Were War (WereWitch Book 4) Read online

  “This,” he answered them, “was the best and most objective view I could produce after employing the recommended procedures for emotional decompression.”

  “Good,” said Left.

  “Go on,” said Right.

  He breathed in again and adjusted his posture by an inch or so.

  “It is my belief that the Venatori, rather than merely pursuing a feud, have gone off the proverbial deep end and are attempting to perpetrate a lycanthrope genocide, thereby eliminating one of the chief rival populations to the hegemony of sorceresses. Given the level of violence that’s already occurred, to say nothing of what else might be coming in the very near future, I am forced to remind our organization that our responsibilities are not only to clean up messes after they’ve happened but whenever possible, to prevent these sorts of fiascoes from happening.”

  The two dark silhouettes moved in a way that suggested they were looking at one another before returning their gazes to the agent.

  Left observed, “The most recent data do point to an unusually high level of homicidal activity by the recently-arrived group.”

  “Essentially a scorched-earth policy,” Right agreed. “Ruthless even by their standards. The facts thus far support your argument. Continue.”

  Townsend did.

  “To put it bluntly, we need to keep this from blowing up. It’s not just one powder keg, it’s multiple powder kegs, each of them buried right underneath the porta-potties at an electronic music festival. When it blows…”

  He sucked in air to give his lungs the necessary sustenance to finish the analogy.

  “…it’s going to be a raver’s wet dream of a surrealistic light show, combined with the mother of all shitstorms. Rain, hail, sleet, snow, and torrential downpours of fecal matter, all of it landing on us, the persons who’d then have to clean it up. I’m proposing we defuse the bombs before it gets to that point. Even if, to continue the metaphor, the people who planted the goddamn things are still here and need to be terminated.”

  Left fidgeted. “Very colorful, Agent.”

  “Be more specific, please,” Right admonished.

  Townsend unclasped his hands and made a powerful, sweeping gesture. He wished he were holding a gun right now. Better yet, a rocket launcher aimed directly at the murderous gaggle of imperious occultists who’d already turned Washington into something from a third-world war zone. That would be a better use of his time than standing here belaboring the obvious to the bureaucrats in charge.

  “Things are on the verge of spiraling out of control. We have an all-out war between wolves and witches in the making. You might say it’s already started. At the absolute least, we need to warn the lycanthrope community to be ready to defend themselves and take preventative measures, with our men ready to step in at a moment’s notice. Better yet, in my professional opinion, we need to mobilize and repel the Venatori’s invasion. Because that’s exactly what it is: a hostile incursion on American soil by foreign troops.”

  From the darkness behind the two glaring lights, there came the faint sound of breath being sharply drawn in.

  Townsend added one more remark. “To top it off, our girl Bailey is at the eye of the storm o’ shit. She seems to attract them, even though I reluctantly admit it’s not her fault.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “Your case is most convincing, Agent,” commented Left.

  Right appeared to nod. “We will deliberate and inform you when a decision has been reached.”

  Townsend frowned. “Pardon me, sirs, but when will that be?”

  The bosses replied in unison. “Soon.”

  “That’s it,” Bailey snarled. “Enough is fucking enough!”

  Nick, consumed by the rigors of intensive arcane channeling, didn’t seem to hear her, though his bulging, glassy eyes stared vaguely in her direction. He didn’t react when she changed.

  The girl was drawn toward the floor and the earth beneath it, and a posture designed for crawling on hands and knees became one fit for running on all fours. Her body elongated, her muscles grew even more powerful, and dark fur sprouted from every inch of her skin. Her senses sharpened to an incredible degree, and a blood-hued sheen descended over her vision as her eyes began to glow red.

  The Shashka fighters who were still in humanoid form had just enough rational thought left to hesitate, then dodge aside as the huge she-wolf launched into the air, enhancing her already considerable speed and power with subtle magic.

  The shifted Weres were too deeply affected by their shaman’s berserker enchantment to take heed. A wolf almost as large as Bailey dove toward her from the side, its snout aimed at her abdomen.

  “Bailey!” Roland called. “Watch out!”

  The warning was unnecessary. With a mighty shove of her shoulder, she caught the beast on the jaw, her speed scarcely slowed. The big wolf was jostled back, yelping, two of its teeth cracked or dislodged. Then Bailey found a foothold on the edge of an emptied booth and pounced on Nick.

  He seemed to notice her, now that it was too late. The slowly revolving circle of glowing silvery runes pulsed and dimmed like a candle in danger of going out. Then the massive lupine creature struck him in the midsection.

  Bailey felt the muscular solidity of the young man as her head and shoulders butted into him, but in human form, he was no match for her. The peripheral scenery of the diner whizzed past as they tumbled across the floor and out through the back door, finally coming to a stop in the rear lot of the restaurant.

  Already Bailey’s jaws had clamped on Nick’s shoulder, and she hoisted him to his knees. He was dazed, and his face was drawn with pain. In the middle of the motion, she shifted back to human form.

  Her jaws released him, but her hands made up for it. The left one twisted sharply in the rear collar of his shirt, and one finger dug into the skin at the scruff of his neck hard enough to draw blood.

  She panted with exertion, but also with rage, staring at him and struggling not to end his life there and then.

  “You got some fuckin’ balls, coming into my hometown!”

  Her right fist slammed into his groin. He groaned and tried to double over, but she held him firm in the same position one would use to cut a man’s throat.

  “My own diner! We were having breakfast, you fuck!”

  Again she punched him between the legs. “Correction, you had balls.” She jerked up with her left hand, raising him to his feet, although he staggered in her grip.

  Bailey reared back with her right hand, and Nick’s eyes shone with sudden terror as a ball of light formed there. Fire and electricity intertwined into natural plasma, an orb of burning death that she held only an arm’s length from his face. He was in no condition to counter her; she could boil his brains out of his skull.

  Her teeth were bared as though she was still a wolf. “What the hell’s going on here? Why do you people keep coming after me? I didn’t wipe out any fucking Were packs. Tell me why you did this!”

  By now, the Shashka Weres, not to mention the South Cliffs and Roland, had piled out the back door, forming a semicircular crowd that filled most of the back lot and surrounded the werewitch and her hostage.

  “Hey!” one of the Shashkas cried out. Like the rest, he’d shifted back to human and lost the buff provided by their shaman’s spell. “Don’t kill him.”

  “I won’t. If,” Bailey shouted, “you all back the fuck off and tell me what’s going on. Nicolas Jezak, you tell them to stand down, or I’ll turn your head into a pan of cherry cobbler fresh out of the oven.”

  The plasma ball in her hand blazed brighter.

  Nick inhaled through bleeding nostrils and hardened his face, making a sighing sound of resignation.

  Then, stunning them all, he said, “No.”

  “What?” Bailey sputtered. “You want to die?”

  His Weres didn’t resume the attack, though, and she didn’t want to kill him. Not unless absolutely required.

  The apprentice glared a
t her. She now realized he’d made up his mind to sacrifice himself. “It’s worth dying to stop you. All those dead Weres up in Washington, not to mention most of the earlier ones here in Oregon, have been laid at your feet. A shaman has a responsibility to his people. I’d be a failure unless I made that choice. Guys! Take her out!”

  They hesitated. Nick was still convinced of the justice of his cause, but everyone else was confused.

  Especially Bailey. “I don’t understand,” she admitted, her tone softer now. Force and threats clearly wouldn’t work on the man in her grasp, and she found herself depressed, almost sickened by the pointlessness of it all.

  Then footsteps, heavy yet somehow muffled, sounded just behind her. She spared a quick sidelong glance and saw a familiar figure, tall and broad, dressed in a bulky hooded coat, striding into the lot from an indeterminate location. Weres parted to let him in.

  Marcus stood between the crowd and the pair at the center of the scene, about three feet from Bailey’s elbow. He looked them both over.

  “Kill him, Bailey,” he said.

  Nick and the girl stared at him. He gave a small, almost undetectable flick of his hand, though, and when Nick’s mouth fell open, no words came out—just a faint, hollow gasp.

  The tall man focused his gaze on Bailey. “Kill him. And his wolves. They attacked you and tried to take your life, based on clearly false information that they didn’t even try to verify. You were set up, and they went along with it. You can’t allow that to go unpunished. Kill them all.”

  Twenty werewolves growled or spat in protest, but rather than attack, they drew back, afraid. They must have known who Marcus was. Who he really was.

  Roland, on the other hand, just stared at the man, his face icy and impassive.

  Bailey froze, shuddering with horror. Anger resurfaced as fleeting images of the Elk’s patrons running in terror flashed before her mind’s eye. They were good, normal people; she’d known most of them since birth. Any of them could have been hurt or killed.

  She wanted to kick the Shashka apprentice in the face for that and punch him in the nuts again, but she couldn’t just murder him.

  I can’t. The thought repeated itself in her brain. I can’t, I can’t!

  “No,” she said. “It’s not right. These guys might be dumb as posts, but they thought they were doing the right thing. They’re not like those pricks who were kidnapping and selling our girls. Someone lied to them, dammit!”

  Nick had gone pale. Now, he looked like he wanted to live after all. Offering oneself as a heroic sacrifice was different from being executed for a crime.

  Marcus seemed to be considering her proposal. “Very well,” he agreed. “The pack will be spared. But…”

  Too fast for anyone to react, his big hands shot out, seized Nick by the head, and snapped his neck. The wide eyes went glassy, and his body slumped in Bailey’s grip.

  “No!” she protested. “Why the hell did you do that? He surrendered, goddammit!”

  The wolves were agitated but too awed by the presence of their god to do anything.

  Fenris was impassive. “Like you said, Bailey, someone lied to this pack, and that someone was him.” He gestured to the corpse, and the Shashkas slowly fell silent.

  She searched for his eyes, but they were shadowed by his hood.

  He continued, “He was clearly corrupted by ambition, jealousy, and envy. You, on many occasions, have made it clear that you have no desire to forcibly displace other packs’ shamans or alphas, yet he continued to spread that vile rumor with the passion of a true believer. Addicted to the reins of power he held over the packs of central Oregon, he felt threatened by your rise, even after I decreed that you shall be the High Shaman and none may question it. This is the result.”

  Sirens were approaching. Bailey hoped it was Sheriff Browne and his men rather than the state troopers or the feds or the goddamn Men in Black. Though even Browne might well toss her in the slammer over a dead man lying outside a destroyed diner.

  Roland interceded, “We need to get out of here. You guys better head for the hills and fast.”

  Marcus’ hand shot up in a powerful grasping motion. “You may leave, but know this. You follow Bailey Nordin now. She is your shaman. I, Fenris, have spoken.”

  With grunted oaths and half-terrified bows, the Shashkas backed away, then shifted and sprang off through empty lots and narrow lanes toward the forest.

  Marcus looked at Bailey. “He led them astray. Acting as he did is against our code, and a violation of that magnitude has to be severely punished. Death alone could redress the affront he’s done to your pack and your town. Now, as Roland suggested, we must go. Back into the Other. Come with me.”

  The tall shaman knelt and picked up Nick’s body. Removing it as evidence from the scene of the crime, Bailey realized. Thinking of it that way only made it worse. Then Marcus opened a portal near the back dumpster and stepped through it, Nick draped over his shoulders.

  Bailey stood up. She looked past Roland toward her four new friends, who’d fought bravely to protect her. Tomi, the waitress, had also drifted out the back door despite her obvious fear.

  “Tell the cops,” Bailey began, “the gist of what happened. I’ll deal with the rest when I get back. Somehow. And I’m sorry. We’re really, really sorry. We love this place. And don’t take it out on my brothers. I know you’d like to still see them around here, Tomi.”

  The waitress managed a wan smile.

  The werewitch turned to her partner. “Come on, Roland.”

  She couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen him looking so cold and bitter, and she knew why. He blamed Marcus for what had just transpired and obviously disagreed with his judgment. At this point, she wondered if the only thing keeping him from heading for the hills himself was her.

  “Gosh,” he said, “I can hardly wait.”

  He handed her the remains of her clothes.

  Chapter Ten

  The part of the Other they’d come to was one Bailey and Roland had never seen before. Even denser and swampier than most places in a realm dominated by bogs, it was dark, dismal, and foreboding, yet somehow peaceful in its seclusion. A slight rise in the land, covered by dull purplish weeds, extended above a vast expanse of burbling water strewn with floating masses of plant matter. The ebony trees rose high enough overhead to blot out most of the deep-violet sky.

  The three figures crouched on the rise, a layer of mist roiling on the ground below them. Fenris had conjured up another campfire from a few pieces of gnarled wood, and it seemed the flames would magically burn as long as they needed them to.

  Bailey huddled beside the fire, trying not to get lost in her thoughts. Roland was giving the tall shaman a piece of his mind.

  “You killed a man in public,” he ranted, barely controlling his tone of voice. “Half the people in town are regulars there, and most of them aren’t going to care that you’re a god. Either they believe in a different God or none at all. If you want to go around pretending to be a human, you have to abide by human laws, or everyone’s life will get a lot more difficult, especially Bailey’s, and mine. Here I was, thinking you were better at understanding mortals than most divine beings, and then you pull something like this. You’re endangering Bailey. Do you realize that?”

  Marcus stood, unmoving and unmoved, and waited for the wizard to run out of steam. Bailey tried not to be alarmed. She was pretty sure her teacher would refrain from smiting Roland like a bug for her sake. Still, it surprised her to see him fly off the rails at a being of Fenris’ power. She had to admire his courage.

  It occurred to her also that Fenris wasn’t his deity, Freya was. Roland had been far more deferential to her. He’d been cautious with Baldur, who was an unknown quantity to them both.

  The shaman cleared his throat. “I did not kill a man, I killed a Were. According to our laws, his death was justified. Ultimately, it is none of the human authorities’ business.”

  While Roland threw up
his hands in exasperation, Marcus knelt by the fire, having produced a broad stone cup in which he now was brewing some liquid.

  “Okay.” Roland sighed, “I know there’s a partition between the supernatural and the so-called normal parts of the world, and that certain things tend to get swept under the rug. However, this wasn’t the same thing as wolf killing wolf out in the woods. It was more like—”

  “Like you and Bailey,” Marcus interrupted, “running cars off the road in the middle of Portland and Seattle. Although Greenhearth is a far smaller town, one where the existence of Weres is understood and recognized.”

  The wizard bit down on whatever his next comment would have been. He was shaking with anger but unable to produce an immediate comeback.

  The shaman went on, “Truces exist between humanity and lycanthropes and go back a long way. People will converge on the ‘crime scene’ and fill out the necessary paperwork to make certain it looks like human laws are being observed. In the end, it will be dismissed as something that belongs on the other side of the ‘partition’ of which you speak.”

  Bailey knew Marcus was right, or mostly right, but she was still worried. Even if no one was arrested, the Elk might never be the same. People in town might be afraid to go out and talk to each other, like suburbanites in a neighborhood where a gang war had spilled over.

  “And,” Marcus added, “there was no body. Therefore, they cannot classify it as a homicide.”

  After they’d come into the parallel dimension, the shaman had left Bailey and Roland alone for a few minutes while he took Nick’s corpse through another portal. It led to Shashka, Oregon, and he returned the young man’s remains to his family. And the rest of the pack would whisper the truth of what had happened.

  No Weres would report it as a murder to the human cops. None.

  Roland sat down and put his face in his hands. “Okay, fine. Maybe you do sort of know what you’re talking about. But could you at least warn us about this shit? I’m just glad I got a decent night’s sleep for once.”