by Renée Jaggér
I want to cry, Bailey admitted to herself. I haven’t done that in a long time, but I need to. Not here, and not now, but soon.
“Fine.” She grunted, giving no indication of how she felt within. “So, if all this is true, what am I supposed to do?”
He smiled. “Nothing…yet. Play along as though everything was the same, but be careful. Watch. Observe. Be ready, for when the time comes, we, the gods, will fall in by your side.”
She glared at him. “If you’re lying to me about this,” she vowed, “I will not forget.”
He started walking away. “Oh, I figured as much.”
Agents Velasquez and Park sat in front of an array of screens, watching and waiting as their software collated the pertinent data to create the time-lapse imagery they needed to tease out the necessary pattern.
Velasquez sighed. “Of all the fuckassery,” he said through gritted teeth. “This is exactly the kind of shitstorm of shit Townsend used to rant about.”
Park raised a finger. “Isn’t he supposedly coming back on duty sometime soon? I heard guys in the lunchroom say that. Though of course, you can never trust what lunchroom guys say.”
“I haven’t heard anything,” Velasquez countered, “one way or another. He might come back, or he might retire, or he might still die. I hope he does return since we could use his help, though he’ll probably walk in, say ‘Nope!’ and walk straight back out when he sees this crap.”
Using multiple pieces of the Agency’s super-advanced tech, they had managed to match the energy signature of their target to dispersed masses of eldritch energy working their way through the Pacific Northwest. Once the time-lapse kicked in and played over the main regional map screen, they’d have a better idea of what they were dealing with.
A week ago, Velasquez and Park, with the help of Roland and a wizard from Seattle, had tracked down the phantasmal entity who had once been a young witch named Caldoria McCluskey. Wraiths in the Other had transformed her into an eldritch crone, a variety of magical lich or vampire-like creature who’d been preying on the magical auras and life force of various casters in Portland since that time.
They’d destroyed what remained of her physical body and captured her life force and arcane essence, only to discover that the witch had been sending her essence off into the void for the probable purpose of infecting other casters and transforming them into an army of the goddamned undead.
Park snorted as they watched the time-lapse. “What the hell does this mean?”
Velasquez didn’t know yet. They had some decent ideas, but nothing was certain.
The main map screen depicted the Pacific Northwest region of North America, mainly the states of Washington and Oregon, with a bit of British Columbia, Idaho, California, and Nevada along the edges. Red dots appeared in great profusion in Seattle and worked their way down into Oregon, congregating around Portland and growing into a giant mass that moved slightly southeast and then spread in all directions before vanishing.
The process repeated; the time-lapse was showing a later period, but the pattern was nearly identical.
“Okay,” Park began, “so we know Callie deliberately tossed pieces of her, uh, arcane essence off to other places to create more of those things, right? She stole magical energy from random witches, filtered it through her so that it copied her or something, and then sent them on their merry way. But what exactly are those dots, and why do they keep disappearing?”
Velasquez scratched his chin as he thought. Park was sharp, and he was already shaping up to be a good agent, but he hadn’t seen some of the shit Velasquez had, let alone the old farts. The universe was a bigger and scarier place than most people knew.
“What if,” the senior agent mused, “she isn’t infecting people yet, but instead was creating ghost-clones of herself? Not fully developed, but, like, seeds that contained her essence. Like those things in Harry Potter that begin with an ‘H’ that the bad guy had, sorta.”
“Horcruxes,” Park chimed in.
“Yeah, thanks. I’m thinking the dots are those prototype clones, heading out to feed on even more witches, then make more copies of themselves at an exponential rate, potentially creating a nearly unlimited army of crones. The vanishing act is them leaving our plane of existence and heading off into the Other.”
Park cracked his knuckles. “I’ve heard about the Other, which means I know you were there, along with those other guys in the crack team.”
Velasquez nodded. “Briefly, but the place is real, and it’s nothing to fuck around with. But we need to chase these things down, no matter where they go.”
They stood up in unison, not hurried but with steady purpose.
“Getting out there,” Park added, “and simply observing the things will grant us a better idea of what the fuck they’re doing, if nothing else. At this point, it’s pure conjecture. No offense.”
“None taken,” Velasquez replied in a monotone. “We have no experts on eldritch crones, only data files taken from much older cases and vague foreign reports.”
Exiting the room within Regional HQ, they headed toward the armory to gear up for a field mission.
Chapter Two
Bailey floated through the air, keeping close to the trees, the better to stay inconspicuous. She could have walked or driven her black Toyota Tundra back home, but it would have taken longer. After the upsetting conversation with Loki, all she wanted was to get back to her bed as quickly as possible. Tomorrow she could fly back up and retrieve the truck.
She passed below the tree line. It was halfway through the magic hour, and the land was growing dark where the pines shadowed it from what little remained of the sun. Familiar slopes and peaks rolled under her, and the summer evening wind felt unusually cool as it rushed by.
She landed on the wooded slope right before her backyard started. The lights were on in her house, and standing by the pole barn that dominated the rear portion of the backyard was a familiar tall, broad-shouldered figure.
Fenris. He’d been waiting for her.
A tremor of nervous cold began in her spine and rattled its way out to her extremities, but with a deep breath and the intense mental discipline she’d cultivated during her training, she dispelled it. Then she walked toward the silhouette.
Fenris stepped out into the semi-light, his eyes hidden by the hood of the coat he always wore. “Bailey. I need to speak to you. But first, how did the arbitration go?”
“Fine,” she replied, hoping her voice sounded natural. She was pretty sure it did, but a veteran god might be more sensitive to subtle changes in a person’s manner of speaking than she could conceive. “They argued and postured, mostly to make themselves look cool in front of their friends, then I imposed a decent compromise on them, and they grunted and agreed and went home. We’ll see if they keep to it. If not, I might have to kick their asses around a little until they behave.”
The were-god smiled, an expression not often seen on his grim, craggy face. “Good.”
She stopped next to him, where they were mostly hidden from the house’s windows behind the pole barn. “What is it you wanted to talk to me about? No offense, but I could use some food.”
He answered her with, “I won’t keep you long. Something has been troubling me of late, and I wanted to make you aware of it so you can keep your eyes open and know about it if any problems develop.”
She allowed her eyes to narrow in concern and gave a slow nod. “Okay. What is it?”
He laid a hand on her shoulder, and she forced herself not to react. He’d done that many times, a warm, fatherly gesture that she had always welcomed.
“I am beginning to fear,” he began, “that much, if not all, of what has happened recently has not been a coincidence, but instead has been orchestrated.”
“Oh?” She raised an eyebrow. “By who? And what-all incidents are you referring to? Lots of shit has happened in the last week or so.”
The wolf-father inhaled through his nose and seem
ed to consider his words before he spoke on. “The difficulties you encountered while trying to ascend to the council,” he stated, “along with the seemingly random tribulations at the training grounds in the Other, and the minor squabbles among local packs you’ve been dealing with. And perhaps even worse and more major things from months past.”
It was hard not to squirm. What he was saying reminded her too much of what Loki had told her less than half an hour ago.
“I believe,” Fenris went on, “that many, if not all of these problems were part of a plan being executed by the other council gods. Which ones, I am not certain—quite possibly all of them. Freya is the main suspect.”
She put her hands on her hips, affecting her usual tough, skeptical, but open manner. “What makes you think that? Freya’s been kicked off the council for the time being, anyway, and I haven’t seen or heard from her. Which is weird, considering she promised she’d mentor me on how to take her place.”
Fenris shook his head, his mouth puckering in sour cynicism. “She may have said that she’d help you, but she’s still angry and bitter about being dethroned. It’s possible she’s plotting something. Still, removing her from her position was a step in the right direction. She lacks the direct power she previously had, and she’ll need time to recover from how badly you drained her.”
The girl admitted that what Fenris was saying made sense. Freya’s dislike and distrust of Bailey had long been obvious, and it wasn’t inconceivable that she could have been pulling the strings all along.
Had she secretly been working with Aradia and the Venatori, maybe? That might explain how Aradia popped out of nowhere when we started to kick the Order’s collective ass. There’s no evidence for that, but—
Fenris cut off her ruminations with the next thing he said.
“If only,” he sighed, “there were others like you, others of your caliber, who could replace them all.”
Her jaw nearly dropped, and had it not been for all the self-discipline she’d cultivated, much of it under Fenris’s tutelage, she would not have been able to disguise her shock.
He admitted that he has...ambitions. Designs to take over the council, and that I’m a part of that.
“Yes,” the wolf-god went on, “I would not place your full trust in any of them. I’ll talk no more about divine politics since much of those are personal matters between us that go back far, far before your birth. I will warn you to be vigilant. Keep an eye out for anything suspicious or unusual. Some, if not all, of the deities who sat in judgment before you might be lurking in wait for the opportunity to pounce and neutralize the threat you represent, regardless of whatever ceremony they performed to make you feel at home among them.”
As he talked, Bailey’s mind went into overdrive. Loki had primed it to do so. Things began falling into place, and she didn’t like the shape they were forming.
Everything had happened so perfectly. Every single event that had needed to transpire in order for Bailey to ascend to godhood at Fenris’s side had done so.
And why, she wondered, would he be so generous and charitable as to give another being so many opportunities to grow in power and influence? Why would he, with his intricate relationships and resentments with the other deities, raise a mortal to the level of a goddess?
He had to have a purpose for her. It made no sense otherwise.
And who better than a dumb, desperate girl like me, who would have done anything to gain the power she needed to get out of that godawful marriage tradition Weres still impose on their kids. If he’d asked me to swim across the Pacific with weights tied to my legs, I’d probably have done it if it meant I didn’t have to get married to someone like Dan-fucking-Oberlin.
“Freya,” Fenris went on, “lacks power now, but she is still angry. And Loki is a spiteful liar; that is his nature, and it’s part of his divine mantle. Coyote is little better than Loki. Thor is not as deceitful as the others, but he’s capable of great foolishness. Balder may seem innocent, but he and Freya are very close, so consider that. Thoth may come across as wise and trustworthy, but he is blinded by his adherence to hollow traditions.”
Bailey nodded, continuing to make a show of carefully considering her mentor’s monologue.
But, she thought, if Loki has it out for me, he could have voted against me during the trials, or come up with an elaborate scheme to screw me over. He’s a genius trickster. Instead, he came onto my turf to give me a private warning.
“Okay,” said Bailey, “I guess I personally haven’t seen too much wrongdoing from them, but I’ll keep all that in mind. I’m used to being careful. Let me know if you need me for anything, and take care of yourself, too.”
She prepared to walk into her house, but Fenris stopped her. “Before you go, give me one quick demonstration of your newly acclimated power. A brief, friendly duel of the sort we used to engage in for practice. For old time’s sake.”
The faint hint of warmth was back in his gentle smile, and Bailey was confused. Why was she doubting his motives? He’d never done anything but help her.
“Sure, but let’s make it fast. I’m hungry.”
The tall shaman extended his hands, and they glowed an intense deep purple for a fraction of a second.
It was enough warning for Bailey to conjure an arcane shield of translucent light in front of her with a rippled structure that deflected the powerful bolt that surged from Fenris’s hands.
He caught the bolt and threw it back at her. She created an illusory double of herself, covered it with a second shield, and allowed it to deflect the bolt again while she dashed in on the wolf-god’s flank and swung a sword-like beam of red plasma at him.
Fenris spun, an indigo blade rising from his fist to meet hers in a shower of sparks while his off hand caught the initial bolt and crushed it into a small glowing coal.
“Good,” he stated, stepping back and relaxing. He dismissed the enchantments in each hand, and Bailey did likewise.
“You are growing in power and ability so fast,” he told her. “You completed your education in deflective shields on your own after I walked you through the basic underlying philosophy. Phenomenal. You will soon be the equal of any god, including me.”
Raising a hand, he trudged off into the woods beyond the yard, vanishing into the blackness.
The girl stood there, neither moving nor speaking.
Equal to him.
It was past dark, and the werewitch felt foolish for taking her Camaro for the short drive into town, but she’d left the truck up in the mountains, and fetching it would take too long.
She needed to speak to Gunney now.
She turned onto the side street off the main road, and her car ascended the gentle slope. She found the auto shop mostly dark, save for a single light in the repair bay closest to the office. As usual, Gunney was hanging out and doing extra work for fun, well past formal closing time. The man loved what he did.
Bailey parked in front, stepped out, and strode toward the bay. She had no doubt that he saw and heard her, but her visits were routine enough that he’d probably wait until she was inside to bother saying hello.
She stepped over the threshold of the open door into the shop. “Hi, Gunney,” she called.
The mechanic came around a corner, wiping his face with a grease-smudged rag. “Evening, Bailey. Heard you went off to play referee to some bucks who had a hunting dispute or some shit like that.”
“Yep,” she replied, eyeing him.
Gunney was short and thick-bodied, though not overweight, with a full beard and shaggy hair that he usually hid beneath an old, battered baseball cap. The skin around his eyes crinkled when he smiled. He’d raised Bailey as much as her own father had.
“What’s up?” she asked.
He gestured at the car in front of him. “This thing, that’s what.”
She nodded and looked it over. It was a ‘96 Chevy Caprice in simple white with steel rims. Okay-enough car, but nothing special. Nothing appeared obvio
usly wrong with it, so she guessed it was here for routine maintenance.
“Sometimes,” Gunney murmured, his voice growing softer and more distant as he gazed at the vehicle, “the easy, straightforward stuff can clear the mind. Might seem boring, but I honestly enjoy stuff like this in between the tougher jobs and the more esoteric rides we get. So,” he turned to catch her eyes, his own twinkling, “you being a goddess and all, are you too big in the britches now to help an old man turn a wrench?”
She laughed. “You know damn well that’s a stupid question. It’s physically impossible for me to get too big to work on cars.”
“Oh, right,” he snarked. “I keep forgetting you technically work here since I don’t see you around much.”
She pouted. “Sorry, old man. You know how it goes. Cosmic duties and shit...”
They fell into an easy, comfortable silence as the tasks before them progressed. Moving at a steady but unhurried pace, they performed a basic oil change, then installed new pads on the front brakes, topped off the brake and wiper fluid, and checked the spark plugs, replacing the ones that were getting worn.
Midway into the process, Gunney asked, “So, what’s on your mind? You seem busy these days, so I kinda doubt you’re here out of sheer boredom.”
“A whole bunch of disturbing crap,” she muttered. “But you know, I’m hungry as a dog. Somehow I forgot to eat after I got back from playing mediator for those two packs up the mountain.”
Gunney nodded. “That can be remedied, especially since I could use a dinner break myself.”
He went to the fridge and returned with two subs he’d purchased from the local sandwich shop earlier, leaving them in the fridge to stay nice and cold.
“Kinda figured you’d be around,” he shrugged. “Dunno why. Something in the air changes when I suspect you’ll show up, maybe. Oh, wait.” He went back to the refrigerator again and came back with a couple glass bottles of Mexican Coke. “I know orange is your usual favorite, but we don’t get this stuff often.”
