A/N: So here's a belated Christmas pressie :)
THIS CHAPTER IS ONCE AGAIN AN 'M'!
LOT'S OF VIOLENCE! SERIOUSLY!
So for any younger readers, be warned.
Also, this is un-beta'd so if you spot any mistakes (which this beast shall undoubtedly by full of) then tell me and I'll fix it :) I just thought it'd been a while since I posted and you'd rather I got the chapter out than... yeah. You know the spiel.
Disclaimer: Hmm, ya. Still not Eoin!
Soundtrack: Roses For the Dead - Funeral For A Friend (how appropriate)
Dedication: To Sleekpelt! Who wrote me review poetry. I am being completely serious - REVIEW POETRY! Made my day.
'You murdered me a very long time ago. It is about time I returned the favour.'
Chapter Sixteen - If You Go, I Go
Holly rammed the communicator against her ear.
"C'mon, c'mon!" she roared. "Pick up! D'arvitting pick up!"
"I'll clear your route to the surface," said Foaly, his wan face lit by the screen of his tablet. "There's a flare in half an hour. Take a pod and you'll be there by midnight."
Holly screamed with frustration and slammed the hand-set back down.
"What about gear?"
"I'll have someone ready at the docking bay with wings and a field kit."
"And Trouble?"
"I'll deal with him."
THIS IS AN 'M' RATED CHAPTER - CONTAINS GRATUITOUS VIOLENCE AND SCENES OF A DISTRESSING NATURE
Fat tears were trailing down No.1's face. He was wringing his hands, his bottom lip trembling. "I should come with you," he said, his forehead crinkling into stone-coloured rumples. "Annie will probably need extensive healing and–"
"You'd be too slow," snapped Holly, shoving one arm into a jacket. "Those pods are only built for one and I'm not dragging all your bodyguards into this too."
The demon looked wounded but didn't protest. Holly yanked up her left sleeve and snatched up the communicator again.
"Why isn't he answering? He always answers! He carries the thing around on his finger for Frond's sake!"
"Have you tried the old one?" asked Foaly.
"Yup, and it's the same thing: no-one's answering."
"It's probably flare interference. I'll try through my network."
"Right, good." Holly grabbed her keys and wrenched open the front door. "If I'm not back by tomorrow then send a team. I'm going to try and reach Artemis first, but if he and Butler aren't in the house, then I'm going straight for the basement."
The centaur frowned. "What about the Mud Man police? Do you want me to call them?"
"No. They'd probably cause more harm than good. And Artemis Senior probably has something set up to detect a human authority's approach anyway – I don't want him warned."
Foaly nodded. "Alright. Good luck. And keep me in on this, Holly. You know it's going to dangerous."
"When isn't it?"
The door closed with a bang.
Artemis hit the carpet running.
It was as if he had been asleep these past few days. He had been numbed, dreaming. His life had become some twisted stage play he had been observing from the stalls.
"She had laid there, on the left side, traditionally my side."
"She went there! She went to your house before she died!"
His feet pounded onwards. He descended the main staircase taking three steps at a time.
"And do you know how they identified her? Her teeth!"
"Come now, Art, have you lost your touch?"
"The Neck is in Ireland."
"I can't hear the scratching, Arty."
He flew down the main hallway.
One step, two… four, five, six. He grabbed the torch from its shelf in the foreman's closet. It flashed ahead of him, bright, vibrant. It rested finally on the door of Holly Short's former cell.
I was here, he thought, I was metres away.
Last time, he remembered, the door had been shut.
Now it was open.
Butler scowled through the rain-lashed windscreen of the Land Rover. He was forty miles away from the manor speeding down a deserted country lane in a storm which had just reached a new fever-pitch. The car had aquaplaned four times already leaving him to fight the wheel lock and use all his considerable driving skill just to stay on the tarmac. How he was going to perform a reconnaissance in this weather he did not know.
Maybe ten years ago…
Heck, maybe five years ago. But the Kevlar had done for that. He was an old man now and only getting older.
But not wiser. You know you should be at the manor.
He knew, and yet he had his orders. His soldier senses were beating him as hard as the machine-gun drum of the rain on the rooftop but... if the Neck was local then it was his duty to find him and stop him.
Kill him.
For what he'd done to Artemis, perhaps. He hadn't killed in so long. But he so easily could.
For that. I could.
He gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, feeling the metal give beneath his grasp.
Artemis had seemed so small hidden beneath the folds of that mystery sweatshirt, under the king-size sheets of the bed, head covered, useless arm cradled to his stomach. He had seemed almost a child: a little boy, lost and weak. Butler had decided to call the fairies there and then… but Artemis had been in no state to consult about it, the boy's laptop was encrypted and his communicator ring… well that was wherever his hand was. And so Butler had obeyed Mr Fowl's instructions instead, and set off for the Neck.
I'll call Holly the instant I get back. Maybe she'll have contacts. Foaly, No.1: maybe they'll have a fix for Artemis's arm.
The steering wheel gave a little more.
And then he heard the bleeping.
Butler sunk a hand inside his jacket, practically crushing his mobile into the hands-free jack attached to the dashboard.
"Artemis–"
"Ah," interrupted a strangely familiar drawl. "Finally. One member of the Fowl contingent who answers their phone."
Butler glared at the device. There, the impossible: caller unknown writtenin bold italics across the screen.
"Who is this? How did you get this number?"
There was a faint chuckle. "Don't you recognise me? We met just yesterday. And let's just say I know a man. He knows all the numbers…"
A tall, willowy teenager with blonde hair, green eyes and his arms cradled around Artemis's back flashed through the manservant's mind.
"Brannagh."
"Tuley, please."
"What do you want?"
"I want vengeance, my good man."
"Vengeance–?"
"But first I need you to turn your vehicle around and get straight back to your master."
"And why–?"
"Because," hissed Tuley, all pretence of calm vanished, "your employer is a vulpine monster birthed from the very seed of Satan himself and should not be permitted to draw another breath further. Now, I am my no means singular in holding this opinion, and even as we speak, forces outside of my control are advancing upon Fowl Manor to carve your little Arty into pieces small enough to post through a napkin ring. Is that reason clear enough?"
Butler's foot slammed down on the brake pedal.
The first thing to hit him was the smell. The stench of bile, excrement and sweat assaulted his senses like an actual, physical force, pushing him back a step, causing his stomach muscles to cramp and flip. He stifled a wretch and flung his good arm over his mouth and nose. Then his crinkled eyes began to focus.
Something, or someone, had obviously been kept in the cell for a very long time. The walls were smothered by blankets of industrial insulating wool, keeping the stale air close, almost suffocatingly so. The whole arrangement was leaking dust and the noxious motes, starkly visible in the glare of the torch, swirled at his breath, cloying at his airwaves. The cot was unmade. The sheets were stained varying shades of yellow and burgundy, in patches, bitumen-black. And then there was the bucket in the corner, full, overflowing, malignant.
Artemis held the beam steady as he moved it through the silence, across the room, the walls, down to the bed. He saw the loose hairs trapped in the fibres of the only pillow, long and black, brittle.
The mattress was sunken low in the centre as if the person who had slept there had done so curled up, hugging at their knees. He walked closer, and pushed a hand firmly onto the bedding. It was cold.
But this room was not vacated long ago, he deduced, swallowing horror, swallowing panic, some of these stains are fresh.
He drew the light sharply upwards. His gaze narrowed, hawk-like, as he scoured the wool on the walls and ceiling. It was patchy but thick, obviously put up by a novice.
Soundproofing, thought Artemis, swallowing fear, swallowing anger, but of course they would not want their prisoner to be heard.
Then he noticed the largest gap in the wool. It had been ripped open, without care and in haste. Written in the plaster, scraped with either a blunt tool or a fingernail, was one word repeated a dozen times, each letter ugly, uneven.
"Art," he whispered.
Art. Art. Art. Art. Art. Art.
ART.
The blood fled from his head. He felt suddenly faint, dizzy. He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth.
"Can you hear the scratching?"
He fought for calm in the darkness, breathed heavily in the fumes. The room had not been vacated for long. The only important thing was she hadn't burnt all those months ago; she'd only been beneath him, waiting, calling for him.
"Annie," he muttered, walking back from the wall, his heart set. "Annie, I am coming. I'm–"
He turned.
Holly strode into the docking station, deaf to the shouts of the gnome on duty.
"This is disgraceful!" he blustered as she plucked her wing-rig and combat pack from his burly arms. "I don't care what the big bosses say; I don't think you should be allowed such special treatment! No sir!"
Holly jammed on the helmet and swung the rest of her kit over her back. She didn't even register the stab of the wing generator as its corner hit, hard, against her spine.
"You know I've heard you're crazy?" asked the gnome, following her down the port's gangway. "Totally do-lally! Fruit-da-loop! A basket case."
Holly stopped at the right pod and inserted her key card. A light flashed green. The gnome continued his remonstrating even as the pod's pneumatic doors hissed and slid upwards.
"You'll only get yerself killed!" he screeched as Holly punched her bag into the tiny hold behind her seat. "And then where will we be? One dead elf on the surface for all them Mud Men to cut up and find out all about us!"
Holly swung herself in and the door slammed down nearly cleaving the gnome's nose and fingers clean off.
"That'll be it!" His voice was muffled now but still audible. "Just you wait!"
Holly buckled the harness and finally looked at the gnome.
"I'd advise you to stand back." Her voice was a dangerous monotone.
"Oh, would you? Would you now?" The gnome's chest inflated. "Well you'll be leaving when I says you'll be leaving and not any the sooner! I've got the switch you see and I–"
Holly sunk Foaly's override key into the computer and the pod was blasted backwards on its rail.
Needless to say, the gnome should have stood back.
"No!" shrieked Artemis, rearing away, his bare back hitting wall, scraping at the wool. "No! No!"
He had never hated his genius before. But now it was processing the facts indifferent to his screams. If he could, he would have ripped his whole brain free from his skull.
The spatter pattern signifies a gunshot wound to the chest. The bullet entered in the left side, puncturing the heart and exiting through the back, which would account for the excessive amount of spray and matter.
"No. No."
The colour and saturation of the wool point to the death having occurred less than twenty-four hours ago.
He was crying now, beating at his head, his thoughts.
The tracks show that she then collapsed, on her left side, to the floor and lay there for at least ten minutes before being contained by another person, most probably her murderer, and removed.
Her murderer.
Artemis had turned his face into the wall, his eyes shut, his mouth a gaping hole of grief. Sense had abandoned the world. He had almost abandoned the world.
Her murderer.
It was all ended. Again. She was gone. Again.
He sucked in a raw, aching breath and screamed.
"Who wants to kill Artemis?" demanded Butler.
"Oh, I don't have time to give you the comprehensive list," drawled the young man, his voice barely audible above the roar of the speeding Land Rover now headed in the opposite direction. "Suffice to say, a lot of people."
"Why?"
"Why? Truly? Does he ever tell you anything besides which cufflinks he would prefer that day?"
Butler rammed the gearstick roughly into sixth.
"Why?" he roared.
"Because he cut off the arm of Martin Kilglooney."
A picture of Victor Kilglooney's prognathous face loomed in the bodyguard's mind. He remembered Artemis's barely concealed indignation as he was looked up and down by the Baron at Saturday's party.
"What are you talking about?"
Tuley sighed causing a rush static. "The Neck. He has cut off the varying appendages of the seven children of the ones who attended his meeting and refused him, my leg included. Victor Kilglooney was in on it; him and whatever other lowlife bastard was on that screen. They colluded to keep it all one, big, foul secret. Then Martin's arm was taken and that wasn't part of the deal." Tuley's voice grew louder, as if he were leaning closer into the phone. "Your master has made a mistake," he spat. "Now Victor has turned, told everyone the truth about The Neck's identity and he's set a price on the Fowl family's head: three million US dollars to the ones who can give him their bodies. Victor wants them destroyed, every last one of them, for what your master has done to his son. So do a lot of people now, people who will just as easily do it for free."
Butler knew he should just shut the phone down there and then. But he had to know, to hear Brannagh actually say it in that voice which sounded so much like the boy's he had been born to protect.
"But what does this Neck have to do with Artemis?"
"It has everything to do with Artemis!" shouted Tuley. "Artemis Senior is the Neck! He's the one who's been gaining territory in the Pacific, who ordered the cull in Murmansk, who has ordered and organised every amputation. And nobody so much as shits in the Fowl family without Art knowing about it first! He has done this to me! To all of us! He's behind it all!"
"But Artemis's own arm was taken!" roared Butler.
Tuley's voice dropped to a murmur."And isn't that the genius of it? No-one would suspect if he himself had been attacked, would they?" He screamed. "Would they?!"
"Why are you telling me this? If you want him dead, why would you warn me?"
"Because Callum Shinner has a four-hour head-start on me, and with you there, there might at least be something left of Art to shoot at by the time I get back across the channel."
Butler cut the connection.
Artemis was crouched near the floor, his heart hammering.
Her murderer.
He stood up and the torch dropped from his fingers.
Her murderer.
He climbed the stairs, his thoughts making blurs of corridors and landings. He crossed the entrance hall.
Her murderer.
He did not stop to notice the corpse of the head of the Manor security team, his bearded, sightless face leaking into the carpeting of the stairs. He reached the second level unmolested, stepping over, unseeing, three more security corpses littering the Fowl manor stairway.
Her murderer.
Then there was a thin, almost puff-like noise: air being blown through a straw.
It was a bad shot, made all the worse for the arm of the shooter's comrade smashing into the barrel mid-pull. The bullet drilled into the wall over Artemis's head, splintering the wainscot. The teenager didn't even duck.
"Fucking Hell!" cried a voice from ahead, a set of footsteps clacking nearer. "Didn't cher hear the boss? Them's not ta be shot, Tank! Nun o' the Fowls are!"
A firm, fat hand grasped Artemis's arm.
"Little Artemis Fowl," said Tank quietly. Then he drew back his other, chubby fist and slammed it into the side of the teenager's head. The boy was knocked to the floor. Boot falls followed him, a brief moment of respite, and then steel-capped toes swung into soft flesh.
The teenager cried out.
"Stop it!" yelled a voice. The first man attempted to shove Tank aside but couldn't shift him. "Stop it, d'you hear?"
Artemis curled on the ground, every blow splitting his insides, causing more blood to spatter past lips.
The first man was grappling to get between them. "Stop it! Just stop it, Tank! Let's just gerrim ta Callum. You'll 'av yer chance ta get beatings later, no doubt!"
"He deserves it," panted Tank. "He…" He swallowed.
"I know. But let's jus' get 'im ta Callum first, alroight?"
There was a pause filled only with heaving breaths and the faint clank of the manor's ancient heating system.
Then Tank dropped to the ground, yanked a shaking, panting Artemis close. "Ya hear that? Did ya? Ya know yer all gonna die tonight, little Fowl. And I am prayin' ta be the one that does fer you."
Artemis gritted his teeth. "Take me... to him."
"What?"
"Take me to him!" roared Artemis.
Tank dug his nails into the teenager's dressings.
I've got 'im, he thought as he yanked the teenager upwards. I've got 'im Anne, and I'm gonna do right by you, right by little Anna too. We'll get yer revenge at long last.
Two hours ago, Tank had been sat in a plastic waiting-room chair staring at the jungle mural on the wall of a loud and bustling paediatrics department. He had been brooding, his thoughts completely with his best friend two corridors away; in a tiny room with his girlfriend, a few sympathetic doctors, and their newly-blinded daughter. Anna had barely turned three years old. She hadn't hurt a soul. And if her daddy had then that was his business – what sick bastard would take out his crimes on her? When he and Callum found them (and they would) they would kill them – they'd flay them alive – and then murder them, bury them so deep they'd be able to give them a personal hand over to Satan…
Then Callum had come banging out of the department's double doors.
"It's 'im," the blonde had hissed, tucking a forbidden mobile into the pocket of his jacket. "I know now it's him."
Tank had risen. "Who? Where?"
"Fowl."
And Tank had felt as if he had known all along.
With each unsteady step down his ancestral corridors, Artemis's purpose grew clearer. There was no red mist, no blackness. He found he could ignore the pain in his missing hand, his bruise-mottled torso, the burn of the gun muzzle branding his bare spine… Yes, he could ignore all that.
It would all end tonight:where it should have ended years ago.
He could see everything so clearly now – events stretching back years, decades. It was as if someone was laying a story out behind is eyes, leading him through it plot twist by plot twist, pointing out the hand of the writer, the hidden voice of the narrator.
Do you see, Arty? Do you see who it was all along?
They arrived at a closed door which Tank promptly kicked open. Artemis recognised his father's second office but not three of the men already occupying it. The strangers were armed and grim-faced, all smoking cigarettes, all covered with scars and tattoos. The blonde man seated behind the desk stood up at Artemis's appearance.
"Arty Fowl," said Callum Shinner quietly.
But the teenager had eyes only for his father, knelt, quivering on the shag of his own Persian carpet.
"Where did you bury her?" he demanded.
Callum frowned. He glanced once at Tank and the teenager was pushed forward. Artemis strode past Shinner's men, gathering momentum, until, before any of them could react, he had stretched his good hand forward and grabbed his father by the collar.
"Where?" he screamed, shaking his father's neck. "Where?"
Then three pairs of hands wrestled him back. One fist punched him, hard, in the stomach and he doubled over. Artemis Senior was left panting and dishevelled on the carpet.
Callum narrowed his eyes at Artemis. "What the fuck–?"
"He's mad," gasped Artemis Senior, as his first-born wheezed in the stranger's grip. "This is what I have been trying to… explain to you, Callum. He is out of his mind!"
"Shut up!" snapped Callum. He walked out from behind the desk until he stood not three foot from Artemis. "You took my baby's eyes, Fowl."
All the teenager could do was suck oxygen down his straw of a throat.
"They took her from her nursery… on your say so… and they cut out her eyes." He curled thin, cigarette-stained fingers around Artemis's boot-muddied shoulder. "Do you… do you have any idea what… what I'm going to do to you for that?"
Artemis closed his eyes and tilted his head back, taking his first clear breath.
"I'm going ta take you home with me, Fowl. And I'm going ta take my time with you. I'm goin' ta make it messy, Fowl. I'm goin' to make it seem like it'll never end. I'm goin' ta take what you took from my little girl. I'm goin' ta take what you took from everyone. And then, maybe, I'll take what you took from my sister–"
"Where… did you bury her?" rasped the teenager. He was looking past Callum to the man on the carpet.
The blonde gripped Artemis's bruised chin.
"You fuckin' look at me," he hissed, staring into the mismatched eyes. "You fuckin' look when I'm tellin' ya–"
"Where?"
Smack.
Artemis's head snapped to the left.
Artemis Senior swallowed. "Maybe… maybe you should take him away now, Callum." His unbound hands were slick with sweat, slipping as he clasped and unclasped them. "You won't get any sense from him here–"
"Shut up!" roared Callum.
He glanced at Tank, at the dark-haired boy. He breathed in deeply through his nose.
"What're ya talkin' about?" he demanded finally.
Artemis's head turned slowly back to look at him.
Artemis Senior looked pained. "Callum, I have told you. He's mad–"
"Shut it!" bellowed the eldest Shinner, jabbing a finger in the man's direction. "You just shut the fuck up! I asked him! Now!" He gripped Artemis's chin and forced his face up to the light. "Who?"
Artemis licked bloodied lips. "Who… would you imagine?"
Callum's face hardened.
"I buried Annie."
"You buried a stranger."
With swift and practiced ease, Callum drew a handgun from his inside pocket and pressed it to Artemis's forehead.
"Yer a liar."
"Really?" The teenager squinted wearily past the narrow barrel. "And what would my motive… possibly be?"
Callum's brown eyes quivered in their sockets, the gun wavered.
"I did not harm… your baby, Callum."
"Yer just a mental case, like yer da says."
"Look… in the basement."
Artemis Senior had moved closer, shuffled towards them on his knees. "It is over," he pleaded. "Just… just give it up, son. They all know… they all know what you've done. What you've put your family through. Just… just stop it now."
Callum looked between the two Fowls. He licked his lips again, glanced at Tank, at his men.
"Well I say kill 'em both," said Tank. "Put 'em both out o' their misery."
"Look… in the basement," repeated Artemis.
They stared at each other a moment, brown against blue… and something in the teenager's eyes told Callum Shinner the truth. His gun was lowered.
"Murphy, Nolan," he barked without looking around. "Go down ta the basement. Take a radio and tell me what ya find."
"Aye, boss."
Two of the strangers stubbed out their cigarettes and turned to leave.
"Do you want me ta go wit' them?"
Callum looked at his oldest friend.
"No, Tank, you stay here. I got more questions fer–"
Then Artemis Senior lurched forward, wrenching the gun from Callum's loosened grip.
The blonde was the first to die, followed swiftly by Tank, Murphy, Nolan, and the man who had tried to stop Artemis from being beaten to death in the corridors above. They died surprised, their hands not even halfway to their firearms, driven back by shock and bullets. Shots exploded above the teenager's head and Artemis dropped to his knees on the carpet. The hands of the man behind him opened limply against his arms.
When his ears had stopped ringing, when the smell of burning metal had somewhat drifted away, Artemis looked up.
Artemis Senior was straightening his tie with one hand. He was on his feet. He was no longer shaking, no longer cowed. The gun he was pointing at his son's head was held in a sure, steady grip.
"Well, Arty," he said, as it were simply the end of a pleasant evening spent playing card games. "We've had more than enough talk up until now so I'll make this brief."
"Just tell me," rasped the son. "Where… Where is she?"
Artemis Senior frowned pityingly, and pulled the trigger.
She was hurtling through a barrage of magma and rocks at over 340 miles-per-hour. She has lost communications twenty minutes ago. She was on her own, sweat dribbling in beads from a spiked, saturated hair line. The steering stick was fighting her at every turn, threatening to throw her off course, to delay her by another few dozen minutes.
"Come on!" she screamed at the dashboard.
The numbers on the depth meter were slowly turning down. Slowly. Slowly.
Another mountain of boulder and half-molten stone bleeped urgently on the sonar. She swerved just in time, but felt and heard the scream of something else near-fatal scraping the under-belly of her pod.
I'm coming, Annie, she thought, wiping a quick forearm over her brow. I'm coming.
Something clicked.
Artemis Senior frowned. He pulled the trigger again… and again.
Nothing.
"What the deuce–?"
And then Artemis Junior raised the firearm he had slipped from his captor's holster whilst his father had been busy fixing his tie.
"Oh." Artemis Senior laughed. He slapped one palm to his crimson-spattered forehead and sighed. "How silly of me. Of course. Of course." He tossed the gun to the floor along with its empty, useless clip. "Well, Arty boy, you have got me yet again."
Artemis's left hand was trembling with the effort of keeping the pistol raised. His wrist was weak, made all the weaker from the drugs still swimming about his system, shock, and the injuries he had taken earlier. But he still rose on protesting knees, keeping the barrel level.
"Well?" demanded Artemis Senior, an ironical smile pulling at his lips. "What are you waiting for, boy? You've been here before haven't you? Not literally with the gun in your hand I grant you but still…"
Artemis could see Callum out of the corner of his eye. He was half-covered by the bodies of Tank and Murphy. His eyes were still open. Her eyes.
"Where did you bury Annie?" he asked quietly.
"Was that her name?"
"Where?"
"Of course it was. I remember now..."
Artemis knew his body wouldn't be able to hold the gun for much longer. His grip was growing more and more tenuous by the second. His thighs were crying with the strain of keeping him raised.
Artemis Senior could tell.
"You should really go and put some more clothes on, Arty," he said suddenly, his face creasing with concern. "It isn't dignified to be walking around in only one's underwear, you know. You look truly ridiculous."
For a moment it seemed that Artemis had been successfully distracted. He blinked heavily. "Ridiculous…?"
"And you are in desperate need of a shower. Look at you."
Artemis was liberally spattered with crimson, and the skin beneath was slowly purpling, scabbing, swelling. The teenager didn't speak for a moment, seemed to be confused, that he needed a few seconds to regain his bearings. The gun shook a little and his father smiled.
"Come, Artemis." He took the smallest of steps forward. "Let us leave this horrible room. Give me that weapon and we shall go together."
"You… You have just reminded me of something," said Artemis quietly.
"Give me the gun," repeated Artemis Senior, taking another step. "It shall all be fine, Arty boy. It will soon be over…"
"It was something Mother said to me a few months ago."
"Come now, Arty."
"You're a fifteen year old in a bespoke suit, and nobody died... She was right. I've… I have been dressing for a funeral for eight years…" He felt new strength surge into the hand that was holding the gun. "And now I know who it was I was waiting to die."
Artemis Senior was calm. He was closer now; he would soon be able to reach him…
"You do not wish to kill me," said the eldest Fowl kindly. "You have had two perfectly sound opportunities before now and both times you have failed to carry out your objective..."
Artemis raised the gun a little higher, readied it to fire directly at that organ which Artemis Senior was only fabled to own.
"You murdered me a very long time ago," said the teenager. "It is about time I returned the favour."
I know where she is, he thought. I have known from the first second I awoke. And then, third time's the charm, dear father.
She swung herself out of the pod while the doors were still smoking. The pixie on duty had heard the slam of the docking clamps and glanced up once over his morning edition of The Daily Hex to see a lone elf stripping on the landing dock … before ducking swiftly back behind his paper. A wise decision as it turned out; as Holly swept past his booth in full Recon gear she had already decided to blast anyone who should attempt to intercept her or slow her progress. She swiped her release card past the gate's sensor and continued into the main terminal. There she began to jog, swinging and clipping the rest of her kit into place as she ran. Once everything was secure she broke into a sprint. The few passengers and officials mingling around the terminal at that hour did not try to stop her. She was a Recon officer in full combat gear with her reflective visor flipped down; her hands were pointed arrows, rising and falling efficiently at her side; there were at least three types of pulsing weaponry dangling from her hips: they got the message. In no time at all she was at the outside release barriers: exactly where she had been barely more than forty-eight hours before.
If only I'd known then what I know now.
But she couldn't think about that. There would be time enough for any regrets later.
I'm on my way, Annie. I'm coming for you, and for Artemis. I know the truth now.
She launched herself, dart-like, into the night-time sky.
Butler's stomach dropped as he saw the towering, cast-iron gates of Fowl Manor swinging freely on their hinges. He raced the Land Rover straight through them, not stopping to check on the man who was supposed to be guarding them from the security booth; the man was slumped sideways with half his head missing - somewhat beyond Butler's help.
"So we've got visitors," murmured the manservant, taking a speed bump at speed.
Your purpose is to protect Artemis. You left him, and now some trigger-happy maniacs are roaming around his house inching to kill him. They might already–
Butler stopped that thought in its track.
He switched off the car's headlights and drove on in darkness. It didn't hinder him, even when his visibility was practically zero due to the storm; he had driven this route a few thousand times too many to not know the way blind-folded. After about a mile, he ditched the car in a nearby grove. He removed as much weaponry and gadgetry as he could carry (whilst still being able to fire) and set off for the house at a jog.
He kept to the shadows, hid behind fountains, bushes, using the same route that Annie Fowler had on her very last journey to the manor. Crouching behind an eighteenth-century statue of a poe-faced Demeter, he pulled out a tablet from his jacket, shielding it with a giant forearm against the battering wind and rain. It was something Artemis had cobbled together for him a few years back, enhanced (of course) by stolen fairy technology. He did a quick scan of the household for signs of life.
"Three life-forms detected," said the box in stilted Gnommish.
One body, tiny, most probably baby Evelyn's, was on the upper-most floor of the house. She was probably in her crib in Artemis's parent's room: just where she should be. The other two bodies were in a room together on the second floor in a corner of the east wing. They were small too, almost definitely belonging to the twins.
"D'arvit."
It was obviously a good thing that the youngest Fowls were still alive and kicking but that still left both parents and the heir-apparent unaccounted for. The bodyguard slipped the device into his pocket and stepped determinedly out from behind the statue.
He entered through the back door, whispering through the old servant's quarters, the kitchen, the old dining room. His ears were straining, his eyes narrowed in the darkness. The safety on his Sig Sauer was switched off.
Artemis's gadgets may be good but he knew from one of Holly's tales that fairy infra-red could be easily fooled. So the Brannagh boy had told him that human organisations wanted the Fowl family dead – that didn't mean that fairy forces couldn't somehow be involved in this. You never knew with Artemis, and he didn't intend to be caught off guard…
And he wasn't, except from a brief start on the first floor when he found half of his hired security personnel lying dead and scattered along the parquet. He didn't stop to check them, knew they were past his help at first glance.
So that's what happened to the main security team. Artemis has only got one hand, how was he supposed to have fought off whoever did for these lot?
He ascended to the second floor, trying not to think of the worst, ghosting towards the guest room in which he had left Artemis. The door was already open.
He swung his gun inside, eyes rolling in their sockets for a haze or a neutrino barrel, but was only met with silence and empty space. The four-poster bed had been vacated, the covers flipped back. There was no sign of a struggle.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
He left the room, and hastened into a jog as he ascended to the next floor. Halfway up the stairway, his nostrils twitched. He could smell something, something that was making every inch of skin tighten and cower over his muscles. He ran down the latest corridor, caution abandoned.
Artemis. Artemis. Artemis.
A door was open up ahead. An arm was protruding from the room beyond it, lying limp and bloodied against the hallways carpet.
No. Please, no.
He wrenched the door back.
The room stank of death. He had smelt that scent before, many times, but never in such concentration.
"Jesus," he breathed.
There were at least five bodies, all clearly having suffered gunshot wounds to various vital points. He tried to ignore his instinctive sense of horror, stronger now in his old age, telling him to be sick, to cry out, to get away from this. He didn't want to look, to try and see Artemis in amongst them. What happened if he was there?
Then you have failed him. You have let him die.
He forced himself to scan faces and clothes, hair colour, the physique of the people lying about him. He saw a blonde, a man who must have weighed over sixteen stone, someone with a cigarette still stuck in the corner of their mouth.
Not Artemis.
The victims' weapons were scattered across the floor; it was a large arsenal, they had each been armed to the teeth. It obviously hadn't done them much good. One man lay with his hand still on the grip of his Beretta.
Not Artemis.
Then the back of someone's black-haired head caught in the corner of Butler's eye. For a second, all breath abandoned his body. He was frozen, riveted to the Persian carpeting… and then he was leaping over bodies, turning over the limp, dark-haired figure…
"Mr Fowl," whispered Butler. He felt a strong surge of relief followed swiftly by shame.
This is Artemis's father.
But not Artemis. It wasn't Artemis.
Was there a mutiny? Could Artemis have been taken by whoever killed these people in order for them to claim the reward money?
Then they would surely have taken Mr Fowl and the children upstairs. The reward went to the person who could give Kilglooney the whole family.
Maybe Artemis managed to escape?
But he would never leave his younger siblings behind whilst he himself fled.
Maybe he's just lying dead in another room? Maybe with Angeline beside him?
He left the room swiftly. A short jog got him to the third floor. He came across another body a short way from the twins' bedroom. It was another one of the strange intruders. Butler's breath quickened and he sprinted towards the twins' doorway, not hesitating before ramming it open with a broad shoulder. There were two shrill screams from inside.
Butler's eyes darted about for any sign of possible hostiles. He saw dozens of stuffed-animals, a whole ceiling-full of painted parrots and parakeets, two giant beds shrouded by silken canopies, a miniature three-cylindered Aston Martin… and two, very startled four-year-olds, one sat on his backside in the middle of the carpet, having obviously just reared back from the door before it was broken open, and the other on his knees at the window seat.
"Butler!" gasped Beckett, tears welling in his eyes.
"Beckett." Butler sighed as the four-year-old slid down from the window and ran towards him.
"We were so frightened!" whispered the boy as he collided with the bodyguard's knees.
"We've been hearing shots all evening," declared Myles, his arms shaking slightly as he pushed himself to his feet. "Who are they? These people in our house? Are they here to kill us?"
Beckett's eyes were wide as he stared up at Butler. The bodyguard's frown deepened.
"Have you seen your mother?" he asked. "Or your brother?"
"I haven't seen Artemis in hours!" said Beckett.
"We have seen Mummy," supplied Myles, as his twin released Butler's leg. "She was in here for a short while and then… she left us again twenty minutes ago."
Butler's heart suddenly began to thunder. His soldier-senses were pounding. "Twenty minutes ago? Why? Where did she go?"
"Look!"
Myles's and Butler's heads snapped towards the window. The manservant followed the line of Beckett's tiny finger smushed against the glass to a tall, barely-clothed figure moving across the distant croquet lawn. It was hard to make them out through the storm-lash of water against the panes but they were definitely dark-haired and moving at speed.
"Stay here," he ordered, backing swiftly away from the glass. "Stay here, and do not leave this room. Do you promise me?"
"Now, wait just one moment!" demanded Myles.
"Promise me!"
"We promise," confirmed Beckett.
The door was slammed shut.
Artemis had left behind his father's office with its multitude of silent inhabitants. He had escaped the whole house in a flurry of paintings, arrars and assorted wooden flooring patterns. He was flying in a dream of numbed pain and shaking surroundings. There was stone beneath his feet. Then gravel, then grass. There was damp in his nostrils; he smelt sheltered, earthy smells as the rain poured against his bruises, washing his skin almost clean. In was January and he was running towards a wood with what he felt was his heart in his hand. It was heavier than the gun he had used to kill his father, heavier than anything he had ever carried before. He would only be able to bare it for a little while longer.
He entered the trees and the rain's pressure lessened on his head, the strain taken away by the natural canopies above him. His breath rattled in his chest, his legs cried for a cessation but, like Butler had told him they would, the one and only time he had taken him jogging, they did not collapse beneath him but kept on running regardless…
Then he heard him.
There was someone else sprinting in the same direction as he was. They were a few dozen metres to his left. He could hear their soft grunts, their panting, somehow clear above the clatter of the rain. Artemis followed them over the undergrowth, only caching brief glimpses of dark hair and little, muddied trousers between tree trunks and thickets of brambles. He followed them into the darkest copses, through puddles and ferns, nettles, patches of angry-looking toadstools. He pushed a branch away with his good arm, ducked under another and almost fell as a ramp of muddied earth shifted beneath one heel. He could feel their excitement, their anticipation...
"Gelli Aur," said a childish voice in his head, "Golden Grove. Named so by a Welsh Lord that came visiting here in the fifteenth century. Apparently this place was once full of Ragwort..."
The trees were thinning again, the rain pressing harder on his head. He was losing sight of the little boy. Artemis saw a glimpse of his white teeth, blue eyes.
Artemis.
Then nothing. And he stopped.
There was silence in the clearing. Artemis could still see the storm, feel it on his bare skin, smell its tang, taste its sweet acid as it slipped between his open lips, but he could no longer hear it. He was stood at the crest of a hillock. Below him, the clearing had lost its numerous, insidious craters. They had been filled in years ago, smoothed over by time and Irish weather. There was only the odd gorse bush now, a few weak sprigs of grass. That was all, except for… except…
Artemis almost stumbled down the hill, sending wet stones and grass clumps tumbling after him. Mud slopped beneath his grateful feet as he walked towards the centre, throat burning, eyes creased. He dropped to his knees beside the only blemish left in entire the clearing. It was a low mound of earth, glistening with wet, and he broke it apart using both hand and bandaged stump. And, like that day almost fourteen years ago, he had soon shovelled enough dirt aside to reveal a bag. He kept digging, kept pushing the mud aside…
"I've found you," he rasped as he gripped the bag, dragging out of its grave. "I'm here now."
He pulled it clear and unzipped it.
Annie Fowler's brown eyes were closed. As he pulled her casing away, one pale, bruised hand slipped down from her stomach to touch softly to the earth.
"I'm here," he said again, crumpling the bag into the ground before throwing it away. He settled himself in the muck beside her, shifted her so she was leaning against his legs. He touched his fingers to her cheek and smiled. "You look older, Annie," he murmured, scrutinizing her face. "You look older than me… You look… You look so... Well... You have grown up!" He laughed. "I shall have to catch up with you, Anne. I shall have to find some way to get to the same point as you. Where you go, I go. Remember? That's what you always said." His smile broke a little. He pulled her even closer, earthened water dribbling down over his legs. "I've got so much to tell you," he whispered to her. "You won't approve of most of it but… but that was such a moronic argument we had, wasn't it? I mean, you know I shall always love you. You know I could never leave you…"
Soft footsteps could be heard on the outskirts of the clearing.
"Let us be friends again. Let us… let us go away from here… Let me take you into Europe, to Paris, Budapest, Vienna…"
The footsteps descended into the basin.
"We can talk. Or not. I think… perhaps… that I always talked too much for your liking. I can show you the Alps, Anne, gondolas in Venice, sunsets over Madrid…"
The footsteps stopped.
"I shall do whatever you want, Annie. I am yours to do with as you will… I… I…"
And his voice cracked finally into a sob. He stroked at her face, at her too brittle hair. His eyes raked her body, seeing the ripped jeans, the bruises beneath her too-short T-Shirt, the broken chest. He grasped her hand, then her sodden clothes, her face.
"I am so sorry," he croaked. "I am so sorry."
He should never have allowed her in, allowed her into his life. He should have pushed her away when they were six years old, not at age fourteen. Fourteen was much too late! Fowls were cancerous; they took their time in destroying a person. It had taken time for his poison to spread into her but spread it had. It had killed her slowly but as effectively as if he had pressed the gun to her heart himself–
"Enough."
Artemis's shoulders were shaking.
The figure behind him held a pistol extended between two sodden, dripping hands.
"That is enough."
The gun trembled, and fired.
...please don't kill me?
This chapter was getting to be over 10,000 words (A FREAKIN' DISSERTATION) so yeah, there's still one bit left - the other half of what I had originally intended this chapter to be. Oh dear. I can already feel the reviewer heat...
BUT! What did you think of part one? If you're confused, don't worry. Part two of this takes you all back a step and leads you sensibly to the FINAL conclusion. Well, semi-sensibly.
I got 28 reviews for the last chapter - that's my highest EVER, after three years of writing this. So, so, flattered by that response. More people are adding this as a favourite and alerting than ever before. You're on the home-stretch guys and you're being truly, truly fabulous.
much festive love,
Holi