The Artemis Fowl Files - Eoin Colfer [7]
Captain Kelp was quick on the draw. He actually managed to get his weapon out of its holster before a sniper’s rifle pulsed beneath the cam foil, catching him high on the shoulder, spinning him across the wet stones.
Holly darted right, zigzagging through the rocks. If she kept moving, the sniper might not be able to get a lock on her. Her fingers were actually digging into the mud slope when a second sniper reared up from the earth, shrugging off a sheet of cam foil.
The newcomer, a stocky dwarf, was holding the biggest rifle Holly had ever seen. “Surprise,” he said grinning, teeth crooked and yellowing.
He fired and the laser pulse hit Holly in the gut like a sledgehammer. That’s the thing about Neutrino weapons: they don’t kill, but they hurt worse than a bucket of hangnails.
Holly came to, and immediately wished she hadn’t. She leaned forward on the oversize chair she was tied to, and threw up all over her boots. Beside her, Trouble Kelp was involved in the same activity. What was going on here? Laser weapons were not supposed to have side effects, unless you were allergic, which she wasn’t.
Glancing around, Holly caught her breath. They were in a small roughly plastered room, dominated by a huge table. A huge table or a human-size table? They were in a human residence? That explained the sickness. Entering human residences without permission was expressly forbidden. The price for ignoring this edict was loss of magic, and nausea.
The details of their predicament sparked in Holly’s memory. She had been on her initiation when a couple of fairies had ambushed them on the beach. Could this be some kind of extreme test? She looked across at Captain Kelp’s drooping head. That was pretty realistic for a test.
A huge door creaked open and a grinning elf stepped through. “Oh, you are unwell. Sorcery sickness, or ‘book barfing’ as I believe the younger fairies call it. Don’t worry, it will soon pass.” The elf looked older than any fairy Holly knew, and was wearing a yellowed LEP dress uniform. It was like something out of a period movie.
The elf caught Holly’s glance. “Ah, yes,” he said, plumping up his ruffles. “My finery fades. It is the curse of living without magic. Everything fades, and not just the clothing. To look in my eyes you would never guess that I am barely a century older than my brother.”
Holly looked in his eyes. “Brother?”
Beside her, Trouble stirred, spat, and raised his head. Holly heard a sharp intake of breath. “Oh gods. Turnball Root.”
Holly’s mind spun. Root? Brother. This was the commander’s brother.
Turnball was delighted. “Finally, someone remembers. I was beginning to think I was forgotten.”
“I majored in Ancient History,” said Trouble. “You have your own page in the ‘Criminally Insane’ section.”
Turnball tried to appear casual, but he was interested. “Tell me, what did this page say?”
“It said that you were a traitorous captain who tried to flood a section of Haven just to wipe out a competitor who was muscling in on your illegal mining scheme. It said that if your brother had not stopped you with your finger on the button, then half the city could have been lost.”
“Ridiculous,” tutted Turnball. “I had engineers study my plans. There would have been no chain reaction. A few hundred would have died, no more.”
“How did you escape from prison?” asked Holly.
Turnball’s chest puffed up. “I have never spent a day in prison. I am not a common criminal. Luckily, Julius lacked the gumption to kill me, and so I managed to escape. He has hunted me ever since. But that ends today.”
“So that’s what this is all about: revenge?”
“Partly,” admitted Turnball. “But also freedom. Julius is like a dog with a bone. He will not let go. I need a chance to finish my martinis without looking over my shoulder. I have had ninety-six residences in the past five centuries. I lived in a fabulous villa near Nice in the seventeen-hundreds.” The old elf’s eyes grew misty. “I was so happy there. I can still smell the ocean. I had to burn that house to the ground because of Julius.”
Holly was rotating