Disclaimer: The characters, much of the dialogue, and sadly, even the plot are not mine; they all belong to Eoin Colfer.

Pages: 267 – 269, 275 – 279

Chapter 25: Cornered Prey

The next few chaotic minutes passed in a blur for Holly. She dashed across the hall, forced to duck and weave to avoid panicked Extinctionists running in every direction.

However, above the ruckus Holly was just able to make out the whistling of metal projectiles whizzing through the air and the small 'thwk, thwk' as they buried themselves in flesh. She realized that Kronski's guards standing in front of the exits were dropping one by one and, somehow, Holly realized almost immediately who was behind it.

She turned her head and was able to catch sight of an enormous figure crouching in the rafters overlooking the scene like a hawk, with eyes just as keen, holding a dart rifle pointed at the melee below. Though a rough khaki desert blanket concealed his head and shoulders, Holly had had too much experience with Artemis's bodyguard over the years not to recognize him.

Butler had shown up to help them. But had he felt compelled to do it by his own will, or did little Artemis decide he had nothing to lose with sending Butler to help them now that he had his money?

Holly could not help just the hint of a smile that spread across her face as she ducked under yet another flailing arm. The little double-crosser.

Holly moved in to incapacitate the two guards by the kitchen, but they were already downed by a couple well-aimed darts from Butler by the time she got into position. However, the opening wasn't free for long as the mass of well-dressed Extinctionists surged forward, high-pitched screams so loud and sustained that they seemed to rise and blur together like the roar of an ocean wave, and every bit as unstoppable.

Holly was nervous. Well, relatively speaking, as she had had a feeling of chronic anxiety that had never really gone away since she'd first arrived in little Artemis's study a couple of days ago. The last thing they needed was to remain trapped in here while all the Extinctionists got out and until either the authorities arrived or the crazed Damon Kronski noticed his fake fairy and the effective undoer of his entire career trying to make a run for it, and decided he did kill humans after all and didn't care who knew it.

Holly stood by the entrance to the kitchen, spinning back around quickly to face the direction she and Artemis had been concealed behind the cage. However, she could not pick Artemis out amidst the wall of approaching Extinctionists, though she knew he must be there. Within the last second she still had before the Extinctionists would reach the kitchen, her eyes scanned over the crowd a final time, desperate to locate her partner, but all she had time to register was the sea of expressions twisted and grotesque with terror, and in an instant they were upon her.

The Extinctionists were apparently too intent on getting out to notice their limbs striking against a short, invisible form as they poured through the kitchen double doors like ants from an anthill, knocking the elephant feet champagne coolers every which way as they stormed past and sending ice and wine spilling everywhere.

Holly was forced backward into the kitchen, crammed in the midst of the crowd rushing past her, knees and elbows striking her again and again as she struggled against the endless supply of bodies towering above her.

Holly found herself suddenly reminded of one of those Mud Men movies from Foaly's collection the centaur had once forced her to watch a portion of. It had been one of those films supposedly sympathetic toward the animals' side of things, which the humans invariably got entirely wrong, but there was one scene in particular that she remembered.

In it, a baby lion had been tricked into going into a kind of wide canyon, where he was soon met with an enormous charging stampede of panicked wildebeests. She felt like that little baby lion now, trying to dodge the wild stamping hooves beating around her, all the while small and helpless against the movement of the dense crowd of immense forms so much taller than she was and blinded to everything but the powerful hot bodies pressing in on her, unable to escape.

"Artemis," she called, almost desperately, once again feeling herself being consumed with that sense of confusion, of crippling weakness she had had just before the episode in the gorilla cage. That insecurity of a child feeling helpless to do anything herself, but also with that same childlike sense of trust, of just knowing she would know what to do as soon as she was reunited with the one she could rely on. "Artemis!"

The fact that it didn't even occur to her that Artemis wouldn't be able to see her even if he could have somehow heard her voice amidst the violent storm of noise roaring around her showed perhaps how much the day's events had taken their toll on her. It felt like exhaustion and hunger had fried her brain; however, there wasn't any space in her mind to think about that now. All she could focus on at the moment was that she needed to find the person who had saved her from this mess, who had been with her from the beginning of his fiasco.

Holly fought against the wave of Extinctionists buffeting against her, trying to keep her wits about her as she did so. If she panicked, she was liable to get a limb twisted or broken in the struggle. She pushed her way back through the crowd, concentrating carefully on weaving her way a through the forest of Extinctionist torsos against the flow.

It seemed to take an age, but finally she reached the end and burst out from between two huffing and wheezing figures, stumbling forward a few steps. For a second she was disoriented.

A quick dazed look around told her she was back in the banquet hall. The room was, for the most part, cleared out except for one or two Extinctionists who had lagged behind. Even Kronski's guards were gone except for the ones who had been knocked unconscious.

The place was almost eerily quiet now, with that sort of "after party" atmosphere, the uniquely wistful, even melancholy sense of a room that had been filled with voices and lively chatter only a little earlier, but was now totally devoid of all excitement, of life. Dead.

Perhaps, she thought vaguely, the empty, lifeless look about it would be better compared to the site of a battle after the fighting was long over then. The elegant round tables lay broken and overturned all over the room, while puddles of liquid from drinks and coolers spreading over the tiles made it look like the place had just been doused in a light rain. Shards of glass and half-melted ice cubes lay everywhere, and it was hard to tell which was which. Yes, it was like a battlefield. A battlefield where the battle was over, but the cleanup of the bodies had yet to commence.

This building certainly wasn't going to be used for anymore social functions anytime soon.

Holly barely had to glance at the place to see that Artemis wasn't there, and she clamped down immediately on the tingle of nerves that shivered down her spine. Artemis had obviously been among the crowd of Extinctionists and gotten past Holly without either of them noticing – not all that hard a thing to do, considering what a confused mess that had been. This was precisely why Artemis had set up a meeting place beforehand. Artemis thought of everything.

Holly frowned slightly, deciding she would blame this rather pathetic dependence on Artemis on her adolescent body. Her considerable knowledge and experience was only failing to reassure her because her physical appearance was interfering, making her feel the way an untrained adolescent would.

Or so she rationalized to herself as she turned toward the nearest exit.

But as Holly sprinted toward a broken door half hanging off its hinges, ready to head for the souk, she couldn't help but recall the Zito probe incident, and the battle at the museum before they had gone to Hybras. That longstanding natural inclination to constantly turn to Artemis for solutions when things got to be too much, as though he were a genie who could magically fix any difficulty through his genius alone.

Holly wondered what her excuse was back then.

Holly was almost out of magic by the time she was out of the main conference center and passing beneath the compound entrance archway. She had no choice but to find some cover and let down her shield to save what blessed little she had left.

However, the whole universe was apparently conspiring against her as almost the moment she returned to the open, dashing at full tilt in the direction of the souk, she heard the cocking of a weapon. A quick glance back over her shoulder told her at least one of Kronski's men had caught sight of her as he spoke rapidly into a clunky gray walkie-talkie.

Oh great.

Holly sped up. She expected a volley of shots behind her any moment, but the guards must not have been ordered to shoot as she heard the pounding of many heavy feet bearing large, well-muscled bodies, but thankfully no gunfire.

By now it was late into the evening and darkness was cast over everything. Not too many people were still out and about at this hour besides a few more hardcore merchants and tourists. However, 'not many' meant that there were still a fair share of witnesses to this bizarre scene like something straight from an action film unfolding right down the middle of the street.

The tourists and salesmen alike goggled as what appeared to be a young, dark-skinned girl in a long black dress with one pointed ear and one half-ripped off tore through the obstacle course that was the center of town in Fez, dodging between bystanders as she was pursued by a whole crew of huge, supremely dangerous-looking thuggish characters wielding enormous knives.

The little girl was, at the moment, shamelessly wreaking havoc in her escape attempt using the merchants' wares she passed, pulling and knocking things over as she ran in a desperate effort to slow down the guards.

Holly flatly ignored the angry shouts of merchants swearing at her in French and Arabic, as well as the tourists continuing to stare at her and the guards storming through with abject fascination, some even pointing in excitement. However, it was perhaps a wasted effort anyway, as she was finding that destroying every shop along her path did not seem to be helping her situation much. The men after her were too big and built too powerfully to even be inconvenienced by her small, haphazard attempts to impede them.

Holly realized early on she wasn't going to be able to lose the guards by flat-out outrunning them. She was fast and had always been in excellent physical condition even as an adolescent, so even now her breathing was fairly even; however, unlike their employer, these men of Kronski's were just as athletic or more so. They were large, yes, but most of that was probably solid muscle.

Within a split second, Holly decided instead she would try the alleyways. Prey almost always had the advantage in maze-like settings. She just had to make enough turns where the hunters didn't know which way she went, and eventually she'd shake them.

At least, that was the plan. But as it turned out, this idea was flawed for several reasons.

Tourists watched the elf with something like avid wonder as though this were a skit set up for their entertainment as Holly took a turn so sharply she actually had to put a hand on the ground and scramble to keep her balance as she forced herself upright again. In less than a second she had disappeared into one of the back alleys, her slim fingers forming spades that sliced the air as she pumped her limbs ever onward, black dress streaming out behind her. She was delighted to find the abaya not so much of an obstruction in a sprint as she had supposed.

But despite her speed and rapid-fire quick turns, still everywhere she went as she tried to weave her way through to the souk she could hear the voices and shouts of the guards emanating from every direction, as though at this very moment she was surrounded by a swarm of their angry ghosts, all sweeping after her like clouds of fog. And she knew it wasn't just her imagination – as big a maze as this was, they really were everywhere, in position to block off one escape route after another, as though she was a rat in a lab.

Of course, she realized her two main mistakes almost from the moment she entered the alleys. One, most likely these were men Kronski had hired locally, so they knew this area far better than she did. Two, all Kronski's guards were connected via walkie-talkie. That meant they had the advantage because they could easily cooperate to capture 'the creature.' Holly knew so because in being a recon officer for LEP, she was usually the one communicating tactics with a team to catch stray fairies on the surface.

Ironically, it seemed their strategy was to chase Holly directly into the souk. It was easy to see why: the souk was a wide open space, and so the perfect place for boxing in and ensnaring prey.

The hard pounding of Holly's heart increased its tempo even more as she realized this, and she felt her strides lengthen, her feet beating the ground so hard she felt each jarring impact up her thighs. She was knocking things over again and pushing people out of her way as she headed ever faster toward the leather souk, knowing it was exactly what they wanted, knowing it would leave her trapped, and knowing she was leading the whole lot of them right to Artemis, but not knowing what else to do.

The only thing that was clear was that somehow she had to get to Artemis. Without Artemis, there was no hope.

Holly turned down another alley, but was stopped by the sight of a virtual wall of bulky guards holding their weapons threateningly at the other end. Holly spun around mid-stride and shot off directly for the souk, aware she was running right into the enemies' clutches, but not seeing that she had any choice. No time to try to find a back entrance somewhere that would give her better concealment when she entered the expansive area of interlocking honeycomb patterns; she would just have to charge recklessly in and hope Artemis had a plan ready. At the very least they would have a much better chance of escape if they had an LEP-issue, nuclear-powered scooter to do the escaping on.

However, as Holly blasted into the souk and forced herself to come to a stop a moment later, kicking up a dust storm behind her, her eyes quickly scanned the open courtyard, finally flickering up to rest on their hiding place from the day before.

Her breathing quickened and Holly felt her heart pounding in her ears as she was hit with a realization, a cold certainty so strong it was almost as though she had known it all along.

Holly took a step back, eyes darting everywhere over the area of vats and urns and plinths for turning the skin of animals into leather for Mud Men to wear and make into bags and upholster seats, the place completely deserted but for a few workers here and there on the rooftops all around the souk.

Despite fairies' excellent night vision, Holly felt the darkness closing in around her, the low-hanging lanterns surrounding the souk only serving to cast an eerie glow on this horrible place. The smell of the pigeon droppings overpowered her for a moment, and she gagged, eyes watering.

Artemis was not here. What was she supposed to do?

Holly forced the gears in her brain to start turning again.

Don't stop moving, she told herself. That was basic. And hide, perhaps she could hide. If only she could have tried to fight her way out, but without a weapon it was useless.

Frozen with fear, her body did not seem to want to start again, but she pushed her brain back into use and took off again. The souk was a wide open space certainly, but it was surrounded on all sides by exits. Doors, windows, alleys – surely she would be able to get out somewhere.

But as she dashed for the first door she saw in the tainted white wall surrounding the souk, one of the guards was already there waiting for her with a blade in hand that winked a dark crimson in the darkness. Perhaps it was only rust, but for just a moment, in the grinning yellow teeth glinting at her in the low lantern light she had an image of the demon Abbott, grinning down at her, six horns glittering atop his head.

She could almost see his enormous form, a giant among fairies, towering over her as he drew back his blade, just before he sank it deep into her chest, where she would fall to the ground, blood soaking the rock of the sulfuric, hellish isle of Hybras around her, running down off her liquid-resistant suit and pooling around her before the light faded from her eyes as she begged Artemis to help her...

Holly's pulse skyrocketed and she scrambled almost wildly in her effort to change her course, losing one of Artemis's shoes in the process.

Her entire upper body was tilted far forward as she bolted across the souk, continuing to keep close to the wall as she went, legs moving so fast they were almost a blur as she pushed herself to the very limit. Even in the dead of night, sweat broke out anew on her face, though whether it was from the exertion or her own terror, she didn't know.

Holly headed for a second floor window, ready to jump up and climb the wall. Two more guards built vaguely like upright rhinoceroses stood waiting for her in its frame, as though teleported there by sorcery. She turned and went for an alleyway just up ahead. Her path was blocked by yet another grinning guard.

Holly had no choice but to come to a stop, breathing hard. She was cornered. No way out.

It occurred to her more clearly than ever that there was not a single thing she could do. She didn't have enough magic to sustain a shield – No, forget that, she didn't even think she could use the mesmer when she was this drained.

Holly guessed she might have been able to produce a weak one if she really concentrated, or, if she dug out the real dregs, she might be able to do a minimal healing. Nothing serious like broken bones or ruptured organs though, so she had no idea how much good it could do her.

The mesmer on the other hand could have been useful as she might have had a chance at slowing them down somewhat with it, but getting a Mud Person under the spell was a delicate business at the best of times, and she guessed that the greed of these particular Mud Men would make them especially strong-willedand so consequently harder to entrance.

It didn't particularly matter at this point, however. They were all around her now and she would have only been able to spellbind one side at a time. By the time she had convinced half to step aside and let her pass, the ones storming up behind her would have her netted and be halfway back to Damon Kronski.

At the moment, Holly really was like one of those animals Kronski and the rest of the Extinctionists despised so much. A small, terrified animal surrounded on all sides by predators. She was a gazelle, a little bird, a mouse – breathing her last gasps as the lions, the snakes, the hawks all slowly closed in on her. Yes, highly trained LEP fairy though she was, she could do little more than any jittery little creature ruled its entire life by its instincts, now finding itself at a somehow fitting end for its short, brutal existence.

The guards crept in slowly, stalking ever closer as though hoping not to startle her, grinning broadly. Their arms were spread wide forming a rough, though unbroken circle around her and they hunched over slightly, not unlike the gorilla in Rathdown Park that had nearly killed Artemis. Their eyes gleamed in the darkness, teeth bared like a pack of wild wolves, so much so that it was almost like they were beasts and not sentient beings at all. The gorilla at Rathdown park had probably been more civilized than these men.

Holly retreated from them, moving backward in a sort of every-tightening spiral inward as she automatically tried to move away from her enemies and keep herself from exposing her back to any of them. But they were everywhere, all around her in that ever tightening, uneven circle.

Closer and closer they drew. Her death was closing in on her, slowly, painfully. Perhaps these men would not kill her right here, right now, but Kronski surely would. And death would probably come as a blessing after being in the hands of the these cruel, vicious Mud Men.

No way out.

Holly would have liked to close her eyes and simply wait for the end to come. It was the only option really, the path that would lead to the least suffering at this point. Even a born survivor like Julius had had to just submit at some point, to give himself up for lost. He had died with a smile on his face, showing such strength even at the very end.

"Be well."

The memory, instead of allowing her to let go, to be strong like her commander, seemed to only drive Holly further into a corner. Commander Root had had such high hopes for her, and now she was going to die in a place like this. Give up? No. She couldn't. She didn't have someone standing nearby she had to be strong for in her final moments, to provide a need for her to have an expression of such peace on her face. All she had was her steel core that would refuse to let her succumb right up to the very last moment, and the heavy weight of her failures. If she had had the ability to be contented in death, she probably would have been dead long before this – Did that make her strong or weak?

Only one thought seemed to penetrate the mire of fear and already growing regret.

Where are you, Artemis? Where are you?

Holly finally turned her eyes from the filthy, grotesque faces of her assailants, grinning at her with mouths full of yellow, deteriorating jagged teeth, false gold ones scattered here and there winking in the dim light, the stench of the men's unwashed breath blowing across to her on the slight breeze. Instead, she stared up at the dark, star-speckled sky above as though Artemis's plan of rescue would descend from it at any second.

"Help," she pleaded in a desperate voice weak with fear, directing it at anyone and anything, because she was at the end of her own ingenuity now. She was out of ideas, of quick, haphazard plans. Now she was totally alone. She had no options left.

Her heart pounded like a jack rabbit's. Trapped. No way out.

But as she gazed up at the sky above, that final, desperate plea still warm on her lips, her salvation began to fall.

A/N: And now we're back to angst. I did enjoy working on this chapter, but I wish something funny would happen... (Well, funny for me anyway (; )

Heh heh, I bet a lot of you know what tortuous movie I was referring to that Foaly forced Holly to watch some of. (By the way, I love that movie, even if Holly thinks it's lame. :P) I really wanted to extend the metaphor further to what happens after the stampede... but I thought that might be a little much, lol.

Anyway, while I'm talking about that, I'll just mention I do know the book describes her as being 'born aloft into the kitchen,' but I couldn't picture how that could actually happen in that situation (not to mention that it seriously gives me weird this crowd surfing image), so I made it like this instead. Yes, I'm continuing to disregard canon... but I won't do it on anything important, really.

Thank you so much for all your responses! Hope to hear from you. (: (And hey, we've reached a 100,000 words! Only one of twelve on this site! Of course a lot of that is author's notes... oh well. I'd be happy if you celebrated with me anyway. (; )

Posted 2/5/12