Too Much Magic (WereWitch Book 3) Page 10

  Now she did look up at him with a puzzled squint. “The hell?”

  “People who are in their seventies,” he explained. “Like how an ‘octogenarian’ is a person in their eighties.”

  “Oh.” She released him and sat back, trying not to laugh. “’Octo’ means eight. Right, I get it now. You could have just said ‘until we’re old,’ though. Would’ve been less work.”

  He shrugged. “I have a reputation to maintain.”

  They got to their feet, having recovered some of their energy, and climbed the slope. They felt that the elevated hillock above the lake was the best place to wait for Marcus. They linked arms as they walked up the narrow path.

  Someone was moving around above them.

  “Huh,” Bailey commented. “Marcus didn’t take long, did he? Then again, I can’t tell how much time passes in here. Maybe he went to Florida for a few months.”

  They crested the top of the ridge.

  “Hey!” a voice burst out, shrill with anger. “Get your filthy hands off him, you stupid slut!”

  Bailey and Roland stared open-mouthed at the three people they were least eager to see. They were certainly not anyone they had expected to encounter in the Other.

  Roland glared. “Hi, Shannon. You were never much of a navigator, but it appears you’re lost. I suggest you go back the way you came and figure out the rest once you’re back in Oregon.”

  “Shut up, Roland,” she snapped, leering at him with her uncovered eye. As usual, a fuchsia forelock obscured the other.

  “Yeah!” Callie added helpfully.

  No one spoke, but Bailey subtly shifted the position of her feet, anticipating that at any moment, magic—or fists—would be doing the talking.

  Chapter Nine

  Shannon held up a hand, palm outwards. “Okay, wait,” she said, her words rushed.

  Bailey smirked and exchanged glances with Roland.

  It wasn’t lost on the witch, and a tremor of fury went through her. “No, goddammit, don’t you dare act all cocky suddenly! We are not afraid of you if that’s what you thought. We just thought maybe you were capable of listening to us for ten seconds instead of acting like a couple of dumb animals.”

  Bailey gritted her teeth. “I like dumb animals.”

  Roland nudged her. “Yes, Shannon, and Aida, and Callie. We can talk if you’re somehow willing to be reasonable, finally. Like, you’ll be negotiating your return to Seattle and the beginning of a new era in which you leave us the hell alone.”

  “Hey!” Callie bellowed. “Shut up! She wasn’t finished speaking.”

  Snorting, Bailey turned to Roland. “Okay, this isn’t working. Let’s just waste them.”

  “No!” Shannon insisted.

  Aida pouted. “We only wanted to warn you of something…because we care.”

  Roland crossed his arms. “Another warning. Fine. What is it?”

  Swallowing and flexing her purple-clawed hands, Shannon told them, “The Venatori are after you. Both of you, I think. You remember who they are, right? You haven’t gone native in her little hick town, have you? Anyway, they actually approached my car and told us to go home. That’s how crazy they are.”

  Bailey, too, crossed her arms. “If you’re still driving the same thing as last time, I’d say you’re the crazy one.”

  “We’re not!” Shannon snapped. “And didn’t you hear what I said?”

  “Yes,” replied Roland. “We already knew. A little bird told us, et cetera. But thanks, I guess.”

  Shannon took a step forward. “I think you owe us a little more gratitude than that, especially since I think you’re lying about this ‘little bird.’ Without us, you’d have no idea. You’d walk straight into—”

  Aida suddenly leaped forward into the lull created by Shannon’s distracting speech and launched a fireball at Bailey.

  Or at least, she tried. A huge flare of light appeared, and an initial swell of flame, only for it to fizzle into little more than a few sparks and a puff of smoke before it had crossed half the distance between the two women.

  Bailey nevertheless fell into a battle stance and bared her teeth. “What the hell? You attacked me after you asked for a truce to talk things over! Fuck you!”

  All three witches looked crestfallen as Roland yelled at them. “That’s pretty goddamn low. And even if you three remember how to get here, it’s clearly been a long time since you’ve tried to use magic here, hasn’t it? Bit shorter for us.”

  Then, while their would-be attackers panicked, it was Bailey and Roland who pressed the attack.

  The wizard summoned a cloud of acid rain—nothing massive, just enough to get their attention—while Bailey moved in, startling them into thinking she was going to launch a physical assault, only for her to summon clumps of mud from the earth and pelt them about the legs and midsection.

  Screaming in unison, the witches were about to simply cut and run. Then Shannon grabbed the arms of her accomplices and some kind of arcane communion seemed to pass between them. They stood their ground, refocusing while Shannon used a weak magic shield to block Roland’s shower of acid.

  Crap, Bailey thought. Just when I thought we’d finally get to curb-stomp these hos once and for all and be done with it.

  She decided she would go for a physical attack after all.

  A faint light was playing about the eyes and heads of the trio; they must have been linking their powers. Perhaps that was something female witches knew how to do when acting as a coven that Roland had never even tried with anyone until he’d met Bailey.

  The werewitch moved toward Aida—she was the one who’d just tried to vaporize her, after all—intending to kick her down the hill, hoping it would break up whatever combined spell they were casting. She lunged, ignoring how tired she was, and her foot lashed out with the weight of her body behind it.

  It struck something solid yet invisible in midair.

  “Fuck!” she exclaimed, the impact rattling the bones of her leg and throwing her off-balance. She rolled back toward the wizard to keep from tumbling down the hill.

  Roland, for his part, was trying to condense his acid cloud into a solid opaque vapor, trapping the witches and blocking their sight, but they kept dispersing it in places. That led to a bizarre struggle as green mist coalesced, then dissipated, becoming lost amidst the benign white mist of the Other.

  Bailey, not knowing what else to do, hurled a lightning bolt at the cluster of sorceresses. It pierced their shield, but moved slowly, giving Shannon time to seize it.

  “Oh, that was cute,” she jeered. “And you’re still trying to copy me. Lightning is my thing.”

  Shannon hurled it back.

  The bolt, now glowing fuchsia instead of red, struck Bailey’s outspread hands, and she barely managed to redirect it into the woods off to the side, where it destroyed a black tree and scattered sparks, smoke, and flame across the bog. The electricity seemed weaker than it had during their battle with the witches in Seattle, but it was strong enough to cause collateral damage.

  Here, though, there were no other people around to get hurt and no bystanders who might see. All bets were off.

  Bailey let out a ragged sigh. “Nothing’s ever easy.” She reared back to strike again.

  Marcus spread his hands, a gesture that tended to put people at ease, even as he kept his face serious but unthreatening. To his left, the sun had just sunk behind the row of pines upon the hill.

  “You see,” he went on, “although my goal was for her to be an asset to us—all of us—I worry that she might be a loose cannon, after all. A potential danger to the entire Were community in the Pacific Northwest.”

  His audience consisted of about fourteen Weres, presided over by a broad-shouldered and grizzle-headed old man. This was the Juniper Pack, longtime inhabitants of an obscure mountain hollow a ways south of the Hearth Valley.

  Marcus had recently learned this particular pack had a shaman. The man didn’t advertise his services or abilities. If he
had, he’d probably already be dead by now. But as it was, it was better for him to be alive.

  The old shaman looked at Marcus. “You’ve interrupted us at an important time,” he pointed out in a wheezy voice that belied his powerful appearance. “So we will do you the courtesy of assuming you’ve come to us with something even more important. Tell us more about the girl’s abilities. If she’s a threat, we should know what we face.”

  Marcus nodded.

  The Junipers, or at least their pack’s warrior-types, had been in the midst of a ceremony whereby the old shaman selected one to become his apprentice and successor. Their alpha needed guidance, and the old man named Estus was past retirement age for the position.

  In a way, it was fortuitous. They’d gathered in this scrubby little high-altitude grove to discuss a matter that was vital to their pack’s future. Thus, they were already mentally receptive to any information about threats to that future.

  “Yes,” intoned Marcus, “you deserve to hear the whole story. She’s a werewitch, as you might have guessed—not only a rare case of a female demonstrating the potential to be a shaman, but her magical abilities are on par with those of a human sorcerer. She does not yet have full command of her powers, but she is reckless and quick to anger. Given to tantrums and wild expulsions of power, exactly the sort of thing we don’t want to happen in a heated moment. I’ve done all I can to teach and restrain her.”

  On he spoke in this vein, and the Junipers all listened with growing concern. He had them now. They would do as he suggested.

  The idea, of course, was to convince them—without being too obvious about it—that Bailey was hazardous enough to warrant a full-fledged attack. A preemptive strike, as it were. Such things were often done in Were society, especially in the backwoods areas that still held to the savage old ways.

  Estus rubbed his scruffy silver beard. “I see. Tell us, though, Marcus…do you think she’s coming our way? The Hearth Valley is over the mountains a ways, although it’s true that a rogue shaman or witch can disrupt things a long ways beyond their hometown.”

  Marcus pretended to be taken aback by the question. “I know not, to be sure. But she has spoken of a desire to go south. To get away from Greenhearth, she said, and perhaps find a new home in one of the southern hollows, where few people know her, and opportunities are ripe.”

  Half the young bucks behind the old shaman bristled at this. Marcus had stopped just barely short of telling them that Bailey intended to challenge them or their pack alpha, and that she regarded their pack as a potential conquest.

  Estus furrowed his thick brow, scowling toward the darkening sky. “If that is true, then yes, we could have a great disturbance on our hands. The thing to do, I think, is to confront her as soon as possible. Not with violence, but with words—a warning that our pack will not have its solidarity broken up by some interloper who lives along a highway to Portland.”

  The other Weres laughed at the remark. Their settlement was so remote as to make Greenhearth look like a cosmopolitan city by comparison. It was a point of pride for some lycanthropes not to engage with the modern world any more than necessary.

  “That,” said Marcus, “is probably the best thing we can do.”

  The other shaman nodded. “Where is she now, then? We can go to the Hearth Valley if we have to, but it’s not our territory. The local Weres might think we’ve come to challenge them, and if we tell them the truth—that we’re only there for Bailey—some might turn out to be friends of hers and warn her about us in advance. It might be better to confront her when she’s on neutral ground.”

  Marcus waited for the old man to stop speaking. “I understand,” he replied. “But you’re in luck. My most recent attempt to train her took us both into the Other.”

  A few of the younger Juniper bucks looked confused at that, but Estus only shrugged his shoulders and scowled in a solemn way.

  “The Other,” the Juniper shaman muttered. “It has been a long time since I’ve been there, but I know the place, nonetheless. Can you tell me where she is now?”

  They were even more eager to act than he’d hoped.

  “Yes, my friends,” he announced. “Let me show you the way. Of course, I don’t want her harmed, but realistically, I have to warn you that she tends to react very aggressively to people. Be careful—of her, and of the realm beyond.”

  Marcus wondered if Bailey would survive the encounter. He would be watching closely.

  The Junipers waited, antsy and agitated, while Marcus recited the ritualistic chant to open the doorway to the Other. It was not only a matter of creating the portal between worlds, but of ensuring it would take them to the proper location. Ideally, not right on top of where Bailey and Roland currently were, but close enough for the Junipers to find them without much delay.

  Marcus swept his hands before him and the gateway appeared, casting the scrawny trees around it in a haze of deep-purple light.

  Estus grunted. “Thank you. Now, I think it best if you don’t come yourself. It would only confuse her and make her feel betrayed to see you with us. No, let us go by ourselves, and we can claim you had nothing to do with it. Nothing whatsoever.”

  The man probably thought the ominous implications—the veiled threats—in his words were subtle. Marcus found them quite obvious.

  “Of course,” he agreed.

  Estus, taking up his wooden walking staff, shuffled forward and vanished into the portal. Ten of the Juniper bucks followed. The other four had agreed to wait behind in case anything went wrong, or to deliver word to the rest of the pack if needed.

  One of the ones who lingered caught Marcus’s attention.

  “Hey,” he asked, “what happens if she doesn’t listen?”

  The shaman shook his head. “Who knows?” he murmured. “Who knows?”

  Light flashed and burst, forming a cornucopia of colors as arcane force assumed different and varied forms that clashed and exploded against each other. Pure magic struggled against manipulated elements, and the elements fought back, although they changed sides with the ebb and flow of the battle.

  Bailey concentrated. Her and Roland’s fight against Shannon, Aida, and Callie had raged across the breadth of the misty hillock and started to work its way down one of the wooded slopes toward the dense forest to the side of the black lake. A constant barrage of lightning, fire, gravity, and kinetic energy had obliterated half the trees, clearing a path as their struggle worked its way downward.

  “Shit!” Roland exclaimed as a trident-like triple arc of blazing lightning bore toward him. He responded by conjuring a wedge-shaped mass of magnetized force that sent one of the three prongs spiraling into the sky and the other two streaking across the ground, raising sparks from the peaty bog pools and burning or blasting trees and thorns where they struck.

  The trio of witches had achieved some kind of mind-meld that was giving them an easier time than they would have had otherwise. In addition to that, there were three of them, compared to two of Bailey and Roland.

  “What are they doing?” Bailey called to the wizard, summoning jets of dark water from the boggy ground to intercept a rippling wave of fire. The elements met halfway and dissolved in a cloud of steam.

  “Coven stuff,” he replied. “I’ll explain it later. We’re fighting one witch with the power of three, not separate individuals.”

  That was what Bailey had been afraid of.

  Shannon’s voice screeched, “Shut up, Roland! She won’t understand anyway!”

  Ignoring her commentary, Bailey tried to form a spear of kinetic force that might penetrate the invisible shield the witches had around them, but she found her strength flagging. All five of them had been operating on almost maximum exertion, and with the Other de-powering them as it did, it took everything they had to produce the moderately powerful effects they delivered.

  By now, the black lake was only a stone’s throw away.

  Bailey noticed it before the others did, perhaps due to
being the least-experienced magic-user and therefore the one most easily distracted. The dark waters were stirring. Bubbles rose in places, the normally placid waters grew choppy, and swirling white mist was forming around the edges and clumping over the surface, as it had before the attack of the fog-demons.

  “Roland!” she cried, gesturing toward the lake with her elbow even as she tried to loop into his magic and aid him in pushing the witches back toward a patch of thorns.

  The wizard glanced quickly over his shoulder. “Aw, hell,” he groaned. “We must be waking it up with all this magical diarrhea. That water obviously responds to any attempt to channel the arcane by anyone who’s near it. Thanks a lot, Shannon. Once again, you’ve done a great job of—”

  “What? That’s bullshit!” the sorceress screamed back.

  The earth exploded under Roland’s feet, hurling him into the air, but he “caught” himself and began floating back down, flinging a torrent of small, erratic green missiles at their enemies as he descended.

  With the trio momentarily on the defensive, Bailey looked at the lake again.

  The mist-demons were spawning there. Worse still, it wasn’t only them. Gelatinous black shapes—wraiths—had begun to grow out of the shadows around the periphery of the pool and the dark patches between the nearby trees. It was as though all the malevolent creatures of the Other were being drawn to this spot by the expulsion of so much mana.

  “We’ve got company!” Bailey announced.

  The witches were closer to the lake and their backs were turned toward it, so they didn’t notice the creatures until Bailey and Roland began hastily shuffling away, trying to work back up the ridge.

  Callie pointed at them. “Hey! Get back here! Frickin’ cowards!”

  Bailey scoffed. “You’re the ones who tried to sucker-punch me with a fireball. Fuck off!”

  She caught the glare of Aida, the one who’d thrown the fireball in question. “You’re going to die now,” she stated. “You sent me to the hospital. We’re done playing games with you.”