the Nordins. “Act like we’re not here. We’ll spring out at the appropriate moment.”

  “Goddammit,” Jacob grated. “That’s not going to work.”

  The wizard retorted, “We don’t have time to come up with anything else, do we? And we have enough people to beat them. Just act, you know, casual.”

  “Casual.” Kurt scoffed. “Sure.”

  The guests scattered. Roland hid behind the couch in the living room, and Jon and Trevor crowded into the bathroom. Mr. Holmquist stuffed himself into the nearest closet. The other witches ran upstairs.

  Someone knocked on the door. Watching and waiting and holding his breath, Roland’s eyes fell upon the coffee table in the living room, set with extra plates and utensils.

 
; Oh, shit, he groaned inwardly. They’re going to have to explain that. Please, Jacob and Kurt and Roland, don’t screw this up.

  Jacob walked to the door and cracked it open.

  The witches did not wait for the Were to greet them before they issued their demands. “You,” said the one in the lead, pushing the door the rest of the way open and stepping in, “call your brothers. They are here?”

  “What the hell?” Jacob protested. “Who are you people? Get out of my house!”

  He was, Roland thought, keeping up the ruse well enough, acting indignant and hostile but not outright fighting back so as not to force the witches’ hands toward violence before the trap was ready.

  Russell and Kurt rushed up behind him.

  “Hey!” the bigger brother rumbled. “What’s this shit?”

  The four sorceresses in their dark red leather smirked at their prey. “You must come with us,” said the apparent leader, a thin, olive-skinned woman with curly dark hair. “It will be easier for you. You know what we can do. If you resist, we will beat you to within an inch of your worthless lives, then strip off your skin while you still live. A skinned wolf will attract the attention we want as well as a whole one.”

  The other three witches laughed menacingly at that. Kurt started to blurt out a threat, but Jacob held up a hand to silence him.

  “Listen,” said the eldest, “you can’t expect us to go with you without explaining what’s going on, but if you want to discuss this, we were just about to have dinner, so we can talk about it over food.”

  “Hah!” the leader jeered. “You offer us hospitality? And who are those places set for?” She flourished her hand toward the coffee table, and Roland tensed. They might have to spring the attack right away.

  Jacob shrugged. “Some of our friends were gonna come over in like, twenty minutes, but it looks like the food is done early. And there should be extra.”

  One of the witches in the rear murmured something in French, and the quartet all tittered.

  “How amusing!” the leader exclaimed. “Yes, let us have dinner. Then we will be leaving. All of us.”

  They strode across the living area into the dining room. Roland wondered if they suspected anything, or if they truly were as stupid and arrogant as they seemed.

  The wizard cast a minor spell to funnel sounds from the table toward himself, and he listened carefully as chairs were pulled out, utensils were rearranged, and the oven door opened, followed by Jacob removing the pans of chicken and fries while Kurt brought out the salad. The sorceresses chattered in their preferred language all the while.

  Come on, guys, Roland thought. Hurry up and give us some kind of signal here. We need you in the fight.

  The brothers set out the food, and the cocky lead witch announced, “Let’s tear in!”

  “Yeah,” Jacob agreed, his voice rising to a far higher volume than necessary, “let’s.”

  Now.

  Roland sprang up, using the sound-amplification spell to judge distance as he threw a curving lasso of nonlethal electricity around the bend of the hall and into the dining room. The women screamed and cursed, and a chaotic racket rose all through the house as Weres and witches pounced, flung spells, or rushed in to engage the intruders. The last thing Roland saw before he was immersed in combat was the lead witch gritting her teeth and flinging a plate filled with chicken tenders at Jacob’s face.

  * * *

  Bailey was not one to despair or turn down a challenge, but there was no denying basic, factual reality. The battle to come might be the toughest she’d ever encountered.

  The woods were swarming with witches, some of whom terrified with the dangerous and domineering aura they gave off.

  Bailey strengthened the soundproof arcane dome she’d conjured over her group and fell back thirty or forty feet. She motioned for her alphas to form a huddle. Moving low to the ground with the efficient quickness characteristic of their species, they clustered around her, eyes bright and serious.

  “Okay,” she began, “the Venatori have finally sent their heaviest hitters. That’s why they’re in uniform, and also why the witches leading them are wearing black outfits instead of the usual dark red. Plus, I can sense the magical power coming off them. It’s the strongest of any I’ve seen. The regular Venatori are stronger than normal witches, and these new ones are two or three times stronger. Maybe more. At my best, I’m a match for one of them at once. All of us together might be able to tackle two tops.”

  She grimaced as fear spread over the faces staring at her, then added, “But we might be able to separate them and confuse them, stuff like that. I can’t think of an ideal strategy yet, though. Does anyone have any ideas?”

  The Juniper alpha suggested, “Circle them. Pick off the weaker ones. Get them confused, so they friendly-fire each other? Best I can come up with.”

  “Eh,” Bailey replied, “it could work, but we have to find something that would give us an edge. That’s a start, but we need more.”

  Alfred Warner rubbed his beard. “We can rip a page from one of the oldest books and pretend to be the prey rather than the predator. That worked earlier, albeit against standard witches. Pretend to flee to lure parts of them off, then move to circling, hit-and-run, and the like.”

  Nods of assent followed. The pack’s confidence was starting to come back.

  Then Will made a further suggestion. “The temple. We could lure them in there and let its defenses do half the work for us.”

  Bailey felt as though a light went on in her brain, but then a dismal thought came to her at the same time as another wolf, one of Will’s buddies, spoke.

  “But what about us? Won’t we have to deal with all that crap again as well?”

  Bailey creased her brow. “I don’t think so, believe it or not. We passed the trials. Well, some of you weren’t here for that, but you’re all with me, and I damn sure passed the temple’s requirements. So did Will and Roger and everyone else who was there. We oughta be able to just glide through. The Venatori will send the place into emergency mode, and they’ll be pinned down fighting off the ancestral spirits and stuff as we start picking them off.”

  Will looked excited. “Yeah, definitely. That place is a deathtrap. Everything freaked out when the witches came in after us before. Plus, half of it is a maze, which we navigated, but they don’t have a way of getting through it fast. Only one of them made it out alive, and didn’t she go into hiding?”

  It occurred to Bailey that she had no idea what had become of the young Finnish witch she’d spared. She only hoped the sorceress hadn’t gone straight back to her mistresses with useful information.

  The Venatori were closing in.

  “I’m not sure,” the werewitch admitted, “but that’s the best thing I’ve heard so far. All your ideas were good, in fact, so let’s combine them. Move out toward the temple, which is that way. We can hash out the details when we’re farther ahead of them.”

  Everyone shifted to cover more ground in less time, and they hurtled through the forest and up the gentle slope toward the plateau near the summit of the massive hill. There, the ancient pyramidal structure housing the primordial spirits of their kind awaited.

  Bailey sent out a psychic message to her friends, urging the swiftest wolves to run ahead and then howl when they reached the temple’s clearing. Meanwhile, she hung toward the rear of the pack, the better to protect the others with magic if the Venatori got close enough to attack.

  The silvery trees sped by on either side of her, the tall grass brushing against her black-furred legs. Stones appeared, carved with hieroglyphs of lupine forms and runes that were indecipherable, yet curiously familiar.

  Two howls rose over the forest. Bailey urged the others onward, then shifted back into human form. She stood up and looked straight back—into the eyes of two witches standing a hundred yards away.

  “You lose!” the werewitch bellowed. She ducked behind a tree, shielding for good measure, as streams of electrified plas
ma streaked past. “You’ve already lost, and you’ll never win. All you ladies might as well go back to Europe before you get yourselves killed.”

  She threw herself toward the ground, changed shape in midair, and bounded uphill to the sacred site where her pack waited. Behind her, the witches cursed and gave chase, moving at a heavy trot, burning and blasting their way through trees, plants, and rocks as needed.

  Up ahead, the werewitch could see the foliage thinning, and she smelled her fellow lycanthropes nearby. Again she reverted to human form, popping her head up just long enough to taunt her foes.

  “You failed! I’m still here. You still want me, come and fucking get me!”

  She blocked a beam of plasma so powerful it drove her reeling backward and started to burn through the shield almost as soon as it struck. Bailey rolled aside, shifted again, and was running off at an angle when the deadly blast tore through her shield and exploded into the ground.

  That was one of the Inquisitors, she surmised. I used a pretty strong shield. It might be impossible to block their full-power attacks. Shit.

  Bailey burst through the last of the trees and into the clearing at the summit. Her small army of Weres stood there, most of them back in human form, although a few stood on four legs, crouched and ready to pounce. Behind them was the tall stone step-pyramid, and the misty translucent barrier still surrounded it.

  She strode toward the wall of fog and spread her hands. It parted without her needing to cast any particular spell, perhaps in recognition of her status as a full shaman. “Come on,” she urged her followers. “Get through the entrance before they catch up with us. You saw the size of that explosion.”

  Werewolves dashed through the opening and into the temple. As the last of them passed her, Bailey saw human figures advancing over the crest of the hill toward the clearing. A woman screamed something in French.

  She ducked through the gap and left an arcane shield behind her to be safe. A hurricane of magic crashed against both the mist-wall and her conjured barrier, lighting the clearing up like noon, and the forcefield began to melt away.