The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  Chapter Three

  The council chamber of the gods was a high-vaulted room of blue and white crystal, with a translucent skylight looking out on a vast expanse of airy sapphire void and rolling ivory clouds. It was expansive, with a broad audience floor in front of the semicircle of massive chairs where the six deities of the council sat, and beyond the floor was a translucent barrier that provided privacy from the hallway beyond.

  The hall had neither entrances nor exits unless one knew how to get there to begin with.

  For the time being, two of the half-dozen chairs in the great chamber were empty. Bailey was not present to occupy the seat that had previously belonged to the Norse goddess Freya, and Balder was also unaccounted for. Thor, Loki, Thoth, and Coyote were all present. They settled in and prepared for the solemn discussion to come.

  Thoth steepled his fingers and cleared his throat. The council had no leader whose authority superseded that of any other member, but as the oldest and most level-headed of them, the Egyptian lord of wisdom usually acted as spokesman, moderator, and master of ceremonies.

  “Are we in agreement, then?” he inquired as Coyote watched him with bright eyes, “that Fenris is the likely culprit behind Balder’s disappearance?”

  Votes of “yea” went around the room.

  Thoth nodded his sleek dark head. “It is the only explanation that is remotely likely, and yet, we have no definite proof. If we haul him before us and charge him with a crime he has succeeded in covering up, we will do nothing except alarm him into being more careful. Or moving faster to achieve his aims.”

  Coyote raised a hand and suggested, “He must mean to maintain ‘plausible deniability,’ as mortal politicians call it. Most of the bloodiest work is probably being done by his henchmen and intermediaries, while he keeps his hands clean for the most part.”

  “Aye,” Thor grunted, his bushy red brows descending in an angle over his blazing eyes. One of his hands balled into a huge square fist. “The skulking bastard intends to come after us one by one, doesn’t he? Picking us off in slow, measured succession, striking at the moment when we least expect it and are least able to fight back! Ah, the wretched cowardice and two-faced nature of it! If we can prove anything, I’ll wring his neck myself. Gladly.”

  Loki held up a hand, barely restraining a contemptuous smirk at the boisterous attitude of his fellow Asgardian. “Patience, friend Thor. There may be time for that, but not immediately. We have to flush him out. What better way, I wonder, than to bait him?”

  Thoth frowned. “Sending someone in our stead would not be nearly as effective, and it could lead innocents to be endangered beyond any need.”

  The skinny mischief-god laughed. “No, no, Thoth, I’m not talking about using patsies or decoys. At least, not living ones. Illusions. Projected doppelgangers, carefully constructed to be as convincing as possible, and imbued with our same powers so as to further reinforce the deception.”

  Coyote laughed. “Fighting lies with lies, eh? Fenris ought to learn how it feels to be deceived, at this point, anyway. And it may well work.”

  Thor chuckled, suddenly appreciating the irony of the plan.

  Loki raised his other hand as he continued to outline the details. “If done with skill and success, Fenris can pounce upon our doubles and appear to kill them; he’d be unable to reveal the illusion except with extremely powerful magic, or if one of us is stupid enough to cancel the projection before he leaves. Thor, take note.”

  The red-bearded giant stiffened and glared. “What?”

  Before he could protest further, Loki went on. “And as each of us seems to fall before him, we will, at the last instant, trade places with the double, making the illusion utterly seamless. To do this, I will handle the main conjurations, but I’ll need each of you to channel your powers into the task so I can replicate you more convincingly. Failure is, I think, not very probable. This sort of thing is second nature to me.”

  Thoth allowed himself a faint, morose smile as the other gods chuckled.

  Coyote slapped his knee. “Ha, ha! True, Fenris thinks of himself as a master schemer, and I must say I’m impressed with his layers of foul deception. But can he hold a candle to us?”

  “Of course not,” Loki snorted. “He is my son—technically—and he may have inherited some of my skill, but he is no true trickster deity. He’s not on the same level as Coyote, let alone me.”

  Coyote raised a paw. “I object to that last bit. But I love the plan. Let the wolf-father reap as he has sown. His confidence will burgeon into overconfidence as he assumes he’s whittling us down. Then we will be able to surprise him after he thinks he’s won and press the advantage granted by surprise.”

  “Hmm,” Thoth mused, folding his hands over one another. “Yes. And furthermore, the mere fact of Fenris trying to murder us—or our doubles—proves his guilt. Each of us may be witness to an attempt on our own lives. Nothing could be more convincing than that, in terms of justifying the worst of our suspicions.”

  Loki’s eyes rolled upward and aside within his head; the expression usually meant he’d thought of something.

  “Oh,” he added, “one other thing. Bailey ought to be brought in on the plan and act as our double agent. She and Fenris have a history together. Well, what qualifies as a ‘history’ by the pathetically brief periods of time to which mortals are accustomed. It would not be difficult, I think, for her to convince the great lycanthropic one that she’s still on his side.”

  Nods and mumbles of assent greeted his proposition.

  Loki smiled more broadly. “It would help further if she was present during Fenris’ little assassination attempts. That may not always be possible, but imagine the impact. It will lull him into believing she’s still his loyal apprentice. And then, right as the bastard is reeling in shock to discover us still alive, Bailey will slip the knife into his back.”

  Thoth frowned and eyed the trickster-god sharply. “You enjoy such things too much, Loki. Treachery is not our way, but in this case, we face a greater treachery that could destroy us and have no choice but to respond in kind. Let us begin construction of these illusory doubles soon and disperse for now. There is much to do.”

  “And,” Coyote offered, “remember to have a psychic message ready to send out the instant Fenris or one of his cronies jumps out of the bushes and we pretend to fall. We must coordinate our efforts.”

  Everyone agreed, and the council dispersed. Though confident in their counterplot, a pall of doom hung over the chamber. They had no way of knowing for sure if they’d ever meet here again.

  * * *

  Agent Velasquez leaned back in his chair, hands folded behind his head, staring at the ceiling air conditioning unit through his dark glasses. The unit came on, its steady mechanical purr accompanied by a blast of refreshingly cool air.

  “Ahh.” He sighed, his face relaxing in a calm grin. “Much better. And I timed it perfectly. Seven minutes, thirty-eight seconds, though it’ll probably change as soon as the weather starts to cool off more.”

  The Agency’s Western Sector Headquarters was located in Reno, Nevada, a location chosen for its relatively equal distance from both Portland and Seattle on the one hand, and Los Angeles, San Diego, and Phoenix on the other, not to mention being effectively next door to northern California and not too far from the Wasatch Front in Utah. Days in late summer were cooler here than what the poor schmucks down in Vegas, let alone Arizona and southeastern Cali, had to deal with, but the afternoons were still hitting a solid ninety degrees Fahrenheit.

  Velasquez’s junior partner Agent Park scoffed. “Man, you got too much time on your hands. I guess let me know if some bullshit errand does come up because I’m in the process of dying of boredom. This is worse than being deployed in New Zealand or Alaska or something. Like I hear the guys out of Fairbanks at least get to hunt elk once in a while.”

  Park was new-ish, having hopped directly over to the Agency from the military and hoping to get more actio
n. He’d been disappointed about half the time, so far.

  The senior agent chortled. “I’ll keep that in mind, Park. Keep fighting the good fight. You’re a great American.”

  “Fuck off,” the other replied, though without much venom. He balled up a misprinted piece of paper and tossed it into a blue recycle bin.

  Then he sat up straight, adjusting his glasses and staring at the wall-sized screen across from them, which had suddenly lit up from idle mode due to activity. “Hey. Look!”

  Velasquez swiveled his chair around. His jaw dropped open. “Holy mother of fuck. What the hell sector of the Other are we viewing here again? Uhh, 3-A, right, got it. Looks like we’re back in the midst of a raging shitstorm, Park. Wanna pop open a bottle of champagne?”

  “Maybe later,” Park retorted.

  The screen showed a rough layout of a certain transitional portion of the Other, the point at which the swampy landscape closest to the mortal world gave way to a region of barren canyonlands. The Agency had been keeping a close eye on it ever since their brief but hazardous war against an army of eldritch crones created by the late witch Caldoria McCluskey. According to the wizards who’d tagged along and helped, the destruction of the crones’ main power source should have wiped them out, but there was always the possibility of stragglers sneaking back to Earth and trying to replicate themselves, preying upon mortal casters.

  Now, the crude outline of the bleak landscape was swarming with masses of colored orbs, indicating supernatural beings on the move, but they didn’t look familiar.

  “Man,” Park gasped, “what are those things? Do we have, like, a handy reference guide for what half-assed colored blobs of light represent on this thing? They don’t look like the witch-clones from a couple weeks ago.”

  Velasquez seized the screen’s control console. He was a man who liked to relax when he could, but when there was a serious job to do, things were different.

  Punching buttons, the senior agent flipped through different screen views showing various portions of the Other, all of which had access points to the world of mortals.

  It was the same. Every screen showed what might well be an advancing army—clusters if not hordes, a veritable migration.

  “Fuckdamn,” Velasquez sputtered. “I’ve never seen anything like this. I don’t know what it is, but we need to find out and fast.”

  He and Park leaped up from their seats, the younger Korean-American agent adding, “One hundred percent concurrence rate here, chief.”

  The pair strode from their office, Velasquez getting on his phone to report all he’d seen to his superiors, while Park handled the task of shouting the news to other agents and random support personnel as they hustled down the hall toward the armory.

  “Okay,” Velasquez barked into his mobile, “we cannot yet confirm what we’re seeing, but if it’s anything remotely hostile, it puts us about at Defcon 2, you got me? We need eyes on this crap immediately, and two seconds after immediately, we probably need every single available field agent with any experience recalled from whatever the fuck else they’re doing.”

  The voice on the other end barked back with clarification requests and miscellaneous expletives, and they didn’t end the call until Velasquez and Park were halfway down the elevator shaft to the basement rooms where the weapons, body armor, and hazmat stuff were kept.

  The pair suited up, pulling on the glistening outfits that would protect them from some forms of physical attack, not to mention offer limited resistance against magic and elemental damage. Other agents came down the elevators after them, the reserve corps within the HQ building. Early responder types.

  Velasquez gestured to them sharply. “You guys. We’re going in directly. We need multiple advance scouts to figure out what the hell is coming at us on each and every one of those screens, and we need you all to survive so we can hear the wonderful news straight from your mouths, preferably. Video footage is nice, too. Retreat the instant things get dicey.”

  They understood. In another three minutes, everyone was ready for battle.

  As they ascended back to the main floor, a generalized message came over the intercom. It began by more or less repeating what Velasquez had just reported, then it moved on to indicate that the brass hadn’t wasted time deliberating on the senior agent’s suggestions.

  “We will be recalling all available field agents,” the voice stated.

  Velasquez chuckled, though without much humor. “Finally, they realize I know what I’m talking about.”

  “Every available hand is needed on deck. Anyone with experience. This includes a recall of semi-retired senior agents and a fast-tracking of those who are still in the late stages of recovery from injury. We repeat, something big is going on. This could be the one we won’t walk away from if we fuck it up, gentlemen. Over and out.”

  When the elevator opened, Park turned to his senior partner and quipped, “Fast-tracking the injured into a resumption of duties, huh?”

  Velasquez smiled. “You know what that means. Not firsthand, but you’ve heard me talk about it before. Townsend’s coming back.”

  “Ahh,” Park commented, his tone appreciative. “Just in time for him to be reintroduced, I would guess, to the center of all fuckery in the known universe, or however you guys used to put it. Am I right?”

  “You are,” Velasquez declared. “The walking shitstorm of the century, Bailey N. Nordin.”

  * * *

  Bailey refilled the redheaded girl’s cup with water and waited for her to speak.

  “We…we didn’t…” The young woman coughed, then took another sip of water and swallowed it with what looked like a painful motion of her throat. “We didn’t even know what was happening at first. It was all so sudden. They had effectively won the battle, or most of it, by the time we were aware that we were under attack.”

  The others confirmed the red-haired girl’s words. Bailey glowered into the flames of the fireplace, where they’d started a blaze with pieces of destroyed furniture.

  The South Asian guy had briefly filled her in on the gist of it. They’d been sleeping when a vast number of the ogre- and goblin-like creatures she’d fought outside had stormed the castle from multiple directions, killing almost everyone in minutes.

  It was exactly as she’d feared—a ruthless cut to the heart, a headshot delivered from a rooftop to an unsuspecting victim.

  After they’d refreshed the other four survivors with water and soothing words, they’d moved everyone to the central den, where there were couches and deep-pile rugs, as well as the fireplace. The more seriously wounded got the couches, and Bailey covered them with another shower of healing magic.

  To her frustration, despite being a full goddess, she was insufficiently talented to bring them back to full health all at once. Her talents ran more toward destruction. She’d always been a fighter.

  Once everyone was calmed down from the lingering terror of the siege, Bailey had begun to piece together the overall story of what had transpired.

  “The grounds,” one of the kids explained, “were normally guarded. Sentries here and there and watchmen at all hours, but only a cursory force to stop lone attackers or perhaps small groups. And to sound the alarm. Well, they did sound the alarm, but it wasn’t enough.”

  A man, who looked somewhat older than the rest who had taken a nasty gash in his left leg, added, “There were so many of them. Hundreds upon hundreds. They swarmed right over the guards and the castle.”

  “And,” added the South Asian guy, “it wasn’t a disorganized mob, either. They’re not so smart, but they can follow basic orders and understand simple tactics. Someone instructed them on how to assail this place. Hitting all the weak points, knowing which places to strike at first to get control of the complex and cut everyone off from everyone else. Like hitting the right domino and watching all the rest fall down in sequence. There was no way we could respond fast enough.”

  The redhead concluded with, “As if somebody ins
ide had helped them ruin everything.”

  Bailey’s hand trembled around the stone cup she held. “I see. Yeah, it was a planned attack. Make no mistake.”

  There was a long moment of silence as everyone stared into the crackling orange flames, their faces crisscrossed by flickering shadows.

  The man with the gashed leg queried, “Do you have any idea who might have planned it?”

  “Yes,” Bailey responded at once. “But I can’t tell you yet. There are...other people who are looking into a few things. That’s all I can say for now. We have to be careful not to, uh, blow our cover or whatever. But we’re gonna figure it out, and soon. And then someone’s going to pay.”

  The uninjured guy muttered, “Doesn’t surprise me. This was an act of war.”

  Bailey was starting to feel mildly nauseated, so she decided to change the course of the conversation. Particularly since, while she considered it justified to detour to help these people, she still had her primary mission here to fulfill.

  “So,” she began, “anyone seen Balder lately? The Norse god of innocence and beauty. Looks the part, though he wears armor and carries a sword half the time, so I’m not so sure about the ‘innocent’ part. Some of you might have met him.”

  “Yeah,” replied a boy with long braided hair and violet eyes, who’d barely spoken ‘til now. “He was here recently, uhh, maybe two days ago? We don’t know where he is now, though. He was supposed to lead an advanced class on combat and forestry training, but he never came back.

  The werewitch grimaced. “And did anyone else go out with him?”

  “Seventeen or eighteen students. They haven’t come back, either.”

  Trying not to panic with worry, Bailey asked for the exact coordinates of where the Norse god’s training course was meant to take place. No one seemed to have paid attention to the specifics, but by asking three of the survivors, she was able to piece together a ballpark estimate.