The Troll Solution (Were Witch Book 8) Read online

  The Troll Solution

  WereWitch™ Book Eight

  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 © LMBPN Publishing

  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

  First US Release, October 2020

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-64971-254-7

  Print ISBN: 978-1-64971-255-4

  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

  Note from Renée

  Books from Renée

  Chapter One

  Bailey stood, leaning against the trunk of a century-old pine, and massaging her temples with the two forefingers of each hand. She had a headache.

  “No,” the tall guy with the soul patch insisted in his loud, sputtery voice, “you guys will just kill every single thing worth hunting in two weeks because your fat asses don’t know how to cull, only practice genocide.”

  The other members of his pack laughed, but the werewolves in the opposing pack bristled and groaned.

  “Bullshit!” the alpha of the opposition retorted. He was a shorter, muscular guy named George. “You dickheads don’t know how to trust anyone, which is why you usually end up fucking things up along the exact lines that you’re complaining about, and then you blame it on everyone else.”

  Bailey raised a hand. “Enough.” She augmented the force and volume of her voice through magic so it echoed through the forest, and everyone fell silent. “Stop calling each other names. That’s not going to get you anywhere. You can’t negotiate worth a damn without a basic respect for the other guys. That goes for both of you.”

  The two packs turned to look at her, cowed by her intervention, but still tense and combative. They waited for her next pronouncement.

  She stepped away from the trunk. “Okay, look. You already went to your damn shamans, and they suggested splitting the hunting grounds up half and half, but you started arguing over which half was better. Then they suggested that each of you would have the whole place for two weeks at a time before handing it over to the other pack, and you can’t agree on that, either. So you’ve come to me to arbitrate.”

  She was Bailey “Nova” Nordin. Werewitch. High Shaman of the packs of North America, and the Pacific Northwest in particular, and most recently, newly-ascended goddess of both Weres and witches.

  “So,” she continued, “are you going to abide by my decision?”

  Rumbles went around before the alphas barked, “Yes!” in virtual unison. It was nice to see them agree on something.

  “Good.” She looked around. “I hereby order you to switch the entire hunting grounds over to each other every single week, rather than every two weeks. That way, neither side will have enough time to deplete the game if you’re worried about that, and you’ll all get in the habit of knowing that the other guys will be using the woods again soon. Part of the deal is that you have to leave things in a decent state for the other pack. Do what I say and don’t bitch about it. Try it out for a month or two, and you might be surprised at how good a job both of your packs end up doing.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence and some faint grumblings, but quickly enough, heads began to nod, men nudged each other, and the alphas agreed. They made a show of casting suspicious glares at their rivals. Of course. It was necessary to save face and look tough in front of their boys, but they seemed reasonably satisfied with her judgment.

  “Okay,” said the alpha with the soul patch, “fine, we can do that. As long as everyone doesn’t over-hunt, the grounds should stay decent most of the time.”

  “Yeah,” George agreed, “it should work, as long as everyone takes responsibility for their own actions.”

  Bailey nodded. “Right. Thanks for not arguing with me. Try not to fight among yourselves, either. There was a time when all of you guys would have died for each other against the Venatori, and that time was, what, two months ago? No point in being at each other’s throats over something like this.”

  They agreed, nodding at her and filing off in their separate directions.

  With the crowd of her people beginning to disperse in a state of what she hoped was lasting peace and contentment, Bailey wandered off separately from the rest of them. By herself, she went uphill. The forest thinned as she neared the mountain’s summit, and when she found a reasonably flat place with a view of the landscape, she sat and rested.

  An hour passed. Late afternoon turned to early evening; dark was a ways off yet, but it would be twilight by the time she returned to Greenhearth. If she used conventional means of travel, anyway.

  She had no pressing responsibilities, so she allowed the solitude of nature to recharge her spirit. In a way, arbitrating bullshit local disputes was more stressful and tiring than battling hostile gods.

  As she was preparing to get up and descend back into the Hearth Valley to have a nice supper with Roland and her brothers, her ears, more sensitive than a wolf’s, picked up the sounds of someone coming up the slope toward her.

  Whoever they were, they were moving softly, making no excess noise, yet they weren’t trying to hide their approach. It was the signature of someone who knew where he was going and was not worried about what he might find there.

  She stood, turned, and waited. The figure that appeared in the shadows of the trees was someone she’d never seen before, an average-height white man with short black hair and a black beard, wearing brown-rimmed spectacles and a green jumpsuit.

  “Hello,” she said as he came closer and noticed her. “Can I help you? Or you just on a hike?”

  The man stopped and smiled. “Good evening, Bailey. Yes, I’ve come to speak to you, but you probably suspected that, didn’t you?”

  The girl blinked. Hearing him speak and observing his mannerisms, she could have sworn she knew him, yet his face was not familiar.

  “Okay,” she replied. “Who are you, and what do you want to talk about?”

  He glanced around, and she heard the sounds of someone else moving a bit farther down the mountain from them. Someone vacationing or getting exercise, or perhaps some of the Weres from the earlier crowd.

  The man inclined his head toward the other side of the peak. “I’d like a moment of your time away from potentially prying eyes and ears. I’m sure you can understand that.”

  She gave a slow nod. “Yes.” She started in the direction he’d indicated, cresting the peak and working her way down the other side toward a darker and less-used vale between four craggy hills.

  The man followed her. She was suspicious b
ut also confident in her powers, not to mention her prowess in using them. She’d survived many prior assassination attempts, and for the moment, she was not aware of any enemies who’d want to kill her.

  They descended and found a shadowed nook beneath a cliff, surrounded by a dense growth of tall pines.

  “Now, then,” the man said softly, “we can dispense with the charade.”

  Bailey tensed as he waved his hand, but all that happened was a change in his appearance, as though someone had swapped out a camera lens and adjusted the focus.

  The individual before her was the same height and slender build, but he was now dressed in an old dark coat, clean-shaven, and his green eyes were no longer covered by glasses. His black hair was shoulder-length, and a sly smirk played about his lips.

  “Loki!” She crossed her arms over her chest. “What brings you out to see me? It’s been a little while, hasn’t it?”

  His smile faded. “Longer than you think,” he stated. “But yes.” He glanced around and snapped his fingers, and a shimmering dome of transparent yellowish-green light surrounded them. Bailey assumed it was an anti-sound barrier.

  Loki’s eyes focused on her. “I’ll cut right to the chase, dear girl. Fenris has been lying to you. In fact, he’s been lying to all of us.”

  She stared blankly at him. It took five or six seconds before the magnitude of the statement struck her.

  “What? How so?” The muscles along her jaw tightened. “And why the hell should I believe you? You’re supposed to be the crafty-ass trickster who does crazy shit for fun. When you have a reputation like that, I’m gonna be skeptical of any bombshells you drop.”

  Loki sighed. “Yes, of course. I expected that, which is why I have plenty of evidence that you ought to consider. You might want to sit down.”

  “I’ll stand,” she insisted.

  “So be it.” He ran his thin fingers through his hair, then began his spiel.

  “Since my son took you under his proverbial wing—or paw, whatever—look at everything that has happened. And think. Think logically about how likely some of it was to happen without outside interference. Without certain parties helping things to unfold in just such a way...”

  The girl had known people who were suspicious and paranoid, people who found ways to connect any random spread of dots into a pattern they insisted was “logical.” Still, she waited and allowed the god to speak.

  “First,” the trickster elaborated, “he appeared to you at the exact moment you were seeking a mentor to teach you the ways of shamanhood and how to be a proper werewitch. Also, he was the only one who contacted you, despite there being several other unattached shamans in the region. Curious, isn’t it? Especially since he also appeared to you under false pretenses at first. I know all about this ‘Marcus’ persona of his, and so do you, yet you never pressed him on why he couldn’t have revealed himself openly from the first.”

  She had to admit, that had always struck her as odd. But...

  “He didn’t want to attract attention,” she retorted. “From the other gods, or the Venatori, or anyone like that.”

  “Oh, so he says,” Loki quipped. “I suppose that would also explain why he was mysteriously unable to resolve disputes you found yourself engaged in, things of minor difficulty for him as the god of your people. Another shaman wanted you dead, and he stood back and watched? He could have intervened at any time to set things right. He is allowed that much under the covenant.”

  The girl considered. Her brain tried to come up with an explanation, something about letting her fight her own battles to gain experience, but before she could answer the charge, the trickster-god went on.

  “Every step of your training, he has gone out of his way to help you and empower you. To raise you up as high as possible, even if it means putting you in severe danger or allowing bad things to happen that he could have prevented.”

  “Well,” she responded, “isn’t a good teacher supposed to challenge his students?”

  Loki snorted. “This isn’t what you think it is. It’s not like he’s given you a hard test and helped you study for it. It’s more like he created a situation where it looks like the principal sexually harassed you or whatnot. Then he backed you up in suing the school—with his own lawyers specially chosen for the job in advance—so he could then place you on the school board and instruct you to elect a new principal he likes better. Something like that.”

  Tremors of fury went through Bailey’s body. “What the fucking hell? Are you saying he’s been using me? Were you there? Did you see everything we went through together? All the help he’s given me? All the,” a lump formed in her throat, “affection he’s shown?”

  Loki looked aside, into the darkness beneath the trees. When he turned back to the girl, he changed his approach.

  “He means to start Ragnarӧk. You know what that is, don’t you?”

  “The end of the world, basically,” she answered him. “What makes you say that? He’s been cautious the whole time he’s taught me. We did more together to stop the world from ending than anything. Where’s your evidence?”

  The trickster-god rubbed one eye with his left index finger. “He told me. He admitted to it.”

  The girl hadn’t expected to hear that, but it wasn’t as though Loki had produced a cell phone video to prove it.

  “I don’t know,” Loki admitted, “exactly how he plans to go about it, or when he aims to bring it about, but it must be soon. You see, in order for Ragnarӧk to begin, a god must die. Specifically, a god of wolves must be sacrificed, and among our pantheon, there is only one individual who fits that bill—him. But...”

  Bailey’s gut clenched as she watched and listened. Loki’s demeanor had grown more insinuating. For all that she balked at his words, it was impossible not to listen to them.

  “...what if another deity were to rise to fill that role? What if he found a candidate whose trust he could earn, someone he could mold into a replacement to fulfill the terms of the prophecy while sparing himself?”

  She felt sick, mostly because Loki would dare say such a thing.

  But part of it was the possibility that if he was right, and telling the truth—unlikely though it was—the awfulness of it would all but destroy her. She refused to think about it too hard.

  Loki was relentless, though.

  “Look,” he offered. He raised a hand and the light changed, forming an image somewhat like a hologram or a disembodied video screen—hazy at first, but growing more distinct. “Here I have visions of times I’ve found him acting according to his own rather odd purposes. I’m a master of illusion and trickery and so forth, so trailing anyone, even him, and spying on him without his knowledge is child’s play for me. Look!”

  The werewitch stared at the images in a near-trance.

  Here was Fenris perched on a hilltop, watching her and Roland drive out of Greenhearth, and leaping through mountains to follow her. It was difficult to be certain, but she was pretty sure it was from before she’d met him in person, meaning that he’d been watching her before he’d introduced himself as Marcus.

  Then the tall hooded man appeared again, this time going into an isolated cabin near a tall snowcapped peak in an area she didn’t recognize; it was somewhere east of the Cascades, she suspected. There was an old man in the house. From a distance, it was hard to tell what happened, but she saw dark shapes move and heard brief screams and snarls and the thrashing and things being knocked over. Violence.

  The next scene disturbed her far more than the previous two had. It showed Fenris standing next to Nick, the shaman from downstate who’d challenged her, as both of them looked over a scene of death and devastation, part of the Venatori’s early rampage against the Were packs of Washington. As far as she’d known, Fenris and Nick had had nothing to do with one another.

  Until Fenris had popped into the confrontation between him and Bailey and summarily executed the young shaman with a quick neck-snap before he could tell his side
of the story.

  There were scenes of Fenris watching her house at night, and of him observing her and Roland at times when she thought he’d been off on some important errand. Scenes of him sitting in strange places she’d never been to or seen, probably in the alternate arcane dimension known as the Other. These meant little to her, but there was something subtly wrong about them.

  The final image Loki showed her was perhaps the most cryptic, yet it bothered her. It showed the interior of a room, dark but decorated with brightly-colored accouterments, with the shadows of a flickering fire being cast on the walls and door. Fenris walked into the frame of the picture, glancing back over his shoulder before opening the door and stepping outside.

  The look on his face in that brief instant was unlike anything she’d seen from him—a cold, harsh, crazed look, the expression of a man who’s done something he knows to be outrageous and is trying not to exult in it.

  Loki snapped his fingers, and the images vanished.

  Bailey looked up, and her eyes flashed. “How do I know that stuff is real? Since you’re a master of illusions, you could have concocted all that shit out of thin air. There’s no way to prove they were snapshots of what actually happened.”

  But it was impossible for her mind not to begin weaving the disparate threads into a pattern. Considering that Loki might be correct.

  “I suppose not.” He shrugged, his mouth in a flippant and sardonic twist. “But spend some time thinking it over. Go back and review all that’s happened. See if everything adds up. I bet you’ll find a handful of things that just...don’t.”