Heart's Magic (42 page)

Elinor started to chase
after it, but Harry nearly fell at her first step. She forgot to
throw her pegs, despite Harry shouting at her to "Throw! Get
it!"

The monster broke down the
half-rotted door to escape, but it was larger than the doorway. It
burst through both door jambs and part of the wall to go lurching
rather speedily down the cobbled alley, leaving the building
listing dangerously.

"Out!" Harry shouted. "Get
out before it falls." He let go of the shield and shoved Elinor
through the hole he'd made in the back wall, kicking the abandoned,
now-purposeless little machines in all directions. Which only made
them angry.

"Nigel!" Elinor cried. "We
can't leave Nigel."

Harry swore as she
clambered back into the building. "I'll get 'im."

"You're wounded.
I
will get him. You--" She
pointed at the hole. "
Hobble.
"

He cursed a great deal
more, not moving from the spot. Elinor wanted desperately to chase
after the demon-machine, but both men were hurt and the building
let out a crack that sounded as if it was coming down on all their
heads. It made the angry little machines skitter and snap at
everything in reach, including Nigel who lay bleeding on the
floor.

"If you're not leaving--"
Elinor tried Harry's kicking method to get through the beasts, but
it was hard to do in skirts, particularly with broken hoops. "At
least put your fires out so you don't catch me on fire."

"Let 'em burn. They won't
catch anything but other machines." Harry hobbled. The wrong way,
coming after her.

Between them, they got
Nigel up. In addition to the terrible blow on his shoulder, he'd
suffered several other wounds from the little machines now going
berserk in the groaning building. He was conscious enough to
shuffle his feet, but not much more.

"Out the back," Harry
ordered. "It's gonna fall toward the door."

Screams in the distance
marked the path the "Kitty" demon was taking. "Surely they'll get
Briganti, or the police, or someone down here quick to deal with
that thing," Elinor said. It was difficult to be both the smallest
member of the party and the only one not injured. Harry tried not
to lean on her, but his leg was still seeping blood, damn
it.

Machines scrambled and
trundled and clattered in all directions like bone-armored rats
escaping a burning building. How would they ever catch them all,
destroy them all, if magic could no longer affect them?

A knot of scruffy urchins
had gathered at the far end of the moonlit back alley, watching as
the building gave out a last great groan, then a whole series of
rotten-sounding pops, and collapsed into a heap. A few more
machines escaped from the piled timbers.

"I'll pay a crown for every
one of those you bring me," Harry called to the children. "Deliver
'em to the Magician's Council Hall."

"Dead or alive," Elinor
added.

"Preferably alive," Harry
added to her addition. "And warn folk about that big un. That one's
dangerous."

The ragamuffins just stared
as the battered trio of magicians limped toward them. Then they
turned as one to stare down the intersecting street. Their eyes
went wide and they vanished. Elinor never saw them go.

Then she saw why. "Kitty"
had gone out the door, but circled round. It had built itself up
larger, adding on more and more machines until it towered over the
puny humans. Refiner's fire burned now around its midsection like
some hellish belt, the new pieces added to the bottom, lifting the
original construct higher. The tiny cat skull still perched on top,
red eyes glowing. It was a terrifying sight.

But Elinor didn't know what
advantage a greater size might give it, besides looking
scary.

Nigel was barely conscious.
He wouldn't be able to help them in a fight. Without needing to say
a word, Harry and Elinor laid him in the meager protection of a
wall not much more sturdy than the one just collapsed. She produced
a fresh droplet of blood and placed it on Nigel's cheek. Harry
mixed it with a bit of the alley's mud and they built a shield
around Nigel with the help of his new tree-branch wand. He would be
all right, Elinor thought.
Really
all right.

The demon-machine waited at
the intersection. The alley behind Nigel's hiding place was too
narrow for its new bulk to fit into.

"We could just wait here
until help arrives," Elinor ventured.

"You should do that." Harry
took his arm from her shoulder and limped ahead a few steps.
"Shouldn't be too long till it does."

"Don't you dare take that
thing on alone, Harry Tomlinson." She caught up with him easily and
caught hold of his wrist, since he needed both hands to hold his
wands. She held her handful of pegs and her own wand in her other
hand.

He looked down at her, the
smile on his face clearly visible in the half-moon's light. "No
wonder I love ya. You're an amazin' woman, Elinor Tavis, in case
nobody's told ya."

She opened her mouth, but
nothing at all came to mind to say. She was too stunned. He loved
her? Was that what he meant when he said he was hers?

"Love?" she whispered. He
bent his head to hear her better. "You love me?"

"Yeah. I know you don't
love me back, but it's all right. I can 'andle it."

He loved her?

The little voice in the back
of her head, the one that kept saying things like, "But why
shouldn't you be able to have both Harry
and
magic?" spoke up again.

This time it said, "If you
are given the gift of talent and then presented with a man who
supports you in that gift and loves you exactly as you are, how can
it be wrong to accept with gratitude the gifts you are given?
Wouldn't it be more wrong, a greater sin, to throw away such a
gift? And thereby break his heart?"

She could do that, she
realized. Break Harry's heart. She had done it already, because she
was so afraid of things that could happen, that
might
happen. But might
not.

She had always thought that
voice was the voice of temptation, calling her to do the wrong
thing. But what if it wasn't? How could loving Harry be the wrong
thing when he pushed her to larger, greater magic, rather than
making her smaller and weaker? Especially when he loved her back.
Loved her anyway.

"But I do," she said, very
softly.

"Wot?" Harry glanced down
at her, then back up at the cat skull demon.

It seemed to be getting
impatient, waiting for them to come out of the alley. It was
bashing its bone-crusted fists against the corner buildings, which
were no sturdier than their neighbors.

"I do love you back," she
said a little louder, a little more certain with each word. "I love
you, Harry. I tried not to. I told myself I didn't. But I do." She
was nearly shouting by now. "I love you, Harry
Tomlinson!"

He gaped at her, the bright
glow of joy rising in his face. Then he ducked, pulling Elinor down
with him as a--a machine went flying past to crash on the
mud-covered stones behind them. "Do ya think you might've picked a
better time to tell me?"

She laughed, too giddy with
happiness to do anything else. "The best of all possible times,
since I just realized it."

Another machine bounced off
Harry's arm onto the alleyway behind, losing bits of armor in the
bounce and landing.

"Have they learned to fly?"
she asked, surprised.

"Nah." Harry straightened
and let her up as well. "Monster-Kitty's throwin' 'em."

It was. It didn't even have
to bend down for its ammunition. The machines crawled up its body
to be plucked off. Harry and Elinor ducked twice more while she
took in the sight. Monster-Kitty did not seem to be an expert
bowler.

"I will kill you!" the
thing raged in its hissy-rumbly voice, picking the terrier-sized
machines off its piecework body and throwing them. "You have
interfered with my plans for the last time!"

"You--" Harry went still,
the stillness of a predator preparing attack. "
You
made the dead zones?"

"Of course I didn't. You
wonderful humans did that yourselves when you set the magic so far
out of balance. I simply took advantage."

Elinor absorbed the
knowledge, her stillness matching Harry's. So now they knew what
had caused the dead zones. Knew how to fix it--rebalance the
magic--and had no way of convincing dissident magicians of the
truth. They were the only two to hear the demon's confession. Nigel
was unconscious, or as good as. No one who did not already agree
with their plans would believe anything they said.

Monster-Kitty obviously
realized it as well, for it gave a cackling laugh and a tiny caper.
Its new bulk did not permit much capering.

"I'm tired of waiting." The
demon-machine suddenly began disassembling itself, shedding
machines in a ripple of disturbing motion--toward Elinor and Harry.
It reminded her of ants pouring from a damaged nest, ready to
attack anything in reach.

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.