Gobdaw began his strike in mid-sentence, as Holly had known he would. His blade hand darted forward, aiming for his opponent’s midriff; but he didn’t have quite the reach he used to possess, and Holly rapped him hard on the nerve cluster in his deltoid, deadening the arm. That arm was about as much use now as a lead pipe hanging from his shoulder.
“D’Arvit,” swore Gobdaw. “You are a tricky one. Females were ever treacherous.”
“Keep talking,” said Holly. “I am liking you less and less, which should make my job a lot easier.”
Gobdaw took three running steps and jumped onto a Regency hall chair, grabbing one of two crossed reproduction pikes from the wall.
“Be careful, Myles!” shouted Artemis, from force of habit. “That’s very sharp.”
“Sharp is it, Mud Boy? That’s the way I like my spears.” The warrior’s face twisted as though on the point of sneezing, then Myles broke through for a second.
“It’s not a spear, idiot. It’s a pike. You call yourself a warrior?”
Then the features twisted again, and Gobdaw was back. “Shaddup, boy. I’m in charge of this body.”
This brief breakthrough gave Artemis hope. His brother was in there somewhere, and he hadn’t lost a lick of his acid tongue.
Gobdaw tucked the pike under the crook of his good arm and charged. The pike seemed as big as a jousting lance in his hand. He fanned the tip from side to side in a flashing arc, slicing Holly’s elbow before she could sidestep the attack.
The wound was not serious, but it was painful, and Holly did not have the magic for a quick heal.
“By Danu’s Beard,” said Gobdaw. “First blood to the Berserkers.”
The two soldiers faced each other a second time, but now Holly was backed into the corner with less room to maneuver, and Gobdaw’s deadened arm was coming back to life. The Berserker grabbed the pike with both hands, increasing the speed and steadiness of his sweep. He inched closer, giving Holly no space to make a move.
“I take no pleasure in this,” he said. “But then, I don’t feel much sorrow, either. You chose your worm, elf.”
Chose your worm was a reference to the fairy game of chewing root worms. A group of kids would dig up five worms, and each would choose one to pop in their mouth. Statistically, at least one of the worms would be in its dying cycle and have begun to rot from the inside, so one of the kids would be in for a putrid mouthful. But it didn’t matter, because the rules of the game dictated that you had to swallow it regardless. A human equivalent of this saying would be: You made your bed, so now you have to lie in it.
This looks bad, thought Holly. I don’t see any way of taking out Gobdaw without hurting Myles.
Suddenly Artemis waved his arms and shouted, “Myles! The tip of that pike is steel. Where does steel sit on the periodic table?”
Gobdaw’s features twisted, and Myles emerged. “Artemis, steel isn’t on the table. It is not an element, as you well know. It is composed of two elements: carbon and iron.”
Toward the end of the last sentence Gobdaw took control once more, just in time to feel his arms being yanked behind his back and to hear the sounds of the plasti-cuffs ratcheting over his wrists.
“You tricked me,” he said, not sure exactly how he’d been hoodwinked.
“Sorry, Gobdaw,” said Holly, lifting him by the collar. “The human doesn’t play fair.”
“When did humans ever play fair?” muttered Gobdaw, who at that moment would have gladly vacated young Myles Fowl’s head if another host had been available. But then he realized how clever Artemis had been.
That is not a bad strategy, he thought. Perhaps I can show the butterfly its own wings and turn that human’s trick against him.
Suddenly Myles’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he hung slack in Holly’s arms.
“I think Gobdaw has gone,” said Holly. “Artemis, it looks like you have your brother back.”
Butler pursued Bellico into the office, where she was two steps away from sabotaging the siege box. Her fist was drawn back for the strike when Butler hooked his own arm through the crook of her elbow and they spun like dancers away from the security terminal and onto the rug. Bellico’s arm slipped free, and she pirouetted to the wall.
“You’re finished,” said Butler. “Why don’t you release my sister?”
“Both of us will die first, human!” said Bellico, circling warily.
Butler stood his ground. “If you have access to my sister’s memories, have a flick through them. You can never defeat me. She never has, and you never will.”
Bellico froze for a moment, accessing the database of Juliet’s mind. It was true, Butler had easily defeated his sister a thousand times. His talents were far superior to hers…but, wait. There was a vision of the big human on his back, with pain on his brow. He was speaking:
You really nailed me with that move, Jules. It came out of nowhere. How is your big old brother supposed to defend himself against that?
Bellico’s eyes flashed. Which move was the big human speaking of?
She dug a little deeper and found a fifty-four-step kata that Juliet Butler had developed herself, loosely based on the teachings of Kano Jigoro, the founder of judo.
I have found the human’s weak spot.
Bellico allowed the memory to fully surface and send instructions to the body. Juliet’s limbs began to seamlessly perform the kata.
Butler frowned and dropped into a boxer’s defensive stance. “Hey, what are you doing?”
Bellico did not answer. There was anxiety in the Mud Man’s voice, and that was enough to assure Bellico that she had chosen the correct course of action. She swept around the office like a dancer, her speed increasing with each revolution.
“Stand still!” said Butler, struggling to keep her in his line of sight. “You can’t win!”
Bellico could win, she was certain of it. This old man was no match for the young powerful body she inhabited. Faster and faster she spun, her feet barely touching the ground, air whistling through the jade ring that held her long ponytail.
“I’ll give you one more chance, Juliet, or whoever the hell you are. Then I will have to hurt you.”
He was bluffing. A scared, obvious bluff.
I will win, thought Bellico, feeling invulnerable now.
On the fifty-second step, Bellico launched herself
high into the air, backward, then braced her hind leg against the wall, switching direction and increasing her altitude. She descended on Butler in a blur of speed, her heel aimed like an arrowhead at the nerve cluster in his neck.
Once the human is disabled, I will destroy the siege box, thought Bellico, already celebrating her victory.
Butler slapped her heel with his left palm and jabbed the fingers of his right hand into Bellico’s gut, just hard enough to wind her—and there is not a warrior on the planet who can fight when they cannot breathe. Bellico dropped like a sack of stones to the rug and lay whooping in the fetal position.
“How?” she gasped. “How?”
Butler lifted her by the collar. “That day was Juliet’s birthday. I let her win.”
He marched her toward the security panel and had typed in the lockdown sequence when he heard a snare-drum roll of claws clicking on the floor behind him. He recognized the pattern instantly.
The hound is attacking me.
But he was wrong. The hound hurled itself at Bellico, propelling them both underneath the descending steel shutter and through the office window, leaving Butler with a patch of material in his hand.
He stared blankly at the fallen shutter, thinking.
I did not even see her land, and I don’t know if my sister is alive or dead.
He hurried to Artemis’s desk and activated the security cameras, just in time to see Juliet pat the dog and limp out of sight—back toward Opal, he supposed.
“Alive for now,” muttered the bodyguard.
And where there was life, there was hope. For a few more hours, at least.
Below Fowl Manor and a Little to the Left
Nobody, human or fairy, had been declared dead more times than Mulch Diggums, and it was a record he was inordinately proud of. In Mulch’s eyes, being declared dead by the LEP was just a less embarrassing way for them to admit that he had escaped for the umpteenth time. In the Sozzled Parrot fugitives’ bar, LEP death certificates were printed up and tacked to the Wall of Heroes.
Mulch had fond memories of the very first time he had faked his own death to throw police officers off his trail.