Heart's Magic (43 page)

Monster-Kitty squealed and
clicked and hissed incomprehensibly in its multitude of voices as
it advanced ponderously through the sea of machines, its voices
apparently driving them on, for they surged forward again. Elinor
threw her peg through the shield, yanking out the magic as Harry
hit it with his "
Ignis!
"

The fire burst in the midst
of the machines, the flames so bright and hot, Elinor threw up an
arm to shield her face.

"Kitty has a gun," Elinor
commented, when the first bright flare died back a bit.

Harry took her hand, the
one holding his wrist, to accompany his in a ballet as he directed
the fires with his wand, spreading them as wide as possible with
the magic they held. "Maybe Monster-Kitty doesn't 'ave any more
ammunition."

"One? One dart and it's
out?" It seemed unlikely to Elinor.

"Didn't shoot you with a
dart, did it? Shocked you, you said, with some kind o'
electricity."

"Well, why hasn't it done
that now?"

"Can't reach?" He gave her
an exasperated look. "Why are you worryin' about that
now?"

"To keep from being
scared?" There, she'd admitted it. Sort of.

He shook his head at her,
smiling. "'Nother peg." He pointed. "There. Ought to drive 'em back
a bit longer."

"Want to try two at once?"
She had two already in her hand, left from the fistful she'd
started with.

"All right."

She thought about
asking
What if it doesn't drive them
back?
but she didn't want to play
pessimist. She thought about saying
I love
you
again, but he knew. She would say it
again when they got out of the alley. And if they didn't--well, she
would be terribly, terribly disappointed. But she would be with the
man she loved.

She
hated
tragic endings. This would not
be one, if she could help it. "Ready?" she asked.

Harry nodded. Elinor cocked
her arm back and threw in one quick motion to keep from giving
warning. Instinctively, sensing Harry's intent as if it were her
own, she waited until the pegs were tumbling into the crowd of
creatures at the demon-machine's feet and
yanked.
Harry shouted. The pegs
exploded.

Machine armor burned and
they cowered, slowing their advance. For a moment. Flaming machines
lurched forward again, their appearance even more frightening with
the fires licking over the dry bone armor.

"Harry! Elinor!" Grey's
voice in the distance made Elinor's knees go weak with relief.
"Tell me that was your magic!"

"Here we are!" Harry
shouted. "
Hurry.
Don't let it get away!"

The sound of running
footsteps echoed in the night as the score or so of machines behind
the demon-machine went scuttling out of the alley, defying its
orders. "Don't let wha--" Grey cut himself off with a curse. More
curses echoed. They'd obviously seen the escaping machines, at
least half of them still on fire. Elinor thought she heard a
feminine squeal. Had Amanusa come?

Monster-Kitty cranked its
head around. Just the glowy-eyed cat skull atop its uppermost piece
swiveled, as if on a stick. Elinor wondered briefly by what
mechanism it saw, but she didn't let herself get lost in the
wondering, not this time. Too much to be done.

The cat skull turned its
red-ember eyes back on Harry and Elinor and lumbered forward faster
than before. Either the shield was weakening, or it didn't work as
well on wheels as on arms.

"
Kill you,
" it hiss-rumbled. More than
once. It must have decided that escape was impossible, so it would
take them with it.

"Holy--" Grey cut himself
off before he could actually blaspheme. He had finally reached the
far end of the alley with, yes, Amanusa and Jax, Norwood, a raft of
Briganti, and– There were others too, but Elinor couldn't see them
past the demon-machine and the first row or two of
reinforcements.

"What is that thing?" Grey
shouted.

The cat skull revolved
again to look at Grey and company. Or whatever its equivalent to
looking was.

"Demon-possessed," Harry
shouted back. "Built itself by sticking a great heap of the little
machines together. It can also control another 'eap of little ones
that aren't attached."

The skull pivoted back and
began rotating as if to keep both groups in view, making Elinor's
skin crawl.

"So how do we kill it?"
Grey called back.

The alchemists and wizards
in Grey's and Thom's force--all three of the loyal wizards had come
out, to Elinor's gratification--had their wands out, pointing them
at the demon-machine. Grey, being a conjurer, didn't have a wand.
He propped hands on hips to glare at the thing.

"Break it apart, I think."
Harry took a step forward, toward the machine. "And do somethin' to
send the demon back where it belongs."

"Well, yes. Of course. That
is a given." Grey made a gesture, writing a sigil on the
air.

Elinor was
so
glad to have a conjurer
present. They knew what to do about demons. And there were lots of
conjurers. She saw others writing their symbols behind
Grey.

"So who's doing the
breaking?" Amanusa called out. "How can we get close to
it?"

"It's got a shield on it,"
Elinor told her. "That slows it down a great deal."

"What did you use--innocent
blood! On a machine?"

"I was just as surprised,"
Elinor admitted. "But I believe it's the demon the magic has
attacked."

"Any rate, it's slow,"
Harry called. "Easy to dodge. Just break it apart with your 'ands,
or a stick, if you got one."

"Why aren't you breaking it
up, if it's so easy?" Grey demanded, the only one of them with
cheek enough to do so.

"'Cause I'm movin' even
slower than it is," Harry retorted.

"He got shot. Again."
Elinor thought this was one of the most peculiar conversations
she'd ever taken part in, shouting back and forth across a
demon-possessed machine monstrosity.

"I broke off a piece of its
arm." He defended his valor. "With Elinor's 'elp." And hers.
"Before it stuck more machines on in place."

"Enough talk." Nikos
Archaios strode forward, with an iron crowbar he'd acquired from
somewhere in his hands.

Little machines scurried to
attack him while Monster-Kitty swung one of its segmented limbs at
the Greek, slowly enough he avoided it with ease. A silvery wire
shot out from the skull's eye socket, flying almost too fast to
see. Until it hit the shield, where it stuck, spitting electrical
sparks. The thing that had disabled Elinor, she assumed.

Archaios kicked his way
through the small machines and slammed his crowbar against the
swinging arm. It didn't break quite as easily as the one Harry and
Elinor had snapped off. She surmised that the demon had learned
from their attack to strengthen its joints. Archaios had to hit it
again.

The arm broke off about
halfway up, cracking into three separate machines when it hit the
mud-covered stones of the alley's ancient paving. As the machines
tried to crawl to safety, the Enforcers charged as one to bash the
demon-monster with a variety of canes, clubs and pry bars. Local
residents surged forward with them, carrying paving stones and
bricks to crush the little machines--the ones broken off from the
big one, and any others they might catch.

Elinor felt odd, watching
others finish the battle she'd started. Shouldn't she be helping
them? Smashing the machines, or--or
something.

Harry took a lurching step
forward and she hauled him back. "You are already injured," she
informed him sharply. "You're still bleeding, damn it. You are not
going in there to get hurt again, because if you go, I go. It's my
magic holding you upright."

He looked at her hand
gripping his wrist behind his grip on his wand. Then he looked up
at her and sighed. "You're right."

"Of course I am." She
sighed to match him. "Much as I want to be in there myself,
cracking heads--or armor, in this case."

"That's no place for you."
His voice was as sharp as hers had been. "Your magic's better used
other ways."

She snorted. "Like what? I
feel absolutely useless."

"Holdin' me up, for
one."

She shrugged, granting that
truth.

"And you're the one built
the shield allowin' them to go in and bash it like
that."

"Yes, but I want to do
something
now. I
want to bash it." She wasn't used to feeling so bloodthirsty.
But then, she hadn't been a blood sorceress very long.

"Harry!" That was Grey,
shouting over the noise of all the bashing.
"Elinor--
catch!
"

He and Amanusa threw a net
of magic, woven of all four of the magics. Elinor caught it, bound
it with her blood and Harry's, and Nigel's, too.

"We don't 'ave a conjurer
on this side," Harry called.

"Doesn't matter." Grey
shouted back. "There's plenty of conjury already in it. The anchor
there will keep it from escaping that way. We've cut off all
escapes but one."

"Don't know as I like
that," Harry muttered. "Demon in the earth is still a demon out of
'ell."

"Then push the magic under
it, back toward Grey," Elinor said.

"
Through
the earth?" Harry looked at
her like she'd proposed running water uphill.

"They run trains through
the earth. Why not magic? That's where alchemy comes from, isn't
it?" It seemed reasonable to Elinor. "Why not through earth as
easily as through air?"

"Because earth is a mite
thicker than air." He flicked his wands, thinking. "But just
because it ain't been done before don't mean we can't do it. Never
'ad anything that could escape that way before. Worth a
try."

Elinor hauled on the net of
magic, pulling more of it to their side.

"What are you doing?"
Amanusa cried.

She could be heard because
by now, most of the machine crushing had stopped. Bits of broken
bone and metal lay scattered all through the mud. Kitty was no
longer "Monster-Kitty." Its eye sockets still glowed an evil red,
but it crawled about now atop a single subordinate
machine.

Archaios and Norwood were
poised with matching iron bars, ready to crush it as soon as Grey
gave the word that all was ready to prevent the demon's escape. The
locals had melted back behind the ranks of magicians on both ends
of the alley, now that the little machines were all escaped or
crushed, to watch the end of the battle. Some of the Briganti had
come around through the streets to join Harry and Elinor behind
their shield.

"We need to make the net
bigger," Elinor told Amanusa.

"Thom, Nikos," Harry called
to the alchemists between the two groups. "I'm gonna try pushing
the magic through below. Watch for it. Keep it movin' if you can,
right?"

"Yes, sir." Norwood
answered for both men.

Elinor wrapped her magic
around the net and around Harry's magic, tying them together. Then
Harry
pushed
it all
into the mud and stones under their feet. Elinor thought it felt
more like pushing a shuffleboard puck along than like a toss
through the air. Except this went under the ground.

The magic went bowling
along to Archaios and Norwood, who gave it a shove. It might have
made it all the way back to Grey and Amanusa without their help,
but with it, the magic came flying, to be caught up and merged with
the rest.

Kitty lumbered about,
screeching and clicking--noises Elinor thought were curses and
threats. Thom must have got tired of having to step out of its way,
because he brought his iron bar down hard on one of the bottom
machine's bone-and-iron limbs, crippling it. Afterward, it could
only scrabble in feeble circles.

"Why hasn't the demon
escaped before now?" Elinor rose on tiptoe to ask Harry.

"Dunno. Ask Grey after.
Maybe he knows."

"Can we kill it now?"
Archaios called to Grey.

"Amanusa!" Elinor thought
the two men looked entirely too close to the red-glowing eye
sockets. "Pull the net tighter, so it's only around Kitty--the
machine. If breaking the machine will release the demon, I don't
want Thom and Nikos inside the net with it."

"Nor do I!" Archaios said
with a laugh.

Together, the two women
tightened the magic, moving closer to the demon-machine under the
protection of their guards, until the net of magic was precisely
where they wanted it. Surrounding the demon-possessed machine
alone.

"
Now.
" Grey said quietly.