Were War (WereWitch Book 4) Read online

  The next morning, Bailey returned to her job at the auto repair shop for the first time in far too long. She hadn’t seen or heard from Marcus, and after the fiasco at the Bristling Elk, she felt like she ought to be seen doing normal things and helping the townsfolk. Not to mention, it would put her mind at ease to just work on cars again.

  “The hell?” she exclaimed, staring in horror at the tires on a sky-blue 2005 Ford Taurus. “Those things are balder than Patrick Stewart after dipping his head in a vat of acid mixed with Nair. Didn’t this guy say he was driving up a snowy-ass mountain to go skiing?”

  Gunney’s sigh of exasperation was audible even over the clanking and drilling from elsewhere in the shop. “Yep. He didn’t ask us to check them, neither.”

  The girl shook her head. “Well, I’m gonna tell him when he shows up again, complete with a ‘don’t say we didn’t warn you’ disclaimer if he doesn’t get the damn things replaced before his vacation.”

  Kevin’s voice echoed out of the pit. “Good job looking out, Bailey. Here I was, thinking you’re the Han Solo ‘I’m only in it for me’ type, but you’re being all Mother Teresa now.”

  Her head snapped toward the subterranean depths. “Kevin, was that supposed to be some sort of real commentary on recent events or an excuse to make another lame Star Wars joke?”

  “Lame Star Wars joke,” he replied. “I don’t do serious commentary. You know that.”

  “True,” she conceded and got back to work.

  The day passed uneventfully, which almost made her feel like she’d accomplished something. She kept expecting her phone to ring with news of a witch invasion mounting in the hills, or someone’s mother to rush up and say her sons were killed in a slaughter of Weres out in the fields, or Agent Townsend to drop by to inform her that the Department of Homeland Security wanted to talk to her. She’d almost forgotten that normalcy was still possible.

  They finished with the customers’ vehicles around four, and Gunney let Kevin and Gary and Emily go home if they wanted to, which they did. Then he wheeled the Camaro back into one of the bays.

  “That thing again?” Bailey smirked. “Well, I’ll stick around to make sure you don’t screw up the restoration of such a beautiful vehicle.”

  The mechanic snorted. He doffed his baseball cap and let his sweaty hair breathe for a moment. “You should talk. You’re lucky I let you so much as touch a car of that caliber, Miss I Almost Wrecked Gunney’s Trans Am.”

  “Bullshit,” she shot back, grinning openly. “It didn’t have a scratch on it.”

  He shook his head. “Pure luck. There ain’t no goddamn reason it shouldn’t have been damaged, with you driving like a maniac all over fuckin’ Seattle.”

  “Suuuuure…” She picked up a sander.

  They got to work without bothering to consult about what needed to be done since it was obvious. First, the rest of the paint had to come off. Gradually it did as they sanded the dull stuff off by hand, leaving it ready for a fresh new coat. But first, there was the engine to deal with.

  As they worked, Bailey found herself talking about her latest concerns, and as usual, she found she could count on Gunney to hear her out.

  “…and the visions I’ve been getting since all this started!” she explained. “They’ve been bad for the most part, but it was nothing like this. Just the reality of it. The thought that that monster was me. Or that it could be me if I make the wrong choices. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”

  The aging man nodded gently to show he’d heard as they finished the paint removal. “It doesn’t sound pleasant, I’ll grant you that,” he murmured.

  “Yeah. And honestly, one of the worst parts is thinking about what happened at the Elk, not to mention what happened with you just recently, being taken hostage by those fucking witches, dragged out into the woods, and threatened. I don’t think I could bear to see that again, Gunney. You or anyone else I care about in this town.”

  The mechanic gave her a sad grimace, swiftly followed by a sardonic chuckle. “Don’t worry about me, Bailey. I’m too stubborn to die. They’d have to stop my head from crawling back here, using my teeth to pull myself along, before this damn car is done. Not to mention there’s the Trans Am. Nobody fucks with that thing until I give them permission.”

  “Good point,” the werewitch acknowledged. “Maybe next time the Venatori show up, I’ll warn them about you and your classic cars. Might scare ‘em off.”

  “Eh,” he responded, “they seem kinda dense. Might just provoke them to try something. Anyway, instead of worrying about me, let’s worry about you. It’s pretty obvious that all this stress is taking a toll. I think a lot of that is because you’re thinking too far ahead and then trying to take on everything at once.”

  Bailey furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

  By now, they’d removed the last of the paint and disassembled the whole front, removing the grill. It made it easier to attack the engine.

  “See,” he said, “there’s all kinds of fuckin’ shit we’re gonna have to do with this car. It’ll be a long time before it’s in prime condition. But at the moment, are we trying to do every single one of those tasks? Nope. Just the ones that need to be dealt with first.”

  For the moment, that meant taking out the old engine, putting in a new one, which it looked like Gunney had done some custom work on, and mating it to the transmission.

  As the work went on and silence set back in, the old man stretched out the metaphor, continuing to explain his reasoning in his oddly comforting way.

  “With most things,” he went on, “it’s only the details that are different. Those can be important, yeah, but the big-picture stuff is surprisingly similar from one thing to another. That’s why a lot of older people know how to deal with life, even if their experience is narrower than you might think. They’ve been able to generalize their knowledge.”

  They started to lower the engine back into the car with a hook, and Bailey considered the old man’s words. He certainly wasn’t a were-shaman, but he’d been around the block many times nonetheless, and she trusted what he had to say.

  “When you think about it, leading a group of wolves as their shaman or whatever isn’t that different from running an auto shop or working on an individual car. You’ve already got some of the sort of experience you’ll need. There are a million possible problems. Think of how many parts a vehicle has, and how any one of them could go bad on you and might need replacing.”

  She wished he hadn’t said that since it wasn’t like she needed to be reminded.

  “But,” he continued, “you don’t worry about every single one of them at the same time. You deal with them by being smart, taking your time, and pinpointing the issue at that particular moment. Then you tackle that one. And if there are any others, or if the first one contributed to something else, you move on to that one. One thing at a time. A smooth, methodical process. If you can apply that to everything in your life, things will work out in the end. Trust me.”

  Slowly, the young woman let her breath out. “Thanks, Gunney. I mean, in the midst of frickin’ battle, you kinda have to do everything all at once, but I guess that would fall under ‘specific details.’ In terms of the overall situation, yeah, you’re right.”

  He wiped his hands on his overalls. “I’m always right.”

  Chapter Twelve

  It was about ten in the morning. Rhona breathed in and out through her nose, flexing her hands and adjusting her leather armor as a ripple of excitement went through her body. She could hardly wait.

  Today was the day the werewitch died. And Madame MacLachlan had put her in charge of the first phase of the assault.

  There were eleven of them, enough to qualify as a full coven and a magically portentous number. It was also more than the paltry half-dozen who’d confronted the American pair previously. Their orders were to wear down the girl and her wizard companion and to destroy any other local resistance until reinforcements cou
ld arrive for the second wave of the attack.

  To Rhona, that sounded ridiculous and inefficient. It made more sense to simply kill them both—or wound the wizard and possibly capture him—and be done with it. She knew they could.

  And the rewards she’d get for Bailey’s head! She would advance more quickly than any other woman in the history of the Order.

  They stood on a winding and bumpy side street that descended out of the hills and led into Greenhearth via a sparsely settled corner of the town to the northeast. It was the fastest way into town since MacLachlan’s force had detoured east of the werewitch’s home to eliminate a pack living out in the rugged semidesert beyond the mountains. Madame was awaiting more witches, who ought to be arriving presently.

  “Rhona,” one of the lowest-ranking new recruits asked, “should we remain cloaked?”

  The lead sorceress smiled. “No. I want them to see us coming. I want the entire town to see. Now, move out.”

  They descended.

  Bailey and Roland walked from her house to the Bristling Elk, where they planned to do some volunteer repair work, followed by a meal.

  “So, Roland,” she asked as they strolled past the sheriff’s office and a small bank, “did you have any place like that in your neighborhood in Seattle? Like, a local place where everyone went to eat to the point that it was, you know, an institution in everyone’s lives?”

  He stroked his chin. “Not quite, although there were certainly popular bars and restaurants. This town is small enough that I can see how you’d all be attached to the Elk, since it’s practically the only place to eat here, aside from the Subway. I swear, Subways are everywhere.”

  “Yeah, well,” she riposted, “everyone here has been to the place, and all the regulars are locals. Smashing up the Elk is like, I dunno, desecrating the damn cemetery. It’s not our fault the place got attacked, but with me graduating to shaman, we have a responsibility.”

  She’d also asked the South Cliff pack to stand guard over the place and help with the repairs when and where they could.

  Maybe if they got lucky, the Whitcombs would send some money. She wasn’t going to force the issue, though. If the establishment’s proprietor and morning bartender, old Maury Fitzpatrick, wanted to ask for restitution from them, it was between him and the pack.

  The slate-colored clouds overhead were heavy and thick as they reached the traffic light in the center of town. It might rain, but in the Pacific Northwest, that was pretty standard.

  “So,” Roland asked, “what do you—” He stopped abruptly and turned northeast, blinking, then leaned forward and scanned the horizon.

  Bailey halted too. “What is it?” Tension boiled from her core to her extremities, readying her for whatever might come.

  The wizard’s nostrils flared. “Hmm. Probably nothing. A slight disturbance, but could just be a bird flying too close to something Marcus is doing in the hills or some crap like that.”

  They relaxed for about five seconds before a line of figures appeared on the street above them on the crest of a low hill.

  “Oh, hell,” Bailey groaned.

  A female voice, speaking with a heavy accent, pierced the air. “There she is!” Someone else repeated the alarm in what sounded like French.

  Roland didn’t wait to see what the Venatori intended to do. He surrounded them both with a powerful shield-bubble. Half a second after it enclosed them, purple blasts of lightning and plasma streaked down from the ridge and fizzled against the translucent green surface.

  “Goddammit!” Bailey raged. “They’re attacking us right in the middle of town! We’re gonna have people fleeing and asking for status as fucking war refugees.”

  She cast out her hand, and a bolt of lightning of her own descended from the sky to strike amidst the witches. One of them caught it with a weak and hasty shield, but the bolt did not die against it. It did slow enough for the sorceresses to scatter, half of them to either direction, before the deadly electricity crashed into the asphalt and dissipated.

  A couple of grocery shoppers emerged from a nearby store, screamed, and ran down a side street. Someone’s car alarm went off as the Venatori began haphazardly chucking fireballs and blazing magical lances. Chunks of buildings and asphalt from the street were kicked up in the general chaos.

  Bailey summoned a powerful wind to push the witches back and then caused it to swirl in a minor cyclone, disorienting them without doing further damage to the town.

  Roland swiped out his arm. “Back that way, toward the sheriff’s station. We’ll force them to abandon the high ground by chasing us. We might even get some men with guns on our side.”

  They jogged west. “That always helps,” Bailey conceded. Involving the cops meant that some of them might get hurt or killed, though.

  Roland maintained the shield and tried to hit the Venatori task force, which looked to be about a dozen strong, by sending psionic waves of confusion and befuddlement. A handful of them slouched, stumbled, or tried to cast spells and failed.

  Bailey, meanwhile, kept pumping offensive magic at them, forcing them to abandon attacks in favor of protecting themselves.

  When they reached the sheriff’s office, it occurred to her that these weren’t the heavy hitters. They were mid-range witches, probably low-ranking Venatori soldiers since even the least of their Order tended to be superior in talent to the average rustic sorceress. They were skilled enough to pose a threat, but not on the same level as the leader of the band they’d fought in the hills days ago. She’d nearly killed them both, along with Gunney.

  The witches also did not seem to have formed a coven-mind yet. Bailey wondered what they were waiting for.

  Then the doors of the station burst open and out came Sheriff Browne, his tall, heavy frame ready for action and a massive .357 revolver in his hands. Beside him was his right-hand man Officer Jurgensen, who was holding a semiautomatic pistol and had a rifle with a scope slung over his shoulder on a strap.

  The sheriff exclaimed, “What in Sam Hill is going on?”

  His answer was an especially large napalm-like fireball hurled in his general direction by one of the witches.

  Officer Jurgensen almost dropped his pistol. “Jesus Christ!”

  He and Browne ran for cover, the sheriff moving astonishingly fast for his bulk. The blast struck the asphalt about twenty feet in front of the doors and spread a broad patch of flame across it, although it fizzled out in a puff of black smoke shortly thereafter.

  The sheriff had already come up from his hasty dodge and was aiming his revolver at the attackers. The air cracked as he squeezed off a potshot, distracting the Venatori long enough for Roland and Bailey to crack through their shield and put them on the defensive with magic blazing in from multiple directions.

  Then, as the witches struggled to defend themselves, both cops opened fire.

  Four gunshots rang out in quick succession—three from Jurgensen, one from Browne—and the sorceress on the right of the formation screamed and contorted, a faint reddish mist appearing in the air around her before she topped to the ground.

  “Ha!” Browne roared. “Take that, bitches. Lead has a magic all its own!”

  Jurgensen holstered his pistol and raised the rifle. “Dunno about you, Sheriff, but I’m gettin’ pretty tired of all those goddamn weirdos coming into our town and messing everything up. You hear?” He raised his voice for the benefit of the Venatori, although they might not have heard him over the crackle of lightning and the rumbling of the earth. “Greenhearth isn’t just a stomping ground for this shit!”

  The less experienced among the witches quailed at the death of one of their own. Thus far on their rampage through the backwoods of the northwestern United States, they’d only encountered occasional injuries from foes who were poorly equipped to fight back.

  In a blind act of lashing out, one of the women conjured a torrent of plasma knives that rained down on the positions of the two officers.

  “Oh, crap!” J
urgensen scrambled to secure his rifle as he ran toward the rear corner of the station, narrowly avoiding a half-dozen of the searing purplish blades.

  Browne wasn’t so lucky. Older, heavier, and slower, there was only so much he could do, so he fired another shot at the Venatori while struggling to dodge the attack. Burning knives grazed his stomach and left thigh.

  “Gah!” he cried out, falling to his knees but then squeezing off a fourth round that sent the witch who’d injured him ducking for cover. Jurgensen ran up to his side and the sheriff bellowed, “Call the packs. All the locals. We need backup, and it needs to be Weres or guys of ours who are in the know. Got it?”

  Jurgensen was ashen-faced. He helped the sheriff most of the way back to the doors, then ducked inside. Browne remained behind to keep shooting. This time he hit a witch in the leg, and she shrieked and fell over sideways. She tried to control her magic, but most of it winked out.

  Meanwhile, Bailey and Roland were getting the upper hand at first, but the Venatori had good positioning and seemed able to reconjure their shields with surprising ease.

  Roland looked crestfallen. “Those chicks aren’t that skilled. They’re low-rankers. It doesn’t make any sense. They must have some kind of artifact with them that bolsters their defenses.”

  “Maybe,” said Bailey. “They weren’t in a coven-mind before, I don’t think. They might have just done that.”

  The wizard frowned. If that was true, it meant their opponents were more formidable than they’d guessed.

  Officer Smolinski emerged from the station as well, firing a shotgun at the witches until it was empty and then drawing his pistol to plug away. Only once did he wound one of their foes, and then not fatally.

  The battle was reaching a stalemate. Bitterly, Bailey reflected that she might have been able to crush them with larger and more volatile spells, but that would endanger the town and its people.

  Then the packs showed up.