by Gail Dayton
The creature didn't entirely dissolve, merely shrank small enough to fit into the narrow back alley. It rumbled forward over planks laid on top of the mud, still rolling on wheels. Many of the small machines seemed to prefer that sort of locomotion. Harry flicked his right hand wand--the steel--and the flames, now about knee-height, spread, climbing upward toward the cat skull.
The fires didn't seem to affect the thing, and she said so. But then demons should be accustomed to fire, given their native habitat.
"It will." Harry kicked away a few ambitious, or speedy, little machines that had got close enough to kick, leaning a bit heavier on Elinor to do it. It seemed to give the other little ones pause.
"Sooner or later," he added. "Once the fire burns through the bone. It's magic fire, remember. It will burn through, an' then the magic will kill it. But who knows 'ow long that'll take?"
Elinor didn't have the patience to wait. She invoked the blood still streaking their hands, seeping from Harry's leg. She called magic from the pegs she scattered in the mud in front of them, from her wand, from the alley walls and the mold growing on them. She pulled magic through Harry from the earth and water beneath their feet and the air around them, and she built a shield to protect them.
She didn't build it around the humans present. She built it around the demon-machine itself, sticking it down with the power of innocent blood avenged.
The little Kitty machine was the one that had shot Harry, driven by the demon that possessed it. The blood magic would cling to one or the other of them, claiming justice and--Elinor hoped--keeping the thing from harming anyone else.
The demon shrieked, bashing its arms into the rotten walls--but the shield surrounding it forced it to move so slowly, its blows had little force when they landed. The walls shook, but didn't break.
The monstrosity kept coming at them. Harry and Elinor backed away, step by slow step. To keep from focusing on the frightening sight of the burning bones and all those restless limbs and beaks and other moving parts, Elinor wondered whether the shield spell clung to the original cat skull machine or to the demon.
The spell did not stick to all of the little machines still flowing down the alley toward them, apparently swept forward by some silent command from the demon-machine. Except some of the little ones moved as slow or slower than Monster-Kitty. Had they been part of the larger construct? Parts shed when the monster made itself smaller to fit into the alley? If so, that would mean the shield was affixed to the demon, wouldn't it? If the little machines were tainted by being attached to it?
"Elinor!" Harry shook his arm, the one she held, thereby shaking her arm. "Pay attention. We need more o' your pegs."
He indicated the alley before them, overrun with the little machines, kicking a few more of them away to crash into their overgrown comrade. "We can't back up past Nigel." He tilted his wand to indicate the wizard lying crumpled against the wall.
No, they couldn't. She dropped a few more of her fistful of pegs, anchoring them with a smear of the blood on her fingers. Harry flung up the shield this time, removing the few machines on the wrong side of the shield back to the other with a kick. He spread the shield side to side across the alley.
"Why haven't we been shot at?" Elinor asked, rolling a peg from palm to fingertips, getting it ready to throw. Her wand was tucked up her sleeve, ready to pull out when she needed it. At the moment, pegs seemed to be the weapon of choice. She didn't have too many more. They had to last till reinforcements arrived. She hoped they arrived soon. She could pull chunks off the walls to throw, but half-rotten wood had half-rotten magic.
"Maybe most of 'em don't have popguns," Harry said. "Or crossbows, or whatever they shoot with." He pointed his wands at the swarming machines, the mere threat seeming to hold them back for now.
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.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
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 alchemi
sts 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.
The alchemists swung their weapons. In moments, "Kitty" was methodically reduced to splinters of bone and rusting metal, smashed to bits by crowbars wielded by powerful and angry men. The magic obviously did not impede physical action.
With the machines destroyed, the web of magic took on the violent red glow of the crushed cat skull's eye sockets, visible now to the o
rdinary eye. Elinor wasn't the only one who cried out for fear the demon would escape. The crowd of locals had grown.
She poured magic into the web. Hers, Harry's--any magic she could catch hold of. It came from that place inside her, where the angel had touched her with power flowing from the Source. She received magic from Thom and Nikos, from the Enforcers beside her. They all offered it up and she took what they gave to keep this evil from escaping into the world. Amanusa did the same from her end of the alley, the blood magic able to call to the beating hearts of those willing to help, to share what they had.
More magic appeared, coming from the determination of the ordinary people behind her to protect their families and their homes. They didn't have much talent or much magic but what they had, they gave, and there were many more of them. Dozens, scores of people, all refusing to give in to the evil. Even Nigel--Elinor felt his crippled magic coming out to take part.
The web turned orange, then yellow, glowing brighter and brighter. Elinor shielded her face with an arm, but she kept pouring in magic in concert with Amanusa. The net holding the demon soon burned with a blue-white ferocity, as seconds ticked away into minutes. A howling inside the net rose to a shriek that threatened to shatter buildings. And then, abruptly, it went silent. The magic net collapsed in on itself.
Elinor's knees buckled. Harry caught her, but he'd been losing blood for so long, he collapsed and they both crumpled to the ground. Archaios shouted for Amanusa, for wizards, but no one moved. Not yet.
"Is it gone?" Thom asked Grey what they all wanted to know.
Elinor waited, holding her breath and Harry's hand in case they had to fight again, while Grey looked and listened.
"Yes," he said a few seconds later. "Yes. My spirits confirm it. It has gone back to hell. The only escape we left it." As cheers rose, he began picking his way along the planks laid over the alley's mud toward Harry and Elinor.
"How could we do that?" Harry asked. "Took an angel's 'elp the last time."
Elinor dove into his bloodstream to check the damage. He had lost quite a lot of blood through that slow seepage, but not as much as she'd feared. She finally found the leaking blood vessel and stopped up the leak.