N
o
1 could have sworn that the stone fingers in his own moved a fraction, but that could just have been his imagination. What was definitely not in his imagination was the sudden feeling of cold loss that sped along his arm. As though life itself were being sucked from him.
Don’t worry, young warlock. I’m simply siphoning off a little magic to get the sparks running. It feels terrible, but it will not last
.
It did feel terrible. N
o
1 imagined that dying piece by piece would feel something like this, which in a way was what was happening. And in such a situation the body will try to defend itself by fighting off the intruder. The magic that had lain dormant inside N
o
1 until recently suddenly exploded in his brain and gave chase to the invader.
To N
o
1 it felt as though he suddenly had an entire new spectrum of vision. He had been blind before, but now he could see through walls. Of course, it was not really some kind of super vision, it was an understanding of his own abilities. The magic flowed through him like liquid fire, chasing impurities out through his pores. Venting steam through his orifices and setting the runes on his body aglow.
Good boy
, sent Qwan.
Now let it go. Chase me out
.
N
o
1 found that he was able to do exactly that, to control the magical flow. He sent it after Qwan’s tendril, through his own fingers, and into Qwan’s. The dead feeling was replaced by a buzzing of power. He began to vibrate, and so did the statue, shedding wafers of stone like a dead snakeskin. The old warlock’s fingers were solid no more, but living, breathing skin. They held on to N
o
1 tightly, keeping the connection solid.
That’s it, boy. You’re doing it
.
I am doing it, thought N
o
1 incredulously. This is really happening.
Artemis and Holly looked on in amazement as the magic spread through Qwan’s body, sloughing the stone from his limbs with pistol-shot cracks and orange flame. Life claimed Qwan’s hand, then his arm, then his torso. Stone fell from his chin and mouth, allowing the warlock to heave his first breath in ten millennia. Bright blue eyes squinted against the light and shut tightly. And still the magic ran on, blasting every last shard of stone from Qwan’s body. But there it stopped. When the sparks of N
o
1’s power reached the next warlock in line, they simply fizzled and died.
“What about the others?” asked N
o
1. Surely he could free them, too.
Qwan hacked and coughed for several moments before he answered.
“Dead,” he said, then collapsed in the rubble.
On the other side of the gallery security door, Kong was emptying a third clip from his machine pistol into the keypad.
“The door won’t hold much longer,” said Butler. “Any second now.”
“Can you slow them down?” asked Artemis.
“Shouldn’t be a problem. I don’t want to leave any bodies here, Artemis. I imagine the police are already on their way.”
“Maybe you could just scare them a bit.”
Butler grinned. “My pleasure.”
The shooting stopped, and the security door drooped slightly on its hinges. Butler ripped the door open smartly, yanking Billy Kong inside, then jammed the door closed again.
“Hello, Billy,” he said, pinning the smaller man to the wall.
Kong was too demented to be scared. He lashed out with a series of blows, any one of which would have been fatal to a normal person. They bounced off Butler like a fly bouncing off a Tiger tank. That’s not to say they didn’t hurt. Kong’s trained hands felt like heated brands where they impacted. Butler’s only reaction to the pain was a slight tightening around the corners of his mouth.
“Holly?” he said.
“Pull,” said Holly, aiming her Neutrino at a point in space.
Butler catapulted Billy Kong straight up, and Holly plucked him out of the air with a blast from her weapon. Kong spun across the floor, still throwing spasmodic punches.
“The snake’s head is out of action,” said Artemis. “Let’s hope the rest will follow suit.”
Minerva decided to take advantage of Billy Kong’s unconsciousness to indulge in some payback. She stalked over to her prone kidnapper.
“You, Mr. Kong, are nothing but a thug,” she said, kicking him in the leg.
“Young lady,” said Butler sharply. “Move away. He may not be completely out.”
“If my father has as much as a hair out of place,” continued Minerva, oblivious to Butler’s warnings, “I will personally ensure that you spend the maximum time in prison.”
Kong cracked open an eye. “That’s no way to talk to your staff,” he croaked, and wrapped steely fingers around her ankle.
Minerva realized that she had made a drastic mistake, and decided that the best course of action was to scream as shrilly as possible. Which she did.
Butler was torn. His duty was to protect Artemis, not Minerva, but through years of working with Artemis and, indeed Holly, he had unconsciously adopted the role of general protector. Whenever somebody was in danger, he helped them to get out of it. And this foolish girl was certainly in danger. Mortal danger.
Why is it, he wondered, that the smart ones always think they’re invincible?
And so Butler made a decision, the consequences of which would haunt his dreams and waking hours for years to come. As a professional bodyguard, he knew the futility of second-guessing his own actions, but in the nights ahead he would often sit by the fire, with his head in his hands, and replay the moment in his mind, wishing that he had acted differently. Whatever way he played it out, the results were tragic, but at least they would not have been tragic for Artemis.
So Butler acted. He took four steps away from the door to disentangle Minerva from Kong’s grasp. It was a simple thing; the man was barely conscious. He seemed to be operating on some kind of psychotic energy. Butler simply stepped down hard on his wrist, then rapped him sharply between the eyes with the knuckle of his index finger.
Kong’s eyes rolled back in his head, and his fingers relaxed ike the legs of a dying spider.
Minerva stepped out of Kong’s range.
“That was very foolish of me. I apologize.”
“It’s a little late for that,” reprimanded Butler. “Now, will you please take cover?”
The entire mini-episode took about four seconds, but in that four seconds a lot happened on the other side of the security door. Don, who was holding the bomb, and had recently been punched for no good reason by his boss, decided to win Kong’s favor by bursting into the gallery and taking on the giant in there. He put his shoulder to the door at the exact moment that Butler stepped away from the other side, and to his own surprise went tumbling headfirst into the room, followed quickly by four more of Kong’s henchmen, brandishing an assortment of weapons.
Holly, who was covering the door with her Neutrino, was not unduly worried. She
began
to worry when a grenade rolled out of the tangle of men and tapped against her foot. It would be easy enough for her to escape the explosion, but Artemis and N
o
1 would be well within the blast radius.
Think fast!
There was a solution, but it was costly in terms of equipment. She holstered her weapon, whipped off her helmet, and jammed it down over the grenade, holding it there with her own weight. This was a trick she had employed before with mixed results. She had hoped it wouldn’t become a habit.
She squatted there like a frog on a toadstool for what seemed like a long time, but it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. She noticed from the corner of her eye that a thug with a silver case was slapping the man who had rolled the grenade. Perhaps using lethal force had been against orders.
The grenade exploded, blasting Holly into a sharp arc. The helmet absorbed most of the shock, and all of the shrapnel, but there was still enough force to shatter both of Holly’s shinbones and fracture one femur. She landed on Artemis’s back like a sack of rocks.
“Ow,” she said, and passed out.
Artemis and N
o
1 were attempting to revive Qwan.
“He’s alive,” said Artemis, checking the warlock’s pulse. “Steady heartbeat. He should come out of it soon. You keep a strong contact with him or he could disappear.”
N
o
1 cradled the old demon’s head. “He called me a warlock,” he said tearfully. “I am not alone.”
“Time enough for a talk-show moment later,” said Artemis brusquely. “We need to get you out of here.”
Kong’s men were in the gallery now, and shots were being fired. Artemis was confident that Butler and Holly could take care of a few thugs, but this confidence took a blow when there was a sudden explosion and a battered Holly landed on his back. Her body was instantly enveloped in a cocoon of blue light. Sparks dropped from the cocoon, like falling stars, pinpointing the most severe injuries.
Artemis crawled out from beneath her, laying his recuperating friend gently on the floor beside Qwan.
Kong’s men were now embroiled with Butler, and probably regretting choosing this line of work. He tore through them like a bowling ball into a pack of quivering pins, but with considerably more economy of movement.
One made it past Butler. A tall man with a tattooed neck and an aluminium case. Artemis guessed that this case probably did not contain a selection of Asian spices, and realized that he would have to take action himself. While he was wondering exactly what it was he could do, the man sent him sprawling. By the time he made it back to Holly’s side, his friend was sitting up groggily and there was a suitcase handcuffed to her wrist. The man who had delivered the case had returned to the fray, where he had lasted less than a second before Butler took him out of it again.
Artemis knelt by Holly’s side. “Are you all right?”
Holly smiled, but it was an effort. “Just about, thanks to the magic. I’m out, though, not a drop left. So I would advise everyone to stay healthy until I can complete my ritual.” She shook her wrist, jangling the chain. “What’s in the case?”
Artemis looked paler than usual. “I would guess nothing pleasant.” He flicked the clips and lifted the lid. “And I would be right. It’s a bomb. Big and complicated. They sneaked it past security somehow. Through an area still under construction, probably.”
Holly blinked herself alert, shaking her head until the pain woke her up.
“Okay. Bomb. Can you see a timer?”
“Eight minutes. And counting.”
“Can you disarm it?”
Artemis pursed his lips. “Perhaps. I need to open the casing and get into the works before I know for sure. It could be a straight detonator, or we could have all kinds of decoys.”
Qwan struggled to his elbows, coughing up large globs of dust and spit. “What? I’m flesh and bone after ten thousand years and now you’re telling me a bomb is going to blow me to a million pieces?”
“This is Qwan,” explained N
o
1. “He’s the most powerful warlock in the magic circle.”
“I’m the only one now,” said Qwan. “I couldn’t save the rest. Just us two left, boy.”
“Can you petrify the bomb?” asked Holly.
“It will take several minutes before my magic is up and running. Anyway, the gargoyle’s touch only works on organic matter. Plants and animals. A bomb is full of man-made compounds.”
Artemis raised an eyebrow. “You know about bombs?”
“I was petrified. Not dead. I could see what was happening around me. The stories I could tell you. You wouldn’t believe where tourists stick gum.”
Butler was piling unconscious bodies against the security doors.
“We have to get out of here!” he called. “The police are in the hallway.”
Artemis stood and took a half dozen steps away from the group, closing his eyes.
“Artemis, this is no time to fall apart,” chided Minerva, crawling from behind a display case. “We need a plan.”
“Shh, young lady,” said Butler. “He’s thinking.”
Artemis gave himself twenty seconds to rack his brains. What he came up with was very far from perfect.
“Very well. Holly, you must fly us out of here.”
Holly did a few sums in her head. “It will take two trips, maybe three.”
“No time for that. The bomb must go first. There are a lot of people in this building. I must go with the bomb, as there is a chance I can defuse it. And the fairies must come, too; it is imperative that they are not taken into custody. Hybras would be lost.”
“I can’t allow this,” objected Butler. “I have a duty to your parents.”
Artemis was stern with his protector. “I am giving you a new duty,” he said. “Look after Minerva. Keep her safe until we can rendezvous.”
“Let Holly fly out over the sea and drop the bomb,” argued Butler. “We can mount a rescue mission later.”
“It will be too late. If we don’t get these fairies out of here, the eyes of the world will be on Taipei. And anyway, the local seas are thronged with fishing boats. This is the only way. I will not allow humans or fairies to die when I might have prevented it.”
Butler would not give up. “Listen to yourself. You sound like a ...like a
good guy
! There’s nothing in this for you.”
Artemis had no time for emotions. “In the words of HP Woodman, ‘Time is ticking on, and so we must be gone.’ Holly, tie us to your belt, all except Butler and Minerva.”
Holly nodded, still slightly shell-shocked. She reeled out a number of pitons from her belt, wishing she had been issued one of Foaly’s Moonbelts, which generated a lo-grav field around everything attached to it.
“Under the arms,” she instructed N
o
1. “Then clip it back onto the loop.”
Butler helped Artemis with his strap. “This is it, Artemis. I’ve had it, I swear. When we get home I am retiring. I’m older than I look, and I feel older than I am. No more plotting. Promise me?”
Artemis forced a smile. “I am simply flying to the next building. If I cannot defuse the bomb, then Holly can fly it out to sea and endeavor to find a safe spot.”
They both knew that Artemis was lying. If he could not defuse the bomb, there would be no time to find a safe drop point.