Winner Takes All (Were Witch Book 9) Read online

  One of their wounded Weres slipped outside a faltering shield, and sword-wielding elves converged on him to finish him off. Snarling, Bailey detonated a flaming explosion that obliterated the alfar swordsmen, but too late to save the wolf.

  Their path led into a vast, airy, sprawling cavern, across a makeshift bridge of rock that spanned a black chasm below. Other paths between other openings crossed the walls of the pit, and here dark elf archers had taken position to snipe at them.

  “Goddammit!” Roland exclaimed. “Can’t things get easier instead of harder for once?” He raised strong, towering shields on both sides of the path, and their arrows ricocheted off to plummet into the void below.

  The elves trailing behind them launched bolts of their own over and through the middle of the path. One grazed Roland’s arm and the wizard faltered, his left-hand shield dissipating.

  Bailey spun toward him as another volley of arrows came across the chasm. “No!” She deflected them, barely, then seized telekinetic control of the very rock of the cavern wall, bringing it down on the archers, crushing them and destroying the path. The ruins of both tumbled into the darkness.

  She turned to the other side, where another group of bowmen was approaching from a closer, broader tunnel. The girl dislodged more stone within the corridor’s walls and slammed both halves together, closing the passage off and reducing the alfar within to paste.

  Then they ran ahead, reentering an enclosed area and clashing with a squad of swordsmen. Bailey pulled free her blade, noting the way Fenris looked at it curiously, and the two of them cut down the warriors in seconds.

  Not far beyond lay an archway, beyond which was another dome-like cavern, albeit one which seemed to have a solid floor. Forty elves burst out, firing a volley of arrows before charging with their scimitars.

  The wolf-father blocked the projectiles while Bailey used her sword to throw a wave of freezing gas into the front lines of the platoon, killing the first dozen and leaving their ice-statue corpses to obstruct the ones behind.

  Fenris gestured at the space ahead with a big, clenching hand. “This is not Gormyr’s main throne room, but I strongly suspect he’s here. It’s a forward command center, which will allow him to stay close to his troops while on this side of their realm but remain in a secure location at the same time. Move!”

  “Gotcha,” Bailey replied, throwing a percussive shockwave into a cluster of guards who streamed out of the archway toward them. The frozen ones shattered and the others staggered into the walls. “There’s got to be something important here if they’re fighting to defend it so goddamn hard.”

  They plunged into the warriors who remained standing, blasting them into the cave walls or cutting them down, bulling their way into the chamber beyond. At once, they found themselves facing down two dozen elves who could only be an elite honor guard.

  Bailey paused for a brief instant. The new adversaries wore shining golden armor and deep purple robes, and they carried glaive-like bladed staffs as well as short swords at their sides. Something about the way the armor glowed faintly suggested that it offered the wearers significant protection against magic. She couldn’t be sure, but the hunch was strong.

  Fenris barked, “Plunge through! We’ll handle them.”

  Bailey threw a net of crackling lightning at the praetorians, but it did no more than spark against their helmets, pauldrons, and breastplates and momentarily slow them. “Shit,” she muttered, then dashed forward, surrounding herself with a battering ram’s worth of arcane shield.

  She struck one of the elite guards head-on. His glaive glanced off her shield, and he was thrown off-balance to clatter aside. Another tried to stab her from the side and she ducked the blow, driving her sword deep into his armpit before ripping it free.

  Then she was past them, as Fenris and her friends engaged the others. She ran forward on a broad open stone floor toward an elevated platform where a distinctive figure sat on a small, portable throne.

  He did not look much different from the others, though he was taller than most, with a bearing that was less feral and more aloof and haughty. His long silver hair was tied into a braid that fell behind his shoulders, and a slim black crown encircled his brow. The gold-hued armor he wore was similar to that of his bodyguards, though limited to leg greaves, shoulder pauldrons, and a vest of scales, rather than full heavy plate. He wore a black cape and a scimitar at his side that was slightly longer and more finely-decorated than that of the average warrior.

  He looked down his nose at the girl. “You. So soon.”

  Behind Bailey, the struggle against the elite guards had reached a stalemate, and Fenris shoved his way past the rest of them to stand at the werewitch’s elbow and point up the dais at the monarch.

  The two men locked eyes. Gormyr’s smirk faded when Fenris spoke.

  “Your reign is over,” the wolf-god boomed. “You have broken the non-aggression pact we had made, foully betraying us by moving your entire army toward the boundaries that lead to Asgard and Earth. Our realms will be spared the surging numbers of your blood-maddened people, and you will cease to live.”

  The pompous elven face fell in deep dismay. Bailey noticed that the ruler was not looking at her but staring at Fenris.

  Holding her bright sword in two hands, the girl held it up and aimed the point toward the elf’s face. “Gormyr, King of the Dark Alfar, I, Bailey Nordin, hereby challenge you to single combat for control of your army.”

  He turned his face back to her and spread his bony hands. “I know of you, Bailey Nordin, and I had expected us to meet, although not as soon as this. Treachery must be afoot.”

  He allowed the bitterness of his last statement to hang in the air for a moment before resuming his spiel.

  “But it makes no difference, just as it is unimportant that you are officially a goddess. For you are a neophyte, an amateur, barely able to control your powers, whereas I am heir to eons upon eons of elite training as both a swordsman and a sorcerer. And furthermore, woman-child, your death is inevitable, for it is written into the prophecies that underlie our current situation. You cannot fight Fate. You can only fight me...and fail.”

  Bailey’s nostrils flared. “Well, you’re half right. Bring it on, and let’s see about the rest.”

  Gormyr walked steadily forward and raised his sword in a slow, smooth motion, settling into a fighting stance, the blade in a high defensive guard. “Control of my army, you say?”

  “Yes,” she shot back. “If I win, leadership over the dark elves passes to me.”

  The monarch laughed drily. “If you win, Bailey, they will fall upon you and destroy you, sweeping you aside and battening the walls of Asgard until either they fall at last or the final elf dies. You cannot stop what’s been set in motion.”

  She trembled in frustration. “Fight me! Quit talking.”

  Behind and around her, the alfar who’d been chasing them had piled into the chamber and stood watching, tense and ready.

  “As you wish,” Gormyr said. He looked slowly at Fenris, his face grim, and the two men locked eyes for the span of three heartbeats before the king turned his gaze back to the werewitch.

  The alfar blade leapt from its wielder’s hand with such nimble speed that Bailey was shocked and only narrowly avoided taking its point in her eyes. She flung her head back, wheeling to the side and swinging her sword upward toward his hand and arm, but he’d already retracted it and was circling around toward her flank.

  Bailey feinted a thrust and then slashed powerfully at Gormyr’s head while the elf leaned to the side, cutting toward the girl’s legs. She jumped twelve feet in the air, seeking to descend and cut her enemy in half from above, overpowering him with sheer force.

  He responded by raising his hand and summoning a bolt of lightning from above her. She realized what he was doing at the last fraction of a second and took the bolt on her sword, absorbing the energy and striking toward him as she landed.

  The king swept aside the light
ning stroke with a mixture of water and arcane shield-matter, then his sword once again drove toward her throat.

  Bailey’s mind worked like a machine, recalling and employing everything she’d learned about fencing and combat. Her arms and her sword were one, moving with a speed and efficiency of which she was proud. Yet it was scarcely enough to fight the tall monarch to a draw.

  There came a brief lull, and Bailey deployed the secret weapon in her arsenal, the one she knew with near-certainty that Gormyr would not expect.

  She visualized long tendrils of magic emerging from her to lock into the king’s chest and head, piercing him and opening a one-way channel between them. She started draining him of his power, as she’d done before to two goddesses. Since Gormyr was less than a deity, powerful though he was, she knew she could handle it.

  The elven monarch did not appear to notice at first. He lunged at her again, and once more she blocked his strike. He was slower than he’d been before, if only minutely. When he wheeled around for a second slash, he faltered, and his eyes widened.

  Bailey swept her blade toward his throat. He dodged it, but he’d grasped that something was wrong. He raised a hand to hurl a blast of magic at her, but the fireball that erupted from his fingers was weak, fading into smoke after only a few yards. Bailey blocked it with ease.

  Still she siphoned his power, absorbing most of it into herself and letting the rest bleed into the ground, to be sponged back up by the fabric of the realm itself. A charge went through her like three cups of Russell’s coffee.

  “No,” Gormyr rasped. “No!”

  He charged at her, stopped to throw a knee-level kinetic shockwave, and then lashed out again. Bailey hadn’t expected a feint of this kind and the shockwave knocked her off balance, though not off her feet. The king’s sword sliced across her hip. The wound wasn’t deep, but it was painful, and blood ran down her leg.

  She retaliated faster than he could. The tip of her sword moved under his sword arm and drew up, cutting armpit and pectoral and causing the alfar to lose full control of his weapon. Still his power seeped out.

  The werewitch swung her sword again, striking the elven blade dead-on and shattering it. Another sweep of the longsword dug partway into the armor of his midsection, not cutting through it, but denting it inward and gouging the king’s abdomen.

  Gormyr faltered, a tremor going through his lithe body, and fell to one knee, barely able to brace himself on his broken sword. His face was contorted in pain and shock, and still his latent magical potential flowed out of the space his body occupied into that of the goddess of Weres and witches.

  Feet began to move in a rush, and shadows flickered. The quality of the air and light changed as vast numbers turned and ran. The dark elves abandoned the hall and its surrounding system of tunnels, knowing their king was beaten.

  Bailey looked Gormyr in the eyes. “I’ll hold you to your bargain.”

  He tried to laugh and coughed up a spot of blood. “I will be in no position to enforce it, will I? Hold them to it. If you can.”

  The emptying of the chamber continued. Alfar fled, yelling and conversing in their sibilant voices, probably arguing whether to obey Bailey as their new leader or to regroup and mount a resistance against her later.

  The girl held the point of her sword in front of the elven king’s chest, then, with a quick thrust, skewered him through the heart. His eyes squeezed shut as his facial muscles tightened and the breath rattled out of his lungs. Then he slumped over and was still.

  Fenris, with a borderline sarcastic tone that was unusual for him, announced, “All hail Bailey Nordin, Queen of the Dark Elves. And we, her agents and ministers.”

  Cheers, grunts, and shouts of “Yeah!” went around the cavern as her friends and supporters pumped fists in the air.

  For her part, the girl breathed deeply, turning her mind to the power she’d absorbed. Gaining so much of it so quickly was always a difficult experience. It was like speeding up a winding road in a car. Exhilarating at first, but there came a moment when you realized you were going too fast, that things might slip out of control, and a nervous, twitchy incoherence threatened to overwhelm the mind.

  But she’d dealt with it before, and after a minute or two, she was calm enough to turn to them and speak.

  “It’s done,” she began. “I have no idea if the elves will fight now that he’s dead. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. They might splinter into different groups who can’t agree on anything if we’re lucky, but they’re scattering. We broke their will to fight; they ain’t gonna invade Earth anytime right away. I’ll call that good enough until further notice. Of course, we couldn’t have done this without each other. Thank you, all of you, for fighting so bravely.”

  After another brief round of celebration, during which she and Roland locked eyes for a much-needed tender moment, Fenris stepped up and raised his arms.

  “I must depart,” he told them, “to do further scouting and reconnaissance in other realms, where more trouble may be brewing. I will report back to you when I’ve learned enough. It would be better for the rest of you if you returned to Earth to rest and recover your strength. We may need it.”

  The wolf-god opened another broad portal back to their realm, then stepped aside and opened a second one only big enough for one person. Bailey nodded to him, watching him leave. She contemplated dashing in after him before he could close it from the other end to discover what the hell he’d be up to next.

  No, she ordered herself, not yet. Soon, the time will be right. But until then, patience.

  Clenching and unclenching her fists, she followed her people through the large gateway, back to Oregon, back home.

  Chapter Eight

  The bloodstained forest seemed heavier with silence than usual as Fenris approached the shallow depression next to which his chess table had been set up. Carl was sitting there, waiting for his master. Their eyes met, and the wolf-god beckoned for him to stand.

  The scion rose to his feet. “I have located Balder,” he stated. A charge of excitement went through him. He nearly trembled with a mixture of nervous energy and combative eagerness.

  “Good,” said Fenris. “Tell me everything so that we may decide what to do next.”

  Carl’s dark eyes gleamed with triumph. “His arcane energy signature is coming from one of your hunters’ forests. I forget the name of it, pardon me. One of the more humanoid-friendly ones, with the paths and signs, But it’s under your purview. Balder is there and radiating strongly. I do believe he’s trying to attract attention to himself, probably in an effort to get the other Asgardians to find him and come to his aid.”

  “Ah,” the wolf-god murmured, “I see. He is not dead yet, then.”

  His apprentice’s face fell by a small margin, detecting the slight note of disappointment in his master’s tone.

  “He is alive, my lord,” Carl went on, “but badly weakened. The accursed arrow is doing its work with slow but deliberate effectiveness. There is a chance he’ll be rescued. Shall I depart and finish him off? I’ve sensed nothing to indicate that there would be any witnesses nearby.”

  Fenris rubbed his square, stubbled chin. “No. I will deal with him myself. He won’t pose much of a challenge in his current state, and I relish the opportunity to deliver the final blow. I’ve not hunted such prey for far too long.”

  The scion’s eyes dimmed in obvious disappointment, but his only reply was, “Yes, wolf-father, as you wish. May I ask what’s been going on in the meantime?”

  “All is well,” Fenris answered him. “We confronted the dark alfar, and Bailey has slain King Gormyr and absorbed his powers.” At this point, his barely-contained excitement was palpable. His eyes glimmered beneath his hood. “She is close, Carl, so terribly close to being a proper replacement for me. Furthermore, the elves are now under my command. Bereft of a leader, they will follow me before they follow Bailey, and at my insistence, will attack Asgard in secret, weakening the barrier betw
een the realms. And then, at last, will come the surge which overthrows the divine realm’s tyranny once and for all.”

  Carl chuckled. “Me being only half-divine, I never would have been allowed to reign alongside them. They deserve everything that’s coming to them.”

  “Yes.” Fenris beckoned. “Come with me. Though I insist on delivering the coup de grace to Balder myself, I want you to be present and watch. Consider it your reward for having brought him to this pass.”

  The scion beamed. “Why, thank you, good sir.”

  Turning to the side, the wolf-god opened a portal to the realm his apprentice had mentioned. He knew the description, and by sending out his astral consciousness, he easily confirmed Carl’s words by picking up the energy signature of the Norse god of beauty. He placed the gateway near enough to Balder that they would find each other without delay, but Fenris and Carl would still have a moment or two to prepare.

  Fenris stepped through, followed by the scion. They emerged into another forest, vastly different from the one they’d departed.

  Here, groundcover was minimal, and dirt paths wound between the huge, thick, twisted old trees, many of which rose more than a hundred feet. Earth and bark were a rich, deep brown, and the leaves were as bright as emeralds. The sky was overcast though it was a light, almost silvery color, giving the whole place a vital yet somber atmosphere. In places where the trees weren’t as thick, grass or flowering bushes grew.

  Signs were posted at the junctions of the various footpaths—low stone columns with symbols scratched into them, pointing out directions to one place or another, or giving indications to hunters about where their prey might be located.

  The forest was well-stocked with game. Deer and hares frolicked and gamboled. Fenris felt a mild urge to shift and chase them down, more for the thrill of the hunt than for food as he seldom needed to eat.

  But he was here on other business.