Winner Takes All (Were Witch Book 9) Read online

Not to mention, nothing could hide its smell from the nose of a wolf.

  Soon the girl sensed she was getting closer to her quarry. Up ahead were the noises of sporadic combat, almost like a duel or a training session, which puzzled her. It didn’t sound like an all-out battle.

  The foliage parted before her, and she saw an area where the trees were not quite as dense, as well as a dozen lithe, dark shapes in a slowly-moving circle around a familiar figure, who grunted, gasped, and struggled against them.

  Her eyes bulged, and while gripping her sword in her right hand, she threw out her left.

  Undulating homing bolts of plasma, bright reddish-pink, snaked out from her spread fingers, cutting through tree branches and masses of leaves and vines, finding their mark in the backs of five of the elves closest to her. The humanoids screamed or groaned as the projectiles seared through their spines and hearts, toppling them all at once.

  Half of those who remained turned toward the new arrival, raising their swords, while Balder strove against the few who were engaging him with renewed vigor.

  Bailey lunged at the first elf to challenge her. “Bastards! You’re toying with him, aren’t you?”

  The curved blade of her adversary was fast, but not fast enough. She knocked it aside with a lightning-quick thrust and skewered him through the upper chest, then kicked him aside to engage the others.

  Everything became a raging melee of violence, and both elves and tree branches seemed to fall at random. The world spun, then Bailey and Balder stood alone in the small glade.

  “Oh,” Balder gasped, “Bailey. I didn’t think there was any chance that—”

  She’d been grinning at seeing him still alive, but before they could celebrate, they were interrupted. The woods ahead of them abruptly bristled with black-armored shapes, shorter greenish forms beside their hips and waists, and curved swords for all.

  “Shit on a shingle,” the werewitch cursed. “I’m not hurt, so I’ll go out in front.”

  Balder struggled to raise his rapier in a fighting stance; he switched the blade to his left hand so his shoulder would not pain him any more than needed. “Be careful. Beware of their arrows!”

  One of the elves let out a dry, rasping chuckle. “We would rather not shoot you, though we will if we must. We have the opportunity to collect the heads of two gods instead of one, and the sword laughs with greater delight when it can shear through the neck of an opponent who still fights and strives. Beheading a foe felled with an arrow is not the same.”

  Bailey snorted. “If you want to handicap yourselves, fine with me.” She raised her sword and detonated the stretch of forest where the white-haired humanoids had gathered.

  The explosion projected its heat, light, sonic percussion, and kinetic force straight upward at the goddess’ command. It did not resemble an expanding dome or sphere, but a tight rising column of fire and fury. The dark shapes of trees, elves, and goblins who’d been reduced to unrecognizable cinders showed through the yellow and white mass, then it faded.

  When the smoke cleared, two elves and four goblins remained. They stared, open-mouthed, at the black circle where their comrades had been.

  “Okay,” Bailey stated, “that evens up the odds, I’d say. I hereby promise to fight fair from here on.”

  The six monsters howled in rage and lunged toward her.

  She met them head-on, her longsword clashing with scimitars and knocking aside spears, its magically-augmented blade cleaving flesh and armor. Both elves and two goblins fell.

  The last two of the smaller creatures rushed past the girl to attack Balder, whose rapier impaled the skull of the first, then he kicked the other into a tree before stabbing it through the heart.

  “All right,” he panted, “we’ve won for the time being. Please, help me to rest against a tree. I need a respite.”

  Bailey rushed to the god’s side and took his good left arm, finding a trunk shaped in a way that he could lean his lower back and hips on it without irritating his wounded shoulder.

  The girl examined the arrow. “I should pull that out. You can’t heal properly if the damn thing’s still in there, right?”

  “No,” Balder urged, holding up a hand. “You must not. It’s a trap, a trick arrow. If removed, the head will explode and suffuse the whole area with magic. Not only energy attacks but a variety of curse that can insinuate its way through barriers. It could do us both serious harm. I am already weakened; I might die at once or be left so depleted by the blast that a single warrior of the dark alfar could finish me off. It is too dangerous for you as well as me.”

  Frowning with concern, Bailey retracted her hands. “Okay, but we need to get you some help and fast. Do you think you can make it through the woods out of here? If not, I might be able to, well, levitate you and float you back, something like that. Or try to open a portal, though it seems like magic is wonky in these woods. Most of mine worked well enough, but it felt strange, like it didn’t want to work.”

  Balder nodded. “Yes, they use this forest to train the recruits in fighting without magic. And the arrow has properties that have...interfered with my arcane sensibilities. I cannot see except with my eyes or summon any great spells.”

  The girl waited for the deity to recover a bit, then asked, “Who did this to you? Dark elves and their pet goblins, obviously, but who ordered it?”

  “I’m not sure.” Balder’s lungs heaved, and he stood up straight again with difficulty. “I have no idea how they could have gotten so close without alerting me to their presence. This jungle is an easy place to sneak up on some beings, but I am rarely ambushed. Whoever did this knew what they were doing and was aware of how to get through my defenses.”

  A cold tingle of dread crept down the werewitch’s spine. What Balder had said reminded her far too much of what she’d heard from the trainees at the castle earlier. It confirmed the suspicion, bordering on certainty, that the attack was an inside job.

  Balder went on. “The arrow came out of the trees; I never saw who fired it. And then they attacked, the alfar and their allies. Worse yet, nearly half of my students joined them. The effects of the poison on my mind acted swiftly, and I could not respond fast enough. It was all so shocking. Ambush and betrayal at once!”

  The girl realized that Balder was succumbing to despair. “It’s not over yet,” she reassured him. “You’re going to get through this, and so are we. And Asgard and Earth. Fenris’ lies have spread farther than we thought. He must have corrupted some of your trainees. But this is all gonna end, and soon.”

  The blond deity nodded. “Yes, I suppose it must. We need to leave this place and decide on our next moves. You should find Carl, my apprentice. He was your friend during training; you remember him.”

  “I do,” she affirmed. “I’ll look for him as soon as I get you taken care of.”

  She paused, then, struggling with the logistics of how and when to get Balder to safety and how to arrange it so that she could see him cared for while also seeking out Carl as soon as possible.

  While she deliberated, a portal opened in front of her.

  Balder tensed beside her, and the girl reflexively fell into a fighting stance.

  “Oh, hell,” she breathed.

  Chapter Five

  Out of the shimmering purple doorway stepped Loki. A slight breeze caught his black hair and blew it aside from his face as he gazed down his nose toward them with his usual mixture of condescension and detached amusement.

  “Ah,” he remarked, “there you are. I’m glad I was able to pinpoint your exact location in this awful place. It interferes with magic, though more from within than without.”

  Bailey let out a sigh of relief. “Hi. And yeah, thanks, you’re just in time. Balder and his students got ambushed, and I had to fight off a bunch of dark elves and goblins or whatever they are—green guys three or four feet tall. Balder’s got an accursed arrow in his shoulder. Literally accursed, I mean.”

  Loki’s eyes went wide, and the sarc
astic-asshole demeanor vanished instantly. He rushed past the werewitch toward his wounded relative.

  The god of innocence let out a soft, hollow laugh. “Loki. Who would have expected that you’d be the one to come so readily to my aid?”

  “Silence,” the lord of mischief snapped. “Is that one of those arrows that explodes if you try to pull it out?”

  “Yeah,” Bailey told him. “Glad he warned me before I tried.”

  Loki pursed his lips, examining the projectile. “Mmm, yes, I can remove it. The ways of nastiness and deceit and dirty tricks, and all manner of similar things, are well known to me. Booby traps like this are elementary.”

  Bailey recalled how much he’d helped during their war against Callie’s army of ghost crones, so she didn’t doubt his abilities. Still, what Balder had said about the lethal burst of the arrow concerned her enough that she backed off a few paces. Just to be safe.

  As Balder leaned his front against the nearest tree, Loki came up behind him and wrapped his hand around the arrow, not yet trying to draw it out but hovering his other hand over the wound and examining it. The werewitch assumed he must have been “feeling out” the arcane structure of the spell, unraveling the process by which it had been imbued with such powerful malice.

  There was a faint yellowish-green glow around the trickster god’s arms as he began, slowly and carefully, to pull the dart free. Balder moaned, grunted, and trembled in pain.

  Bailey wanted to shout at Loki to be careful, but she knew better. There was no way to remove a barbed arrow without hurting the person. They were lucky that gods healed mundane wounds more readily than humans did.

  Finally the arrowhead emerged from the wound along with the shaft, and Loki tossed it gently aside, immediately encasing it in a thick shield-capsule that crackled with extra layers of arcane security. “Beastly thing,” the black-haired deity muttered. “I have standards, believe it or not, and those arrows are beneath them. They are weapons powered by absolute ageless hatred.”

  Balder’s shoulder was bleeding, and he seemed on the verge of losing consciousness.

  “Stand up,” Loki told him, pressing his hand over the gash to staunch the flow of ichor-blood. “I’ll pass on a portion of my strength to you, as well. It will bring you up to acceptable functionality, but it will weaken me.”

  The girl offered no objection. Loki had empowered her in a similar fashion not long past.

  “Bailey,” Loki said, “the two of us will need some time to recover after this. We’ll have to lie low, out of sight, and out of reach to offer you immediate aid. Do you understand?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Yes. Makes my life harder, but I can deal with that if neither of you will die.”

  Loki smiled. “That’s the spirit. Let us discuss, meanwhile, the devious plot that we’ve come up with for opposing our mutual friend, the deity of lycanthropy. Meaning my bastard son, not you, Ms. Nordin.”

  “I know who you meant,” she grumbled.

  As Balder recovered his strength and senses, Loki sat down on a big curling root. The werewitch noticed that he looked pale and tired after donating magical energy to his brother.

  “Now,” the trickster god began, “listen closely...”

  The girl did. Loki explained the outline of the council’s plan to fake their own deaths at Fenris’ hands and how he was confident in their ability to generate illusions that were perfectly convincing replicas of the original gods.

  He went on to describe how Bailey might have to take part in the activities to come by continuing to play along and maintain Fenris’ trust.

  “Follow his orders,” Loki instructed her. “Heed his suggestions. As I understand it, you’ve always been the type to ask a reasonable question or two about the why of things, so you don’t want to appear too eager to do precisely what he wants. But keep doing as you’ve been doing. He must believe you’re on his side and that you’d side with him instead of us if push comes to the proverbial shove.”

  She bowed her head, then raised it. “I understand, and I have to concede it’s a smart plan. If he strikes, we know he’s guilty one hundred percent, yet we won’t lose any of you guys. And if he doesn’t by some chance, no harm, no foul.”

  It occurred to her that though her rational mind highly doubted that Fenris was entirely innocent, part of her wanted him to be. She would rather keep him as her friend, her teacher. She hated the thought that they had to be enemies. She wished his lies were true.

  No, Bailey, she told herself. That’s not how it works. We focus on doing what has to be done and protecting everyone else first and foremost. You can deal with your own mishmash of emotions later.

  Loki went on. “Given Balder’s condition and the fact that whichever servant of Fenris’ fired the arrow knows he’s in bad shape, I’d say we should begin with a nice fake Balder and allow Fenris to chase it down and murder it. Tempt him into making a clear, present, and obvious attack in the open where we can all see it. That will remove the last traces of doubt from all our minds, won’t it?”

  The werewitch frowned deeply. “Yes. I’d imagine so.”

  “And,” Loki added, “it will bolster the wolf-god’s confidence and deceive him into thinking he’s gaining the upper hand, exactly as he’s deceived us time and time again. At least when I lie, it’s usually for the sake of a joke.”

  Bailey waved her hand sharply. “You said that for the illusions to work properly, the real god has to be there first, and he swaps places with the double at the last second. Is that right? Won’t that put Balder at massive risk if he doesn’t time it perfectly?”

  “More likely,” the lord of mischief retorted, “it will be a minor risk. I think.”

  Balder turned toward her, his beautiful face strained with diminishing anguish. “There is danger, yes, but Loki is right. It is necessary and the best opportunity we’ve received thus far. I am willing to chance it.”

  The girl closed her eyes, again forcing her feelings aside in the name of duty. “Fine, so be it. There are more lives at stake than only his, after all.”

  Balder smiled. “Exactly.”

  Loki looked skyward and tapped his fingers on the back of his hand. “Hmm. And now a stratagem is forming as to how, specifically, we can lure our beloved Fenris into the necessary confrontation. Knowing him as I do, it ought to work.”

  “Let’s hear it,” Bailey urged.

  Loki laughed nastily, his eyes focused on something far distant before he looked back at his fellow gods.

  “What we shall do is deposit Balder somewhere on the fringe of a domain where Fenris is the ruling power, or at least the absentee landlord. That way, via the channels of arcane influence that experienced divine beings can sense, he will perceive Balder’s presence, and more importantly, his weakness and pain.”

  Balder squinted. “But why would I go to a realm of his if I were wounded? His territories are nowhere near this one, and there are other places I could go if I was looking for help with my injuries.”

  Loki scoffed. “Who said you were looking for help? No, the kind of thing you’d do is march straight out there for the express purpose of challenging him. Summon him to you with a barrage of threats, saying you know what he’s up to. The only way for him to silence you will be by slaying you. He’d enjoy it, besides.”

  Although the god of mischief sounded sure of himself, Bailey didn’t understand.

  “But haven’t Fenris and Balder known each other for a long time? Does he actually hate everyone that much?”

  “No,” Loki replied. “Fenris doesn’t like us much, but he is what you might call an ‘apex predator.’ By nature, he is a hunter. He’s cultivated enough savvy and self-discipline to pull off this little scam of his so far, but his true urge is to move in for the kill. His motives are always directed toward that. In this case, to relish the challenge of pouncing upon, fighting with, and brutally slaying our poor, innocent god of innocence. The temptation will be far too much for him to resi
st.”

  Balder’s face had acquired a grim smile that was totally unlike him. The werewitch pondered if the nature of the events they’d become embroiled in was teaching him the alien emotion of cynicism.

  “Aye,” Balder agreed. “It is a wise plan, and if done right, it will allow me to gauge Fenris’ strength in the process.”

  Bailey shrugged. “Good point. But be cautious. Anyway, what about me? Should I do anything in particular?”

  Loki chortled. “We shall see, as far as Balder’s case goes. As for the bigger picture, you should certainly do something. Since I am the smart god, allow me to lay out what is likely to happen as far as your role is concerned.”

  Looking extremely pleased with himself, the prankster deity elaborated upon his predictions.

  “Fenris will leverage all of the connections he’s made against us, using their borrowed strength to try to keep us off-balance and preoccupied. It’s tremendously likely that he will bring you into it to keep doing the good work of putting down rebellions by the monsters he’s stirred up. This will keep you busy and also make it look as though he’s still one of the so-called good guys, a heroic deity doing his part to protect the realms.”

  Bailey scowled. That was what Fenris had been doing unless they were mistaken, so it hardly qualified as much of a prediction on Loki’s part. But there was more.

  “Furthermore,” Loki continued, “these shenanigans will clearly be used to empower you further. To increase your skill and experience and give you opportunities to absorb power from defeated adversaries. He must know that you learned to drain magic from non-deities not long ago and is scheming to turn that to his advantage.

  “Don’t be stupid though, Bailey. And by stupid, I mean ‘humble’ or something along those lines. Take all the power you can get. It will come in handy. Fenris means to sacrifice you, yes, as we’ve all surmised, and bringing you up to a certain level of divine might is a prerequisite for him being able to effect that. But it also means that as long as your guard is up and your mind sharp, you will be strong enough to take him on yourself. He’ll be caught off-guard and defeated by the person he least expects to challenge him.”