Holly shouted at Doodah. Maybe her mouth formed actual words, but she couldn’t be certain, not with the shaking and the noise. Blades snicked through the air, grabbing for her. With each pass they tore strips from the ground beneath her feet. There wasn’t much ground left. Soon she would be feeding the multi-mixer. She would be shredded, passed through the machine’s innards, and finally laid as a pavement slab. Holly Short would literally be part of the city.
There was nothing to do. Nothing. Mulch was too far away to be of any assistance, and it wasn’t likely that any civilian would attempt to mount a rogue mixer, even if they had known she was trapped between the paddles.
As the blades closed in, Holly gazed toward the computer-generated sky. It would have been nice to die on the surface. Feel the heat of the real sun warm her brow. It would have been nice.
Then the rotor stopped. Holly was sprayed with a shower of half-digested debris from the mixer’s stomach. A few stone slivers scratched her skin, but that was the extent of her injury.
Holly wiped the grime from her face and looked up. Her ears rang with the engine’s aftershock, and her eyes watered from the dust that settled on her like dirty snow.
Doodah peered down at her from the cab. His face was pale but fierce.
“Leave me alone!” he shouted down. His voice seemed weak and tinny to Holly’s damaged eardrums.
“Just leave me alone!”
And he was gone, scurrying down the access ladder, maybe heading for his bolt hole.
Holly leaned against one of the paddles, allowing herself a moment to recover. Tiny sparks of magic blossomed on her many cuts, sealing them. Her ears popped, whined, and flexed as the magic automatically targeted her eardrums. In seconds, Holly’s hearing was back to normal.
She had to get out of there. And there was only one way. Over the rotor. Past the blades. Holly tipped one gingerly with a finger. A droplet of blood oozed from a tiny cut, only to be sucked back in by a blue spark of magic. Those blades would cut her to ribbons if she slipped, and there wouldn’t be enough magic under the world to stitch her back together again. But the rotor was her only way out, otherwise she would have to wait until LEPtraffic arrived. It would have been bad enough causing this kind of damage with the weight of LEP public liability insurance behind her, but as a freelancer she’d probably be thrown in jail for a couple of months while the courts decided what to charge her with.
Holly threaded her fingers between the blades and gripped the first bar on the rotor. It would be just like climbing a ladder. A very sharp, potentially fatal, ladder. She stepped on a lower bar and boosted herself up. The rotor groaned and dropped six inches. Holly held on, because it was safer than letting go. Blades quivered an inch from her limbs. Slow and steady. No false moves.
One bar at a time, Holly climbed the rotor. Twice, a blade nicked her flesh, but the wounds were not serious and were quickly sealed by blue sparks. After a brief eternity of utter concentration, Holly pulled herself onto the hood. The hood was filthy and hot, but at least it wasn’t sharper than a centaur’s tongue.
“He went that way,” said a voice from ground level.
Holly looked down to see a large frowning gnome in a city services uniform pointing toward Crystal Street.
“He went that way,” repeated the gnome. “The pixie who threw me out of my mixer.”
Holly stared at the burly public services guy. “That tiny pixie threw you out?”
The gnome almost blushed. “I was getting out anyway, he just tipped me over.” He suddenly forgot all about his embarrassment. “Hey, aren’t you Polly something? Polly Little? That’s it. The LEP hero.”
Holly climbed down the cab ladder.“Polly Little. That’s me.”
Holly landed running, her boots crunching on pebbles of crushed pavement.
“Mulch,” she said. “Doodah is coming your way. Be careful. He’s a lot more dangerous than we thought.”
Dangerous? Maybe, maybe not. He hadn’t killed her when he’d had the chance. It would seem that the pixie had no stomach for murder.
Doodah’s stunt with the multi-mixer had caused chaos in the plaza. Traffic police, nicknamed Wheelies, were pouring in, and civilians were pouring out. Holly counted at least six LEPtraffic magna-bikes and two cruisers. She was keeping her head down, when one of the traffic officers hopped off his bike and grabbed her shoulder.
“Did you see what happened, missy?”
Missy? Holly was tempted to twist the hand on her shoulder and flip the officer into a nearby recycler. But this was not the time for outrage; she needed to redirect his attention.
“Why, thank goodness you’re here, officer,” she twittered in a voice at least an octave higher than her normal tones. “Over there, by the multi-mixer. There’s blood everywhere.”
“Blood!” exclaimed the Wheelie, delighted to hear it. “Everywhere?”
“Absolutely everywhere.”
The traffic cop dropped Holly’s shoulder. “Thank you, missy. I’ll handle it from here.”
He strode purposefully toward the multi-mixer, then turned back.
“Excuse me, missy,” he said, recognition glimmering in his eye, just out of reach. “Don’t I know you?”
But the hooded elf had disappeared.
Ah, well, thought the Wheelie. I should probably go look at the blood everywhere.
Holly ran toward Crystal Street, though she felt sure there was no need for haste. Doodah had either decided that there was too much heat on him to reveal his bolt hole, or Mulch had him. Either way it was out of her control. Once again she lamented the loss of LEP backup. In her Recon days, all it would have taken was a quick order into her helmet microphone, and every street in the area would be cordoned off.
She skirted a street-cleaning robot and turned onto Crystal. The narrow street was a service lane for the main shopping plaza, and consisted mostly of delivery bays. The rest of the units were rented out for storage. Holly was surprised to find Doodah directly in front of her, rummaging in his pocket, presumably for the access chip to his unit. Something must have held him up for a minute. Maybe he had ducked behind a crate to avoid the Wheelies. Whatever. She had another shot at him.
Doodah looked up, and all Holly could do was wave.
“Morning,” she said.
Doodah shook a tiny fist at her. “Don’t you have better things to do, elf? All I do is smuggle a few fish.”
The question cut Holly deeply. Was this really the best way to help the People? Surely, Commander Root had wanted more from her. In the past few months she had gone from top priority surface operations to chasing down fish smugglers in a back alley. That was quite a drop.
She showed Doodah her hands. “I don’t want you to get hurt, so stand perfectly still.”
Doodah chuckled. “Hurt? By you? Not likely.”
“No,” said Holly. “Not by me. By him.” She pointed at the patch of mud under Doodah’s feet.
“Him?” Doodah looked down, suspecting a trap. His suspicions were absolutely correct. The ground beneath his feet fizzled slightly as the surface earth shivered and bounced.
“What?” said Doodah, lifting one foot. He would doubtless have stepped off the patch if he’d had time. But what happened next, happened very quickly.
The ground did more than just collapse, it was sucked from below Doodah with a sickening slurping sound. A hoop of teeth cut through the earth, followed by a huge mouth. There was a dwarf on the other end of the mouth, and he breached the ground like a dolphin jumping, driven apparently by gas from his rear end. The ring of teeth closed around Doodah, swallowing him to the neck.
Mulch Diggums, for of course it was he, settled back into his tunnel, taking the unfortunate pixie with him. Doodah, it has to be said, did not look quite so cocky as he had a second ago.
“A d . . . dwarf,” he stammered. “I thought your people didn’t like the law.”
Holly peered into the hole. “Generally they don’t. But Mulch is an exception. You don
’t mind if he doesn’t answer you himself. He might accidentally bite your head off.”
Doodah squirmed suddenly. “What’s he doing?”
“I imagine he’s licking you. Dwarf spittle hardens on contact with air. As soon as he opens his mouth, you’ll be locked up tight as a chick in an egg.”
Mulch winked at Holly. It was about as much gloating as he could pull off at the moment, but Holly knew that he would spend the next several days boasting about his skills.
Dwarfs can tunnel through miles of earth. Dwarfs have jet-powered rear ends. Dwarfs can produce two gallons of rock spittle every hour. What have you got? Besides a famous face that keeps blowing our cover?
Holly peered into the hole, the toe of one boot hooked over the edge. “Okay, partner. Good job. Now, can you please spit out the fugitive.”
Mulch was happy to oblige. He hawked Doodah onto the lane’s surface, then clambered up himself, rehinging his jaw.
“This is disgusting,” moaned Doodah, as the viscous spittle solidified on his limbs. “It stinks, too.”
“Hey,” said Mulch, injured. “The smell is not my fault. If you’d rented storage on a cleaner street . . .”
“Oh yeah, stinky? Well, this is what I think of you.” Doodah attempted a pixie hex gesture, but fortunately the rock spittle froze his arm before he could complete it.
“Okay, you two. Cut it out,” said Holly. “We have thirty minutes to get this little guy to the LEP before the spittle loosens up.”
Mulch peered over her shoulder toward the mouth of the lane. He turned suddenly pale underneath his coating of wet earth, and his beard hair bristled nervously.
“You know something, partner,” he said. “I don’t think we’re going to need thirty minutes.”
Holly turned away from her prisoner. There were half a dozen elves blocking the entrance to the lane. They were LEP, or something very like it. They wore plain clothes with no markings or insignias of any kind. They were official, though. The heavy artillery cradled in their elbows attested to that. Holly noticed with some relief that none of the guns were pointed at her or Mulch.
One of the elves stepped forward, popping the visor on her helmet.
“Hello, Holly,” she said. “We’ve been looking for you all morning. How’ve you been?”
Holly swallowed a relieved sigh. It was Wing Commander Vinyáya, a longtime supporter of Holly and Julius Root. Vinyáya had blazed the trail for all females in the forces. In a five-hundred-year career, she had done everything from leading a Retrieval team to the dark side of the moon, to heading up the liberal vote on the fairy Council. In addition to this, she had been Holly’s flight instructor in the academy.
“Fine, Commander,” said Holly.
Vinyáya nodded at the solidifying mass of rock spittle.
“Keeping busy, I see.”
“Yes. That’s Doodah Day. The fish smuggler. Quite a catch.”
The Commander frowned. “You’re going to have to cut him loose, Holly. We have bigger snails to pop.”
Holly placed her boot on Doodah’s midriff. She was reluctant to jump through LEP hoops, even for an undercover wing commander.
“What kind of snails?”
Vinyáya’s frown deepened, cutting a slash between her brows.
“Can we talk in the car, Captain? The regulars are on the way.”
Captain? Vinyáya had referred to her by her old rank? What was going on here? If the regulars were LEP, who were these fairies?
“I don’t trust the force as much as I used to, Commander. You need to give me something before we go anywhere.”
Vinyáya sighed. “Firstly, Captain, we’re not the force. Not the one you think, anyway. Secondly, you want me to give you something? I’ll give you two words. Care to hazard a guess what they are?”
Holly knew at once. She felt it.
“Artemis Fowl,” she whispered.
“That’s right,” confirmed Vinyáya.“Artemis Fowl. Now, are you and your partner prepared to come with us?”
“Where are you parked?” asked Holly.
Vinyáya and her mysterious unit obviously had a serious budget. Not only were their weapons state of the art, but their transportation was way out of the usual LEP league. Within seconds of scraping Doodah Day and slipping a tracker into his boot, Holly and Mulch were strapped into lounger seats in the back of a stretch armored vehicle. They weren’t prisoners, exactly, but Holly couldn’t help feeling that she wasn’t in control of her destiny anymore.
Vinyáya took off her helmet, shaking out long silver hair. Holly was surprised.
The commander smiled. “You like the color? I got fed up dying it.”
“Yes. It suits you.”
Mulch raised a finger. “Sorry to interrupt the salon chat, but who are you people? You’re not LEP, I’ll bet my bum-flap on it.”
Vinyáya swiveled to face the dwarf. “How much do you know about demons?”
Mulch checked the vehicle’s cooler and was delighted to find sim-chicken and nettle beer. He liberated both. “Demons. Not a lot. Never seen one myself.”
“What about you, Holly? Remember anything from school?”
Holly was intrigued. Where could this conversation be going? Was this a test of some kind? She thought back to her history classes in Police Academy.
“Demons. The Eighth Family of the Fairy People. Ten thousand years ago, after the battle of Taillte, they had refused to move underground, opting instead to lift their island out of time and live there in isolation.”
Vinyáya nodded. “Very good. So they assembled their circle of warlocks and cast a time spell over the island of Hybras.”
Mulch burped. “They disappeared off the face of the earth, and no one’s seen a demon since.”
“Not quite true. A few have popped up over the centuries. One quite recently, in fact. And guess who was there to meet him?”
“Artemis,” said Holly and Mulch simultaneously.
“Exactly. Somehow he was able to predict what we couldn’t. We knew when, but our where was off by several feet.”
Holly sat forward. Interested. Back in the game.
“Did we get Artemis on film?”
“Not exactly,” replied Vinyáya cryptically. “If you don’t mind, I’ll leave the explaining to someone more qualified than me. He’s back at base.”And she would say no more on the subject. Most infuriating.
Mulch wasn’t one for patience.
“What? You’re just going to take a nap? Come on, Vinyáya, tell us what little Arty is up to.”
Vinyáya would not be drawn. “Relax, Mr. Diggums. Have another nettle beer, or some spring water.” The commander took two bottles from the cooler and offered one to Mulch.
Mulch studied the label. “Derrier? No thanks. You know how they put the bubbles in this stuff?”
Vinyáya’s mouth twitched with the ghost of a smile. “I thought it was naturally carbonated.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought until I got a prison job at the Derrier plant. They employ every dwarf in the Deeps. They made us sign confidentiality contracts.”
Vinyáya was hooked. “So go on, tell me. How do they get the bubbles in?”
Mulch tapped his nose. “Can’t say. Breach of contract. All I can say is it involves a huge vat of water and several dwarfs using our . . . eh”—Mulch pointed to his rear end—“. . . natural talents.”
Vinyáya gingerly replaced her bottle.
As Holly sat back in her comfortable gel chair, enjoying yet another of Mulch’s tall tales, a niggling thought nudged through. She realized that Commander Vinyáya had avoided answering the dwarf’s initial question. Who were these people?
Ten minutes later, that question was answered.
“Welcome to Section Eight Headquarters,” said Vinyáya. “Forgive my theatrics, it’s not often we get to wow people.”
Holly didn’t feel very wowed. They had pulled into a multi-story car park several blocks down from Police Plaza. The stretch armored vehi
cle followed the curved arrows up to the seventh floor, which was stuffed below the craggy ceiling. The driver parked in the least accessible, darkest space, then switched off the engine.
They sat for several seconds in the damp darkness, listening to rock-water drip from stalactites onto the roof.
“Wow,” said Mulch. “This is something. I guess you people spent all your money on the car.”
Vinyáya smiled. “Just wait.”
The driver ran a quick proximity scan on the dashboard scanner, and came up clean. He then took an infrared remote from the dash and clicked it through the transparent plastic roof at the rock face overhead.
“Remote-controlled rocks,” said Mulch dryly, delighted at the opportunity to exercise his sarcasm muscle.
Vinyáya did not respond; she didn’t have to. What happened next shut Mulch up all on its own. The parking space rose hydraulically, sending the car catapulting toward the rock face above. The rocks did not move out of the way. There was no doubt in Holly’s mind that when rock went up against metal, the rock would win. It made no sense, of course, that Vinyáya would bring them here only to crush the entire party. But there was no time to consider this in the half second that it took the stretch vehicle to reach the hard unforgiving rock.
In truth, the rock wasn’t hard or unforgiving. It was digital. They passed right through to a smaller car port built into the rock.
“Hologram,” breathed Holly.
Vinyáya winked at Mulch. “Remote-controlled rocks,” she said. She flipped open the rear door and stepped out into an air-conditioned corridor.
“The entire headquarters has been hewn from the rock.
Actually, most of the cave was already here. We just lasered off a corner here and there. Forgive all the cloak-and-dagger stuff, but it’s vital that what we do here at Section Eight remains secret.”
Holly followed the commander through a set of automatic doors and down a slick corridor. There were sensors and cameras every few paces, and Holly knew that her identity had been verified at least a dozen times before they reached the steel door at the end of the corridor.