Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex

shower her with confetti hearts. Butler frowned. He would definitely be keeping an eye on those particular young gentlemen.

Butler allowed himself to relax a little, a loosening of the fingers, which perhaps five people in the world would have noticed. He was still on high alert, but could admit to himself now that his darkest fear had always been that he would arrive too late.

Juliet is alive. And healthy. Whatever the problem is, we can solve it between us.

He decided then that the most prudent course of action would be to observe from this vantage point. He had a clear view of the wrestling ring, and, if necessary, he could be by his sister’s side in seconds.

The opening match was started by an old-fashioned ringside bell, and Juliet leaped high, landing catlike on the top rope.

“Princesa! Princesa!” chanted the audience.

A favorite with the crowd, thought Butler. Of course she is.

Juliet’s opponent was obviously the villain of the piece. A humongous woman with buzz-cut bleached hair and a costume of bloodred Lycra.

“Boo!” called the crowd.

Like most wrestlers on the luchador circuit, the huge newcomer wore a mask that covered her eyes and nose and was tied at the back with some nasty-looking barbed wire, which Butler suspected was actually plastic.

Juliet seemed like a doll in comparison, apparently outmatched. A little of the cockiness drained from her masked face, and she appealed to her corner for assistance, but was met with shrugged shoulders from a stereotypical flat-capped trainer who could have been recruited from the set of a wrestling movie. This match is all scripted, Butler realized. There’s no danger here.

He pulled a chair up to the screen and settled to watch his sister.

The first round was gentle enough on Butler’s nerves. Then, in the second round, Juliet strayed a little close to her opponent and was pounced on with surprising speed.

“Oooh,” cried most of the crowd. “Snap her in two, Samsonetta!” called a few less charitable observers.

Samsonetta, thought Butler. It suits her.

He was not worried at this point. There were at least a dozen ways for Juliet to break Samsonetta’s hold, as far as he could see. Most she could do without even using her hands. One would be theoretically possible by combining a fake sneeze with a sudden drop.

Butler started to worry when he noticed a dozen men in trench coats sidling along the far wall toward the ring.

Trench coats? In Cancun? Why would anyone wear a trench coat in Mexico unless they were concealing something?

The picture was too grainy for Butler to garner much detail, but there was something about these guys and the way they moved. Purposeful, devious, sticking to the shadows.

I’ve got time, Butler reasoned, already putting together his plan. This could be nothing, but it could be everything. I can’t take chances with Juliet’s life at stake.

He glanced around the dressing room to see if there was anything he could use as a weapon. No such luck. All he could find were a couple of chairs, plenty of glitter and mascara, and a barrel of old costumes.

I won’t be needing the glitter or mascara, thought Butler, reaching into the costume barrel.

Juliet Butler was feeling a little claustrophobic in the arms of her opponent.

“Come on, Sam,” she hissed. “You’re suffocating me.”

Samsonetta stamped flat-footed on the canvas, sending hollow booms bouncing around the auditorium, while at the same time making a show of squeezing Juliet’s neck.

“That’s the idea, Jules,” she whispered, her Stockholm accent stretching the vowels. “I whip up the crowd, remember? And then you take me down.”

Juliet turned her face to the three-thousand-strong crowd, delivering a dramatic howl of pain.

“Kill her!” screamed the nice ones.

“Kill her and then snap her in two!” screamed the not-so-nice ones.

“Kill her, snap her in two, and stamp on the pieces!” howled the downright nasty audience members, usually easily identifiable by the violent slogans on their T-shirts, and the drooling.

“Careful, Sam. You’re moving my mask.”

“And such a pretty mask too.”

Juliet’s entire outfit was pretty enough to make her a crowd favorite. A jade skintight leotard, and a small eye mask, which was actually a gel-pack covered with glitter.

If I have to wear a mask, Juliet had reasoned, it might as well be good for my skin.

They prepared for Samsonetta’s trademark takedown: an overhead drop, helped along by the power of her amazing arms. Usually if her opponents had so much as a spark of energy left in them after that maneuver, Sam simply fell on them, and that generally did the trick. But since Juliet was the crowd’s favorite, the move was not planned to go as usual. A wrestling audience liked to see their hero as far down as possible without being out.

Sam advertised the move by asking the crowd if they wanted the body slam.

“Do you vant it?” she shouted, playing up her accent.

“Yes!” they howled, beating the air with their fists.

“The body slam?”

“Slam!” they chanted. “Slam! Slam!”

A few chanted other rougher slogans, but security soon zoned in on them.

“You vant a slam! I vill slam!” Generally Samsonetta would have said I shall slam! But Max, the promoter/ manager of LuchaSlam, liked her to use ‘v’ instead of ‘w’ wherever possible, as for some reason it drove the crowd crazy.

And so she bent backward and hurled the unfortunate Jade Princess toward the deck, and that would have been the end of it had not the Jade Princess somehow twirled in midair to land on her toes and fingertips, and that wasn’t even the impressive part. The impressive part was springing back up again and whipping her head around so the jade ring woven into her blond ponytail whacked Samsonetta in the jaw, landing the giantess flat on her back.

Samsonetta whined and complained, rubbed her jaw to redden it, and rolled like a walrus on a hot rock.

She was quite a performer, and for a moment Juliet worried that the jade ring had really hurt her, but then Sam threw her a secret wink, and she knew that they were still playacting.

“Have you had enough, Samsonetta?” asked Juliet, springing nimbly to the top rope. “Would you like some more?”

“No,” blubbed her supposed opponent, then decided to sneak another ‘v’ in for Max. “I vant no more.”

Juliet turned to the audience. “Should I give her some more?”

Oh no, said an imaginary audience. No more, that would be barbaric.

But the real audience said things like:

“Kill her!”

“Take her downtown!” (Whatever that meant-they were already downtown.)

“Show her the pain!” The pain being obviously more excruciating than just plain old pain.

I love these people, thought Juliet, and launched herself off the top rope for the coup de grace.

It would have been a thing of beauty. A lovely double flip rounded off with a nice oooof- inducing elbow to the stomach, but someone came out of the shadows and snatched Juliet from the air, tossing her roughly into the corner of the ring. Several other silent, muscled attackers piled on top of Juliet until all that was visible of the girl was one green-clad leg.

In the shadows, where he was watching behind one of the lighting rigs, Butler felt a sour ball of fear drop to the pit of his stomach, and muttered: “That’s my cue.”

Which sounded an awful lot more flippant than he felt.

The crowd was still applauding the unexpected arrival of the Ninja Squad luchadores