The Last Guardian

  Butler knew it was his function to play devil’s advocate. “Won’t that just lock us in here with a bunch of pirates?”

  Artemis smiled. “Or lock them in here with us.”

  Salton Finnacre was bemoaning the loss of his own body to his mate J’Heez.

  “Remember those arm muscles I had?” he said wistfully. “They woz like tree trunks. Now look at me.” He jiggled his left arm to demonstrate how the flaps of flesh hung loosely from his bones. “I can barely hold this fire stick.”

  “It ain’t a fire stick,” said J’Heez. “They’re called guns. That’s a simple enough word to remember, ain’t it?”

  Salton looked at the automatic handgun in his bony fingers. “I suppose. Just point and pull, is it?”

  “That’s what Bellico said.”

  “Did you hear that, Berserkers?” Salton asked the half dozen pirates squashed into the stairwell behind him. “Just point and shoot. And don’t worry about hitting the person in front of you, because we are already dead.”

  They stood in the red-bricked corridor, praying for some humans to wander past. After all this time, it would be a shame if they didn’t get to kill anyone.

  Ten feet below, in the wine cellar, Butler hefted two bottles of Macallan 1926 Fine and Rare whiskey.

  “Your father will not be pleased,” he said to Artemis. “This is thirty thousand euros per missile.”

  Artemis wrapped his fingers around the door handle. “I feel certain he will understand, given the circumstances.”

  Butler chuckled briefly. “Oh, we’re telling your father about the circumstances this time? That will be a first.”

  “Well, perhaps not all the circumstances,” said Artemis, and he opened the door wide.

  Butler stepped into the gap and lobbed the bottles at the ceiling over the pirates’ heads. Both smashed, showering the Berserkers with high-alcohol liquid. Holly stepped under Butler’s legs and shot a single flare into their midst. In less than a second the entire bunch of pirates was engulfed in a whoosh of blue and orange flames, which painted the ceiling black. It didn’t seem to bother the pirates too much, except for the one with the peg legs, who was soon left without a leg to stand on. The rest lived on as skeletons, bringing their guns around to bear on the cellar door.

  “The house will save us?” asked Holly nervously. “That’s what you said.”

  “Three,” said Artemis. “Two…one.”

  Right on cue, the manor’s fire-safe system registered the rise in temperature and instructed eight of its two hundred nozzles to submerge the flames in sub-zero extinguisher foam. The pirates were driven to their knees by the force of the spray, and they yanked their triggers blindly, sending ricochets zinging off the walls and down the stairs. The bullets played out their kinetic energy on the steel bannisters and fell to the ground, smoking. In the corridor, the pirates’ bone temperature dropped over a hundred degrees in less than ten seconds, making them as brittle as pressed leaves.

  “Here we go,” said Butler, and he charged up the stairs, crashing through the disoriented pirates like a vengeful bowling ball. The unfortunate Berserkers shattered under the lightest impact, disintegrating into a million bone crystals, which fluttered in the air like snowflakes. Holly and Artemis followed the bodyguard, racing down the corridor, their feet crunching on bone shards, not stopping to collect weapons—most of which had exploded in the fire, rendering them useless.

  As usual, Artemis was sandwiched between Butler and Holly as they fled.

  “Keep moving,” Holly called from behind. “There will be more of them, count on it.”

  There were more pirates in the panic room, feeling very pleased with themselves.

  “This is the smartest thing we ever done,” said Pronk O’Chtayle, acting commander. “They comes in here to hide from us, but we is already here.” He gathered his bony crew around him. “Let’s go over it again. What does we do when we hears them?”

  “We hides,” said the pirates.

  “And what does we do when they comes in?”

  “We pops up real sudden,” said the pirates gleefully.

  Pronk pointed a bony finger. “What does you do, specifically?”

  A small pirate who seemed to be wearing the remains of a barrel stood by the wall. “I bangs on this here button, dropping the steel door so’s we’re all trapped in here.”

  “Good,” said Pronk. “Good.”

  The sound of staccato gunfire bounced off the vaulted ceilings and echoed along the corridor to the panic room.

  “They’re coming, comrades,” said Pronk. “Remember to kill ’em several times just to be sure. Stop slicing when yer arms fall off.”

  They squatted in the gloom, light from the outside glinting on their blades.

  If Bellico had probed a little deeper into Juliet’s memories, she would have realized that the panic room could be accessed or sealed from the outside, remotely, or with a voice-activation program. But even if she had known, it would not have made any sense for the humans to lock themselves out of their own haven. That would be pure insanity. Butler barely paused on his way past the panic-room door to talk into the small speaker set into the steel frame.

  “Butler D.,” he said clearly. “Authorization prime. Lock.”

  A heavy door dropped down, sealing the panic room completely and locking the giddy bunch of Berserker pirates inside. Artemis had barely a second to glance under the door.

  Is that a pirate wearing a barrel? he thought. Nothing would surprise me today.

  On reaching the laboratory/office work suite, Butler held up his fist. Artemis was not familiar with military hand signals and crashed into the bodyguard’s broad back. Fortunately the teen did not have the heft behind him to budge the bodyguard, for if Butler had taken so much as a stumbled step forward, he would have surely been skewered by one of his sister’s arrows.

  “I see,” whispered Artemis. “The raised fist means Stop.”

  Butler placed a finger to his lips.

  “And that would mean you wish me to be quiet. Oh, I understand.”

  Artemis’s words were enough to elicit a reaction from inside the lab, taking the form of an aluminium arrow that penetrated the partition wall, thunking through the plasterboard, sending flakes fluttering.

  Butler and Holly did not discuss a strategy, as they were both experienced soldiers and knew that the best time to attack was directly after shots had been fired—or in this case, arrows.

  “Left,” said Butler, and that was all he needed to say. Translated for the layman, his utterance signified that he would take any hostiles on the left of the room, leaving the right side for Holly.

  They darted low going in, splitting into two targets as they crossed the floor. Butler had the advantage of being extremely familiar with the lab’s layout, and he knew that the only logical hiding place would be behind the long stainless steel workbench where Artemis played around with the unknown and built his experimental models.

  I have always wondered how secure this thing is, he thought, before charging it like a football player entering a scrimmage where the cost of losing was death. He heard an arrow whistle past his ear a second before his shoulder rammed the stainless steel, lifting the bench from its supply cables in a flurry of sparks and a hiss of gas.

  Gobdaw clambered on top of the bench, and he had both a short sword and fire stick raised to strike when the Bunsen burner gas said hello to the electric cable. Sparks and a brief explosion resulted, flipping the Berserker backward into the velvet curtains.

  Bellico assessed the situation quickly and bolted toward the office.

  Butler saw her go. “I’m after Juliet,” he barked at Holly. “You subdue Myles.”

  Perhaps the boy is unconscious, thought Holly, but this hope faded as she saw Myles Fowl disentangle himself from the velvet curtains. The look in his eyes told her that there was still a Berserker in that body and that he was not in the mood for surrender. He was armed only with a short blade now, but
Holly knew the Berserkers would fight to the last drop of blood, even if the blood was not, strictly speaking, their own.

  “Don’t hurt him,” said Artemis. “He’s only four years old.”

  Gobdaw grinned, showing a mouthful of baby teeth, which Myles cleaned religiously with a toothbrush modeled on Einstein’s head, the bristles being Einstein’s trademark spiky hair. “That’s right, traitor. Gobdaw is only four years old, so don’t hurt me.”

  Holly wished that Artemis would stay out of it. This Gobdaw might look innocent, but he had far more battle experience than she would ever wish to have; and, judging by the way he was twirling the blade on his palm, he hadn’t lost any of his knife skills.

  If this guy was in his own body, he would take me apart, she realized.

  Holly’s problem was that her heart was not in this fight. Quite apart from the fact that she was battling Artemis’s little brother, this was Gobdaw, for heaven’s sake. Gobdaw the legend. Gobdaw, who had led the charge at Taillte. Gobdaw, who had carried a wounded comrade across an icy lake at Bellannon. Gobdaw, who’d been cornered by two wolves in a cave after the Cooley raid and come out of that cave wearing a new fur coat.

  The two soldiers circled each other.

  “Is it true about the wolves?” Holly asked in Gnommish.

  Gobdaw missed a step, surprised. “The wolves at Cooley? How do you know this tale?”

  “Are you kidding?” said Holly. “Everyone knows that. At school, it was part of the pageant, every year. To be honest, I am sick of that story. Two wolves, right?”

  “There were two,” said Gobdaw. “One was sickly, though.”

  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.