“Say again. I thought you said—”
“Eh . . . I mean, get out of there. Take cover! Take cover!”
Take cover? The military term didn’t sound right coming out of Master Artemis’s mouth. Like a diamond ring in a lucky bag.
“Take cover?”
“Yes, Butler. Cover. I thought speaking in primal terms would be the quickest route to your cognitive functions. Obviously I was mistaken.”
That was more like it. Butler scanned the hall for a nook to duck into. Not much choice. The only shelter was provided by the suits of medieval armor punctuating the walls. The manservant ducked into the alcove behind a fourteenth-century knight, complete with lance and mace.
Juliet tapped the breastplate.
“You think you’re mean? I could take you with one hand.”
“Quiet,” hissed Butler.
He held his breath and listened. Something was approaching the main door. Something big. Butler leaned out far enough to get one eye on the lobby. . . .
Then you could say that the doorway exploded. But that particular verb doesn’t do the action justice. Rather, it shattered into infinitesimal pieces. Butler had seen something like this once before when a force-seven earthquake had rippled through a Colombian drug lord’s estate seconds before he had been scheduled to blow it up. This was slightly different. More localized. Very professional. It was classic anti-terrorist tactics. Hit ’em with smoke and sonics, then go in while the targets were disoriented. Whatever was coming, it would be bad. He was certain of it. He was absolutely right.
Dust clouds settled slowly, depositing a pale sheet on the Tunisian rug. Madam Fowl would have been furious, if she ever put so much as a toe outside the attic door. Butler’s instincts told him to move. Zigzag across the ground floor, make for the higher ground. Stay low to minimize the target. This would be the perfect time to do it, before visibility cleared. Any second now, a hail of bullets would be whistling through the archway, and the last place he wanted to be was pinned down on a lower level.
And on any other day Butler would have moved. He would’ve been halfway up that stairway before his brain had time for second thoughts. But today he had his baby sister over his shoulder spouting gibberish, and the last thing he wanted to do was expose her to murderous assault fire. With Juliet in the state she was in, she’d probably challenge the fairy commandos to a tag-wrestling match. And though his sister talked tough, she was just a kid, really. No match for trained military personnel. So Butler hunkered down, propped Juliet against a tapestry behind a suit of armor, and checked his safety catch. Off. Good. Come and get me, fairy boys.
Something moved in the dust haze. It was immediately obvious to Butler that the something wasn’t human. The manservant had been on too many safaris not to recognize an animal when he saw it. He studied the creature’s gait.
Possibly simian. Similar upper body structure to an ape, but bigger than any primate Butler had ever seen. If it was an ape, then his handgun wasn’t going to be of much use. You could put five rounds in the skull of a bull ape and he’d still have time to eat you before his brain realized he was dead.
But it wasn’t an ape. Apes didn’t have night eyes. This creature did. Glowing crimson pupils, half-hidden behind shaggy forelocks. Tusks too, but not elephantine. These were curved, with serrated edges. Gutting weapons. Butler felt a tingle low in his stomach. He’d had the feeling once before. On his first day at the Swiss academy. It was fear.
The creature stepped clear of the dust haze. Butler gasped. Again, his first since the academy. This was like no adversary he’d ever faced before. The manservant realized instantly what the fairies had done. They had sent in a primal hunter. A creature with no interest in magic or rules. A thing that would simply kill anything in its way, regardless of species. This was the perfect predator. That much was clear from the meat-ripping points on its teeth, from the dried gore crusted beneath its claws, and from the distilled hatred spilling from its eyes.
The troll shambled forward, squinting through the chandelier light. Yellowed claws scraped along the marble tiling, throwing up sparks in their wake. It was sniffing now, snorting curious breaths, head cocked to one side.
Butler had seen that pose before—on the snouts of starved pit bulls, just before their Russian handlers set them loose on a bear hunt.
The shaggy head froze, its snout pointed directly at Butler’s hiding place. It was no coincidence. The manservant peeked out between the chain-mail fingers of a gauntlet. Now came the stalk. Once a scent had been acquired, the predator would attempt a slow silent approach, before the lightning strike.
But apparently the troll had not read the predator’s handbook, because it didn’t bother with the stealth approach, jumping directly to the lightning strike. Moving faster than Butler would have believed possible, the troll sprang across the lobby, brushing the medieval armor aside as though it were a shop mannequin.
Juliet blinked. “Ooh,” she gasped. “It’s Bigfoot Bob. Canadian champion 1998. I thought you were in the Andes, looking for your relatives.”
Butler didn’t bother to correct her. His sister wasn’t lucid. At least she would die happy. While his brain was contemplating this morbid observation, Butler’s gun hand was coming up.
He squeezed the trigger as rapidly as the Sig Sauer’s mechanism would allow. Two in the chest, three between the eyes. That was the plan. He got the chest shots in, but the troll interfered before Butler could complete the formation. The interference took the form of scything tusks that ducked below Butler’s guard. They coiled around his trunk, slicing through his Kevlar reinforced jacket like a razor through rice paper.
Butler felt a cold pain as the serrated ivory pierced his chest. He knew immediately that the wound was fatal. His breath came hard. That was a lung gone, and gouts of blood were matting the troll’s fur. His blood. No one could lose that amount and live. Nevertheless, the pain was instantly replaced by a curious euphoria. Some form of natural anesthetic injected through channels in the beast’s tusks. More dangerous than the deadliest poison. In minutes Butler would not only stop struggling, but go giggling to his grave.
The manservant fought against the narcotics in his system, struggling furiously in the troll’s grip. But it was no use. His fight was over almost before it had begun.
The troll grunted, flipping the limp human body over his head. Butler’s burly frame collided with the wall at a speed human bones were never meant to withstand. The bricks cracked from floor to ceiling. Butler’s spine went too. Now, even if the blood loss didn’t get him, paralysis would.
Juliet was still enthralled by the mesmer.
“Come on, brother. Get off the canvas. We all know you’re faking.”
The troll paused, some basic curiosity piqued by the lack of fear. He would have suspected a trick, if he could have formulated such a complicated thought. But in the end, appetite won out. This creature smelled flesh. Fresh and tender. Flesh from above ground was different. Laced with surface smells. Once you’ve had open-air meat, it’s hard to go back. The troll ran a tongue over his incisors and reached out a shaggy hand. . . .
Holly tucked the Hummingbirds close to her torso, dropping into a controlled dive. She skimmed the banisters, emerging into the portico below a stained-glass dome. The time-stop light filtered unnaturally, splitting into thick azure shafts.
Light, thought Holly. The helmet high-beams worked before, there was no reason why they wouldn’t work again. It was too late for the male, he was a bag of broken bones. But the female, she still had a few seconds left before the troll split her open.
Holly spiraled down through the faux light, searching her helmet console for the Sonix button. Sonix was generally used on canines, but in this case it might provide a moment’s distraction. Enough to get her to ground level.
The troll was reaching in toward Juliet underhand. It was a move generally reserved for the defenseless. The claws would curl in below the ribs, rupturing the heart. Minimu
m damage to the flesh and no last-minute tension to toughen the meat.
Holly activated her Sonix . . . and nothing happened. Not good. Generally your average troll would be at the very least irritated by the ultra-high-frequency tone. But this particular beast didn’t even shake his shaggy head. There were a couple of possibilities: one, the helmet was malfunctioning; two, this troll was deaf as the proverbial post. Unfortunately, Holly had no way of knowing as the tones were inaudible to fairy ears.
Whatever the problem, it forced Holly to adopt a strategy she would rather not have resorted to. Direct contact. All to save a human’s life. She’d gone section eight. Without a doubt.
Holly jerked the throttle, straight from fourth to reverse. Not very good for the gears. She’d get a dressing-down from the mechanics for that, in the unlikely event she actually survived this never-ending nightmare. The effect of this gear-crunching was to flip her around in midair, so that her boot heels were pointed directly at the troll’s head. Holly winced. Two entanglements with the same troll. Unbelievable.
Her heels caught the beast square on the crown of its head. At that speed, there was at least half a ton of G-force behind the contact. Only the reinforced ribbing in her suit prevented Holly’s leg bones from shattering. Even so, she heard her knee pop. The pain clawed its way to her forehead. Ruined her recovery maneuver too. Instead of repelling herself to a safe altitude, Holly crumpled onto the troll’s back, becoming instantly entangled in the ropy fur.
The troll was suitably annoyed. Not only had something distracted it from dinner, but now that something was nestled in its fur, along with the cleaner slugs. The beast straightened, reaching a clawed hand over its own shoulder. The curved nails raked Holly’s helmet, scoring parallel grooves in the alloy. Juliet was safe for the moment, but Holly had taken her place on the endangered-individuals list.
The troll squeezed tighter, somehow securing a grip on the helmet’s anti-friction coating, which, according to Foaly, was impossible to grip. Serious words would be had. If not in this life, then definitely the next.
Captain Short found herself being hoisted aloft to face her old enemy. Holly struggled to concentrate through the pain and confusion. Her leg was swinging like a pendulum, and the troll’s breath was breaking over her face in rancid waves.
There had been a plan, hadn’t there? Surely she didn’t fly down here just to curl up and die. There must have been a strategy. All those years in the Academy must have taught her something. Whatever her plan had been, it floated just out of reach somewhere between pain and shock. Out of reach.
“The lights, Holly . . .”
A voice in her head. Probably talking to herself. An out-of-head experience. Ha ha. She must remember to tell Foaly about this . . . Foaly?
“Hit the lights, Holly. If those tusks get to work, you’ll be dead before the magic can kick in.”