Artemis Fowl 08 - The Last Guardian by Eoin Colfer Page A

she was clear.
    Holly felt the throbbing afterpain of a healed break in her shoulder, but otherwise she was physically fine.
    My vision is still blurred, she realized. Why?
    But it was not her vision, it was the helmet’s lenses, which were cracked.
    Holly raised her visor and was greeted by the crystal-clear sight of an attacking force being led by Artemis’s little brothers, which seemed to include a phalanx of ancient, armored warriors, and various woodland animals.
    Butler was on all fours beside her, shaking off the magic fugue like a grizzly bear shaking off river water. Holly found another adrenaline patch in her pack and slapped it onto his exposed neck.
    Sorry, old friend. I need you operational.
    Butler jumped to his feet as though electrified, but swayed, disoriented, for a moment.
    The assortment of possessed figures halted suddenly, arranged in a semicircle—obviously itching to attack but held at bay for some reason.
    Little Beckett Fowl was at the forefront of the motley group, but he seemed less a child now, carrying himself as he did with a warrior’s swagger, a fistful of bloody reeds swinging in his grip. The vestiges of N o 1’s magic allowed Holly to glimpse the spirit of Oro lurking inside the boy.
    “I am a fairy,” she called in Gnommish. “These humans are my prisoners. You have no quarrel with us.”
    Opal Koboi’s voice drifted over the ranks. “Prisoners? The big one doesn’t appear to be a prisoner.”
    “Koboi,” said Butler, coherent at last. Then the big bodyguard noticed his sister in the group. “Juliet! You’re alive.”
    Juliet stepped forward, but awkwardly, as though not familiar with her own workings. “Braddur,” she said, her voice cracked and strangely accented. “Embrash me.”
    “No, old friend,” warned Holly, glimpsing the flickering warrior inside Butler’s sister. “Juliet is possessed.”
    Butler understood immediately. They had previously encountered fairy possession when Artemis had been wrapped up in his Atlantis Complex.
    The bodyguard’s features sagged, and in that moment his decades of soldiering were written on his face.
    “Jules. Are you in there?”
    The warrior queen Bellico used Juliet’s memories to answer, but the vocal cords were not under her complete control. Her words were unclear, as though heard through tinny speakers, and the accent was an unusual blend of thick Scandinavian and Deep South American.
    “Yesh, braddur. It ish I. Zooooliet.”
    Butler saw the truth. The body might be his sister’s, but the mind certainly wasn’t.
    Artemis joined them, laying a hand on Holly’s shoulder, a blotch of blood on his shirt where he had coughed. As usual, he found the most pertinent question to ask.
    “Why do they not attack?”
    Holly physically jerked.
    Why not? Of course why not?
    Butler reiterated. “Why aren’t they attacking? They’ve got numbers over us, and emotionally we’re a mess. That thing is my sister, for heaven’s sake.”
    Holly remembered why they remained unmolested.
    We are hosts inside the circle. They need us.
    The souls flapped overhead, rearing up to descend.
    I can explain what I am about to do, thought Holly. Or I can just do it.
    Easier to just do it and hope there was an opportunity to apologize later.
    She expertly flicked the settings wheel on the barrel of her Neutrino and shot Butler on his exposed neck and Artemis on the hand in blurred succession.
    Now we won’t be possessed, she thought. But, on the downside, these Berserkers will probably simply kill us.
    The souls dropped onto their intended hosts like sheets of wet polythene. Holly felt ectoplasm cram itself into her mouth, but the spirit would not be able to possess her because of the rune under her collar.
    Hold on, she told herself. Hold on.
    Holly tasted clay and bile. She heard echoes of screams from ten thousand years earlier, and experienced the Battle of Taillte as though she herself had stood on that plain where blood ran through the