Winner Takes All (Were Witch Book 9) Read online

  Bailey pondered it. It made sense. Part of her didn’t like the devious, Machiavellian aspect of it, but Fenris, by starting a war of lies, had effectively forced them to use counter-deception to defend themselves and expose his treachery. They had little choice.

  “I’ll do it,” she stated.

  Agent Fauchard had been placed in charge of the fire team sent to scout the parallel world that the guys back in the lab had dubbed “Svartalfheim” after the so-called dark elves of Norse mythology. Parts of it abutted the Other or bled into its boundaries, but it seemed to be a different dimension entirely.

  The sky overhead was curiously low and cloaked with dark, oppressive clouds, a weird and disturbing contrast with the dry, desiccated landscape. The ground beneath their feet was composed mostly of reddish rock and dust, and there was little vegetation save bleached-looking thorny vines and the occasional cluster of dead trees. Oddly-carven boulders or rock ridges eroded by the wind added to the alien nature of the terrain.

  “Okay,” Fauchard spoke into his intercom, and his words were beamed across the astral plane and back to HQ. “We’ve successfully arrived. All quiet on the western front except for the scanner. According to it, we’re standing in the middle of a gigantic swarm of colorful dots.”

  One of the three men with him snickered at that, then stopped himself.

  Fauchard ignored him as he readjusted his gas mask and hoisted his arcanoplasm rifle. He and one other man had standard plasma guns, which did arcane-elemental damage to physical targets. The other two had dispersal rifles, which were essentially the opposite: they weakened and dissolved the arcane structures of incorporeal entities, though tests had found that they could do some damage to living things too.

  In any event, combat was not the goal. Theirs was strictly a recon mission.

  Agent Velasquez, supervising the operation from back at headquarters, watched the scanner screen in his office while speaking into a microphone. The big screen was subdivided into eight sections, one for each of the worlds or regions currently being investigated by a patrol.

  “Advance, but carefully,” he instructed them. “Keep adjusting your visors if you don’t see anything. Abominations from different planes of existence may only be visible on the right infrared or ultraviolet frequencies.”

  “Roger,” Fauchard acknowledged him. “Move out.”

  The four agents moved quickly and quietly across the rusty earth, darting from one random object or obstacle to another and keeping out of sight as much as possible. Gusts of wind picked up now and again, filling the air with red dust and obscuring their transmissions with static.

  “Hey,” one of the men whispered and pointed toward a barely-elevated small plane of rock with a yawning black mouth. “Cave.”

  Fauchard noted the information and glanced around, seeing two other entrances in distant parts of the rusty stone. He checked his scanner. Masses of dots were still moving around, seemingly on top of them.

  Not on top, he realized—below.

  “Right,” he said to HQ, “the dark elves are using underground tunnels and caverns to reposition themselves under our feet. Judging by the number of blips on our screen, I’d say they have a colony down there the size of Tucson or so. We’re going up to one of the cave mouths and looking in.”

  “Hey,” Velasquez replied into the intercom, “cautious-like, okay? Retreat the goddamn second you even think they might be after you.”

  The nearest hole in the ground, framed by drooping spikes of red rock, loomed closer. Something started beeping; it was Fauchard’s team’s scanner, warning them of supernatural beings getting closer.

  “Whoa,” the fire team leader quipped. “We, uh, may have a problem. Preparing to pack up and…shit. Shit!”

  The colored blobs on the screen rushed out in a solid wave, then the screen went dark. No sound came from the intercom.

  The senior agent in the office barked, “Fauchard. Respond, Fauchard! What the fuck?”

  Two more screens went black, too. Technicians fiddled with knobs.

  “Well, damn,” Velasquez snapped. “What the hell happened to them? Is anyone showing technical difficulties with the transmission?

  Someone did a quick check on his device. “No, sir. Unless it’s entirely on their end, which is, uhh, possible...”

  His tone indicated that he was just saying that to be diplomatic. They all knew Fauchard and his men were dead.

  The senior agent resisted the urge to kick chairs, flip laptops off of desks onto the floor, and pick up garbage cans to hurl them at walls. Instead, he asked his cohorts, “Does anyone know what to make of this? Before I offer my professional opinion, naturally.”

  No one did. Half of them shrugged, and of the other half, most offered only vague, meaningless commentary meant to fill uncomfortable silences with sound. Two made doom-and-gloom pronouncements that everyone tried to ignore.

  “Dammit,” Velasquez snarled. “As bad as this looked to begin with, it’s an order of magnitude worse if we can’t even get word back to check on our troops who’ve gone missing in action. The boys at the top of the totem pole aren’t hesitating for once to declare this a maximum alert situation. And why don’t we have word from fucking Bailey? I mean, we left a message at her house and a voicemail.”

  It annoyed and embarrassed him to consider that they leaned on her for support, but she was a goddess. That could not be overlooked.

  He made the decision to pull the other teams back. Losing them all would be a minor disaster and terrible for morale. Plus, they needed every available agent ready to fight. The scanners didn’t always tell them things in ways they could understand, but they didn’t lie, either.

  Right now, the scanners were indicating a full-scale invasion of paranormal and otherworldly creatures.

  Velasquez called his superiors and conveyed the information and hunches to them. “We haven’t yet gotten confirmation on any of the blips. Three of our teams went dark and the remaining ones aren’t seeing anything yet, so I’m pulling them back for the sake of personnel retention. I repeat, invasion-level numbers are moving toward us. Is there something we should know about, something that we missed? Like an ancient prophecy or some shit? I hate those things. Whatever the case, sirs, everything else in the world is secondary unless this turns out to be a goodwill mission by a bunch of sex angels or something, and when has that ever happened?”

  A few of the men laughed, but nervous strain underlay their voices.

  Velasquez was well aware that his people needed a confidence boost, and sooner rather than later.

  Dammit, Bailey! he thought. Why aren’t you here, fraternizing with the troops? Be a good goddess and move your ass.

  Footsteps approached behind them, and Velasquez turned.

  It was Townsend, walking with the aid of a cane, looking older and paler than his former understudy recalled, but otherwise like his old self again.

  The room cheered.

  Townsend waved with a smile, but it was replaced by his standard grimace after a second or two. “Hi,” he said. “Looks like you’re having some trouble.”

  “All right,” Loki concluded. “Now to enact, ah, Phase One, as you people would put it. Simply call Fenris and have him come to you. Say it’s urgent.”

  Bailey wasn’t so sure. “You’re putting a lot of faith in my acting skills, you know.”

  Loki shrugged. “Yes, but you’ve proven to be an excellent thespian so far. We know you won’t let us down. Tell Fenris what happened. Not all the details, natch, or that you understand what’s going on, but enough for him not to question your motives or reasons for being here. Show him the devastation, the bodies, the trail. Say you’re looking for Balder out of pure concern for his safety but haven’t found him yet.”

  Bailey inquired, “Yeah, and then what? What if he gets suspicious, or what if he knows you came and talked to me right before I called him?”

  Loki shrugged. “Oh, he won’t. Probably. And if he does, you’re
smart enough to figure it out, aren’t you? All speculation aside, I anticipate that he’ll come to you of his own volition once you inform him of the situation. Leaping to your aid, or so it seems, and also seizing the chance to spirit you into battle against the forces he has gone out of his way to assemble. Like he did not long ago, remember?”

  She did. Together they’d slain small armies of frost trolls and platoons of dark elves. She still didn’t understand how this could be. How could Fenris be working with the monstrous species while participating in the slaughter of their warriors? Loki had explained the politics of it, but it made no emotional sense to her.

  The god of mischief finished up his spiel. “I believe that Fenris will stoop even to betraying his allies in the course of achieving his aims. He’ll happily sacrifice them for the sake of powering you up and then sacrificing you, allowing him to survive and reign beyond the end of the universe. So, if you would, please call him. Balder and I will take our leave.”

  The girl agreed. She couldn’t think of a better plan. If nothing else, she’d be able to see how Fenris reacted to the news of Balder’s injury and go from there.

  Loki helped Balder to his feet, and the pair took their leave through the portal the mischief-lord had come through. The purple light of the doorway winked out.

  Bailey stood alone in the thick, shadowy forest. Daylight was waning; it would be pitch black soon. She inhaled slowly and raised her arms, sending out streamers of her divine and arcane consciousness toward her would-be mentor, the wolf-father.

  “Fenris,” she intoned. Then, louder, “Fenris! I have need of you. Come forth, god of werewolves. Aid me! Manifest!”

  She imbued her words with magic and sent them echoing throughout the dimensions of the known universe. She could not recall if the incantation was correct, but it ought to be close enough. He usually heard her when she called for him.

  The astral reverberations fell still and quiet, and there was no sound in the forest at first, except for the slow beating of Bailey’s heart.

  Then a glimmering amethyst-hued doorway opened in the air to her side, much like the one Loki had used. Out of it stepped his son.

  Fenris looked at her. As usual, his face was mostly veiled by his hood, but she noted that the tilt of his head and the subtle twist of his mouth suggested he was more perplexed than anything.

  “Bailey,” he began, “what is the matter? I have been busy patrolling the borders of Asgard against any attempts by the monstrous people to breach their treaties with us. Is it something serious?”

  It pained her to realize that if it hadn’t been for all the evidence she’d heard previously, she would at this moment have no reason to suspect Fenris of lying to her.

  “Yeah,” she replied, “pretty damn serious. I came here looking to see if Carl wanted to help out with some stuff and to touch base with everyone, but the castle had been attacked, and everyone but five people had been wiped out.”

  She relayed the tale of what happened, keeping most of the details accurate though a tad vague. Obviously, she left out the parts involving Loki and Balder.

  The wolf-god grimaced in a way that was moody and severe even for him.

  “It comes as no shock. I had feared something like this might happen since there is unrest all across the dimensional boundaries. We foolishly assumed that the training grounds would be safe due to the presence of so many demigod-level beings and the constant presence of skilled guards and trainers, but it wasn’t sufficient. Come, we must halt the dark elves’ invasion. They are moving on many fronts. I was preparing to inform you.”

  Though Bailey had half-anticipated this—Loki had said to expect as much—somehow the idea that the elves were attacking multiple places simultaneously came as a mild shock.

  And that was only the dark alfar. What, she wondered, were all the other monstrous species up to?

  “Goddammit, I thought we’d negotiated a settlement or a ceasefire with them. What the hell is happening to the world lately?”

  Fenris’ answer was ominous. “That will remain to be seen. In this specific case, the dark elves are making a massive push against us. They’ve congregated in numbers too great for most to resist. There is no guarantee that we will be able to stop them, but we must try. Come, and we will begin to retaliate against them. Be careful, Bailey, but don’t hold back, either. This might be the biggest conflict we’ve yet been involved in.”

  She nodded. “We’ll do whatever we have to do to protect the realms. I’m with you.”

  The tall man smiled and turned away from her to dismiss the portal he’d entered by and conjure a new one in its place. He seemed relaxed.

  I think I’ve succeeded in convincing him I’ve got his back. He doesn’t suspect me. I hope. But let’s see how he reacts to a little something else.

  “Oh, also,” she remarked as Fenris opened the gateway, “I was looking for Balder. I ran into him briefly. He was wounded with a magic arrow or something and told me to leave him be. He went back to Asgard, I think, to have the other gods remove it. He was pretty messed up. Seemed confident he’d be okay, but I’m worried.”

  Fenris stiffened, and he did not reply immediately. He turned around.

  “Balder was attacked as well?” he mused. “That is disturbing. I fear for him too, since there are accursed arrows in the universe that can cause tremendous harm to gods as well as lower beings. Do you have any leads, any evidence as to who or what might be responsible?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. Aside from the dark elves being all over this forest, naturally. I don’t know anything beyond that.”

  “Well,” said the wolf-father, “if Balder is returning home, he will get the help he needs and likely survive. Now, follow me.” He stepped through the portal.

  But, Bailey speculated, how much longer will he survive? And what am I walking into?

  Chapter Six

  The homeworld of the dark alfar was not a pleasant realm. Nothing about it was soft or reassuring. Bailey had been here once before, briefly. It hadn’t been high on her list of places to visit again.

  It was a desert of red rock and orangish-brown dust, of small jagged mountains and mysterious cavern complexes, with sporadic boulders eroded by the wind and weird petrified trees and vines breaking up the desolate monotony. Overhead, the sky was masked with low, thick clouds the color of slate.

  Bailey couldn’t recall if this was the exact place she and Fenris had come to on their previous excursion or somewhere else since it all looked pretty similar to her. She asked the were-god.

  “No,” he said, “this is not the location we came to before. It’s closer to the edge of their realm, with some overlap with the Other. Not far, in fact, from the dark forest where you called me. It also seems that your human friends in the Agency sent people here quite recently. And yet...”

  There were no signs of human intrusion. No footprints, relics, or the markings of any significant fighting. No bodies, either. It was as though the spot had been undisturbed for decades.

  “Huh,” Bailey mused. “As if everything wasn’t weird enough already.”

  It was quiet as they advanced toward an area with a greater than average concentration of dark openings to the underground, but it wasn’t long before a low noise combined with a rising vibration brought them both to a halt.

  They stood, neither moving nor breathing. They only listened.

  The ground was rumbling. So many bodies were moving around beneath them within the bowels of the rock that it qualified as a seismic event, a minor earthquake.

  “Uh,” Bailey piped up, in a louder voice, “we have a problem here, Fenris.”

  “I know,” he growled.

  From the cave mouths all around them streamed black-armored, white-haired archers and swordsmen, their collective hissing battle cry like the descent of a giant tidal wave toward a hapless shore—hundreds of them, with hundreds and thousands more streaming out behind them. The earth emptied itself of their numberless horde.


  Bailey punched the ground, conjuring an expanding semicircular wave of water that grew in size and power, becoming a tidal wave that smashed into the first of their foes. It drove them back in rolling heaps, washing them away.

  She pushed the torrential waters toward a cluster of cave openings and then froze it, trapping dozens of alfar within the ice and blocking a paltry few of their points of egress to the surface.

  But more were coming, not only from other caves but from hidden places aboveground. Forty at a time leaped down from a low, jagged line of cliffs and hills, while scouts and sentries sprouted from behind what looked like every single tree, rock, and bush across the visible landscape.

  Fenris retaliated with huge gales of wind and by seizing the rock beneath their feet in sheets an acre wide, turning the ground itself over like a revolving trash can lid and dumping elves back into the subterranean depths from which they’d come.

  They screamed and growled and arrows from their bows blanketed the sky, colliding uselessly with the two deities’ hastily-conjured shields.

  But for every dozen they forced away, incapacitated, or destroyed, another three dozen rushed to meet them.

  “Bailey,” Fenris shouted, “we can’t win here. Not now, not without serious and needless risk. We must flee and get reinforcements!” He shifted into his hulking house-sized wolf form and stomped on elves, flung them aside, and batted groups across the stony plain.

  The werewitch created a field of static electricity a quarter-mile across. Fifty or so elves ran into it and froze, their muscles seizing. It wouldn’t kill them, but it would hold them off for a bit.

  “No objections here!” she yelled. “We need to clear a place to warp out, though!”

  She selected a spot off to her right that seemed less dense with adversaries than anywhere else in the wasteland and detonated an expanding wave of concussive force. Elves flew head over heels through the air or were driven straight back, leaving a broad circle empty of them.