The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  She perceived his presence, oddly cold and grim yet comforting with his wisdom and strength. She’d locked onto Aradia, and the goddess might have realized that the wolf-deity was present or that Bailey was calling out to him. If so, she probably thought Bailey was merely crying in desperation.

  She was wrong.

  Silently, the werewitch chanted the intonation her mentor had taught her, anchoring herself to Fenris like an appliance is plugged into an electrical socket. No conscious thought emanated from him. In observance of the rules, he had remained wholly passive throughout the battle, yet she sensed enormous power, a reservoir that, compared to her own, was nearly bottomless.

  Then she grounded herself in the dismal enchanted substance of the Other, setting her body up to act as a conduit through which excess arcane energy could be channeled before being bled out into the basic stuff of the dimension. By its very nature, the Other absorbed magic the way a sponge soaked up water.

  Finally, the werewitch imagined a grasping, luminous cord or vine or tentacle extending from her forehead to plug into the heart of the deity who had founded the Venatori Order and caused so much suffering.

  The conduit was established. Bailey gasped.

  So did Aradia, visibly and audibly, resembling a human for a brief instant. The goddess’ half-lidded eyes flew open, blazing with alarm. Bailey felt her fear as she realized what the werewitch was about to do.

  The first moment of connection between the two beings was like an explosion in Bailey’s mind. As with her locking into Fenris as a backup anchor, there was a sense of overwhelming might and unfathomably deep wells of arcane power. But in all other respects it was different, due both to the nature of the connection and the personality of the goddess.

  In contrast to the cool stolidity of the wolf-deity, Aradia’s mind blazed with anger, supercilious loathing, and an alien self-righteousness that had no interest in understanding mortals’ point of view.

  Overlaying these emotions was a sharp shriek of abject terror, so awful in its intensity that Bailey almost felt pity for the goddess. The threat of annihilation was bad enough for creatures destined to die. It was many times worse for an entity for whom immortality was the norm.

  Yet Bailey did not back off. Aradia had come here to kill her and all her people, family and friends, alongside her. The werewitch would do whatever it took to stop her.

  The goddess felt that, too.

  “Destroy her!” Aradia screamed, her bizarre voice more hideous than ever with its edge of panic. “Stop the werewitch! Kill her!”

  In accordance with the witch queen’s will, her bound servants jumped as though they’d been jabbed with cattle prods. They flung themself toward Bailey, their intent to kill her now double its former strength.

  The wolves and witches of the Northwest interposed themselves and their powers, however, and the agents of the United States government fired their plasma guns with deadly accuracy. Again there was a general clash of violence against violence, but neither side gained the advantage.

  The battle reached a lull as the grounding process began. Bailey drew raw power through the channel she had opened.

  Everyone stared in shock as a blinding light, both terrible and magnificent, emanated from the goddess’ form. It was so intense as to be impossible to look at near the edge of her physical shape, yet it wavered and lessened as it moved away from her, like flames or like a liquid spraying from a pressurized source. It was power, pure magical essence, and it was being bled out of her.

  Aradia, her eyes wrathful, snapped a gold-bedecked arm toward a group of four Weres clustered at her right flank. Bailey watched in horror as the shifters were engulfed in the shining white blaze, burning through them in a flash and reducing them to mounds of pale, bleached dust. It had happened too fast for her to do anything, especially with ninety-nine percent of her attention focused on grounding and destroying the goddess.

  But her observation about Aradia’s power fading as it leaked out of her proved accurate. The white flames were incredibly bright, but they dissipated into nothingness mere yards from the spot where the quartet of werewolves had perished. One other wolf stumbled back, howling in fear and pain, but he had only superficial burns to fur and skin and rolling on the damp ground extinguished the heat easily enough.

  Too much of the deity’s power, vast though it was, had been siphoned away from her.

  Blobs of light with tails of radiant flame emerged from Aradia like comets and spiraled toward Bailey. Most of them streaked past her or swirled around her briefly and then sunk into the ground, which absorbed them with glowing flickers that resembled lightning within an approaching thunderhead.

  But some of the spectral fireballs flowed into Bailey. She felt energized and invigorated but also jittery and shocked. She hadn’t expected that to happen, and she didn’t know how to deal with it.

  “Back!” she shouted to her allies. “Fight them, but everyone get back from Aradia!”

  And me, she thought but didn’t say aloud.

  The Dreadknights began to coordinate their efforts toward destroying the werewitch. Two of them threw crude but powerful waves of magic at their nemeses, knocking Weres back and pressing witches down in the desperate need to defend their goddess. With the cover this provided, the other two knights focused on Bailey.

  For all that she’d been through, and all the courage she’d shown, the werewitch had to fight not to succumb to total panic. Victory hung by a thread. Everything depended on the next moment or two, and as the dark-armored elite warriors moved in with murderous purpose, she saw her death approaching—and with it, the failure of everything they’d strived for.

  No, Bailey, not this fucking time or any other time, she urged herself. We might want to fall to pieces since this goes beyond anything a mortal is supposed to deal with, but we’re not doing it that way. We’re winning this. Period.

  Amidst the chaotic violence, Bailey found herself strained by a kind of four-way tug-of-war as her attention, strength, will, and essence were acted upon from four different directions.

  First there was the influence of Fenris, passive though it was, representing a massive reserve of strength and wisdom and arcane potency. Being connected to it, she felt a modicum of security, but being certain of how much or how little to draw upon was nearly impossible with everything else going on.

  Second was the continual hemorrhage of power from Aradia, flowing toward and through her into the Other’s magically created earth, some of it seeming to lodge in Bailey’s being as it passed, while the rest dissolved into the substance of the bog.

  Third was the reaction from the goddess—the interplay of Aradia trying to pull her immortal life force back into her, and at other times, hurling it out and around her in a crazed effort to destroy her enemies.

  Fourth and finally, Bailey’s mind was on the verge of tearing itself asunder. She didn’t know if she was doing things right, she didn’t know if she would succeed, she didn’t know if any of her friends would survive. There was nothing she could do but forge ahead with the insanity of desperation and hope it worked out.

  And still the battle raged.

  Madame MacLachlan had begun using telekinesis to lift the two Dreadknights who were fighting Bailey’s allies, tossing them from position to position, the better for them to quickly unleash devastating attacks on any group of Weres or witches who got too close.

  “Ha-ha! None of you numpties can overcome the simplest tactic imaginable. You’ll all be carbon paste in no time!”

  Roland, who was trying to fend off a surge of acid rain while his friends attacked the Dreadknights, had to admit the Scotswoman had a point.

  “Okay, then,” he murmured, and reached out with his telekinetic hand, grabbing the nearest Dreadknight, the male, and hurling him toward MacLachlan. The armored witch collided with Madame and both hit the ground. The brief reprieve allowed Jon, Trevor, and Charlene to take out a regular Venatori caster with a hasty combined-arms strike.<
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  Meanwhile, Velasquez and three of his men managed to cut through the cluster of arcane shields to hit one of the Dreadknights moving toward Bailey with their plasma beams. The projectiles couldn’t defeat the knight through its heavy enchanted armor, but they slowed it down and forced it to respond by casting a spell to deflect the arcanoplasm back. The agents scattered as random pulses of magenta-white fire rained down around them. One man took a terrible burn to the chest and arm and had to be pulled away from the front line.

  Bailey mentally stabilized the core of her being. The forces tugging on her would continue doing their own thing for now. She had to focus on the second thing—draining Aradia of her power.

  Watching her people suffer and die in the heat of combat only strengthened her resolve.

  I can do this, she thought. It’s like opening a fire hydrant, is all. Shit, didn’t Fenris say when he was first training me to use magic that that was what I shouldn’t be like? A spraying pipe? Well, it’s different this time. There’s only so much water, and we’re gonna keep draining it until Aradia is done for.

  As the stress and strain increased, so did Bailey’s ability to deal with it. Not only because she was starting to understand what she was doing, but because more and more of the arcane flow from the goddess was streaming into her. The majority was entering her body and empowering her. Only a trickle shot past to vanish into the misty ground.

  Bailey was taking the goddess’ power.

  “No!” Aradia raged, every last semblance of composure gone from her as she entered a new spasm of fury.

  Her limbs flailed, her eyes bulged, and her hair came loose to waft about her head like a mass of black tentacles. Hissing as she sucked in breath, the witch-deity then expelled it in an outward strike with both hands, employing the strength that remained to her in a final act of divine destruction.

  A ripple of mostly invisible sonic-concussive force shot out from Aradia in a circular shockwave and tailing it was a moving wall of blue-white fire. Bailey tried to redirect some of her newfound stolen magic to stop it, but the intense concentration of the grounding process interfered. She was too slow.

  Everyone except the werewitch was bowled over. The goddess’ friends and foes alike toppled and crashed to the ground as the shockwave hit them. And then the people closest to her, including most of the remaining Venatori as well as twenty or so Weres and local witches, were blasted with the bright flames.

  Bailey swallowed her horror as half the bodies caught in the firestorm were burned to death in seconds. The others were merely scorched and discombobulated and sent rolling across the plain toward the surrounding woods.

  She could feel the fear the attack had created. The surviving Venatori felt their mistress had gone mad and forsaken them, and Bailey’s forces had started to believe they were fighting an opponent who could not be defeated.

  But Bailey knew better. Aradia had exhausted herself, conjuring the mighty blast. She didn’t have much vitality left.

  “Dreadknights!” the deity shrieked. “Kill the werewitch now! Kill her lover, the traitor he-witch, and the pack alphas!”

  Her knights had only been knocked off-balance by the attack; the flames had not harmed them through their armor. They resumed their prior strategy of having two of their number advance on Bailey while the other pair went after her friends.

  But the elite mage-warriors drew their strength and took their direction straight from Aradia. Bailey, her mind conjuring an image of taking a massive gulp of air or water, siphoned a huge mass of arcane essence away. So much that it threatened to overwhelm her, but after a moment of dizziness, she held firm.

  Aradia sank from the air to the ground. Her feet touched the earth, then she crumpled to her knees, squinting and balling her fists in fear, anger, and pain. The Dreadknights faltered, swaying on their feet as if drunk.

  Bailey was so intent on the spectacle in front of her that it took a few heartbeats before she realized what had happened to her. She no longer stood in front of the goddess, separated by a short stretch of boggy heath, but floated in the air.

  “Look!” a woman shouted. “Look at Bailey!”

  The werewitch’s feet dangled two yards above the earth. Motes of brilliant starlight swirled around her, blinking and shining from an iridescent cloud of pure magic, the overflow of the divine power that had once been Aradia’s and was now hers. She closed her eyes and felt as if she were a sun with an entire solar system orbiting her body, and a rush went through her that was both chillingly cold and blazing hot.

  When she opened her eyes, they shone furious crimson light like the eyes of her wolf-form, but far brighter and more striking. A hurricane of power spun within her.

  Fenris started to cut her off from himself, slowly retracting with a profound satisfaction that was faintly arrogant. He was proud of her, but there was more to it than that.

  Bailey had no time to think about it, though. She opened her mouth and spoke.

  “It’s over!”

  Her voice was clear and ethereal, like a peal of thunder and a chorus of trumpets all at once. It echoed over the plain and through the foggy woods and swamps that stretched for leagues in every direction. It shook everyone who heard it, then awed them into silence.

  “It’s over,” Bailey repeated. “The balance has shifted, and the tide has turned. The power that used to be Aradia’s is hers no longer. We have a new goddess, one born of both witches and Weres, who represents the best interests of both. That’s me. I’m not bound by the laws and oaths made by the previous deities, and all of this insanity is done with today!”

  Her glowing eyes saw the faces of the people before her. Those of her friends and the individuals who had rallied to her proverbial banner, who stared with stunned reverence and mounting relief. Those of the Venatori, flabbergasted and feeling helpless anger and frustration. And the face of Aradia, borderline pitiful but still malignant with loathing.

  In the moment of silence that followed, Bailey thought of Fenris. He had not mentioned the possibility that Bailey could attain the power of a deity, but he must have known it could happen. He must have.

  That left the question, had he neglected to mention it to spare her the extra worry and anxiety over the ramifications? Or was it perhaps something he’d hoped would happen all along?

  But there was no time to ponder the matter. The Venatori were preparing to make a last stand, and they might kill more of Bailey’s friends, even if they had no chance against the werewitch.

  She didn’t give them the chance.

  Bailey shouted wordlessly and extended her arms, throwing out a crackling electrical storm cloud that covered the air above the plain. With no difficulty whatsoever, she manipulated the energies that churned within it, and powerful bolts of lightning descended upon the remaining Venatori regulars, cracking through their shields and striking them down with an overload of voltage. The other witches, the lycanthropes, and the agents backed away from the lethal spectacle.

  The four Dreadknights charged her. She waved her hand and they screeched to a halt mid-stride as though they’d crashed into an invisible wall of thick foam, their arms flailing.

  Bailey dealt with the first knight via a meteor of roaring black fire that struck her and engulfed both body and armor in supernatural heat, reducing the figure to ash in the blink of an eye.

  “Holy shit!” one of the agents exclaimed.

  Bailey encased the second knight in thick ice at absolute zero, then tossed an invisible lance of percussive force into the man’s armored center and shattered him into hundreds of frosty shards.

  The third struggled forward a step, hoisting a bronze Mycenaean-era sword over her head. Bailey opened a chasm under her feet and she toppled in. It closed around her, leaving only earth where she’d been.

  The fourth, the one whose sex was unclear, waved a fist at Bailey in a final gesture of defiance. She responded by blinking at the figure. When her eyes opened, metal and flesh had turned to stone. Then
she blew toward it the way one would puff out a candle flame, and under the enchanted wind that resulted, the statue crumbled to powdery dust.

  “Curse you!” It was Aradia, still determined to fight back even as she slumped to the ground, looking wan and haggard and barely like a supernatural being anymore. The long-nailed hand rose and cast a bolt of arcanoplasm at Bailey’s face.

  She swept it aside as if it were a spitwad, and it streaked into the sky and was gone.

  Bailey’s eyes glowed still brighter. “Like I said, Aradia, it’s over.”

  The werewitch swept her hands straight down. A column of white light and plasma that were too intense for mortals to look at descended from the heavens and engulfed the decrepit former goddess. Aradia’s black silhouette was briefly visible within the ivory flame, then it dissolved into a cluster of shrinking black dots that quickly faded to nothing. As the rocket-like cacophony of the plasma strike ended, all that remained of the Venatori’s deity was the faint echo of a wrathful, anguished scream.

  Bailey floated back to the ground, her feet touching the dirt and weeds. The clearing was silent except for the usual sounds of the swamp. Of the people who still stood, and still lived, there were only her supporters, her partners, and her loved ones. Their enemies had been destroyed.

  “We won,” gasped Charlene, who crouched on the ground with an injured leg. “We actually frickin’ won!”

  Roland exhaled and fanned his face with a flapping hand. “Yeah, we did somehow. Hell. Nicely done, Bailey! That was kinda scary in all honesty, but it was certainly impressive.”

  The werewitch felt her powers receding. They weren’t needed now, or at least there was no reason to be so theatrical with them. Her eyes returned to normal.

  “I’m still me,” she said in her normal voice, although she wondered if that were true.

  Then something flashed pink, and Roland, demonstrating better reflexes than Bailey would have credited him with, pivoted aside to dodge the thrust of a plasma sword.

  “Oh, shite,” Madame MacLachlan cursed, then she ran.

  Weres and witches started to stumble after her, but crashed into each other and got bottlenecked by the dense woods. Bailey waved for them to stand aside, and she stepped into the place the final witch had recently occupied.