Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer [28]
The shuttle port director swallowed. “Everybody?”
“Yes. That includes terminal personnel. And take everything you can carry. Full evacuation.” He stopped and glared into the director’s mauve eyes. “This is not a drill.”
“You mean—”
“Yes,” said Root, continuing down the access ramp. “The Mud People have committed an overtly hostile act. Who knows where this is going?”
The elf/goblin combo watched as Root disappeared in a cloud of cigar smoke. An overtly hostile act? It could mean war. He punched in his accountant’s number on his mobile.
“Bark? Yes. This is Nimbus. I want you to sell all my shares in the shuttle port. Yes, all of them. I have a hunch the price is about to take a severe dive.”
Captain Holly Short felt as though a sucker slug was drawing her brain out through her earhole. She tried to figure out what could possibly have caused such agony, but her faculties didn’t stretch to memory just yet. Breathing and lying down were about all she could manage.
Time to attempt a word. Something short and pertinent. Help, she decided, would be the one to go for. She took a trembling breath and opened her mouth.
“Mummlp,” said her treacherous lips. No good. Incomprehensible even by a drunken gnome’s standards.
What was going on here? She was flat on her back with no more strength in her body than a damp tunnel root. What could have done this to her? Holly concentrated, skirting the edge of blinding pain.
The troll? Was that it? Had the troll mauled her in that restaurant? That would explain a lot. But no. She seemed to remember something about the old country. And the Ritual. And there was something digging into her ankle.
“Hello?”
A voice. Not hers. Not even elfin.
“You awake, then?”
One of the European languages. Latin. No, English. She was in England?
“I thought the dart might have killed you. Aliens’ insides are different from ours. I saw that on television.”
Gibberish. Aliens’ insides? What was the creature talking about?
“You look fit. Like Muchacho Maria, she’s a Mexican midget wrestler.”
Holly groaned. Her gift of tongues must be on the blink. Time to see exactly what kind of craziness she was dealing with here. Focusing all her strength at the front of her head, Holly cracked open one eye. She closed it again almost immediately. There appeared to be a giant blond fly staring down at her.
“Don’t be scared,” said the fly. “Just sunglasses.”
Holly opened both eyes this time. The creature was tapping a silver eye. No, not an eye. A lens. A mirrored lens. Like the lenses worn by the other two . . . It all came back in a jolt, rushing to fill the hole in her memory like a combination lock clicking into place. She had been abducted by two humans during the Ritual. Two humans with an extraordinary knowledge of fairy affairs.
Holly tried speaking again. “Where . . . where am I?”
The human giggled delightedly, clapping her hands together. Holly noticed her nails, long and painted.
“You can speak English. What sort of accent is that? Sounds like a little bit of everything.”
Holly frowned. The girl’s voice was corkscrewing right to the middle of her headache. She lifted her arm. No locator.
“Where are my things?”
The girl wagged her finger, as one might at a naughty child.
“Artemis had to take your little gun away, and all those other toys. Couldn’t have you hurting yourself.”
“Artemis?”
“Artemis Fowl. This was all his idea. Everything is always his idea.”
Holly frowned. Artemis Fowl. For some reason, even the name made her shiver. It was a bad omen. Fairy intuition was never wrong.
“They’ll come for me, you know,” she said, her voice rasping through dry lips. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”
The girl frowned. “You’re absolutely right. I have no clue what’s going on. So there’s no future in trying to psych me out.”
Holly frowned. It was obviously pointless playing mind games with this human. The mesmer was her only hope, but that couldn’t penetrate reflective surfaces.