by Alix Hadden
"Ali!" He ran down towards her.
"Kir. About bloody time."
She didn't look round from whatever she was concentrating on, though her body language said she was nearly overwhelmed, and he could see that she was breathing hard.
Finally, he was close enough that he could see over her shoulder -- Ali was a few inches shorter than him. "What the hell is that?"
The thing in front of her was a lumpy mess of dirt and bits of concrete and rubbish. Kir could see squashed paper cups, a chewed chicken bone, a puddle of cigarette ends, all connected together with tiny stones and smears of dirt. It spread across most of the narrow alleyway, and its surface churned alarmingly.
"Your guess is as good as mine," Ali said, between gasps. There was a sheen of sweat on her light brown skin, and her hands were shaking slightly. "Every time I take it apart it comes right back at me. I'm running a bit low."
Not like Peckham was the best of places for their sort of energy, although as Kir looked around he could see a balcony with a couple of thriving plant troughs a couple of floors up over their heads, and the ever-present buddleia. This would have been a damn sight worse in winter. Or at night.
"Kir!" Ali's voice was ragged.
The thing was rising up, impossibly, out of its lumpy puddle. It turned into a foot-high, now two-foot-high, pillar, beginning to reach pieces of concrete out of itself.
Kir reached out mentally for the buddleia -- buddleia always had energy in abundance -- and yanked, pulling the energy down and throwing it at the concrete-and-rubbish thing.
Which collapsed.
"Yeah," Ali said. "You can do that, but give it a minute, and it'll be back again. I think there's metal in there. I'm shit with metal."
"I saw a couple of lumps of concrete, too," Kir said.
Metal was hard to work with, magically speaking. Concrete and other things that weren't alive were difficult too. Earth ought to be alive, sort of, but it wasn't like plants. Plants were easy. Animals and people were another level of hard, not to mention dangerous for everyone involved. Kir reached out with his mind towards the puddle-thing while it was still down.
It was hard to assess, a roiling mass of incoherency. It started pulling itself together again, reaching out, and Kir smacked it down again -- but he could see what Ali meant. That wasn't going to get rid of it. They needed to find a way of pulling it apart altogether, pulling away whatever was holding this stuff together. (And what could that even be? This sort of thing just didn't happen.)
Next to him, Ali was bent over, hands on her knees, breathing hard. Her hair had fallen forwards, and he couldn't see her face.
"Ali? Look, I can hold it for a minute, but...any ideas?"
"Gimme a sec."
Kir smacked at the thing again as it pulled itself back together. God, how long had Ali been doing this for? No wonder she was knackered.
"Okay." Ali straightened up. "First answer: no, fresh out of ideas. Second answer: I haven't really thought this through at all, but if it's made up of stuff, what happens if the stuff isn't there?"
Kir scowled at the puddle. "What, you want to start fishing crisp packets out of there?"
"With my actual hands? Not bloody likely, no."
"And half of it's just dirt and stones, anyway. Could we even fish that out?"
"Look, I said I hadn't thought this through," Ali said. "Feel free to come up with something yourself. Any time now will do."
"No, I think you might be onto something. If there's nothing to animate, whatever's doing it will have to -- go somewhere else? Disappear? I guess?"
"I'm not mad keen on spending the rest of my life stood here smacking at it," Ali said with a grimace. "But I'm not mad keen on the idea of it going somewhere else, either. You see how there's, like, nothing much else on the floor around it?"
Kir looked. The ground did seem surprisingly clean, given where they were. There was a thin film of water around the drainpipe, but the usual detritus of litter and dirt and fag ends was -- all in the puddle-thing, apparently. Right.
"That's because it just sucked all that shit up, like a sodding hoover. So I don't like the visual I have of what happens if it slurps its way out of here and off out there." She waved her hand in the direction of Peckham High Street.
"Yeah." It wasn't an image Kir liked, either. "So. Something's animating it. And there's stuff being animated. So we either need to remove the thing doing the animating, or the stuff being animated, you reckon?"
"And as I don't have a clue what the thing doing the animating is, I'm going with the stuff, at least for starters. Unless you feel better informed?"
"Not even slightly," Kir said. "But what happens if we take all the stuff away and it's still there?"
"Deal with that if it happens?" Ali suggested. "Not like we've even tackled question one yet, right?"
"Water," Kir said. "Lots of water. Wash it all away."
Ali frowned. "You think it'll wash away rather than just pulling it in."
"Look." Kir pointed. "The only thing left anywhere near it on the ground is that puddle of rainwater. I don't think it likes the water. But we can test it, if we like."
He scrabbled around in his bag, and pulled out his water bottle. Half empty, from the feel of it, but that ought to be enough, if he had a good enough aim.
"Shit, it's coming up again," Ali said, a note of desperation in her voice.
"Let it, just for a minute," Kir said, unscrewing the bottle top. Dammit, if he had a plastic bottle instead of metal he'd be able to squeeze it and aim properly.
"Kir..."
Kir ignored her, watching the thing pull itself back up again, the top of it starting to form into something that looked almost like an arm, or a tentacle, whatever it was reaching out towards him...
He brought the open bottle down overarm, sending a stream of water at the end of the arm, hard. It hit a foot or so down, and knocked a lump off above where it hit. The dismembered part fell to the floor by Ali's feet, and she jumped backwards in a hurry. It wasn't joining back up with the main part, but it wasn't falling apart, either. Kir jumped back himself, out of reach of the rest of the arm which was reaching out for him again, and threw the remainder of the water in the bottle at the dismembered piece.
To his immense relief, it dissolved into a collection of bits of rubbish and dirt, dispelling his sudden horrible vision of the thing rising up again in two parts rather than one, Sorcerer's Apprentice style.
He grabbed at the power from the balcony plants overhead, and threw it at the rest of the thing, knocking it back down again.
The main part was already pulling itself back together again, the cigarette ends and crisp packets and crumpled receipts pulling closer together; but the bits Kir had knocked apart with the water stayed inert. Though doubtless they'd be sucked back in again once the rest of the thing crept back over there.
"Right then," he said. "We need a lot of water. A hose, ideally, I guess."
"A hose," Ali said. "Which obviously I just carry around about my person. A tap, too. This doesn't seem to be a direct solution to the problem, Kir."
"Check in the back yard," Kir said, jerking his head backwards towards the gate he'd noticed a few feet behind them. He didn't want to take his eyes off the puddle-beast, doubtless readying itself for its next move. "There might be an outside tap."
Ali nodded, and disappeared from view. He heard a rattling noise as she tried the gate, some muttered swearing, and then the sucking feeling of someone using magic nearby. The gate's hinges creaked.
"Tap," she reported back in a moment. "No hose. I suppose we could try to direct it or something -- but Kir, shit, I hate saying this, but I'm nearly wiped out." She sounded somewhere between furious and embarrassed. Ali hated admitting any kind of weakness.
"Not surprised, you've been holding this thing off for ages and it's knackering." The thing chose that moment to rise up again, and Kir swiped it back down. Shit, how long had Ali been doing this before she called him?
"It's round a corner, too, so it would take quite some effort even if we were both feeling full-strength and in the middle of a fucking summer meadow. Right. Well. There are advantages to being in the damn city, too, right? There must be a pound shop round here somewhere. I can hold this for a few minutes, okay? You go buy some hosepipe." He tried to sound as firm as he could. But he hoped like hell that she was going to hurry.
"Yeah. Okay. Quick as I can."
Kir didn't count in minutes. He counted in the number of times the thing regrouped and tried to swipe back at him again. It was gaining ground, too, each time now, as he got more tired, and started backing up. It had reclaimed those dismembered pieces -- though before it had oozed onto them, he'd been watching them too, and they hadn't moved of their own accord. So the water plan still looked good.
He was getting more tired, though. The water really did need to do it by itself. On the upside, the more he retreated, the closer they were to the damn tap. The thing was getting steadily bigger, though, which couldn't help. Shit, where was Ali?
He heard running footsteps behind him.
"Got it," Ali said, breathlessly. "You okay there? Want me to take over?"
"Just get the damn hose hooked up," Kir said through his teeth, and pulled power again to whack at another pseudopod-arm. He was getting wobbly. Mage power might come from the living world, but it had to go through the mage themself, and it took something out of you every time.
It couldn't have been more than another minute or so that Ali took to hook the hose up. It felt longer.
"I've got it. Stand back!" she said, sharply, and with a sigh of relief, Kir darted backwards.
A torrent of water came past him as Ali appeared through the gate carrying the hose, tap obviously already on full blast. Kir swore under his breath. Hopefully no one in that house or shop or whatever it was was looking out of a window. Not that they had many options left, at this point. Better a row about trespass than being eaten by a rubbish-monster.
Ali raked the water over the thing, her face set in concentration -- and it was working. Pieces fell off it, raining onto the floor, losing their cohesion as Ali flooded the end of the alleyway. Kir jumped up onto an abandoned milk crate as the water began to pool on the floor and flood towards them.
"As much as you like," he advised, and Ali nodded tersely.
She kept it up for a good five minutes, until the whole alleyway was ankle-deep in water, and the rubbish was beginning to spill out into the street.
"That ought to do it," he said, and nipped into the yard to turn the tap off. With some relief, he noticed that the windows overlooking it were sufficiently grubby that even if anyone was looking, they were unlikely to have seen much of anything.
He came back out into the alleyway, and stood with Ali, looking at the flooded ground. There was no sign of movement.
"How long we going to wait?" Ali said, after a few moments of silence.
Kir shrugged. It felt like an effort. "Ten minutes?"
"And then we are going to the chippy, and -- your flat's closer than mine," Ali said firmly. "I left ice-cream in your freezer. I need it, even if you don't."
"I need it. I definitely need it." Kir looked down at his climbing trousers, which at some point in the last half hour had been splashed with all sorts of unpleasantness. "And I want to get changed."
This. All of this was why he couldn't hook up with anyone.
CHAPTER TWO
"Bags first shower," Ali said the instant they got through the door of Kir's flat, dumping her half-eaten chips on top of the clutter on the hallway shelf.
"Fine," Kir said. "But I am not sitting down on the sofa -- or even the carpet -- with this much scuzz all over me. I'm going to come and sit on the bathroom floor."
"Whatever," Ali said, already on her way to the bathroom.
She was already in the shower by the time Kir got in there. He took his filthy trousers off and dumped them on the bathroom tiles on top of Ali's clothes, then sat down on the floor, leant back against the wall, and carried on eating chips from the paper. Kir and Ali had lived in each other's pockets for two years in their late teens, when they were both new mages; although Ali in particular was cautious around most folk, the two of them had long ago worn straight through any body shyness either of them had around the other.
"Oh god, hot water," Ali said from the shower. "This is the best."
"My trousers are never going to be the same again," Kir said. "I liked those trousers."
"Nonsense," Ali said. "It was just dirt and rubbish and stuff. Manky, but it'll wash off. Soak them in the bath once we're both done showering. You can put my stuff in there with them."
"Why are these little problems always so dirty?" Kir asked.
"You always say that," Ali said. "And I always say, I have no idea. It's not like they happen all that often."
"Your experiments are like that too," Kir countered.
"And yours aren't. So obviously it's just me."
"I should leave you to it," Kir muttered, and shovelled more chips into his mouth. "Are you done yet? If you use all the hot water I will personally kill you."
"Yes, yes, whatever. Fine. Done. Hand me a towel and get yourself in." She paused. "Make it one you don't mind going a bit green. I redid the hair dye a couple of days ago and it's still washing out a bit."
Ali was right, the hot water was blissful. And the vigorous application of generous quantities of mint shower gel did a good job of getting the unpleasant smell out of his nose.
Rubbing shower gel over himself, he found himself suddenly thinking of Zach again. Zach in the shower, assisting with the soaping down process...Kir's cock hardened a little, and he did his best to banish the idea. Zach wasn't a mage. The whole thing with Becky had demonstrated what a bad idea that was. He'd never been able to explain to Becky what it was that occasionally dragged him away in a hurry for hours at a time, or why there were times when he didn't want her round the flat (because he'd have to tidy away whatever he was experimenting with), or even talk to her about it. And he wanted to be able to talk about magic. Magic, coding, climbing -- there wasn't much else in his life, not so as you'd notice. You couldn't have a relationship with someone when a third of your life was out of bounds, right? He'd established that pretty comprehensively at this point.
So. Thinking about Zach was a bad idea.
He emerged again from the bathroom with a towel round his waist. Ali was stretched out on the sofa, towel still wrapped round her head, wearing one of his T shirts and a pair of yoga trousers she must have left here before. The chip paper was empty and screwed-up on the coffee table, and he saw with relief that she was looking a bit less strained.
"Have you put all the clothes to soak?" she asked, without moving.
"Done," he said. "And even rinsed them out first. So you can take your turn and stick them in the machine in a bit."
"Fetch the ice-cream while you're up? And put the kettle on," Ali called after him as he went into his bedroom to find something to wear.
"What did your last slave die of?" Kir grumbled; but in all fairness, Ali had taken the brunt of today's little experience, and Ali was smaller than him and thus had less in reserve, although she loathed admitting it. She would kill him if she thought he was trying to protect her, and when it came down to it she was probably a better mage than him...but if he'd got there a bit quicker, if he'd thought of a solution a bit faster, she wouldn't be so tired.
He wasn't going to say that out loud. He made tea for both of them, dumped a generous portion of ice-cream into a bowl for himself, and put a spoon in the rest of the tub for Ali.
"There you go," he said. "Now move your damn feet so I can sit down."
It had probably taken more out of Ali than it had out of him, but he was pretty exhausted himself. When using magic, you drew power primarily from the living plants in the area, but it was all mediated by the mage themself, channelling it in and back out again, and that took energy. Which was why one couldn'
t draw power down from animals or humans; that required so much more energy to mediate it that the mage would destroy themself at roughly the same rate that they destroyed the power source. In theory you could get away with it in very small quantities, but doing it at all was deeply frowned upon because it was so hard to judge the safety. Plants gave up their energy more readily, and were less damaged by the giving. Which was why Kir's flat resembled a small indoor jungle. Becky had -- well, she hadn't exactly complained about it, but she definitely thought it was a bit much.
Maybe he should have told her. But then, he'd been worried about her reaction. Possibly that had been the wrong thing to be worrying about.
Ali lifted her feet up for long enough for Kir to sit down, then dropped them again, onto his lap.
"So," she said. "Any bright ideas about that little experience?"
"How did you come on it?" Kir asked. "I mean, did you just happen to be walking past, or what?"
Ali shrugged. "I'd just got off the bus, and I was walking down to the post office. I felt something a bit weird in the air, kind of thing -- you know what I mean? Hairs on the back of your neck. A bit like when I ran into you that time." She grinned at him, and he grinned back, remembering that first night he'd found magic, and Ali finding him doing it, in an alleyway up in Angel.
"So you think there was someone around?" he asked.
Ali shook her head. "No. It was like that, but it wasn't that, you know what I mean? Definitely not a person. Just felt weird. So I took a look around, found this lump of stuff on the floor that didn't look quite right, and my skin still feeling all itchy. So I was just wondering whether it really was weird or whether I was imagining things, when it fucking lunged at me."
"And then you phoned me?"
"No, then I spent ten minutes trying to deal with it myself," Ali said, glaring at him. "I am perfectly competent, you know. I only phoned you when I realised I wasn't getting anywhere."
"Not like I could have done it on my own either," Kir said.
"No, I realised that too. Metal. Concrete."
Kir chewed on a thumbnail. "I wish I could work out a way of working with metal."
