Too Much Magic (WereWitch Book 3) Read online

  Too Much Magic

  WereWitch™ Book Three

  Renée Jaggér

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2020 Renée Jaggér

  Cover by Cover by Fantasy Book Design

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  Version 1.01, September 2020

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-64971-149-6

  Print ISBN: 978-1-64202-807-2

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Note from Renée

  Books from Renée

  Chapter One

  “I was a ticking time bomb all these years,” the girl said, her eyes growing distant, the cool, damp breeze blowing a lock of her brown hair across her face. “On some level, everyone knew about it—even me, and even my brothers. In general, the way you just know certain things about the world.”

  Two men were with her, and they stood on the damp greensward, watching her and listening to her words. One was about the same age, twenty-something, and the other was at least a score of years her senior, almost as old as her father.

  The young woman sighed, slowly shaking her head as she stared into the shadows between the pines. “But who knew it would be magic? My own damn magic, for that matter. The fistfights and arguments I used to get into all the time were nothing compared to this. I guess I’m finally starting to appreciate what the hell people mean when they talk about self-control and how important it is.”

  The younger man, blond and slender, shrugged. “Better late than never.”

  He still wore some bandages and had residual scars on his face. Though he had healed from his recent severe beating with almost unnatural speed and efficiency, he still was not a hundred percent recovered. His handsomeness was obvious, despite having been partially ravaged.

  The other man just nodded with an unhurried, deliberate motion, and the girl went on.

  “Now,” she concluded, the muscles along the rim of her jaw tightening, “my only option is to learn to use my powers. Get the training and discipline so I don’t level half the town, kill someone when I didn’t need to, shit like that. I need to reach the point where I only blow up at the right people, and then only when I have no other option.”

  The bigger, older man took a step forward. He had a hood pulled over his craggy head, and the bulky coat hanging from his broad shoulders hid most of his tall frame from sight.

  “Yes,” he stated. “Just having that first realization that you must learn is an important step. Perhaps the most important. But the learning…that’s the hard part, Bailey.”

  She grunted. “Yeah, yeah I know. Or I guess I will know. Let’s get started, then. I’ve probably wasted enough time yakking.”

  The younger guy snorted and tried to cover it up, regaining his composure and forcing his face back into a calm, semi-dignified smug smile. “Well, at least you have self-awareness. That’s an encouraging sign.”

  She glared at him, although she was trying not to smile. “Shut up, Roland. Smarmy Seattle prick with your big words.” She playfully punched him on the arm.

  “Ow,” he complained and rubbed his bicep in mock pain.

  The older man ignored this little exchange. “You’re right. And both of you could benefit from my instruction, I think. Let us begin.”

  The trio had decamped to a fallow field overgrown with tall green grass that lay on a mostly derelict tract of farmland owned by Bailey’s family. The farmhouse still stood. She and her brothers came by to clean it up occasionally, but otherwise, it was abandoned.

  The property was only accessible by a single dirt road through the forested hills, which even some people who lived in the town of Greenhearth didn’t know about and had never driven down. The Hearth Valley kept its secrets after all these years.

  No one would bother them today.

  They began with movement and breathing exercises, which almost reminded Bailey of Tai Chi, while the older shaman, a man known as Marcus, expounded on his theories and philosophy about the arcane.

  “Magic,” he said in his deep, gravelly voice, “is no different from any other thing in the universe. It is not separate from us, or from nature. It is woven into the fabric of reality and into our beings. You must always remember that if you are to master it.”

  He showed her ways of subtly channeling force, of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling the flow of magic in the earth and air around them. By now, she’d learned to recognize the odd tingling when someone was casting a spell, and all around her, it seemed, was the essence of the world’s power.

  Roland followed along, looking skeptical but keeping his mouth shut. His view of magic was more scientific, Bailey felt. She wondered if that was why she’d been having trouble thus far.

  Marcus’ way felt more intuitive to her. Like her, he was a lycanthrope, a different sub-species of the supernatural. She grasped that the magic of werewolves was different from that of wizards and witches, even if it drew upon the same sources.

  Her teacher paused. “Now, let us try a few basic acts of will, elemental manipulation and ways of moving that exceed what would normally be possible.”

  Over the course of the next hour, he showed them how to leap fifty or sixty feet into the air, drawing upon the energies of the earth to launch himself, then riding wind currents and pushing away gravity to soar, almost float, slowly across the breadth of the field. He landed gently on the far side.

  Bailey and Roland both tried to emulate him, but neither quite succeeded.

  Roland went first. He rose perhaps thirty feet, then floated down about halfway across the field.

  “Didn’t want to overdo it,” he explained, grinning sheepishly. “We’ll work on greater distances next, I suppose.”

  Then it was Bailey’s turn. She took a deep breath and jumped straight up into the sky.

  “Whoa!” Roland exclaimed as she shot up at least a hundred feet, wind whipping her brown hair around.

  Then she sailed far past the edge of the field, hurtling toward the wooded slopes of the surrounding hills. The exhilaration of what she’d done turned to fear, and she fell.

  Marcus and Roland were already running toward her point of impact.

  The wizard shouted, “I’ll catch her! I should at least be able to guide her into a tree or something.”

  “No!” Marcus snapped. “She must do this on her own.”

  Bailey’s head reeled, and her limbs flailed in the air as the sky’s currents of wind buffeted them. Her stomach clenched, sending waves of nausea and vertigo through her as the trees rose t
o meet her. She’d have to either catch one or find a way to slow down, or she’d splatter herself on the hill.

  “Bailey!” Marcus called up. “Feel the earth’s pull and resist it. Push it back. Feel the cushion of air beneath you. You dictate the speed of your descent.”

  It sounded too simplistic, too obvious to work, but Bailey tried her best, and it did work. Thrusting down with her hands, she somehow perceived gravity’s power weakening, and it was as though she slipped down through a mass of cotton. She no longer fell but drifted to the earth.

  Still, she landed hard enough that her legs rattled with pain, and she toppled over in the grass and mud.

  Roland was beside her at once. “Are you okay? Goddamn, you scared us for a second there.”

  She took his arm and rose to her feet. “Uh, mostly, I think. Yeah. I’m kind of dizzy.”

  They stood there while she regained her bearings. Marcus slowly walked up.

  “Both of you,” he began, “have great potential, but you have the opposite problem in terms of controlling it.”

  He hardly needed to elaborate on what that meant, since they both knew. Roland was too cautious, and Bailey too reckless.

  They moved on to basic elemental combat. Roland already had significant experience in it, but he went through the motions anyway, conjuring an impressive green-and-yellow fireball and hurling it at Marcus, who blocked it with a shield of combined air and water that dissipated the flames into steam.

  “Now,” the shaman intoned, “Bailey. Throw a bolt of lightning at me.”

  Her skin crawled. “I tried that before, and it never worked until it needed to. When it did, it was like I couldn’t stop.” She’d almost killed half the Weres who’d attacked them on the edge of town a week ago.

  Marcus nodded. “Do what you can. Imagine that—no, don’t imagine. Know that I am threatening you and Roland. If you cannot summon a lightning bolt, I will, and I’ll throw it at you.”

  Roland squinted. The girl knew his moods well enough by now to guess that he was concerned about the wisdom of Marcus’s methods, even if he understood the ideas behind them.

  Forty feet across the grass from them, the older man spread his hands, and deep violet sparks of electricity leapt from his palms. “Do it, Bailey. You have thirty seconds before I strike.”

  Something in his voice suggested that he wasn’t kidding.

  She raised her hands, remembering what both the shaman and the wizard had told her and thinking back to the terrible brawl. She pretended that Marcus had been the one responsible for siccing the pack of thugs on them and that he would do even worse now.

  The bluish-purple glow around his hands grew in strength, and the air buzzed with electricity.

  Bailey felt it—the electromagnetism and the way it was tied to the currents of air and deposits of metal around her. She thought of all the threats she and Roland had faced since they’d met, and everything they had been through.

  And it happened.

  “No!” she cried, and a huge blazing torrent of lightning, glowing a strange crimson color, arced from her hands toward Marcus.

  He somehow caught the blast, tangling it with electrical currents of his own, and jagged bolts of red and violet jumped through the air in all directions, striking earth and trees and kicking up sparks and smoke where they landed.

  “Enough,” Marcus growled.

  The power surged through Bailey, exciting and terrifying at the same time. She didn’t want to stop.

  Roland looked at her. “Cut it off,” he shouted. “You did it. We’re done now, okay?”

  She didn’t know how to stop.

  “Enough!” Marcus bellowed again, and with a strenuous motion, he leaned into the blazing stream, flexing his powerful hands and arms.

  The bolt winked out, but an explosion of sparks erupted just in front of Bailey’s hands. Her muscles seized painfully up and she fell back as if pushed, legs kicking out as she landed on her ass.

  Roland blew out his breath. “Okay, that was close.”

  Again, he helped the girl up, and again she needed a moment to recover, her mind turning over what had happened as the shaman sauntered up to them.

  Marcus stopped and rubbed his broad, stubbled jaw. “You are like a broken faucet,” he observed—not being malicious or overly critical, rather, stating the facts as he saw them. “Behind you lies a tremendous reservoir of power, but it flows, even spills out, uncontrolled, random, and dangerous, with no way of adjusting the intensity.”

  That was exactly what Bailey had been afraid of hearing, but she supposed it was better for her new teacher to give her the straight, hard facts. Sugarcoating the truth would only make it less clear. She put her hands on her hips and held the older man’s gaze, waiting for his next advice.

  He continued, “You do not know how to shut the tap off while power is shooting out. And it’s not a steady flow, either, more like massive, erratic spurts. That is dangerous. To others, yes, but also to yourself.”

  His eyes widened slightly. “Bailey, understand that if I’m brutally honest with you, it’s only because I know of no other way to be honest. You must grasp what’s at stake. For now, I can help ensure that you have time to improve, but if you can’t get your powers under willful control, they might kill you.”

  She tried not to show any reaction that might make her look weak, hurt, indignant, frustrated, or despondent. She mostly succeeded by staring ahead and nodding gravely.

  And yet, somehow, Bailey felt like a weight was bearing upon her head from above. Bowing it down. Making her shoulders slump. Marcus probably noticed.

  If he did, though, he gave no indication. The older Were extended a hand, gesturing for them to pile into Bailey’s truck and return to the comfort of the Nordin family’s house. There was no need to speak. It had been a long day for all three of them.

  Perhaps because they were tired, even the two Weres, with their keen senses, did not see the tiny drone hidden between the branches of a distant tree on a slope above them, its camera watching their every move.

  Nor did they perceive the two men watching them remotely from two ridges deeper into the mountains, who now stood up and headed for their car.

  Bailey and Roland had dropped Marcus off in the woods on the edge of town. He hadn’t said where he was staying, and had insisted on walking back. Weird though it was, they hadn’t protested. Bailey suspected that the man was sleeping in the forest.

  Soon they were back at the Nordin house, an aging but reasonably well-maintained two-story farmhouse near the back corner of the town’s northwesternmost neighborhood. Bailey parked her black Toyota Tundra out front, and Jacob, the eldest of her three younger brothers, opened the door to greet them almost as soon as they stepped out of the vehicle.

  “Hi,” he called. “Good timing. Dinner’s in half an hour, so you won’t have to wait long, but we got time to talk also.”

  Bailey smiled. “Nice.”

  Deep down, though, she felt cold and alone right now, and a million thoughts fought for space inside her head. She knew Marcus was right, but his words stung her. She had no idea yet how she could act on them and discipline her powers.

  I’m a danger to everyone around me, she thought, trying not to let that notion overwhelm her as she and Roland climbed the porch and entered the house. Beside her, the wizard was quiet.

  I could end up accidentally suicide-bombing myself, my brothers, Roland, and maybe the whole town. It’s something to do with the rush of using magic. I need to be able to clamp down on that, not just give in to it.

  Her other two brothers appeared from the living room. Kurt, the youngest, looked similar to Jacob, though slimmer and more youthful-faced, although both were tall and well-built. Russell, the middle brother, was even taller, and dark and glowering. She was glad her dad had left again. He would have been too much to face right now.

  “So,” Kurt asked, smirking, “how did things go with the big creepy hairy guy?”

  Bailey na
rrowed her eyes. “He’s not creepy, he’s wise. And he taught us both a lot. I think with him around, I’m finally going to get hold of things.”

  Kurt shrugged.

  “Well,” said Jacob, “he didn’t seem like a bad guy, even if he is eccentric. Just be careful, though, especially if magic is involved.”

  They all sat down then, and the conversation turned to mundane things—the weather, gossip at Gunney’s auto shop, and so forth.

  After about five minutes, Bailey perked up, blinking and turning her head toward the front door. She caught sight of Jacob, who was doing the exact same thing. They’d heard it simultaneously.

  Footsteps mounting the porch. A couple of seconds later, three heavy knocks sounded on the door.

  Jacob squinted. “Who the hell? Better not be Freyja again, that’s all I’ll say.”

  “Nah,” Kurt quipped, “she’s not the knocking type.”

  Bailey and Roland were already on their feet. Though not exactly frightened, there was an undercurrent of unease that flowed freely amongst them. If someone were approaching the house, they should have heard it sooner than now.

  Bailey raised a hand to stay her brothers. “Just let us look. We’ll be fine.”

  She and the wizard stood before the door and looked through the peephole. Standing on the porch were two men in identical dark suits and even darker glasses.

  Roland’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, hell. Well, I suppose it was only a matter of time. The men in black, or whatever you want to call them. They probably want to offer us a stern warning or something.”

  Frowning, Bailey opened the door. “Can I help you?” she asked, politely but hard-edged.