The Opal Deception (Artemis Fowl 4)

Artemis paused. The sight had awoken a vague memory. “Snow,” he said uncertainly. “I remember something . . .”

Holly caught his shoulder, dragging him forward. “Yes, Artemis. The Arctic, remember? We’ll discuss it at great length later, when there are no trolls trying to eat us.”

Artemis snapped back to the present. “Very well. Good tactic.”

The temple roof sloped upward at a forty-degree angle, toward the crystal orb that was the fake sun. The pair crawled as quickly as Artemis’s exhausted limbs would allow. A ragged trail of blood marked their path across the white plaster. The scaffold shook and banged against the roof as the trolls climbed ever closer.

Holly straddled the roof’s apex and reached up to the crystal sun. The surface was smooth beneath her fingers.

“D’Arvit!” she swore. “I can’t find the power port. There should be an external socket.”

Artemis crawled around the other side. He was not particularly afraid of heights, but even so, he tried not to look down. One did not have to suffer from vertigo to be worried by a fifty-foot drop and a pack of ravenous trolls. He stretched upward, probing the globe with the fingers of one hand. His index finger found a small indent.

“I’ve got something,” he announced.

Holly scooted around to his side, examining the hole.

“Good,” she said. “An external power port. Power cells have uniform connection points, so the cuffs’ cells should clip right on.”

She fumbled the cuffs from her pocket and popped the cell covers. The cells themselves were about the size of credit cards, and glowed bright blue along their length.

Holly stood up on the razor-edge rooftop, balancing nimbly on her toes. The trolls were swarming over the lip of the roof now. Advancing like the hounds of hell.

The white roof plaster was blanketed by the black, brown, and ginger of troll fur. Their howls and stink preceded them as they closed in on Holly and Artemis.

Holly waited until they were all over the lip, then slid the power cells into the globe’s socket. The globe buzzed, vibrated to life, then flashed once. A blinding wall of light. For a moment the entire exhibit glowed brilliant white, then the globe faded again with a high-pitched whine.

The trolls rolled like balls on a tilted pool table. Some tumbled over the edge of the roof but most collected on the lip, where they lay whining and scratching their faces.

Artemis closed his eyes to accelerate the return of his night vision. “I had hoped the cell would power the sun for longer. It seems like a lot of effort for such a brief reprieve.”

Holly pulled out the dead cells and tossed them aside. “I suppose a globe like this needs a lot of juice.”

Artemis blinked, then sat comfortably on the roof, clasping his knees.

“Still. We have some time. It can take nocturnal creatures up to fifteen minutes to recover their orientation following exposure to bright light.”

Holly sat beside him. “Fascinating. You’re very calm all of a sudden.”

“I have no choice,” said Artemis simply. “I have analyzed the situation and concluded that there is no way for us to escape. We are on top of a ridiculous model of the Temple of Artemis, surrounded by temporarily blinded trolls. As soon as they recover, they will lope up here and devour us.

We have perhaps a quarter of an hour to live, and I have no intention of spending it in hysterics for Opal Koboi’s amusement.”

Holly looked up, searching the hemisphere for cameras. At least a dozen telltale red lights winked from the darkness. Opal would be able to watch her revenge from every angle.

Artemis was right. Opal would be tickled pink if they fell to pieces for the cameras. She would probably replay the video to cheer herself up when being princess of the world got to be too stressful.

Holly drew back her arm and sent the spent power cells skidding across the roof. It seemed then that this was it. She felt more frustrated than scared. Julius’s final order had been to save Artemis, and she hadn’t managed to accomplish even that.

“I’m sorry you don’t remember Julius,” she said. “You two argued a lot, but he admired you behind it all. It was Butler he really liked, though. Those two were on the same wavelength. Two old soldiers.”

Below them, the trolls were gathering themselves. Blinking away the stars in their eyes.

Artemis slapped some of the dust from his trousers. “I do remember, Holly. I remember it all. Especially you. It’s a real comfort to have you here.”

Holly was surprised. Shocked, even. More by Artemis’s tone than what he had actually said, though that was surprising too. She had never heard Artemis sound so warm, so sincere. Usually, emotional displays were difficult for the boy, and he stumbled through them awkwardly. This wasn’t like him at all.

“That’s very nice, Artemis,” she said after a moment’s consideration. “But you don’t have to pretend for me.”

Artemis was puzzled. “How did you know? I thought I portrayed the emotions perfectly.”

Holly looked down at the massing trolls. They were advancing warily up the slope, heads down in case of a second flash.

“Nobody’s that perfect. That’s how I knew.”

The trolls were hurrying now, swinging their hairy forearms forward to increase momentum. As their confidence returned, so did their voices. Their howls to the roof bounced back off the metal structure. Artemis drew his knees closer to his chin. The end. All over. Inconceivable that he should die this way, when there was

so much to be done.

The howling made it hard to concentrate. The smell didn’t help either.

Holly gripped his shoulder. “Close your eyes, Artemis. You won’t feel a thing.”

But Artemis did not close his eyes. Instead he cast his gaze upward. Aboveground, where his parents were waiting to hear from him. Parents who never had the chance to be truly proud of him.

He opened his mouth to whisper a good-bye, but what he saw over his head choked the words in his throat.

“That proves it,” he said. “This must be a hallucination.”

Holly looked upward. A section of the hemisphere’s panel had been removed, and a rope was being lowered toward the temple roof. Swinging from the rope was what appeared to be a naked and extremely hairy rear end.

“I don’t believe it!” Holly exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “You took your sweet time getting here!”

She seemed to be conversing with a posterior. And then, even more amazingly, the posterior appeared to answer.

“I love you too, Holly. Now, close anything that’s open, because I’m about to overload these troll’s senses.”

For a moment Holly’s face was blank, then realization widened her eyes and sucked the blood from her cheeks. She grabbed Artemis by the shoulders.

“Lie flat with your hands over your ears. Shut your eyes and mouth. And whatever you do, don’t breathe in.”

Artemis lay on the roof. “Tell me there’s a creature on the other end of that posterior.”

“There is,” confirmed Holly. “But it’s the posterior we have to worry about.”

The trolls were seconds away by this point. Close enough for Holly and Artemis to see the red in their eyes and the years of dirt caked in every dreadlock.

Overhead, Mulch Diggums (for of course it was he) released a gentle squib of wind from his backside. Just enough to propel him in a gentle circle on the end of his rope. The circular motion was necessary to ensure an even spread of the gas he intended to release. Once he had completed three revolutions, he bore down internally and let fly with every bubble of gas in his bloated stomach.