Artemis Fowl (5 page)

Some commotion below broke into her thoughts. Something that didn’t gel with the nighttime noises. Holly adjusted the trim on her backpack and flew in for a closer look. Look only, she reminded herself, that was her job. A Recon officer was sent up the chutes to pinpoint the target, while the Retrieval boys took a nice cushy shuttle.

The troll was directly below her, pounding against the town’s outer wall, which was coming away in chunks beneath his powerful fingers. Holly sucked in a startled gasp. This guy was a monster! Big as an elephant and ten times as mean. But this particular beast was worse than mean, he was scared.

“Control,” said Holly into her mike. “Runner located. Situation critical topside.”

Root himself was on the other end of the comlink.

“Clarify, Captain.”

Holly pointed her video link at the troll.

“Runner is going through the town wall. Contact imminent. How far away is Retrieval?”

“ETA five minutes minimum. We’re still in the shuttle.”

Holly bit her lip. Root was in the shuttle?

“That’s too long, Commander. This whole town is going to explode in ten seconds . . . I’m going in.”

“Negative, Holly . . . Captain Short. You don’t have an invite. You know the law. Hold your position.”

“But, Commander—”

Root cut her off. “No! No buts, Captain. Hang back. That’s an order!”

Holly’s entire body felt like a heartbeat. Gasoline fumes were addling her brain. What could she do? What was the right decision to make? Lives or orders?

Then the troll broke through the wall and a child’s voice split the night.

“
Aiuto!”
it screamed.

Help. An invitation. At a stretch.

“Sorry, Commander. The troll is light-crazy and there are children in there.”

She could imagine Root’s face, purple with rage as he spat into the mike.

“I’ll have your stripes, Short! You’ll spend the next hundred years on drain duty!”

But it was no use. Holly had disconnected her mike and swooped in after the troll.

Streamlining her body, Captain Short ducked into the hole. She appeared to be in a restaurant. A packed restaurant. The troll had been temporarily blinded by the electric light and was thrashing about in the center of the floor.

The patrons were stunned. Even the child’s plea had petered out. They sat gaping, party hats perched comically on their heads. Waiters froze, huge trays of pasta quivering on their splayed fingers. Chubby Italian infants covered their eyes with chubby fingers. It was always like this in the beginning: the shocked silence. Then came the screaming.

A wine bottle crashed to the floor. It broke the spell. The pandemonium started. Holly winced. Trolls hated noise almost as much as light.

The troll lifted massive shaggy shoulders, its retractable claws sliding out with an ominous
schiiick
. Classic predator behavior. The beast was about to strike.

Holly drew her weapon and flicked it up to the second setting. She couldn’t kill the troll under any circumstances. Not to save humans. But she could certainly put him out until Retrieval arrived.

Aiming for the weak point at the base of the skull, she let the troll have a long burst of the concentrated ion ray. The beast staggered, stumbled a few steps, then got very angry.

It’s okay, thought Holly, I’m shielded. Invisible. To any onlookers it would seem as though the pulsing blue beam emanated from thin air.

The troll rounded on her, its muddy dreadlocks swinging like candles.

No panic. It can’t see me.

The troll picked up a table.

Invisible. Totally invisible.

He pulled back a shaggy arm and let fly.

Just a slight shimmer in the air.

The table tumbled straight toward her head.

Holly moved. A second too late. The table clipped her backpack, knocking the gas tank clean off. It spun through the air, trailing flammable fluid.

Italian restaurants—wouldn’t you know it—full of candles. The tank twirled right through an elaborate candelabrum and burst into flames like some deadly firework. Most of the gas landed on the troll. So did Holly.

The troll could see her. There was no doubt about it. It squinted at her through the hated light, its brow a rictus of pain and fear. Her shield was off. Her magic was gone.

Holly twisted in the troll’s grip, but it was useless. The creature’s fingers were the size of bananas, but nowhere near as pliant. They were squashing the breath from her rib cage with savage ease. Needlelike claws were scraping at the toughened material of her uniform. Any second now, they would punch through, and that would be that.

Holly couldn’t think. The restaurant was a carousel of chaos. The troll was gnashing its tusks, greasy molars trying to grip her helmet. Holly could smell its fetid breath through her filters. She could smell the odor of burning fur too, as the fire spread along the troll’s back.

The beast’s green tongue rasped across her visor, sliming the lower section. The visor! That was it. Her only chance. Holly wormed her free hand to the helmet controls. The tunnel lights. High beams.

She depressed the sunken button, and eight hundred watts of unfiltered light blasted from the twin spotlights above her eyes.

The troll reared back, a penetrating scream exploding from between rows of teeth. Dozens of glasses and bottles shattered where they stood. It was too much for the poor beast. Stunned, set on fire, and now blinded. The shock and pain made their way through to its tiny brain, ordering it to shut down. The troll complied, keeling over with almost comical stiffness. Holly rolled to avoid a scything tusk.

There was complete silence, but for tinkling glass, crackling fur, and the sudden release of breath. Holly climbed shakily to her feet. There were a lot of eyes following her—human eyes. She was one hundred percent visible. And these humans wouldn’t stay complacent for long. This breed never did. Containment was the issue.

She raised her empty palms. A gesture of peace.

“
Scusatemi tutti
,” she said, the language flowing easily from her tongue.

The Italians, ever graceful, muttered that it was nothing.

Holly reached slowly into her pocket and withdrew a small sphere. She placed it in the middle of the floor.

“
Guardate
,” she said. Look.

The restaurant’s patrons complied, leaning in to see the small silver ball. It was ticking, faster and faster, almost like a countdown. Holly turned her back to the sphere. Three, two, one . . .

Boom! Flash!
Mass unconsciousness. Nothing fatal, but headaches all around in about forty minutes. Holly sighed. Safe. For the moment. She ran to the door and slid the latch across. Nobody was going in or out. Except through the big gaping hole in the wall. Next she doused the smouldering troll with the contents of the restaurant’s fire extinguisher, hoping the icy powder wouldn’t revive the sleeping behemoth.

Holly surveyed the mess she had created. There was no doubt, it was a shambles. Worse than Hamburg. Root would skin her alive. She’d rather face the troll any day. This was the end of her career for sure, but suddenly that didn’t seem so important because her ribs were aching, and she had a blinder of a pressure headache coming on. Perhaps a rest, just for a second, so she could pull herself together before Retrieval showed up.

Holly didn’t even bother looking for a chair. She simply allowed her legs to buckle beneath her, sinking to the chessboard linoleum floor.

Waking up to Commander Root’s bulging features is the stuff of nightmares. Holly’s eyes flickered open, and for a second she could have sworn that there was concern in those eyes. But then it was gone, replaced by the customary vein-popping fury.

“Captain Short!” he roared, mindless of her headache. “What in the name of sanity happened here?”

Holly rose shakily to her feet.

“I . . . That is . . . There was . . .” The sentences just wouldn’t come.

“You disobeyed a direct order. I told you to hang back! You know it’s forbidden to enter a human building without an invitation.”

Holly shook the shadows from her vision.

“I got invited in. A child called for help.”

“You’re on shaky ground there, Short.”

“There is precedent, sir. Corporal Rowe versus the State. The jury ruled that the trapped woman’s cry for help could be accepted as an invitation into the building. Anyway, you’re all here now. That means you accepted the invitation, too.”

“Hmm,” said Root doubtfully. “I suppose you were lucky. Things could have been worse.”

Holly looked around. Things couldn’t have been a lot worse. The establishment was pretty trashed, and there were forty humans out for the count. The tech boys were attaching mind-wipe electrodes to the temples of unconscious diners.

“We managed to secure the area, in spite of half the town hammering on the door.”

“What about the hole?”

Root smirked. “See for yourself.”

Holly glanced over. Retrieval had jimmied a hologram lead into the existing electricity sockets and were projecting an unbattered wall over the hole. The holograms were handy for quick patches, but no good under scrutiny. Anyone who examined the wall too closely would have noticed that the slightly transparent patch was exactly the same as the stretch beside it. In this case there were two identical patches of spiderweb cracks and two reproductions of the same Rembrandt. But the people inside the pizzeria were in no condition to examine walls and by the time they woke up, the wall would have been repaired by the telekinetic division, and the entire paranormal experience would be removed from their memories.

A Retrieval officer bolted from the rest room.

“Commander!”

“Yes, sergeant?”

“There’s a human in here, sir. The Concusser didn’t reach him. He’s coming, sir. Right now, sir!”

“Shields!” barked Root. “Everyone!”

Holly tried. She really did. But it wouldn’t come. Her magic was gone. A toddler waddled out of the bathroom, his eyes heavy with sleep. He pointed a pudgy finger directly at Holly.

“
Ciao, fulletta
,” he said, before climbing into his father’s lap to continue his snooze.

Root shimmered back into the visible spectrum. He was, if possible, even angrier than before.

“What happened to your shield, Short?”

Holly swallowed.

“Stress, Commander,” she offered hopefully.

Root wasn’t having any of it. “You lied to me, Captain. You’re not running hot at all, are you?”

Holly shook her head mutely.

“How long since you completed the Ritual?”

Holly chewed her lip. “I’d say . . . about . . . four years, sir.”

Root nearly popped a vein.

“Four . . . Four years? It’s a wonder you lasted this long! Do it now. Tonight! You’re not coming below ground again without your powers. You’re a danger to yourself and your fellow officers!”

“Yessir.”

“Get a set of Hummingbirds from Retrieval and zip across to the old country. There’s a full moon tonight.”

“Yessir.”

“And don’t think I’ve forgotten about this shambles. We’ll talk about it when you get back.”

“Yessir. Very good, sir.”

Holly turned to go, but Root cleared his throat for attention.

“Oh, and Captain Short . . .”

“Yessir?”

Root’s face had lost its purple tinge—he almost seemed embarrassed.

“Well done on the life-saving thing. Could have been worse, an awful lot worse.”

Holly beamed behind her visor. Perhaps she wouldn’t be kicked out of Recon after all.

“Thank you, sir.”

Root grunted, his complexion returning to its normal ruddy hue.

“Now get out of here, and don’t come back until you’re full to the tips of your ears with magic!”

Holly sighed. So much for gratitude.

“Yes, sir. On my way, sir.”

Artemis’s main problem was one of location— how to locate a leprechaun. This was one sly bunch of fairies, hanging around for God knows how many millennia and still not one photo, not one frame of video. Not even a Loch Ness-type hoax. They weren’t exactly a sociable group. And they were smart, too. No one had ever got his hands on fairy gold. But no one had ever had access to the Book either. And puzzles were so simple when you had the key.

Artemis had summoned the Butlers to his study, and spoke to them now from behind a mini-lectern.

“There are certain rituals every fairy must complete to renew his magic,” explained Artemis.

Butler and Juliet nodded, as though this were a normal briefing.

Artemis flicked through his hard copy of the Book and selected a passage.

“From the earth thine power flows,
Given through courtesy, so thanks are
owed.
Pluck thou the magick seed,
Where full moon, ancient oak and twisted
water meet.
And bury it far from where it was found,
So return your gift into the ground.”

Artemis closed the text. “Do you see?”

Butler and Juliet kept nodding, while still looking thoroughly mystified.

Artemis sighed. “The leprechaun is bound by certain rituals. Very specific rituals, I might add. We can use them to track one down.”

Juliet raised a hand, even though she herself was four years Artemis’s senior.

“Yes?”

“Well, the thing is, Artemis,” she said hesitantly, twisting a strand of blond hair in a way that several of the local louts considered extremely attractive. “The bit about leprechauns.”

Artemis frowned. It was a bad sign. “Your point, Juliet?”

“Well, leprechauns. You know they’re not real, don’t you?”

Butler winced. It was his fault really. He’d never got around to filling in his sister on the mission parameters.

Artemis scowled reprovingly at him.

“Butler hasn’t already talked to you about this?”

“No. Was he supposed to?”

“Yes, he certainly was. Perhaps he thought you’d laugh at him.”

Butler squirmed. That was exactly what he’d thought. Juliet was the only person alive who laughed at him with embarrassing regularity. Most other people did it once. Just once.

Artemis cleared his throat. “Let us proceed under the assumption that the fairy folk do exist, and that I am not a gibbering moron.”

Butler nodded weakly. Juliet was unconvinced.

“Very well. Now, as I was saying, the People have to fulfill a specific ritual to renew their powers. According to my interpretation, they must pick a seed from an ancient oak tree by the bend in a river. And they must do this during the full moon.”

The light began to dawn in Butler’s eyes. “So all we have to do ...”

“Is run a cross reference through the weather satellites, which I already have. Believe it or not, there aren’t that many ancient oaks left, if you take ancient to be a hundred years plus. When you factor in the river bend and full moon, there are precisely one hundred and twenty-nine sites to be surveyed in this country.”

Butler grinned. Stakeout. Now the Master was talking his language.

“There are preparations to be made for our guest’s arrival,” said Artemis, handing a typewritten sheet of A4 to Juliet. “These alterations must be made to the cellar. See to it, Juliet. To the letter.”

“Yes, Arty.”

Artemis frowned, but only slightly. For reasons that he couldn’t quite fathom, he didn’t mind terribly when Juliet called him by the pet name his mother had for him.

Butler scratched his chin thoughtfully. Artemis noticed the gesture.

“Question?”

“Well, Artemis. The sprite in Ho Chi Minh City . . .”

Artemis nodded. “I know. Why didn’t we simply abduct her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“According to Chi Lun’s
Almanac of the People
, a seventh-century manuscript recovered from the lost city of Sh’shamo: Once a fairy has taken spirits with the Mud People—that’s us by the way—they are forever dead to their brothers and sisters. So there was no guarantee that that particular fairy was worth even an ounce of gold. No, my old friend, we need fresh blood. All clear?”

Butler nodded.

“Good. Now, there are several items you will need to procure for our moonlight jaunts.”

Butler scanned the sheet: basic field equipment, a few eyebrow raisers, nothing too puzzling until . . .

“Sunglasses? At night?”

When Artemis smiled, as he did now, one almost expected vampire fangs to sprout from his gums.

“Yes, Butler. Sunglasses. Trust me.”

And Butler did. Implicitly.

Holly activated the thermal coil in her suit, and climbed to thirteen thousand feet. The Hummingbird wings were top of the range. The battery readout showed four red bars—more than enough for a quick jaunt through mainland Europe and across the British Isles. Of course, the regulations said always travel over water if possible, but Holly could never resist knocking the snowcap from the highest Alp on her way past.

The suit protected Holly from the worst of the elements, but she could still feel the chill sinking into her bones. The moon seemed huge from this altitude, the craters on its surface easily distinguishable. Tonight it was a perfect sphere. A magical full moon. Immigration would have their hands full, as thousands of surface-sick fairies were drawn irresistibly overground. A large percentage would make it, probably causing mayhem in their revelry. Earth’s mantle was riddled with illegal tunnels, and it was impossible to police them all.

Holly followed the Italian coast up to Monaco, and from there across the Alps to France. She loved flying— all fairies did. According to the Book, they had once been equipped with wings of their own, but evolution had stripped them of this power. All but the sprites. One school of thought believed that the People were descended from airborne dinosaurs. Possibly pterodactyls. Much of the upper body skeletal structure was the same. This theory would certainly explain the tiny nub of bone on each shoulder blade.

Holly toyed with the idea of visiting Disneyland Paris. The LEP had several undercover operatives stationed there, most of them working in the Snow White exhibit. It was one of the few places on Earth where the People could pass unnoticed. But if some tourist got a photo of her and it ended up on the Internet, Root would have her badge for sure. With a sigh of regret, she passed over the shower of multicolored fireworks below.

Once across the Channel, Holly flew low, skipping over the white-crested waves. She called out to the dolphins and they rose to the surface, leaping from the water to match her pace. She could see the pollution in them, bleaching their skin white and giving them red sores on their backs. And although she smiled, her heart was breaking. Mud People had a lot to answer for.

Finally the coast loomed ahead of her. The old country. Éiriú, the land where time began. The most magical place on the planet. It was here, ten thousand years ago, that the ancient fairy race, the Dé Danann, had battled against the demon Fomorians, carving the famous Giants’ Causeway with the strength of their magical blasts. It was here that the Lia Fáil stood, the rock at the center of the universe, where the fairy kings and later the human Ard Rí were crowned. And it was also here, unfortunately, that the Mud People were most in tune with magic, which resulted in a far higher People-sighting rate than you got anywhere else on the planet. Thankfully the rest of the world assumed that the Irish were crazy, a theory that the Irish themselves did nothing to debunk. They had somehow got it into their heads that each fairy lugged around a pot of gold with him wherever he went. While it was true that LEP had a ransom fund, because of its officers’ high-risk occupation, no human had ever taken a chunk of it yet. This didn’t stop the Irish population in general from skulking around rainbows, hoping to win the supernatural lottery.

But in spite of all that, if there was one race the People felt an affinity for it was the Irish. Perhaps it was their eccentricity, perhaps their dedication to the
craic
, as they called it. And if the People were actually related to humans, as another theory had it, odds are that the Emerald Isle was where it started.

Holly punched up a map on her wrist locator and set it to sweep for magical hot spots. The best site would obviously be Tara, near the Lia Fáil, but on a night like tonight, every traditionalist fairy with an overground pass would be dancing around the holy scene, so best to give it a miss.

There was a secondary site not far from here, just off the southeast coast. Easy access from the air, but remote and desolate for land-bound humans. Holly reined in the throttle and descended to ninety yards. She skipped over a bristling evergreen forest, emerging in a moonlit meadow. A silver thread of river bisected the field and there, nestling in the fold of a meander loop, was the proud oak.

Holly checked her locator for life-forms. Once she judged the cow two fields over not to be a threat, she cut her engines and glided to the foot of the mighty tree.

Four months of stakeout. Even Butler, the consummate professional, was beginning to dread the long nights of dampness and insect bites. Thankfully, the moon was not full every night.

It was always the same. They would crouch in their foil-lined blind in complete silence, Butler repeatedly checking his equipment, while Artemis stared unblinking through the eye of the scope. At times like these, nature seemed deafening in their confined space. Butler longed to whistle, to make conversation, anything to break the unnatural silence. But Artemis’s concentration was absolute. He would brook no interference or lapse of focus. This was business.

Tonight they were in the southeast. The most inaccessible site yet. Butler had been forced to make three trips to the Jeep in order to hump the equipment across a stile, a bog, and two fields. His boots and trousers were ruined. And now he would have to sit in the blind with ditchwater soaking into the seat of his pants. Artemis had somehow contrived to remain spotless.

The blind was ingenious in design and interest had already been expressed in the manufacturing rights— mostly by military representatives—but Artemis had resolved to sell the patent to a sporting goods multinational. It was constructed of an elasticated foil polymer on a multihinged fiberglass skeleton. The foil, similar to that used by NASA, trapped the heat inside the structure while preventing the camouflaged outside surface from overheating. This ensured that any animals sensitive to heat would be unaware of its presence. The hinges meant that the blind would move almost like a liquid, filling whatever depression it was dropped into. Instant shelter and vantage point. You simply placed the Velcroed bag in a hole and pulled the string.

But all the cleverness in the world couldn’t improve the atmosphere. Something was troubling Artemis. It was plain in the web of premature lines that spread from the corners of his deep blue eyes.

After several nights of fruitless surveillance, Butler plucked up enough courage to ask. . . .

“Artemis,” he began hesitantly, “I realize it’s not my place, but I know there’s something wrong. And if there’s anything I can do to help . . .”

Artemis didn’t speak for several moments. And for those few moments, Butler saw the face of a young boy. The boy Artemis might have been.

“It’s my mother, Butler,” he said at last. “I’m beginning to wonder if she’ll ever—”

Then the proximity alarm flashed red.

Holly hooked the wings over a low branch, unstrapping the helmet to give her ears some air. You had to be careful with elfin ears—a few hours in the helmet and they started to flake. She gave the tips a massage. No dry skin there. That was because she had a daily moisturizing regime, not like some of the male LEP officers. When they took off their helmets, you’d swear it had just started to snow.

Holly paused for a minute to admire the view. Ireland certainly was picturesque. Even the Mud People hadn’t been able to destroy that. Not yet anyway . . . Give them another century or two. The river was folding gently before her like a silver snake, hissing as the water tumbled across a stony bed. The oak tree crackled overhead, its branches rasping together in the bracing breeze.

Now, to work. She could do the tourist thing all night once her business was complete. A seed. She needed a seed. Holly bent to the ground, brushing the dried leaves and twigs from the clay’s surface. Her fingers closed around a smooth acorn. That wasn’t hard now, was it? she thought. All that remained for her to do was plant it somewhere else, and her powers would come rushing back.

Butler checked the porta-radar, muting the volume in case the equipment betrayed their position. The red arm swept the screen with agonizing lethargy, and then . . .
flash!
An upright figure by the tree. Too small for an adult, the wrong proportions for a child. He gave Artemis the thumbs up. Possible match.

Artemis nodded, strapping the mirrored sunglasses across his brow. Butler followed his lead, popping the cap on his weapon’s starlight scope. This was no ordinary dart rifle. It had been specially tooled for a Kenyan ivory hunter, and had the range and rapid fire capacity of a Kalashnikov. Butler had picked it up for a song from a government official after the ivory poacher’s execution.

They crept into the night with practiced silence. The diminutive figure before them unhooked a contraption from around its shoulders and lifted a full-face helmet from a definitely nonhuman head. Butler wrapped the rifle strap twice around his wrist, pulling the stock into his shoulder. He activated the scope and a red dot appeared in the center of the figure’s back. Artemis nodded and his manservant squeezed the trigger.

In spite of a million-to-one odds, it was at that precise moment that the figure bent low to the earth.

Something whizzed over Holly’s head, something that glinted in the starlight. Holly had enough on-the-job experience to realize that she was under fire, and immediately curled her elfin frame into a ball, minimizing the target.

She drew her pistol, rolling toward the shelter of the tree trunk. Her brain scrambled for possibilities. Who could be shooting at her and why?