“Foaly? Is that you?” Holly may have said this aloud, or she may just have thought it. She wasn’t sure.
“The tunnel high beams, Captain!” A different voice. Not so cuddly. “Hit the button now! That’s an order!”
Oops. It was Root. She was falling down on the job again. First Hamburg, then Martina Franca, now this.
“Yessir,” she mumbled, trying to sound professional.
“Press it! Now, Captain Short!”
Holly looked the troll straight in its merciless eyes and pressed the button. Very melodramatic. Or it would have been, if the lights had worked. Unfortunately for Holly, in her haste she’d grabbed one of the helmets cannibalized by Artemis Fowl. Hence no Sonix, no filters, and no tunnel beams. The halogen bulbs were still installed, but the wires had come loose during Artemis’s investigations.
“Oh, dear,” breathed Holly.
“Oh, dear?” barked Root. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The beams are off-line,” explained Foaly.
“Oh . . .” Root’s voice trailed off. What more was there to say?
Holly squinted at the troll. If you didn’t know trolls were dumb animals, you’d swear the beast was grinning. Standing there with blood dripping from various chest wounds, grinning. Captain Short didn’t like being grinned at.
“Laugh this off,” she said, and butted the troll with the only weapon available to her. Her helmeted head.
Valiant undoubtedly, but about as effective as trying to cut down a tree with a feather. Luckily, the ill-advised blow had a side effect. For a split second, two strands of conductor filament connected, sending power flooding to one of the tunnel beams. Four hundred watts of white light blasted through the troll’s crimson eyes, dispatching lightning rods of agony to the brain.
“Heh heh,” mumbled Holly, in the second before the troll convulsed involuntarily. Its spasms sent her spinning across the parquet floor, leg jittering along behind her.
The wall was approaching at an alarming speed. Maybe, thought Holly hopefully, this will be one of those impacts where you don’t feel any pain until later. No, replied her pessimistic side, afraid not. She slammed into a Norman narrative tapestry, bringing it tumbling down on top of her. Pain was immediate and overwhelming.
“Ooof,” grunted Foaly. “I felt that. Visuals are shot. Pain sensors went right off the scale. Your lungs are busted, Captain. We’re going to lose you for a while. But don’t worry, Holly, your magic should be kicking in already.”
Holly felt the blue tingle of magic scurrying to her various injuries. Thank the gods for acorns. But it was too little too late. The pain was way beyond her threshold. Just before unconsciousness claimed her, Holly’s hand flopped from beneath the tapestry. It landed on Butler’s arm, touching the bare skin. Amazingly, the human wasn’t dead. A dogged pulse forced the blood through smashed limbs.
Heal, thought Holly. And the magic scurried down her fingers.
The troll faced a dilemma—which female to eat first. Choices, choices. This decision was not made any easier by the lingering agony buzzing around its shaggy head, or the cluster of bullets lodged in the fatty chest tissue. Eventually it settled on the surface dweller. Soft human meat. No dense fairy muscle to chew through.
The beast squatted low, tilting the girl’s chin with one yellowed talon. A pulsing jugular looped lazily down the length of her neck. The heart or the neck? the troll wondered. The neck, it was closer. It turned the talon sideways, so that the edge pressed against soft human flesh. One sharp swipe and the girl’s own heartbeat would drive the blood from her body.
Butler woke up, which was a surprise in itself. He knew immediately that he was alive, because of the searing pain permeating every cubic centimeter of his body. This was not good. Alive he may have been, but considering the fact that his neck had a one-eighty twist on it, he’d never so much as walk the dog again, not to mention rescue his sister.
The manservant twiddled his fingers. Hurt like hell, but at least there was movement. It was amazing that he had any motor functions at all, considering the trauma his spinal column had suffered. His toes seemed all right too, but that could have been phantom response, given that he couldn’t actually see them.
The bleeding from his chest wound appeared to have stopped and he was thinking straight. All in all, he was in much better shape than he had any right to be. What in heaven’s name was going on here?
Butler noticed something. There were blue sparks dancing along his torso. He must be hallucinating, creating pleasant images to distract himself from the inevitable. A very realistic hallucination, it must be said.
The sparks congregated at trauma points, sinking into the skin. Butler shuddered. This was no hallucination. Something extraordinary was happening here. Magical.
Magic? That rang a bell in his recently reassembled cranium. Fairy magic. Something was healing his wounds. He twisted his head, wincing at the grate of sliding vertebrae. There was a hand resting on his forearm. Sparks flowed from the slim elfin fingers, intuitively targeting bruises, breaks, or ruptures. There were a lot of injuries to be dealt with, but
the tiny sparks handled it all quickly and effectively. Like an army of mystical beavers repairing storm damage.
Butler could actually feel his bones knitting and the blood retreating from semicongealed scabs. His head twisted involuntarily as his vertebrae slid into their niches, and strength returned in a rush as magic reproduced the three liters of blood lost through his chest wound.
Butler jumped to his feet—actually jumped. He was himself again. No. It was more than that. He was as strong as he had ever been. Strong enough to have another crack at that beast hunkered over his baby sister.
He felt his rejuvenated heart speed up like the stroke of an outboard motor. Calm, Butler told himself. Passion is the enemy of efficiency. But calm or no, the situation was desperate. This beast had already effectively killed him once, and this time he didn’t even have the Sig Sauer. His own skills aside, it would be nice to have a weapon. Something with a bit of weight to it. His boot clinked on a metallic object. Butler glanced down at the debris strewn in the troll’s wake. . . . Perfect.
There was nothing but snow on the view screen.
“Come on,” urged Root. “Hurry up!”
Foaly elbowed past his superior.
“Maybe if you didn’t insist on blocking all the circuit boards.”
Root shuffled out of the way grudgingly. In his mind it was the circuit board’s fault for being behind him. The centaur’s head disappeared into an access panel.
“Anything?”
“Nothing. Just interference.”
Root slapped the screen. Not a good idea. First, because there was not one chance in a million that it could actually help, and second, because plasma screens grow extremely hot after prolonged use.
“D’Arvit!”
“Don’t touch that screen, by the way.”
“Oh, ha ha. We have time for jokes now, do we?”
“No, actually. Anything?”
The snow settled into recognizable shapes.
“That’s it, hold it there. We’ve got a signal.”
“I’ve activated the secondary camera. Plain old video, I’m afraid, but it’ll have to do.”