Artemis Fowl: The Ballad of Frond
Chapter Three: Escape, Capture, and Standstill
Hey there adoring people. Seven reviews total. That's four more than last chapter! (I did learn something in High School. Yay). Your mission, if you do choose to accept (and you do), is to tell one person about this story and force them to review. Unless you're in-closet fanfiction writers like myself, and then you're excused.
Anyway, I don't think this chapter lives up to my usual standards. But I'll let you good people be the judge of that. Thanks for all the praise! Oh, and Chapter Four will either come really soon or really late because the only "down" time I have this coming week is Wednesday. Just an FYI. But I love you all very much hopefully enough to be excused of my Dan Brown influences.
After three seconds of having a gun pointed at her noise Betony was certain of two things.
First, she knew she had never experienced genuine fear in her life. Not until now.
Secondly, and most importantly, after this entire ordeal was over, she was going to kill Regina. Even if she's already dead.
"That girl is either desperate to find her step sister or impossible to get along with," Artemis muttered irritably.
He was not the slightest bit worried about the shattered pottery. Luckily, most of the decorations in hotels were there for the appearance of expensive taste. In reality the vase would cost at most a few hundred dollars, if that. No. What bothered Artemis was Betony's unbridled anger. She needed to learn to control herself. He Irish Billionaire knew Betony would stay given that he was her only means of transportation.
He gave Ms. Lambert ten seconds to calm down, and then went out to the hall.
"I don't appreciate your crass atti—" Artemis stopped mid sentence, his sharp brain registering something inconceivably wrong.
Someone familiar was holding Betony at gunpoint. Someone he had not seen in a very, very long time…a beautiful, deadly blonde.
"You're coming with me."
A memory flashed. He was chasing a sweet girl through the grounds. She laughed angelically. Her hair glistened in the sun of a perfect day. Arty!
"I said move!" The butt of the gun hit Betony in the face. She fell down, clutching her cheek as she hit the carpet.
It can't be, Artemis reasoned. The Butlers were tough, but proud. They would not resort to crippling someone who was clearly inferior in strength for no reason. They were not so cruel. They only did what was necessary. Especially…
"Juliet."
The name slid out of his tongue almost without Artemis's knowing it. The leather-clad vixen faced him. If she recognized him she did not show it. She drew another gun from her holster and pointed it at his chest. "You. Get this girl off the floor and come with me."
Artemis moved. He had no choice. Whoever this was it was not Juliet. A monster had replaced her. The Irish prodigy knew she would kill him without hesitation. He knelt beside Betony.
"Betony," Artemis said soothingly. "You need to stand up."
She looked into his eyes. She did not trust him as he had once thought but they both knew the choice was long out of their hands. "I'm sorry," he whispered and helped her onto her feet.
"This way," the assassin demanded. Clearly, it was understood what would happen if either disobeyed. Her words are so cold, Artemis thought numbly. What happened? He was afraid of the answer. He was also afraid for Betony whose wild temperament had dissipated into an emotionless stupor. Shock.
Juliet led them down a long hallway to the service elevator. "My men are waiting inside," she explained, "if you try to escape…"
"We die." Betony finished clinically, as if explaining the side effects of a medicine. The assassin said nothing. She pressed the service elevator.
The door slid open. There were no 'men' waiting, only a behemoth that stood in the middle of the elevator with two seemingly unconscious bodies lying at his feet.
The giant charged out like a rhino freed from its cage.
"GO!" Artemis yelled pushing Betony forward. He wondered vaguely if Butler would even recognize Juliet underneath that black leather and sunglasses. There was no time to find out. Artemis slammed his palm on the two arrows facing each other and the elevator descended.
Thousands of feet below Regina's day was summing up to equally disastrous proportions.
Kidnapping aside, the whole ordeal had not been a terrible experience for her. In fact, her abductor had treated her like a goddess, feeding her the most delicious food she'd ever put in her mouth and keeping her in a room fit for the highest priestess. Had he not planned on de-flowering her and the sacrificing her body shortly thereafter, Regina would have been perfectly relaxed. But every evil villain's downfall is a monologue of his despicable plan. And although she had yet to see her abductor, he spoke regularly in the darkness.
"Soon, my beautiful Psyche, you shall be mine…we will engage on a physical and spiritual journey together…for the People…for Frond…please be mine…"
"There's such a thing as Chat Roulette," Regina replied the first time.
Regina had never had an appetite for education but her family had visited Rome once, and she had seen enough ruins to know she was trapped in a temple. Whenever the voice disappeared lights flooded the beautiful chamber. In its center was a slight concave, or pit. Every time Regina laid eyes on it her stomach churned.
It was a sacrificial altar.
But if the younger stepsister were remotely intimidated, her captor did not know it. Where Betony would have been screaming and possibly tearing down the entire infrastructure with her bare fists, Regina was a much cooler customer. It's like being in detention, she convinced herself. I just had to buy some time.
Until then Regina sat in her room waiting for the moment her captor decided to take her virtue, or Betony came to stab her for not paying for the hotel room and stealing her jeans.
Cigarettes had not done much for Betony's cardio. Her grandmother had always insisted she quit but the stubborn girl never gave a damn about the old misanthrope's ramblings. "One day you're going to lose that beautiful voice of yours and you'll be damned if you expect an ounce of pity from me!"
In response, Betony blew a cloud of smoke in the withering woman's face.
Now, she was wishing she listened. After only a few yards of running Artemis was half dragging her to the Bentley Coup, which was purring at the ready behind the hotel.
"In," her Samaritan ordered, practically tossing Betony in the back seat.
Betony had no time to process that she was being manhandled, or that they were being chased by an assassin, or that the driver seemed to double as a bodyguard mercenary, or that in all this mess she had not collected any of Regina's stuff. Two seconds later the driver/bodyguard was back behind the wheel. Despite there not being a mark on him he looked pained.
"Buckle up," he said, slamming the gas pedal.
Had there been any time to Betony would have gladly followed the driver's instructions. Alas. She was thrown against the seat and then forced into very uncomfortable contact with Artemis Fowl as the car made a hard right out of the parking lot.
Betony remembered thinking to herself at the airport if the day could get any worse.
Naturally, it had.