Artemis Fowl_ The Opal Deception - Eoin Colfer [32]
It’s a smart bomb, Butler said to himself without one iota of doubt. And Master Artemis is the target.
Butler’s brain began flicking through his list of alternatives. It was a short list. There were only two choices, really: get out or die. It was how to get out that was the problem. They were three stories up with the exit on the wrong side. He spared a moment to take one last look at the approaching missile. It was unlike anything he’d ever seen. Even the emission was different from conventional weapons, with hardly any vapor trail. Whatever this was, it was brand new. Somebody must want Artemis dead very badly.
Butler turned from the window and barged into Artemis’s bedroom. The young master was busy conducting his tests on The Fairy Thief.
“Is there a problem?” asked Artemis.
Butler did not reply because he didn’t have time. Instead he grabbed the teenager by the scruff of the neck and hoisted him onto his own back.
“The painting!” Artemis managed to shout, his voice muffled by the bodyguard’s jacket.
Butler grabbed the picture, unceremoniously stuffing the priceless masterpiece into his jacket pocket. If Artemis had been able to see the century-old oil paint crack, he would have sobbed. But Butler was only paid to protect one thing, and it was not The Fairy Thief.
“Hang on extremely tightly,” advised the massive bodyguard, hefting a king-size mattress from the bed.
Artemis held on tight as he’d been told, trying not to think. Unfortunately his brilliant brain automatically analyzed the available data: Butler had entered the room at speed and without knocking; therefore, there was danger of some kind. His refusal to answer questions meant that the danger was imminent. And the fact that Artemis was on Butler’s back, hanging on tightly, indicated that they would not be escaping the aforementioned danger through conventional exit routes. The mattress would indicate that some cushioning would be needed.
“Butler,” gasped Artemis. “You do know that we’re three stories up?”
Butler might have answered, but his employer did not hear him, because by then the giant bodyguard had propelled them through the open double windows and over the balcony railing.
For a fraction of a second, before the inevitable fall, the air currents spun the mattress around, and Artemis could see back into his own bedroom. In that splinter of a moment, he saw a strange missile corkscrew through the bedroom door and come to a complete halt directly over the empty Perspex tube. There was some kind of tracker in the tube, said the tiny portion of his brain that wasn’t panicking. Someone wants me dead.
Then came the inevitable fall. Thirty feet. Straight down.
Butler automatically spread his limbs in a skydiving X, bearing down on the four corners of the mattress to stop it from flipping. The trapped air below the mattress slowed their fall slightly, but not much. The pair went straight down, fast, G-force increasing their speed with every inch.
Sky and ground seemed to stretch and drip like oil paints on a canvas, and nothing seemed solid anymore. This impression came to an abrupt halt when they slammed into the extremely solid tiled roof of a maintenance shed at the hotel’s rear. The tiles seemed to almost explode under the impact, though the roof timbers held—barely. Butler felt as though his bones had been liquidized, but he knew that he would be okay after a few moments of unconsciousness. He had been in worse collisions before.
His last impression before his senses deserted him was the feel of Master Artemis’s heartbeat through his jacket. Alive, then. They had both survived. But for how long? If