Then one broke the spell.
Hearing the word spoken aloud galvanized his companions. They dropped to their knees, patting the dusky ground for the precious stones. More dived into the pungent vats as they registered tiny plops made by stones impacting on liquid.
She glanced upwards just in time to see a small hand withdraw into the black rectangle of a window.
A guard diving past her leg reminded her that things were still pretty dire.
Holly spared a moment to salute up at young Artemis’s window, then raced out of his view towards the nearest alley, only to be flattened by a puffing Damon Kronski.
‘Two for two,’ he huffed. ‘I got both of you. This must be my lucky day.’
Kronski pressed down on her like an enraged elephant, frown lines framing his tinted glasses, sweat flowing in sheets down his face, dripping from his pouting lip.
‘Except, this is
Holly was stunned.
She would not believe it. Never. How many people had written Artemis Fowl off and lived to regret it? Plenty. She was one of them.
Holly, on the other hand, was proving easier to kill. Her vision was blurring, her limbs were treading water and the weight of the world was on her chest. The only sense firing on all cylinders was her sense of smell.
She heard her ribs groan.
An idea sparked in her brain, the last ember in a dying grate.
Holly reached deep into her core of magic, searching for that last spell. There was a flicker deep inside. Not enough to shield, or even mesmerize, but perhaps a minor healing.
Usually healing spells were used on recent wounds, but Kronski’s anosmia was a lifelong ailment. Fixing it now could be dangerous and would almost certainly be painful.
She reached up a hand past the forearm on her throat, inching it along Kronski’s face, willing the magic into her fingertips.
Kronski did not feel threatened. ‘What’s this? Are you playing
Holly did not answer. Instead she closed her eyes, jammed two fingers up Kronski’s nostrils and sent her last sparks of magic down those channels.
‘Heal,’ she said. A wish and a prayer.
Kronski was surprised but not initially upset.
‘Hey, what the-’ he said, then sneezed. The sneeze was powerful enough to pop his ears and roll him off his captive. ‘What are you, five years old? Sticking fingers up my nose.’ Another sneeze. Bigger this time. Blowing a trumpet of steam from each nostril.
‘This is pathetic. You people are really-’
A third sneeze, this one traumatizing the entire body. Tears streamed down Kronski’s face. His legs jittered and his glasses shattered in their frames.
‘Oh my,’ said Kronski, when he had his limbs under control. ‘Something’s different. Something has changed.’
Then the smell hit him.
‘Aarrgh,’ said Kronski, and began to squeal. His tendons tightened, his toes pointed and his fingers ripped holes in the air.
‘Wow,’ said Holly, massaging her throat. This was a stronger reaction than expected.
The smell was bad, but Kronski acted like he was dying. What Holly had not fully grasped was the power of the doctor’s awakened sense of smell. Imagine the joy of seeing for the first time, or the euphoria of a first step. Then square that feeling and make it negative. Take a ball of poison, dip it in thorns and manure, wrap it in a poultice of festering bandages, boil the whole lot in a cauldron of unspeakably vile excretions and shove it up your nose.
This is what Kronski could smell, and it was driving him out of his mind.
He lay flat on his back, flinching and pawing the sky.
‘Foul,’ he said, repeating the word over and over. ‘Foul, foul. Fowl, Fowl.’
Holly crawled to her knees, coughing and spitting on to the dry sand. Her entire being felt battered and bruised from back to spirit. She looked at Kronski’s expression and realized that there was no point in asking him questions. The president of the Extinctionists was beyond logical conversation for the time being.
Holly noticed something. One of Kronski’s lenses had completely shattered, revealing the eyeball underneath. The iris was a strange violet, almost the same shade as the spectacles had been, but this was not what caught Holly’s attention. The edge of the retina was ragged, as though it had been nibbled on by tiny sclera fish.
She climbed to her feet and hobbled one-shoed down the nearest alley, the voices of squabbling greed fading behind her.
Mervall Brill winked at himself in the chrome door of a body freezer.
‘Brill!’ called Opal from her office. ‘How is that brain fluid coming?’
Merv jumped. ‘Just sucking him dry now, Miss Koboi.’
The pixie put his weight behind the trolley with its human cargo, trundling it down a short corridor to the lab itself. Being stuck in this tiny facility with Opal Koboi was no picnic. Just the three of them for weeks on end, draining the fluids from endangered species. Opal could afford to hire a thousand lab assistants to work for her, but she was uber-paranoid about secrecy. Opal’s level of paranoia was such that she had begun to suspect plants and inanimate objects of spying on her.
‘I can grow cameras!’ she had shrieked at the Brill brothers during one briefing. ‘Who’s to say that despicable centaur Foaly hasn’t succeeded in splicing surveillance equipment to plants. So get rid of all the flowers. Rocks too. I don’t trust them. Sullen little blebers.’
So the Brill twins had spent an afternoon scouring the facility for anything that might contain a bug. Even the recycling toilet-scent blocks had to go, as Opal was convinced they were photographing her when she used the facilities.
