“Next, we escape. There are friends waiting for us . . . eh ... No1.”
“Friends?” said No1. He knew the word, of course, but never imagined it could apply to him. It was a warming notion, even in these dire straits.
“What do I do?”
Holly wrapped the cam-foil around him like a shawl.
“Keep this on. It will cover most of you.”
“Amazing,” said No1. “A cloak of invisibility.”
Foaly moaned in Holly’s ear. “A cloak of invisibility? That is a highly sensitive piece of field equipment. What does he think? Some warlock pulled it out of his armpit?”
Holly ignored the centaur, something that was becoming a habit.
“Hold the foil close with one hand. Hang on to my belt with the other. We need to get out of here quickly. I only have enough magic left for a few minutes’ shielding. Ready?”
No1’s anxious features peeped out from the shawl of invisibility.
“Hold the foil. Hang on to the belt. Got it.”
“Good. Foaly, watch our backs. Let’s move out.”
Holly shielded, then hurried out the open door, pulling No1 behind her. The corridor was lined with tall potted plants and lush oil paintings, including a Matisse. Holly could hear the humans shouting in adjacent rooms. There was activity all around them, and it could only be seconds before some Mud Men spilled into this corridor.
No1 struggled to keep up, his little legs stumbling along behind the super-fit elfin captain. It seemed impossible that they could escape. All around was the clatter of approaching footsteps. No1, slightly distracted, snagged his toe on the cam-foil and trampled it underfoot. The foil’s electronics crackled and died. The demon was as visible as a bloodstain on a patch of snow.
“We lost the foil,” said Foaly.
Holly clenched her fingers. She missed her handgun.
“Okay. Nothing to do but make a run for it. Foaly, you have free rein, if you’ll pardon the horse analogy.”
“Finally,” whinnied the centaur. “I added a game-pod joystick to my controls. A bit unorthodox, but very accurate. We’ve got hostiles converging from all sides. My advice is to take the direct route. Go to the end of the corridor and follow our friend Doodah’s path out the window. Butler will cover you once you’re in the open.”
“Okay. Hold on, No1. Whatever happens, don’t let go.”
The first threat came from ahead. Two security guards rounded the corner, guns extended.
Ex-police, Holly guessed. Covering the diagonals.
The men were shocked to see No1. Obviously they were not in the need-to-know loop.
“What the hell?” said one.
The other kept his nerve. “Hold it right there.”
Foaly hit them both in the chest with fat laser bursts. The energy sank through their clothes and they slid down the wall.
“Unconscious,” panted No1. “Comatose, cataleptic, out for the count.” He realized that this vocabulary spouting was a good way to deal with stress.
“Stress. Pressure, strain, and anxiety.”
Holly dragged them both onward, toward the still-open window. More guards came from the side corridors, and Foaly dispatched them efficiently.
“I should get bonus points for this,” he said. “Or at the very least a free life.”
There were two more guards in the sitting room, sneaking an espresso. Foaly dropped them where they stood, and then flashed out a fan laser burst to evaporate the coffee before it hit the rug.
“It’s Tunisian,”he explained.“Very difficult to get coffee out. Now they can just suck up the grains.”
Holly stepped down into the room.
“Sometimes I think you don’t quite get the gravity of field missions,” she said, skirting a massive velvet sofa.
No1 stumbled down the human-size steps after his rescuer. In spite of all his new vocabulary, the imp was not quite sure how he was feeling.
Scared, of course. Big Mud Men with fire weapons and all that. Excited, too. Being rescued by some kind of elf superhero, who was invisible, too. Pain in the leg, don’t forget that. The angry human had shot him in the leg, with a silver bullet, no doubt. But No1 realized that one feeling was missing from the melting pot. One that had been strong within him for as long as he could remember. Uncertainty. In spite of the frantic antics unfolding all around, he felt more at home on this planet than he ever had on Hybras.
A bullet whistled past his ear.
Then again, maybe Hybras hadn’t been so bad.
“Wake up, Foaly!” admonished Holly. “You’re supposed to be watching our backs.”
“Sorry,” said the centaur, swiveling the laser and strobing the doorway. The female guard smiled broadly then collapsed. On the ground she began singing a nursery rhyme about doggies and their bones.
“Bizarre,” said Foaly. “That guard is singing.”
“Often happens,” grunted Holly, clambering onto the windowsill. “The laser knocks out some functions, but sometimes awakens others.”
Interesting, thought the centaur. A happy gun. Certainly worth investigating.
Holly reached down and grasped No1’s wrist, pulling him over the sill. She was dismayed to see that her own arms were not as invisible as she would have hoped. Her magic was wearing thin. Shielding was a real power siphon. She would flicker into visibility soon, whether hey were safely away or not.
“Nearly there,” she said.
“Just across the wide-open green space, is it?” said No1, displaying a real gift for sarcasm.
“I like him,” said Foaly.
They tumbled out onto the lawn. The alarm was well and truly raised now, and guards poured from the various doors like beads from a ruptured beanbag.
“Go crazy, Foaly,” said Holly. “And take out their vehicles, too.”
“Yes sir, ma’am,” said Foaly, and began firing.
Holly ran flat out, pulling the imp behind her. There was no time to consider his physical abilities; either he kept up or he got dragged. The laser pencil on her helmet flashed out burst after burst, swiveling in wide arcs to cover the approaching guards. Holly felt the weapon’s heat on the crown of her head and resolved to mention the helmet’s supposedly revolutionary cooling system to Foaly, if they ever made it out of this.
The centaur was too busy for chat now. All Holly could hear through her headset was grunting and whinnying as Foaly concentrated on his job. He was not concerned about pinpoint accuracy anymore; there were too many things to shoot. He sent out scything fans of energy that socked half a dozen guards per burst. The guards would be perfectly fine in half an hour, though some might experience headaches, hair loss, irritability, loss of bowel control, and other assorted side effects for a few days.
Foaly targeted the four-wheel drives next, firing several pulses into each petrol tank. The BMWs exploded in sequence, turning spectacular fiery cartwheels. The force of the blast cupped Holly and No1 like a giant hand, scooting them on their way a little faster. Holly’s helmet protected her from the noise, but poor No1’s head would ring for quite a while.
Thick black smoke billowed from cracked engines and prowled across the tended garden, more effective than any smoke grenade. Holly and No1 raced just ahead of the smoke line toward the main gates.
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“Gates,” Holly panted into her microphone.
“I see them,” said Foaly, melting the wrought-iron barriers right off their hinges. They collapsed to the ground with a big bell bong.
A rented MPV skidded to a halt outside the pillars, and the passenger door slid open.
Artemis was inside, reaching out to No1.
“Come on,” he said urgently. “Get in.”
“Arrgh!” said No1. “A human!”
Holly leaped inside the vehicle, dragging No1 with her.
“It’s okay,” she said, switching off her shield to conserve the little magic that was left. “He’s a friend.”
No1 clung to Holly’s back, trying not to throw up. He glanced toward the front of the MPV to where Butler sat.
“What about him? Please tell me he’s a friend, too.”
Holly grinned, climbing into a seat. “Yes, he’s a friend. The very best.”
Butler yanked the gearshift into drive. “Buckle up, boys and girls. We’re about to be in a car chase.”
The sun was setting as Butler expertly steered the car around the natural chicanes of the Route de Vence. The road had been hewn from the mountainside, with stone villas teetering above and the Gorges du Loup yawning below. It took a skilled driver to negotiate the bends at speed, but Butler had once driven an Al Fahd armored vehicle through a crowded Cairo market, so the Alpine roads were not too much of a challenge for him.
As it turned out, there was no car chase. The Paradizo fleet lay in flaming, mangled, inverted heaps in the Chateau driveway. There was not so much as a moped left intact to tail the getaway car.
Butler checked the rearview mirror constantly, and only allowed himself a satisfied grin when they passed through the toll station at Cagnes sur Mer.
“We’re clear,” he pronounced, accelerating into the motorway’s fast lane. “There’s not a vehicle left intact on the estate, including little Beau’s toy car.”
Artemis smiled, giddy with success. “Perhaps we should have left them Mr. Day’s marvelous booster.”
Holly noticed that No1 was happily examining his seat belt.
“Buckle up,” she said, slotting the buckle into its catch.
“Buckle,” said No1. “Clasp, clip, fastener. Why are you with these humans?”