Calmly, she faced the electrical demon that was fizzing toward her.
Aubrey wanted to call out to Caroline, offer suggestions, but he didn’t want to break her concentration. She was balanced on her toes, alert, watching the creature and waiting for her opportunity.
The demon stretched out to touch its next wire. As soon as it did, Caroline threw herself under the wire she was standing against, then continued rolling under the next before coming to her feet. She glanced around and then seized a length of pipe from a stack of disused building material they’d used in renovating the factory.
‘No!’ Aubrey shouted. He started running toward her, then scrambled frantically on his hands and knees under the first wire.
Caroline held the pipe vertically, in both hands, perfectly balanced. The electrical demon paused for a moment as it assimilated a handful of attendant sparklets, then flashed along the wire toward her. When it came close enough, Caroline swung so hard she was lifted off her feet.
The electrical demon was unaffected. The pipe passed straight through and caught the wire, rebounding wildly before Caroline could bring it under control, but by then the creature had reached out and grasped it. Instantly, it flowed into the metal, its form melting like butter in sunshine. It dissolved from the antenna wire, crackled along the length of the pipe and Caroline was enveloped in a spitting, hissing radiance, an electrical cloak that made her jerk wildly before her eyes rolled back in her head. The pipe fell from her grasp and she slid to the tarred roof. A malevolent nimbus spluttered around her as she lay still.
Aubrey was running before he knew it. Without slowing, he plucked his penknife from his pocket and slashed at the wire ahead of him. Naturally, since it was under tension, it sprang apart and whipped past his face. He raced after it, caught the end and coiled the wire until he reached the edge of the roof where he slashed again, tucking fifty feet of wire under one arm.
Spells came to his lips – affinity spells, amplification spells. Coldly, he merged them together, opting for expediency and power over elegance.
The electrical glow had left Caroline’s inert body and it had leaped back to the antenna wire, where it was reassembling itself into a demon. It swayed for a moment, then it hummed along the wire.
Aubrey swivelled in time to see it vault to the next wire, speed along to the other end, then leap across to the next, coming one step closer. He was clearly its new target.
Tiny imps of sparklets were gathered up and incorporated as it hummed from one wire to the next, careering from end to end then crossing, growing larger as it crackled its way toward him. Waiting for it, Aubrey’s mouth was dry but his mind was clear. He cast the coil of antenna wire over the parapet while he held the loose end in his right hand. When the coil hit the ground, he ran through the spell that made sure it buried itself in the soil, and he paid out enough wire so that he had three or four yards at his feet, all the while refusing to notice the way his heart was thumping. Fear was knocking at the door, but he declined to answer.
The electrical demon crossed to the wire that Aubrey was standing next to. It didn’t hesitate. In a shower of sparks, it screamed along the antenna, sizzling toward him with its arms outstretched.
Aubrey spat out a spell. He swung the wire in a flat plane above his head, slowly at first, then faster and faster, whirling until it whistled. When the electrical demon was barely ten feet away, he let go. Thanks to the spell, the wire hurtled at the creature, struck, then wrapped itself around its torso, tightening like a maddened python and sending a cascade of sparks into the air.
Balanced on the wire only a few feet away, the electrical demon started to squeeze free, but Aubrey was ready for it. He delivered the other half of the spell with venom.
The demon stopped its frenzied wriggling. For an instant, it propped on the wire and tilted its head to the heavens. In defeat? Resignation? Before Aubrey could ponder this moment of terminal cognisance, the demon elongated, then compressed – as if a giant had placed hands top and bottom and were using it as an accordion. With a thud and a whistle, the demon vanished, leaving the antenna wire vibrating. The entrapping wire came alight, crackling with blue fire, a glowing serpent in the night, then it fell to the roof, inert.
The demonic creature had been earthed. Grounded. Defeated.
Aubrey raced to where Caroline lay, slashing antenna wires with his knife to allow his passage. He paused to check that she was breathing, then he scooped her up and fairly danced across the mangled antenna array, not putting a foot wrong. Without a thought he held her over his shoulder and entered the hatch, descending the stairs with the surefootedness of an alpine creature much given to spending its life on near-vertical cliffs.
He hurried to the oval table, at war with himself. Part of him wanted to despair, but he was Caroline’s hope and he couldn’t afford the dramatics.
Her eyes were still closed. Her breathing was shallow and ragged. He touched her throat to find that her pulse was thready, erratic, and he felt the insidious brush of panic. He glanced at her dear hands to see them reddened and burned.
Concentrate! he told himself. Time for namby-pambiness later!
He extended his magical awareness. The creature had been electrical in its nature, but it had also had something magnetic as well, all bound together with magic. The residue was familiar – it had the taint he had detected in Caroline’s headphones, and he knew, then, that this creature was responsible for the interference in the ether.
It had left its touch on Caroline. Many of her normal functions were being overwhelmed. Soon, she would be lost – unless he could perform some delicate medical magic.
Aubrey had a tendency to throw himself into gaps, wherever they occurred. He had a desire to do the right thing, even at personal cost. But medical magic? He was only too aware of the hazards. No matter how robust Caroline’s constitution was, the human body was a complex construction. He could do untold harm.
In a decision that took less than a heartbeat, he decided that inaction here was worse than action. A world without Caroline was unthinkable.
Restoration and strengthening. He’d start there. Dimly remembered lectures came to him, masters at Stonelea mumbling about medical magic and emphasising that it should be left to trained practitioners. Dons at Greythorn insisting that the human body had a remarkable system for repairing itself, but sometimes needed help.
He called on the Law of Origins and the Law of Constituent Parts. Medical magic didn’t substantially derive from these, but Aubrey was groping in the dark. He used what he knew best. The Law of Completeness. The Law of Intensification. Soon, he had a conglomerate spell with elements threaded together and supporting each other, combining to create what he hoped would keep Caroline Hepworth from dying.
Kneeling at her side, he pronounced the spell slowly, despite the urgency. He wanted to get this right – he needed to get this right. If sincerity made spells more puissant, then Caroline would be up and walking in no time.
He finished, hesitating a little over his signature element. Then he anxiously studied the face of the person who mattered.
Many people mattered to him. George. His parents. Even his grandmother. He’d come to understand, however, that Caroline Hepworth mattered to him in a way unlike the others. Her existence affected him in a thousand different ways. Through all of his self-consciousness, through all his doubting and second-guessing, he knew that she made him happy.
Her eyelids moved a little, but remained closed. He chewed at his lip. When her breathing become more even, more regular, he was glad he was kneeling, for he was sure his legs would have given way if he’d been standing.
He bathed her hands and bound them with bandages, taking his time, waiting for her to open her eyes. When she lapsed into sleep, he covered her with a blanket, where she lay on the table, and he woke George and Sophie.
39
Through the small hours of the night, Aubrey tended to Caroline.
After sharing what he knew with George and Sophie, they helped him move her downstairs to her own sleeping cubicle. After that, Aubrey remained seated on a three-legged stool by her side as she slept an uneasy
