The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  The girl realized that Balder was succumbing to despair. “It’s not over yet,” she reassured him. “You’re going to get through this, and so are we. And Asgard and Earth. Fenris’ lies have spread farther than we thought. He must have corrupted some of your trainees. But this is all gonna end, and soon.”

  The blond deity nodded. “Yes, I suppose it must. We need to leave this place and decide on our next moves. You should find Carl, my apprentice. He was your friend during training; you remember him.”

  “I do,” she affirmed. “I’ll look for him as soon as I get you taken care of.”

  She paused, then, struggling with the logistics of how and when to get Balder to safety and how to arrange it so that she could see him cared for while also seeking out Carl as soon as possible.

  While she deliberated, a portal opened in front of her.

  Balder tensed beside her, and the girl reflexively fell into a fighting stance.

  “Oh, hell,” she breathed.

  Chapter Five

  Out of the shimmering purple doorway stepped Loki. A slight breeze caught his black hair and blew it aside from his face as he gazed down his nose toward them with his usual mixture of condescension and detached amusement.

  “Ah,” he remarked, “there you are. I’m glad I was able to pinpoint your exact location in this awful place. It interferes with magic, though more from within than without.”

  Bailey let out a sigh of relief. “Hi. And yeah, thanks, you’re just in time. Balder and his students got ambushed, and I had to fight off a bunch of dark elves and goblins or whatever they are—green guys three or four feet tall. Balder’s got an accursed arrow in his shoulder. Literally accursed, I mean.”

  Loki’s eyes went wide, and the sarcastic-asshole demeanor vanished instantly. He rushed past the werewitch toward his wounded relative.

  The god of innocence let out a soft, hollow laugh. “Loki. Who would have expected that you’d be the one to come so readily to my aid?”

  “Silence,” the lord of mischief snapped. “Is that one of those arrows that explodes if you try to pull it out?”

  “Yeah,” Bailey told him. “Glad he warned me before I tried.”

  Loki pursed his lips, examining the projectile. “Mmm, yes, I can remove it. The ways of nastiness and deceit and dirty tricks, and all manner of similar things, are well known to me. Booby traps like this are elementary.”

  Bailey recalled how much he’d helped during their war against Callie’s army of ghost crones, so she didn’t doubt his abilities. Still, what Balder had said about the lethal burst of the arrow concerned her enough that she backed off a few paces. Just to be safe.

  As Balder leaned his front against the nearest tree, Loki came up behind him and wrapped his hand around the arrow, not yet trying to draw it out but hovering his other hand over the wound and examining it. The werewitch assumed he must have been “feeling out” the arcane structure of the spell, unraveling the process by which it had been imbued with such powerful malice.

  There was a faint yellowish-green glow around the trickster god’s arms as he began, slowly and carefully, to pull the dart free. Balder moaned, grunted, and trembled in pain.

  Bailey wanted to shout at Loki to be careful, but she knew better. There was no way to remove a barbed arrow without hurting the person. They were lucky that gods healed mundane wounds more readily than humans did.

  Finally the arrowhead emerged from the wound along with the shaft, and Loki tossed it gently aside, immediately encasing it in a thick shield-capsule that crackled with extra layers of arcane security. “Beastly thing,” the black-haired deity muttered. “I have standards, believe it or not, and those arrows are beneath them. They are weapons powered by absolute ageless hatred.”

  Balder’s shoulder was bleeding, and he seemed on the verge of losing consciousness.

  “Stand up,” Loki told him, pressing his hand over the gash to staunch the flow of ichor-blood. “I’ll pass on a portion of my strength to you, as well. It will bring you up to acceptable functionality, but it will weaken me.”

  The girl offered no objection. Loki had empowered her in a similar fashion not long past.

  “Bailey,” Loki said, “the two of us will need some time to recover after this. We’ll have to lie low, out of sight, and out of reach to offer you immediate aid. Do you understand?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Yes. Makes my life harder, but I can deal with that if neither of you will die.”

  Loki smiled. “That’s the spirit. Let us discuss, meanwhile, the devious plot that we’ve come up with for opposing our mutual friend, the deity of lycanthropy. Meaning my bastard son, not you, Ms. Nordin.”

  “I know who you meant,” she grumbled.

  As Balder recovered his strength and senses, Loki sat down on a big curling root. The werewitch noticed that he looked pale and tired after donating magical energy to his brother.

  “Now,” the trickster god began, “listen closely...”

  The girl did. Loki explained the outline of the council’s plan to fake their own deaths at Fenris’ hands and how he was confident in their ability to generate illusions that were perfectly convincing replicas of the original gods.

  He went on to describe how Bailey might have to take part in the activities to come by continuing to play along and maintain Fenris’ trust.

  “Follow his orders,” Loki instructed her. “Heed his suggestions. As I understand it, you’ve always been the type to ask a reasonable question or two about the why of things, so you don’t want to appear too eager to do precisely what he wants. But keep doing as you’ve been doing. He must believe you’re on his side and that you’d side with him instead of us if push comes to the proverbial shove.”

  She bowed her head, then raised it. “I understand, and I have to concede it’s a smart plan. If he strikes, we know he’s guilty one hundred percent, yet we won’t lose any of you guys. And if he doesn’t by some chance, no harm, no foul.”

  It occurred to her that though her rational mind highly doubted that Fenris was entirely innocent, part of her wanted him to be. She would rather keep him as her friend, her teacher. She hated the thought that they had to be enemies. She wished his lies were true.

  No, Bailey, she told herself. That’s not how it works. We focus on doing what has to be done and protecting everyone else first and foremost. You can deal with your own mishmash of emotions later.

  Loki went on. “Given Balder’s condition and the fact that whichever servant of Fenris’ fired the arrow knows he’s in bad shape, I’d say we should begin with a nice fake Balder and allow Fenris to chase it down and murder it. Tempt him into making a clear, present, and obvious attack in the open where we can all see it. That will remove the last traces of doubt from all our minds, won’t it?”

  The werewitch frowned deeply. “Yes. I’d imagine so.”

  “And,” Loki added, “it will bolster the wolf-god’s confidence and deceive him into thinking he’s gaining the upper hand, exactly as he’s deceived us time and time again. At least when I lie, it’s usually for the sake of a joke.”

  Bailey waved her hand sharply. “You said that for the illusions to work properly, the real god has to be there first, and he swaps places with the double at the last second. Is that right? Won’t that put Balder at massive risk if he doesn’t time it perfectly?”

  “More likely,” the lord of mischief retorted, “it will be a minor risk. I think.”

  Balder turned toward her, his beautiful face strained with diminishing anguish. “There is danger, yes, but Loki is right. It is necessary and the best opportunity we’ve received thus far. I am willing to chance it.”

  The girl closed her eyes, again forcing her feelings aside in the name of duty. “Fine, so be it. There are more lives at stake than only his, after all.”

  Balder smiled. “Exactly.”

  Loki looked skyward and tapped his fingers on the back of his hand. “Hmm. And now a stratagem is forming as to h
ow, specifically, we can lure our beloved Fenris into the necessary confrontation. Knowing him as I do, it ought to work.”

  “Let’s hear it,” Bailey urged.

  Loki laughed nastily, his eyes focused on something far distant before he looked back at his fellow gods.

  “What we shall do is deposit Balder somewhere on the fringe of a domain where Fenris is the ruling power, or at least the absentee landlord. That way, via the channels of arcane influence that experienced divine beings can sense, he will perceive Balder’s presence, and more importantly, his weakness and pain.”

  Balder squinted. “But why would I go to a realm of his if I were wounded? His territories are nowhere near this one, and there are other places I could go if I was looking for help with my injuries.”

  Loki scoffed. “Who said you were looking for help? No, the kind of thing you’d do is march straight out there for the express purpose of challenging him. Summon him to you with a barrage of threats, saying you know what he’s up to. The only way for him to silence you will be by slaying you. He’d enjoy it, besides.”

  Although the god of mischief sounded sure of himself, Bailey didn’t understand.

  “But haven’t Fenris and Balder known each other for a long time? Does he actually hate everyone that much?”

  “No,” Loki replied. “Fenris doesn’t like us much, but he is what you might call an ‘apex predator.’ By nature, he is a hunter. He’s cultivated enough savvy and self-discipline to pull off this little scam of his so far, but his true urge is to move in for the kill. His motives are always directed toward that. In this case, to relish the challenge of pouncing upon, fighting with, and brutally slaying our poor, innocent god of innocence. The temptation will be far too much for him to resist.”

  Balder’s face had acquired a grim smile that was totally unlike him. The werewitch pondered if the nature of the events they’d become embroiled in was teaching him the alien emotion of cynicism.

  “Aye,” Balder agreed. “It is a wise plan, and if done right, it will allow me to gauge Fenris’ strength in the process.”

  Bailey shrugged. “Good point. But be cautious. Anyway, what about me? Should I do anything in particular?”

  Loki chortled. “We shall see, as far as Balder’s case goes. As for the bigger picture, you should certainly do something. Since I am the smart god, allow me to lay out what is likely to happen as far as your role is concerned.”

  Looking extremely pleased with himself, the prankster deity elaborated upon his predictions.

  “Fenris will leverage all of the connections he’s made against us, using their borrowed strength to try to keep us off-balance and preoccupied. It’s tremendously likely that he will bring you into it to keep doing the good work of putting down rebellions by the monsters he’s stirred up. This will keep you busy and also make it look as though he’s still one of the so-called good guys, a heroic deity doing his part to protect the realms.”

  Bailey scowled. That was what Fenris had been doing unless they were mistaken, so it hardly qualified as much of a prediction on Loki’s part. But there was more.

  “Furthermore,” Loki continued, “these shenanigans will clearly be used to empower you further. To increase your skill and experience and give you opportunities to absorb power from defeated adversaries. He must know that you learned to drain magic from non-deities not long ago and is scheming to turn that to his advantage.

  “Don’t be stupid though, Bailey. And by stupid, I mean ‘humble’ or something along those lines. Take all the power you can get. It will come in handy. Fenris means to sacrifice you, yes, as we’ve all surmised, and bringing you up to a certain level of divine might is a prerequisite for him being able to effect that. But it also means that as long as your guard is up and your mind sharp, you will be strong enough to take him on yourself. He’ll be caught off-guard and defeated by the person he least expects to challenge him.”

  Bailey pondered it. It made sense. Part of her didn’t like the devious, Machiavellian aspect of it, but Fenris, by starting a war of lies, had effectively forced them to use counter-deception to defend themselves and expose his treachery. They had little choice.

  “I’ll do it,” she stated.

  * * *

  Agent Fauchard had been placed in charge of the fire team sent to scout the parallel world that the guys back in the lab had dubbed “Svartalfheim” after the so-called dark elves of Norse mythology. Parts of it abutted the Other or bled into its boundaries, but it seemed to be a different dimension entirely.

  The sky overhead was curiously low and cloaked with dark, oppressive clouds, a weird and disturbing contrast with the dry, desiccated landscape. The ground beneath their feet was composed mostly of reddish rock and dust, and there was little vegetation save bleached-looking thorny vines and the occasional cluster of dead trees. Oddly-carven boulders or rock ridges eroded by the wind added to the alien nature of the terrain.

  “Okay,” Fauchard spoke into his intercom, and his words were beamed across the astral plane and back to HQ. “We’ve successfully arrived. All quiet on the western front except for the scanner. According to it, we’re standing in the middle of a gigantic swarm of colorful dots.”

  One of the three men with him snickered at that, then stopped himself.

  Fauchard ignored him as he readjusted his gas mask and hoisted his arcanoplasm rifle. He and one other man had standard plasma guns, which did arcane-elemental damage to physical targets. The other two had dispersal rifles, which were essentially the opposite: they weakened and dissolved the arcane structures of incorporeal entities, though tests had found that they could do some damage to living things too.

  In any event, combat was not the goal. Theirs was strictly a recon mission.

  Agent Velasquez, supervising the operation from back at headquarters, watched the scanner screen in his office while speaking into a microphone. The big screen was subdivided into eight sections, one for each of the worlds or regions currently being investigated by a patrol.

  “Advance, but carefully,” he instructed them. “Keep adjusting your visors if you don’t see anything. Abominations from different planes of existence may only be visible on the right infrared or ultraviolet frequencies.”

  “Roger,” Fauchard acknowledged him. “Move out.”

  The four agents moved quickly and quietly across the rusty earth, darting from one random object or obstacle to another and keeping out of sight as much as possible. Gusts of wind picked up now and again, filling the air with red dust and obscuring their transmissions with static.

  “Hey,” one of the men whispered and pointed toward a barely-elevated small plane of rock with a yawning black mouth. “Cave.”

  Fauchard noted the information and glanced around, seeing two other entrances in distant parts of the rusty stone. He checked his scanner. Masses of dots were still moving around, seemingly on top of them.

  Not on top, he realized—below.

  “Right,” he said to HQ, “the dark elves are using underground tunnels and caverns to reposition themselves under our feet. Judging by the number of blips on our screen, I’d say they have a colony down there the size of Tucson or so. We’re going up to one of the cave mouths and looking in.”

  “Hey,” Velasquez replied into the intercom, “cautious-like, okay? Retreat the goddamn second you even think they might be after you.”

  The nearest hole in the ground, framed by drooping spikes of red rock, loomed closer. Something started beeping; it was Fauchard’s team’s scanner, warning them of supernatural beings getting closer.

  “Whoa,” the fire team leader quipped. “We, uh, may have a problem. Preparing to pack up and…shit. Shit!”

  The colored blobs on the screen rushed out in a solid wave, then the screen went dark. No sound came from the intercom.

  The senior agent in the office barked, “Fauchard. Respond, Fauchard! What the fuck?”

  Two more screens went black, too. Technicians fiddled with knobs.

/>   “Well, damn,” Velasquez snapped. “What the hell happened to them? Is anyone showing technical difficulties with the transmission?

  Someone did a quick check on his device. “No, sir. Unless it’s entirely on their end, which is, uhh, possible...”

  His tone indicated that he was just saying that to be diplomatic. They all knew Fauchard and his men were dead.

  The senior agent resisted the urge to kick chairs, flip laptops off of desks onto the floor, and pick up garbage cans to hurl them at walls. Instead, he asked his cohorts, “Does anyone know what to make of this? Before I offer my professional opinion, naturally.”

  No one did. Half of them shrugged, and of the other half, most offered only vague, meaningless commentary meant to fill uncomfortable silences with sound. Two made doom-and-gloom pronouncements that everyone tried to ignore.

  “Dammit,” Velasquez snarled. “As bad as this looked to begin with, it’s an order of magnitude worse if we can’t even get word back to check on our troops who’ve gone missing in action. The boys at the top of the totem pole aren’t hesitating for once to declare this a maximum alert situation. And why don’t we have word from fucking Bailey? I mean, we left a message at her house and a voicemail.”

  It annoyed and embarrassed him to consider that they leaned on her for support, but she was a goddess. That could not be overlooked.

  He made the decision to pull the other teams back. Losing them all would be a minor disaster and terrible for morale. Plus, they needed every available agent ready to fight. The scanners didn’t always tell them things in ways they could understand, but they didn’t lie, either.

  Right now, the scanners were indicating a full-scale invasion of paranormal and otherworldly creatures.

  Velasquez called his superiors and conveyed the information and hunches to them. “We haven’t yet gotten confirmation on any of the blips. Three of our teams went dark and the remaining ones aren’t seeing anything yet, so I’m pulling them back for the sake of personnel retention. I repeat, invasion-level numbers are moving toward us. Is there something we should know about, something that we missed? Like an ancient prophecy or some shit? I hate those things. Whatever the case, sirs, everything else in the world is secondary unless this turns out to be a goodwill mission by a bunch of sex angels or something, and when has that ever happened?”