فصل ششم

chapter-6-rise-my-beauties

Tara Shuttleport, Ireland

When Captain Holly Short attempted to dock in her assigned shuttle bay, she found Tara’s electromagnetic clamps to be inoperable and so was forced to improvise a landing in the gate’s access tunnel. This was more or less what the Tara shuttleport supervisor would write in his Extraordinary Incident report when he got out of rehab, but the sentence did not convey the sheer trauma of the situation.

For their entire approach, Holly’s instruments had assured her that everything was hunky-dory; and then, just as she swung the Silver Cupid’s tail around to dock with the clamps, Tara’s flight-control computer had made a noise like raw meat hitting a wall at speed, then shut itself down, leaving Holly with no choice but to reverse into the shuttleport’s access tunnel and pray that there were no unauthorized personnel in there.

Metal crumpled, Plexiglas shattered, and fiber-optic cables stretched like warm toffee and snapped. The Silver Cupid’s reinforced hide took the punishment, but the hood ornament flew off like its namesake and would be found three months later in the belly of a soda machine, corroded to a barely recognizable stick figure.

Holly hauled on the brake as sparks and shards rained down, pockmarking the windshield. Her pilot’s gyro harness had absorbed most of the shock meant for her body, but Artemis and Butler had been tossed around like beads in a rattle.

“Everybody alive?” she called over her shoulder, and the assortment of groans that wafted back confirmed her passengers’ survival, if not their intact survival.

Artemis crawled out from under Butler’s protective huddle and checked the shuttle’s readings. Blood dripped from a slit on the youth’s brow, but he appeared not to notice.

“You need to find a way out, Holly.”

Holly almost giggled. Driving the Cupid out of here would mean willfully destroying an entire LEP installation. She would not just be tearing up the rulebook; she would be shredding the pages, then mixing them with troll dung, baking the concoction, and tossing the biscuits on a campfire.

“Dung biscuits,” she muttered, which made no sense if you didn’t know her train of thought.

“You may be making dung biscuits of the rulebook,” said Artemis, who could apparently track trains of thought, “but Opal must be stopped for all our sakes.” Holly hesitated.

Artemis capitalized on her hesitation. “Holly. These are extraordinary circumstances,” he said urgently. “Do you remember Butler’s phrase? Kill box. That’s where my brothers are at this moment. In the kill box. And you know how much Juliet will sacrifice to save them.” Butler leaned forward, grasping a hanging hand-grip loop and pulling it from its housing in the process.

“Think tactically,” he said, instinctively knowing how to galvanize the fairy captain. “We need to proceed under the assumption that we are the only small force standing between Opal and whatever form of world domination her twisted mind has cooked up in solitary. And remember, she was prepared to sacrifice herself. She planned for it. We need to go. Now, soldier!” Butler was right, and Holly knew it.

“Okay,” she said, punching parameters into the Cupid’s route finder. “You asked for it.” A sprite in a hi-vis jacket was flying down the access tunnel, wings tapping the curved walls in his haste. Sprite wing tips were sensitive bio-sonar sensors that took decades to heal, so the sprite must have been in some considerable distress for such reckless flight.

Holly moaned. “It’s Nander Thall. Mister By-the-Book.”

Thall was paranoid that the humans would somehow contaminate Haven on the way in, or steal something on the way out, so he insisted on full scans every time the Cupid docked.

“Just go,” Butler urged. “We don’t have time for Thall’s regulations.”

Nander Thall hollered at them through a megaphone. “Power down, Captain Short. What in Frond’s name do you think you are doing? I knew you were a wild card, Short. I knew it. Unstable.” “No time,” said Artemis. “No time.”

Thall hovered two feet from the windshield. “I’m a-looking in your eyeball, Short, and I see chaos. We’re in lockdown here. The shield has failed, do you understand that? All it would take is some Mud Man with a shovel to unearth the entire shuttleport. It’s all hands to the fortifications, Short. Power down. I’m giving you a direct order.” Nander Thall’s eyes bulged in their sockets like goose eggs, and his wings beat erratically. This was a sprite on the edge.

“Do you think if we ask for permission, he will let us go in time?” said Artemis.

Holly doubted it. The access tunnel stretched out behind Thall, passengers huddled nervously in the pools of light cast by emergency beacons. The situation would be difficult enough to contain without her driving up the panic levels.

The onboard computer beeped, displaying the optimum escape route on the screen, and it was this beep that spurred Holly.

“Sorry,” she mouthed at Nander Thall. “Gotta go.”

Thall’s wings beat with nervous rapidity. “Don’t you mouth Sorry at me! And you do not gotta go anywhere.” But Holly was sorry and she did gotta go. So she went. Straight up toward the luggage conveyor, which generally trundled overhead, luggage floating along on a transparent smart-water canal that displayed the identity of the owner through the Plexiglas. Now the conveyor canal was stagnant, and the suitcases bumped each other like abandoned skiffs.

Holly nudged the joystick with one thumb, settling the Cupid into the canal, which the computer assured her was wide enough to accommodate the vehicle. It was, with barely an inch to spare on each side of the wheel arches.

Incredibly, Nander Thall was in pursuit. He bobbed alongside the canal, his comb-over blown back like a windsock, shouting into his little megaphone.

Holly shrugged theatrically. “Can’t hear you,” she mouthed. “Sorry.”

And she left the sprite swearing at the baggage tunnel, which flowed in gentle sloped circles toward the Arrivals hall.

Holly piloted the Cupid along the tunnel’s curves, guided by twin headlights that revealed Plexiglas walls embedded with miles of dead circuitry. Dim shapes could be seen beavering at circuit boxes, stripping out smoking capacitors and fuses.

“Dwarfs,” said Holly. “They make the best electricians. No lighting required, and small dark spaces a bonus. Plus, they eat the dead components.” “Seriously?” wondered Butler.

“Absolutely. Mulch assures me that copper is very cleansing.”

Artemis did not involve himself in the conversation. It was trivial, and he was deep in visualization mode, picturing every conceivable scenario that would face them when they reached Fowl Manor, and plotting how to emerge from these scenarios as the victor.

In this respect, Artemis’s methodology was similar to that of American chess master Bobby Fischer, who was capable of computing every possible move an opponent could make so that he could counteract it. The only problem with this technique was that there were some scenarios that Artemis simply could not face, and these had to be shuffled to the end of his process, rendering it flawed.

And so he plotted, realizing that it was probably futile, as he did not know most of the constants in this equation, not to mention the variables.

A dark promise drifted below the surface of his logic.

If my loved ones are harmed, then Opal Koboi shall pay.

Artemis tried to banish the thought as it served no useful purpose; but the notion of revenge refused to go away.

Holly had only a few hundred pilot hours logged in the Cupid, far too little for what she was attempting. But then again, there weren’t enough pilot hours in a lifetime for this kind of driving.

The Cupid sped along the canal, its chunky tires finding purchase in the Plexiglas trough, the tiny rocket disguised as an exhaust pipe boiling a short-lived wake in the smart-water. Suitcases were crushed under its treads or popped like mortars along the belt’s scoop, showering those below with fluttering garments, cosmetics, and smuggled human memorabilia. The security guards on duty had had the presence of mind to confiscate most of these artifacts, but nobody ever figured out who had managed to stuff a life-sized Gandalf cardboard cutout into a suitcase.

Holly drove on, concentrating through squinted eyes and gritted teeth. The luggage canal took them out of the terminal into bedrock. Upward they spiraled through archaeological strata, past dinosaur bones and Celtic tombs, through Viking settlements and Norman walls, until the Cupid emerged in a large baggage hall with a transparent roof that opened directly to the elements—a real James Bond supervillain–lair kind of place, complete with spidery metallic building struts and a shuttle rail system.

Generally, the Sky Window would be camouflaged using projectors and shields; but these security measures were out of commission until all Koboi parts could be replaced with technology that hadn’t exploded. On this afternoon, bruised Irish rainclouds drifted across the beveled panes, and the baggage hall would be completely visible from above if anyone cared to photograph the fairy baggage handlers or forklift trucks that stood with smoking holes in their bodywork, as though the victims of a sniper.

Holly asked the computer whether there was another way out besides the one it was suggesting. The onboard avatar informed her dispassionately that indeed there was, but it was three hundred miles away.

“D’Arvit,” muttered Holly, deciding that she wasn’t going to worry about rules anymore, or property damage. There was a bigger picture to consider here, and nobody likes a whiner.

Nobody likes a whiner. Her father had always said that.

She could see him now, spending every free minute in his precious garden, feeding algae to his tubers under the sim-sunlight.

You have to do your share of the housework, Poppy. Your mother and I work long hours to keep this family going. He would stop then and stroke her chin. The Berserkers made the ultimate sacrifice for the People long ago. Nobody’s asking you to go that far, but you could do your chores with a smile on your pretty face. He would stiffen then, playing at sergeant major. So hop to it, Soldier Poppy. Nobody likes a whiner.

Holly caught sight of her reflection in the windshield. Her eyes brimmed with melancholy. Daughters had always carried the nickname Poppy in her family. No one could remember why.

“Holly,” barked Artemis. “Security is closing in.”

Holly jerked guiltily and checked the perimeter. Several security guards were edging toward the Cupid, trying to bluff her with useless Neutrino handguns, using the smoking hulk of a flipped shuttle for cover.

One of the guards snapped off a couple of shots, dinging the front fender.

A custom weapon, Holly realized. He must have built it himself.

The shots had little effect on the Cupid’s plates. But if the guard had gone to the trouble of cobbling together his own backup pistol, perhaps he had thought to bolt on an armor-piercing barrel.

As if reading her mind, the guard fumbled at his belt for a clip of ammunition.

That’s the difference between me and you, thought Holly. I don’t fumble.

She switched all power to the jets and sent the Cupid rocketing toward the Sky Window, leaving the security guards pretending to fire useless weapons at her, a couple even going so far as to make bang bang noises, though fairy weapons hadn’t gone bang bang in centuries.

The Sky Window is reinforced Plexiglas, thought Holly. Either it breaks, or the Cupid does. Probably a bit of both.

Though she would never know it, Holly’s gamble would not have paid off. The Sky Window was built to withstand direct impact from anything short of a low-yield nuclear warhead, a fact that was proudly announced over the terminal’s speakers a hundred times a day, which Holly had somehow managed to avoid hearing.

Luckily for Captain Short and her passengers—and indeed the fate of much of the wider world—her potentially fatal ignorance would never come to light, as Foaly had anticipated a situation where a fairy craft would be heading at full speed for the Sky Window and it would refuse to open. The centaur had also guessed that, because of the universal law of maximum doo-doo displacement—which states that when the aforementioned doo-doo hits the fan, the fan will be in your hand and pointed at someone important who can have you fired—the Sky Window would probably refuse to open at a crucial time. And so he had come up with a little proximity organism that ran on its own bio-battery/heart, which he had grown from the stem cells of appropriated sprite wings.

The whole process was dubious at best and illegal at worst, and so Foaly hadn’t bothered to log a blueprint and simply had the sensors installed on his say-so. The result was that a cluster of these proximity beetles scuttled along the Sky Window pane edges, and if their little antennae sensed a vehicle drawing too close to a certain pane, they excreted a spray of acid on the window and then quickly ate the pane. The energy required to complete their task in time was massive, and so when the beetles were finished, they curled up and died. It was impressive; but, pretty much like the man with the exploding head, it was a onetime trick.

When the beetles sensed the Cupid’s ascent, they rushed into action like a minute company of cavalry and devoured the pane in less than four seconds. When their job was done, they winked out and dropped like ball bearings onto the vehicle’s hood.

“That was easy,” Holly said into her microphone, as the Cupid passed through a Cupid-shaped hole. “So much for Foaly’s great Sky Window.” Ignorance, as they say, is usually fatal, but sometimes it can be bliss.

Holly powered up the Cupid’s shield—though with every single human satellite out of commission she really needn’t have bothered—and set a course for Fowl Manor.

Which gives us about five minutes before Opal has us exactly where she wants us.

A less-than-comforting thought, which she did not voice—but all it took was a glance in the rearview mirror at Butler’s expression to see that the bodyguard was thinking more or less the same thing.

“I know,” he said, catching her eye. “But what choice do we have?”

Irish Airspace

Opal could not have turned her face from the lock now if she had put all her enhanced pixie might to the task. She was the key, and the two were paired. Their collision was as inevitable as the passage of time. Opal felt the skin on her face stretch toward the lock, and her arms were pulled until the sockets creaked.

The elfin warlock was indeed powerful, she thought. Even after all this time, his magic holds.

Her trajectory took her in a regular arc to the Atlantic’s surface and across the afternoon sky to Ireland. She descended like a fireball in a slingshot toward the Fowl Estate, with no time to wonder or worry about—or, for that matter, revel in—the imminent proof of her theories.

I will raise the dead, she had often thought in her cell. Even Foaly cannot make that boast.

Opal hit the Fowl Estate like a comet come to Earth, directly on the worn nub of the Martello tower, with its alien creeping vine. Like a dog snuffling after a bone, her corona of magic destroyed the tower and cleared a crater for itself, spiraling twenty feet down, past centuries of deposit, revealing another more ancient tower below. The magic sniffed out the roof lock, settling over it like a shimmering man-o’-war.

Opal lay facedown, floating, dreamily watching events unfold. She saw her fingers splay and twitch, spark-streams shooting from the tips. She saw the cloaking spell stripped from what had seemed to be a simple metamorphous boulder, revealing it to be a rough stone tower with complicated intertwined runes etched into its surface. The magical ectoplasm sank into the engraved runes, electrifying them, sending burning rivulets coursing through the grooves.

Open yourself to me, thought Opal, though this is an interpretation of her brain patterns. Another interpretation would be Aaaaaaargghhhhhh.

The lock’s runes teemed with magic, becoming animated, slithering like snakes on hot sands, nipping at each other, fat ones swallowing the lines of lesser magic until all that remained was a simple couplet in Gnommish: Here be the lock first of two

See it open and live to rue

Opal had enough consciousness left to smirk inside her cocoon. Fairy medieval poetry. Typically blunt. Bad grammar, obvious rhyme, and melodrama coming out its metaphorical ears.

I shall see it open, she thought. And Artemis Fowl will live to rue. But not for long.

Opal gathered herself and placed her right hand flat on the stone, fingers splayed, magic clouding the tips. The hand sank in like sunlight through the darkness, cracks radiating from the contact.

Rise, she thought. Rise, my beautiful warriors.

The Berserkers were expelled from holy ground and into the air as though shot from cannon. The afterlife’s tug lessened, and the warriors felt free to complete their mission. The next death, they knew, would be their last, and finally the gates to Nimh would be open to them. This had been promised; they longed for it. For it is ever true that, though the dead long for life, souls are made for heaven and will not rest until they reach it. This was something unknown to the elfin warlock when he had forged the lock and key. He did not know that he had doomed his warriors to ten thousand years with their faces turned from the light. And to turn from the light for too long could cost a person his soul.

But now, all the promises that had been whispered into their dying ears as the priests lugged their limp, heavy bodies to the trench were on the verge of fulfillment. All they needed to do was defend the gate in their stolen bodies, and their next death would open the gates of paradise. The Berserkers could go home.

But not before human blood was spilled.

The soil fizzled and danced as the ectoplasm of a hundred fairy warriors burst through it. Upward they surged, impatient for the light. They were drawn inexorably toward the key who lay over the stone lock, and they passed through the conduit of her magic one by one.

Oro was first.

It is a pixie, he realized with no little surprise, as pixies were known for their lack of magical ability. And a female! But, for all that, this one’s magic was powerful.

As each successive warrior flashed through Opal’s being, she felt their pain and despair and absorbed their experiences before expelling them into the world with one command.

Obey me. You are my soldier now.

And so were Oro and his band of Berserkers placed under geasa, or fairy bond, to follow Opal wherever she would command. They tumbled into the sky, searching for a body to inhabit inside the magic circle.

As leader, Oro had first choice of available ciphers, and he had, like many of his warriors, spent many thousands of hours considering what creature would make the ideal host for his talents. Ideally he would choose an elf with a bit of muscle to him and a long arm for swordplay; but it was unlikely that such a fine specimen would be readily available, and even if it were, it would be such a shame to take one elf and replace him with another. Recently, Oro had settled on a troll as his vehicle of choice, if there should happen to be one lumbering around.

Imagine it. A troll with an elf’s mind. What a formidable warrior that would make!

But there were no trolls, and the only available fairy was a feeble gnome with protection runes crisscrossing his chest. No possessing that one.

There were humans, three of the hated creatures. Two males and a female. He would leave the female for Bellico, one of only two she-fairies in their ranks. So that left the boys.

Oro’s soul circled above the males. Two curious little man-eens, who were not displaying the awe that this situation would seem to call for. Their world had dissolved to a maelstrom of magic, for Danu’s sake. Should they not be quaking in their boots, bubbling from the nose, and begging for a mercy that would not be forthcoming?

But no, their reactions were surprising. The dark-haired boy had moved swiftly to the fallen girl and was expertly checking her pulse. The second, a blond one, had uprooted a clump of reeds with surprising strength for one his size, and he was even now accosting the doltish gnome, forcing him backward toward a ditch.

That one interests me, thought Oro. He is young and small, but his body fizzes with power. I will have him.

And it was as simple as that. Oro thought it, and so it became deed. One second he was hovering above Beckett Fowl, and the next he had become him and was beating the gnome with a fistful of whippety reeds.

Oro laughed aloud at the senses assaulting his nerve endings. He felt the sweat in the wrinkles of his fingers, the glistening smoothness of the reeds. He smelled the boy, the youth and energy of him, like hay and summer. He felt a youthful heart beat like a drum in his chest.

“Ha!” he said exultantly, and he continued to thrash the gnome for the sheer fun of it, thinking: The sun is warm, praise be Belenos. I live once more, but I will die gladly this day to see humans in the ground beside me.

For it is ever true that resurrected fairy warriors are supernoble in their thought patterns and don’t have much in the way of a sense of humor.

“Enough of this playfulness,” he said in Gnommish, and his human tongue mangled the words so that he sounded like an animal grunting speech. “We must assemble.” Oro looked to the skies, where his plasmic warriors sloshed about him like a host of translucent deep-sea creatures. “This is what we have waited for,” he called. “Find a body inside the circle.” And they dispersed in a flash of ozone, scouring the Fowl Estate for vessels that would become their hosts.

The first bodies to be taken were the humans who were nearby.

It was a poor day to hunt for ciphers on the Fowl Estate. On an average weekday the manor would have been a virtual throng of humanity. And presiding over everything would be Artemis Senior and Angeline Fowl, master and mistress of the manor. But on this fateful day the manor was virtually shut down for the approaching Christmas holidays. Artemis’s parents were in London, attending an eco-conference, with one personal assistant and two maids in tow. The rest of the staff was on early leave, with only the occasional holiday visit to keep the manor ticking. The Fowl parents had planned to scoop up their offspring on the tarmac at Dublin Airport once Artemis had concluded his therapy, and then point the Green Jet’s composite nose cone toward Cap Ferrat for Christmas on the Côte d’Azur.

Today, nobody was home except for Juliet and her charges. Not a nugget of humanity left to be preyed on, much to the frustration of the circling souls who had been dreaming of this moment for a very long time. So choices were limited to various wildlife, including eight crows, two deer, a badger, a couple of English pointer hunting dogs that Artemis Senior kept in the stables, and corpses with a bit of spark in them, which were more plentiful than you might think. Corpses were far from ideal hosts, as decay and desiccation made quick thinking and fine motor movements tricky. Also, bits were liable to fall off when you needed them most.

The first corpses to go were fairly well preserved for their ages. Artemis Senior had, in his gangster days, stolen a collection of Chinese warrior mummies, which he had yet to find a safe way to repatriate and so stored in a dry-lined secret basement. The warriors were more than surprised to find their brain matter reanimated and rehydrated, and their consciousnesses being ridden shotgun by warriors even older than they were. They clanged into action in rusty armor and smashed through the glass in mounted display cases to reclaim their swords and polearm spears, steel tips polished to a deadly glitter by a loving curator. The basement door splintered quickly under their assault, and the mummies crashed through the manor’s great hall into the sunlight, pausing for a moment to feel its warm touch on their upturned brows before lumbering toward the pasture and their leader, forcing themselves to hurry in spite of their awakening senses, which longed to stop and smell any plant life. Even the compost heap.

The next corpses to be reanimated were those of a bunch of rowdy lads interred by a cave-in, in a cave, back in the eighteenth century, while burying a plundered galleon’s worth of treasure, which they had transferred from the breached hull of HMS Octagon to their own brigantine, The Cutlass. The feared pirate Captain Eusebius Fowl and ten of his only slightly less feared crew were not crushed by the falling rock but sealed in an airtight bubble that would admit not so much as a sparrow’s whistle for them to suck into their lungs.

The pirates’ bodies jittered as though electrocuted, shrugged off their blankets of kelp, and squeezed through a recently eroded hole in their tomb wall, heedless of the popped joints and sprung ribs that the journey cost.

Aside from these groups, there were sundry corpses who found themselves dragged from their resting places to become accomplices in Opal Koboi’s latest bid for power. The spirit had already moved on from some, but for those who had died violently or with unfinished business, a ghost of their very essence remained, which could do nothing but lament the rough treatment heaped upon their bodies by the Berserkers.

Opal Koboi slumped on the ancient rock, and the runes that had slithered like fiery snakes settled once more, congregating around Opal’s handprint in the center of the magical key.

The first lock has been opened, she thought, her senses returning in nauseating waves. Only I can close it now.

The gnome heretofore referred to as Pip, but whose actual name was the considerably more unwieldy Gotter Dammerung, hobbled into the crater, climbed the ancient tower steps, and wrapped a glittering shawl around Opal’s shoulders.

“Star cloak, Miss Opal,” he said. “As requested.”

Opal stroked the material and was pleased. She found that there was still enough magic in her fingertips to calculate the thread count.

“Well done, Gunter.”

“That’s Gotter, Miss Koboi,” corrected the gnome, forgetting himself.

Opal’s stroking fingers froze, then gripped a handful of the silken cloak so tightly that it smoked. “Yes, Gotter. You shot my younger self?” Gotter straightened. “Yes, miss, as ordered. Gave her a nice burial, like you said in the code.” It occurred to Opal that this fairy would be a constant reminder that she had sacrificed her younger self for power.

“It is true that I ordered you to kill Opal the younger, but she was terrified, Gotter. I felt it.” Gotter was perplexed. This day was not turning out at all as the gnome had imagined. He’d nurtured images of painted elfin warriors, their bone-spiked braids streaming behind them, but instead he was surrounded by human children and agitated wildlife.

“I don’t like those rabbits,” he blurted, possibly the most monumentally misjudged non sequitur of his life. “They look weird. Look at their vibrating ears.” Opal did not feel that a person of her importance should have to deal with comments like these, and so she vaporized poor Gotter with a bolt of plasmic power, leaving nothing of the loyal gnome but a smear of blackish burn paste on the step. A poorly judged use of plasma as it turned out, because Opal certainly could have used a moment to fully charge up a second bolt to deal with the armored shuttle that suddenly appeared over the boundary wall. It was shielded, true; but Opal had enough dark magic in her to see to the heart of the shimmer before her. She reacted a little hastily and sent a weak bolt careering to the left, managing only to clip the engine housing and not engulf the entire craft. The errant magic flew wild, knocking a turret from the estate wall before collapsing into squibs that whizzed skyward.

Though the Cupid was merely clipped, the contact was sufficient to melt its rocket engine, disable its weapons, and send it into an earthbound nosedive that even the most skillful pilot would not have been able to soften.

More avatars for my soldiers, thought Opal, pulling the star cloak tight around her and skipping nimbly down the tower steps. She climbed the crater wall and followed the furrow plowed through the meadow by the mortally wounded shuttle. Her warriors were close behind, still half drunk on new sensations, tottering in their new bodies, trying to form words in unfamiliar throats.

Opal glanced overhead and saw three souls streaking toward the smoking craft, which had come to an awkward rest crammed into the lee of a boundary wall.

“Take them,” she called to the Berserkers. “My gift to you.”

Almost all of the Berserkers had been accommodated by this point and were stretching tendons with great relish, or scratching the earth beneath their paws, or sniffing at the evening musk. All were catered to except three laggardly souls who had resigned themselves to a resurrection spent cramped and embarrassed inside the bodies of ducklings, when these new hosts arrived inside the circle.

Two humans and a fairy. The Berserkers’ spirits lifted. Literally.

Inside the Cupid, it was Holly who’d fared best from the crash, though she had been closest to the impact. Faring best, however, is a relative term, and probably not the one Holly would have chosen to describe her condition.

I fared best, she would probably fail to say at the earliest opportunity. I only had a punctured lung and a snapped collarbone. You should have seen the other guys.

Luckily for Holly, absent friends once again contributed to her not being dead. Just as Foaly’s Sky Window bio-sensors had prevented a calamitous collision in the shuttleport, her close friend the warlock No1 had saved her with his own special brand of demon magic.

And how had he done this? It had happened two days previously over their weekly sim-coffee in Stirbox, a trendy java joint in the Jazz Quarter. No1 had been even more hyper than usual, due to the double-shot espresso that was coursing through his squat gray body. The runes that embossed his frame’s armor plating glowed with excess energy.

“I’m not supposed to have sim-coffee,” he confessed. “Qwan says it disturbs my chi.” The little demon winked, momentarily concealing one orange eye. “I could have told him that demons don’t have chi, we have qwa, but I don’t think he’s ready for that yet.” Qwan was No1’s magical master, and so fond was the little demon of his teacher that he pretended not to have surpassed him years ago.

“And coffee is great for qwa. Makes it zing right along. I could probably turn a giraffe into a toad now if I felt like it. Though there would be a lot of excess skin left over. Mostly neck skin.” “That is a disturbing idea,” said Holly. “If you want to perform some useful amphibian-related magic, why don’t you do something about the swear toads?” Swear toads were the result of a college prank during which a group of postgrads had managed to imbue a strain of toads with the power of speech. Bad language only. This had been hilarious for about five minutes, until the toads began multiplying at a ferocious rate and spouting foul epithets at anything that moved, including kindergarten fairies and people’s grandmothers.

No1 laughed softly. “I like swear toads,” he said. “I have two at home called Bleep and D’Arvit. They are very rude to me, but I know they don’t mean it.” The little demon took another slurp of coffee. “So, let’s talk about your magic problem, Holly.” “What magic problem?” asked Holly, genuinely puzzled.

“I see magic like another color in the spectrum, and you are leaking magic like swamp cheese leaks stink.” Holly looked at her own hands, as though the evidence would be visible. “I am?” “Your skeleton is the battery that stores your magic, but yours has been abused one time too many. How many healings have you undergone? How many traumas?” “One or two,” admitted Holly, meaning nine or ten.

“One or two this cycle,” scoffed No1. “Don’t lie to me, Holly Short. Your electro-dermal activity has increased significantly. That means your fingertips are sweating. I can see that too.” The little gray demon shuddered. “Actually, sometimes I see stuff that I have no desire to see. A sprite came into my office the other day, and he had a bunch of microscopic hoop-worm larvae wriggling around his armpit. What is wrong with people?” Holly didn’t answer. It was best to let No1 rant stuff out of his system.

“And I see you’ve been donating a spark or two of your magic every week to the Opal clone in Argon’s clinic, trying to make it a little more comfortable. You’re wasting your time, Holly. That creature doesn’t have a spirit; magic is no use.” “You’re wrong, No1,” said Holly quietly. “Nopal is a person.”

No1 held out his rough palms. “Give me your hands,” he said.

Holly placed her fingers in his. “Are we going to sing a sea shanty?”

“No,” replied No1. “But this might hurt a little.”

This might hurt a little is universal code for this will definitely hurt a lot, but before Holly’s brain could translate this, No1’s forehead rune spiraled—something it only did when he was building up to some major power displacement. She managed to blurt, “Wait a—” before what felt like two electric eels wrapped themselves around her arms, slithering upward, sinking into her chest. It was not a pleasant experience.

Holly lost control of her limbs, spasming like a marionette on the end of a giggling puppet master’s strings. The entire episode lasted no more than five seconds, but five seconds of acute discomfort can seem like a long time.

Holly coughed smoke and spoke once her jaw stopped clicking. “You had to do that in a coffee shop, I suppose?” “I thought we wouldn’t see each other for a while, and I worry about you. You’re so reckless, Holly. So eager to help anyone but yourself.” Holly flexed her fingers, and it was as though her joints had been oiled. “Wow, I feel great now that the blinding pain has faded.” Suddenly the rest of No1’s words registered. “And why wouldn’t we see each other for a while?” No1 looked suddenly serious. “I’ve accepted an invitation to the Moon Station. They want me to have a look at some microorganisms and see if I can extract some race memory from their cells.” “Uh-huh,” said Holly, understanding all of the first sentence but nothing of the second beyond the individual words. “How long will you be gone?” “Two of your Earth years.”

“Two years,” stammered Holly. “Come on, No1. You’re my last single fairy friend. Foaly got hitched. Trouble Kelp is hooked up with Lily Frond, though what he sees in that airhead is beyond me.” “She’s pretty and she cares about him, but besides that I have no idea,” said No1 archly.

“He’ll find out what Frond is really like when she ditches him for someone more senior.” No1 thought it politic not to mention Holly’s three disastrous dates with Commander Kelp, the last of which ended with them both being thrown out of a crunchball match.

“There’s always Artemis.”

Holly nodded. “Yeah. Artemis is a good guy, I suppose; but whenever we meet, it ends in shots fired, or time travel, or brain cells dying. I want a quiet friend, No1. Like you.” No1 took her hand again. “Two years will fly by. Maybe you can get a lunar pass and come to visit me.” “Maybe. Now, enough changing the subject. What did you just do to me?”

No1 cleared his throat. “Well, I gave you a magical makeover. Your bones are less brittle, your joints are lubed. I bolstered your immune system, and cleared out your synapses, which were getting a little clogged with magical residue. I filled your tank with my own personal blend of power, and made your hair a little more lustrous than it already is, and bolstered your protection rune so you will never be possessed again. I want you to be safe and well until I come back.” Holly squeezed her friend’s fingers. “Don’t worry about me. Routine operations only.” Routine operations only, thought Holly now, groggy from the impact and also the magic coursing through her system, repairing her fractured collarbone and knitting the lattice of slices in her skin.

The magic would have liked to shut her down for repairs, but Holly could not allow that. She pawed the first aid pack from its niche on her belt and slapped an adrenaline patch onto her wrist, the hundreds of tiny needles releasing the chemical into her bloodstream. An adrenaline shot would keep her alert while allowing the magic to do its work. The Cupid’s cab was smashed, and only the vehicle’s toughened exoskeleton had prevented a total collapse that would have crushed the passengers. As it was, the shuttle had ridden its last magma flare. In the back of the vehicle, Butler was shrugging off the concussion that was threatening to drag him to oblivion, and Artemis lay wedged into the floor space between seats like a discarded action figure.

I like you, Artemis, Holly thought. But I need Butler.

And so Butler got the first shot of healing magic, a bolt that hit the bodyguard like a charged defibrillator, sending him spasming through the back window to the meadow beyond.

Wow, thought Holly. Nice brew, No1.

She was more careful with Artemis, flicking a drop of magic from her fingertip onto the middle of his forehead. Still, the contact was enough to set his skin rippling like pond water.

Something was coming. Holly could see the doubly distorted images through the shattered windows and her cracked visor. A lot of somethings. They looked small but moved surely.

I don’t get it. I am not getting it yet.

No1’s magic completed its healing journey through her system, and, as the blood cleared from her left eye, Holly got a good look at what was coming her way.

A menagerie, she thought. Butler can handle it.

But then No1’s magic allowed her a flickering glimpse of the souls floating like tattered translucent kites in the air, and she remembered the stories her father had told her so many times.

The bravest of the brave. Left behind to protect the gate.

Berserkers, Holly realized. The legend is true. If they take Butler, we are finished.

She crawled over Artemis through the back window, and rolled into the trough carved out by the Cupid’s crash, freshly scythed earth crumbling over her head. For a moment Holly had the irrational fear that she was being buried alive, but then the tumbling earth rattled past her limbs and she was clear.

Holly felt the throbbing afterpain of a healed break in her shoulder, but otherwise she was physically fine.

My vision is still blurred, she realized. Why?

But it was not her vision, it was the helmet’s lenses, which were cracked.

Holly raised her visor and was greeted by the crystal-clear sight of an attacking force being led by Artemis’s little brothers, which seemed to include a phalanx of ancient, armored warriors, and various woodland animals.

Butler was on all fours beside her, shaking off the magic fugue like a grizzly bear shaking off river water. Holly found another adrenaline patch in her pack and slapped it onto his exposed neck.

Sorry, old friend. I need you operational.

Butler jumped to his feet as though electrified, but swayed, disoriented, for a moment.

The assortment of possessed figures halted suddenly, arranged in a semicircle—obviously itching to attack but held at bay for some reason.

Little Beckett Fowl was at the forefront of the motley group, but he seemed less a child now, carrying himself as he did with a warrior’s swagger, a fistful of bloody reeds swinging in his grip. The vestiges of No1’s magic allowed Holly to glimpse the spirit of Oro lurking inside the boy.

“I am a fairy,” she called in Gnommish. “These humans are my prisoners. You have no quarrel with us.” Opal Koboi’s voice drifted over the ranks. “Prisoners? The big one doesn’t appear to be a prisoner.” “Koboi,” said Butler, coherent at last. Then the big bodyguard noticed his sister in the group. “Juliet! You’re alive.” Juliet stepped forward, but awkwardly, as though not familiar with her own workings. “Braddur,” she said, her voice cracked and strangely accented. “Embrash me.” “No, old friend,” warned Holly, glimpsing the flickering warrior inside Butler’s sister. “Juliet is possessed.” Butler understood immediately. They had previously encountered fairy possession when Artemis had been wrapped up in his Atlantis Complex.

The bodyguard’s features sagged, and in that moment his decades of soldiering were written on his face.

“Jules. Are you in there?”

The warrior queen Bellico used Juliet’s memories to answer, but the vocal cords were not under her complete control. Her words were unclear, as though heard through tinny speakers, and the accent was an unusual blend of thick Scandinavian and Deep South American.

“Yesh, braddur. It ish I. Zooooliet.”

Butler saw the truth. The body might be his sister’s, but the mind certainly wasn’t.

Artemis joined them, laying a hand on Holly’s shoulder, a blotch of blood on his shirt where he had coughed. As usual, he found the most pertinent question to ask.

“Why do they not attack?”

Holly physically jerked.

Why not? Of course why not?

Butler reiterated. “Why aren’t they attacking? They’ve got numbers over us, and emotionally we’re a mess. That thing is my sister, for heaven’s sake.” Holly remembered why they remained unmolested.

We are hosts inside the circle. They need us.

The souls flapped overhead, rearing up to descend.

I can explain what I am about to do, thought Holly. Or I can just do it.

Easier to just do it and hope there was an opportunity to apologize later.

She expertly flicked the settings wheel on the barrel of her Neutrino and shot Butler on his exposed neck and Artemis on the hand in blurred succession.

Now we won’t be possessed, she thought. But, on the downside, these Berserkers will probably simply kill us.

The souls dropped onto their intended hosts like sheets of wet polythene. Holly felt ectoplasm cram itself into her mouth, but the spirit would not be able to possess her because of the rune under her collar.

Hold on, she told herself. Hold on.

Holly tasted clay and bile. She heard echoes of screams from ten thousand years earlier, and experienced the Battle of Taillte as though she herself had stood on that plain where blood ran through the stake pits, and waves of humanity rolled across the meadow, blackening the grass with their passage.

It all happened just the way my father told me, Holly realized.

The soul howled in frustration as it lost purchase and was repelled, flapping into the air.

Two Berserker souls fought for entry into Artemis and Butler but were repulsed. Butler had keeled over like a felled redwood when Holly’s shot hit him, and Artemis clasped his hand, stunned that their friend Holly would burn their bare skin with her Neutrino beams.

Artemis had quickly and mistakenly concluded that Holly had been possessed by one of the Danu, something he now knew all about from the soul who had tried to occupy him.

He sank to his knees and watched through pain-slitted eyes as the Berserker warriors advanced. Was Holly an enemy or friend now? He could not be sure. She seemed herself and had swung her weapon at the horde.

Opal’s voice came from beyond the throng, shielded by its mass.

“They have protected themselves. Kill them now, my soldiers. Bring their heads to me.” Artemis coughed. Bring their heads to me? Opal used to be a little more subtle. It’s true what they say: Prison does not rehabilitate people. Not pixies, at any rate.

His own baby brothers advanced toward him with murder in their eyes. Two four-year-olds moving with increasing grace and speed.

Are they stronger now? Could Myles and Beckett actually succeed in killing us?

And if they didn’t, perhaps those pirates would, with their rusting cutlasses.

“Butler,” Artemis rasped. “Retreat and evaluate.”

It was their only option.

There is no proactive move open to us.

This realization irritated Artemis, even though he was in mortal danger.

“Retreat and try not to injure anybody except those pirates. The Chinese warrior mummies and I will not be overly upset if a few animals are harmed. After all, it is us or them.” But Butler was not listening to Artemis’s uncharacteristically nervous diatribe, because Holly’s shot had pulsed his vagus nerve and knocked him out cold. A shot in a million.

It was up to Holly to defend the group. It should be fine. All Captain Short had to do was set her custom Neutrino on a wide burst to buy them some time.

Then a pirate’s blackjack twirled from the fingers of a pirate’s skeletal hand and cracked Holly’s nose, sending her tumbling backward on top of Butler’s frame.

Artemis watched the possessed creatures advance the final steps toward him and was dismayed that at the end it all came down to the physical.

I always thought my intellect would keep me alive, but now I shall be killed by my own baby brother with a rock. The ultimate sibling rivalry.

Then the ground opened beneath his feet and swallowed the group whole.

Opal Koboi elbowed through her acolytes to the edge of the chasm that had suddenly appeared to suck her nemeses from their fate.

“No!” she squealed, tiny fists pounding the air. “I wanted their heads. On spikes. You people do that all the time, right?” “We do,” admitted Oro, through the mouth of Beckett. “Limbs too, betimes.”

Opal could have sworn that, underneath her stamping feet, the ground burped.