Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer [62]
Fowl interrupted again.
“It’s not polite, you know. Ignoring your host.”
Holly snarled. “Enough is enough.”
She pulled back her fist, fingers curled in a tight bunch. Artemis didn’t flinch. Why would he? Butler always intervened before punches landed. But then something caught his eye, a large figure running down the stairway on the first-floor monitor. It was Butler.
“That’s right, rich boy,” said Holly nastily. “You’re on your own this time.”
And before Artemis’s eyes had time to widen, Holly put an extra few pounds of spring in her elbow and whacked her abductor right on the nose.
“Oof,” he said, collapsing on to his rear end.
“Oh, yes! That felt good.”
Holly focused on the voice buzzing in her ear.
“. . . we’ve been feeding a loop to the outside cameras, so the humans won’t see anything come up the avenue. But it’s on the way, trust me.”
“Foaly. Foaly, come in.”
“Holly? Is that you?”
“The one and only. Foaly, there is no loop. I can see everything that’s going on around here.”
“The cunning little . . . He must have rebooted the system.”
The avenue was a hive of fairy activity. Cudgeon was there, haughtily directing his team of sprites. And in the center of the melee stood a sixteen-foot-tall hovercage, floating on a cushion of air. The cage was directly before the manor door, and the techies were securing a concussor seal to the surrounding wall. When activated, several alloy rods in the seal’s collar would be detonated simultaneously, effectively disintegrating the door. When the dust settled, the troll would have only one place to go—into the manor.
Holly checked the other monitors. Butler had managed to drag Juliet from the cell. They had ascended from the cellar level and were just crossing the lobby. Right in the line of fire.
“D’Arvit,” she swore, crossing to the work surface.
Artemis was propped on his elbows. “You hit me,” he said in disbelief.
Holly strapped on a set of Hummingbirds.
“That’s right, Fowl. And there’s plenty more where that came from. So stay right where you are, if you know what’s good for you.”
For once in his life, Artemis realized that he didn’t have a snappy answer. He opened his mouth, waiting for his brain to supply the customary pithy comeback. But nothing arrived.
Holly slipped the Neutrino 2000 into its holster.
“That’s right, Mud Boy. Playtime’s over. Time for the professionals to take over. If you’re a good boy, I’ll buy you a lollipop when I come back.”
And when Holly was long gone, soaring beneath the hallway’s ancient oak beams, Artemis said, “I don’t like lollipops.”
It was a woefully inadequate response, and Artemis was instantly appalled with himself. Pathetic really: I don’t like lollipops. No self-respecting criminal mastermind would be caught dead even using the word lollipops. He really would have to put together a database of witty responses for occasions such as this.
It was quite possible that Artemis would have sat like that for some time, totally detached from the situation at hand, had not the front door imploded, shaking the manor to its foundations. A thing like that is enough to knock the daydreams from anyone’s head.
A sprite alighted before acting Commander Cudgeon.
“The collar is in place, sir.”
Cudgeon nodded. “Are you sure it’s tight, Captain? I don’t want that troll coming out the wrong way.”
“Tighter ’n a goblin’s wallet. There’s not a bubble of air getting through that seal. Tighter ’n a stink worm’s—”
“Very well, Captain,” interrupted Cudgeon hurriedly, before the sprite could complete his graphic analogy.
Beside them the hovercage shook violently, almost toppling the container from its air cushion.
“We better blow that sucker, Commander. If we don’t let him outta there soon, my boys’re gonna spend the next week scraping . . .”
“Fine, Captain, fine. Blow it. Blow it for goodness sake.”
Cudgeon hurried behind the blast shield, scribbling a note on his palmtop’s screen. Memo: Remind the sprites to watch their language. After all, I am a Commander now.
The foul-mouthed captain