Artemis Fowl_ The Opal Deception - Eoin Colfer [44]
Opal nodded at Merv. “For heaven’s sake, shut him up.”
Merv was glad to oblige, sinking a blue power slug into Artemis’s chest. The Irish boy dropped in midlecture.
“What have you done?” shouted Holly, dropping to Artemis’s side. She was relieved to find a steady heartbeat under the bloodied shirt.
“Oh no,” said Opal. “Not dead, merely painfully stunned. He is having quite a day, young Artemis.”
Holly’s pretty features were distorted by grief and outrage as she glared at the small pixie. “What do you want from us? What else can you do?”
Opal’s face was the picture of innocence. “Don’t blame me. You have brought this on yourself. All I wanted to do was bring down fairy society as we know it, but oh no, you wouldn’t have it. Then I planned a couple of relatively simple assassinations, but you insisted on surviving. Kudos to you for evading the bio-bomb, by the way. I was watching the whole thing from sixty-five feet up in my stealth shuttle. Containing the solinium with an LEP helmet. Good thinking. But now, because you have caused me so much trouble and exasperation, I think I will indulge myself a little.”
Holly swallowed the fear that was crawling up her throat. “Indulge yourself?”
“Oh yes. I had a nasty little scenario planned for Foaly—something theatrical involving the Eleven Wonders. But now I have decided that you are worthy of it.”
Holly tensed herself. She should go for her gun, there was no other option. But she had to ask; it was fairy nature: “How nasty?”
Opal smiled, and evil was the only word for that expression. “Troll nasty,” she said. “And one more thing. I am telling you this because you are about to die, and I want you to hate me at the moment of your death as much as I hate you.” Opal paused, allowing the tension to build. “Do you remember the sweet spot on the bomb I strapped to Julius?”
Holly felt as though her heart had expanded to fill her entire chest. “I remember.”
Opal’s eyes flared. “Well, there wasn’t one.”
Holly went for her gun, and Merv hit her in the chest with a blue charge. She was asleep before she hit the ground.
CHAPTER 6
TROLL NASTY
Under the Atlantic Ocean, Two Miles off the Kerry Coast, Irish Waters
Ten thousand feet below the surface of the Atlantic, an LEP sub-shuttle was speeding through a minor volcanic trench toward the mouth of a subterranean river. The river led to an LEP shuttleport where the subshuttle’s passengers could transfer to a regular craft.
The craft had three passengers and a pilot. The passengers were a dwarf felon and the two Atlantis marshals who were transporting him. Mulch Diggums, the felon in question, was in high spirits for someone in prison clothes. The reason being that his appeal had finally come through, and his lawyer was optimistic that all charges against his client were about to be quashed on a technicality.
Mulch Diggums was a tunnel dwarf who had abandoned the mines in favor of a life of crime. He removed items of value from Mud People’s houses and sold them on the black market. In the past few years his destiny had become intertwined with those of Artemis Fowl and Holly Short, and he had played a key part in their adventures. Inevitably this roller-coaster lifestyle had come crashing down around him as the long arm of the LEP closed in. Before he had been led away to serve the remainder of his sentence, Mulch Diggums was permitted to say good-bye to his human friend.
Artemis had given him two things: one was a note advising him to check the dates on the original search warrant for his cave. The other was a gold medallion to be returned to Artemis in two years. Apparently Artemis wished to resurrect their partnership at that time. Mulch had studied the medallion a thousand times, searching for its secrets, until his constant rubbing wore down the gold plating to reveal a computer disk beneath. Obviously Artemis had recorded a message to himself. A way