creaking saddle, no snapping reins. Not to mention the facts that the quagga was unbroken and scared out of its wits.
Artemis patted its neck.
Artemis grabbed tufts of the quagga’s mane and tried to direct it towards the open doorway. It bucked and kicked, whipping its striped head round to nip at Artemis with strong, square teeth. He dug in his heels and held on.
Opal was busy protecting herself from a wave of animal vengeance. Some of the larger predators were not as cowed as their cousins and decided that the best way to remove the threat posed by Opal Koboi was to eat her.
The tiny pixie twirled like a demonic ballerina, shooting blasts of magical energy that ballooned at her shoulders, gathered force in roiling spheres at her elbows and shot forth with liquid pulsations.
Artemis had never seen anything like it. Stricken animals simply froze in mid-air, momentum utterly drained, dropping to the ground like statues. Immobile but for their terrified rolling eyes.
Opal was running out of magic. Her bolts fizzled out or spiralled off target like errant squibs. She abandoned them and drew two pistols from her belt. One was immediately batted from her hand by the tiger that had lumbered to join the fray, but Opal did not submit to hysteria. She quickly thumbed the other gun to a broad-spread setting and slashed the barrel from side to side as she fired, releasing a fan of silver energy.
The tiger was the first to drop, with a look on his face that said
Artemis hauled back on the quagga’s spiked mane, jumping it on to an operating table. The beast snorted and complained, but did as it was bid, skittering the length of one table and leaping across to the next one.
Opal loosed a shot in their direction, but it was absorbed by a brace of condors.
The door was directly before them, and Artemis feared the quagga would falter, but no — it butted through to the corridor connecting the lab to the holographic-flame chamber.
Artemis quickly opened the control panel in his stolen network goggles and chose the ramp setting.
It took maddening moments for the platform to extend itself, and for those seconds Artemis rode the quagga round in circles to take its mind off dislodging the unwelcome rider on its back, and to make them both a more difficult target if Opal followed them through the corridor.
An eagle swooped by, its feathers raking Artemis’s cheek. A muskrat clambered along his torso, hopping to the rising platform.
There was light above, the sickly wavering beams of a faulty strip light. But light nevertheless.
‘Come on, girl,’ said Artemis, feeling very much the cowboy. ‘Yee-haw.’
The Extinctionists gathered around Tommy Kirkenhazard’s raised finger, listening intently as if the noise emanated from inside the finger.
‘Ah, I don’t hear nothing,’ admitted Tommy. ‘I must have been dreaming. After all, it’s been a stressful night for human-lovers.’
Then the lodge burst open and the Extinctionists were utterly engulfed in a sea of beasts.
Kirkenhazard went down under a couple of chacma baboons, vainly pulling the trigger on his empty gun and shouting over and over, ‘But we killed you, darn it. We killed you.’
Though there would be no fatalities in the compound that night, eighteen people were hospitalized with bites, skin burns, broken bones and various infestations. Kirkenhazard fared the worst. The baboons ate his gun and the hand holding it and then turned the unfortunate man over to a groggy tiger, who found himself waking in a very bad mood.
Not one of the Extinctionists noticed a small dark craft rising silently from behind one of the chalets. It flew across the central park and scooped up a long-haired youth from the back of what looked like a small stripy donkey. The craft spun in a tight arc, like a stone in a sling, then hurtled into the night sky, as though it had to be somewhere in a real hurry.
Pedicures, and indeed all spa treatments, were cancelled for the next day.
Opal was desolate to find that, on top of everything else, her boots were ruined.
‘What is that stain?’ she demanded of Mervall and his recently liberated twin, Descant.
‘Dunno,’ muttered Descant, who was still a bit moody from his time in the cage.
‘It’s a dropping of some kind,’ volunteered Mervall quickly. ‘Judging from the size and texture, I would say one of the big cats got a little nervous.’
Opal sat on a bench, extending the boot. ‘Pull it off, Mervall.’
She placed her sole on Mervall’s forehead and pushed until he tumbled backwards, clutching the dropping- laden footwear.
‘That Mud Boy. He knows about my lemur. We must follow him. He is tagged, I take it.’
‘Oh yes,’ confirmed Mervall. ‘All the newcomers are sprayed on landing. There’s a radioactive tracer in his every pore right now. Harmless, but there’s nowhere on this planet that he can hide from us.’
‘Good. Excellent, in fact. I think of everything, do I not?’
‘You do, Miss Koboi,’ droned Descant. ‘Brilliant you are. Astounding is your fabulosity.’
‘Why thank you, Descant,’ said Opal, as ever oblivious to sarcasm. ‘And I thought you’d be upset after the pig pen. Fabulosity isn’t a word, by the way. In case you’re thinking of writing how wonderful I am in your diary.’
‘Point taken,’ said Descant seriously.
Opal offered her other foot to Mervall. ‘Good. Now set the self-destructs on this place and let’s get the shuttle prepped. I want to find this human and kill him immediately. We were too nice last time, with the leeches. This time immediate death.’
Mervall winced. He was holding two boots covered in tiger droppings, and he’d prefer to wear those than be in that human’s shoes.
Artemis lay flat on his back in the cargo hold, wondering if he could possibly have dreamed the past few minutes. Super-leeches, sleeping tigers and a grumpy quagga.
He felt the floor vibrate beneath him and knew that they were moving at several times the speed of sound. Suddenly the vibration disappeared, to be replaced by a far more sedate hum. They were slowing down!
Artemis hurried to the cockpit, where Holly was glaring at a readout as if she could change the information displayed there. Jayjay was in the co-pilot’s seat and seemed to be in charge of steering.
Artemis pointed at the lemur. ‘This may seem like a silly question, but is Jayjay …’
‘No. Autopilot. And nice to see you alive, by the way. You’re welcome for the rescue.’
Artemis touched her shoulder. ‘Once again, I owe you my life. Now, I hate to move directly from gratitude to petulance, but why have we slowed down? Time is running out. We had three days, remember? There are only hours left.’
Holly tapped the readout. ‘We were pinged by something at the compound. Someone’s computers have downloaded our schematics. Can you tell me any more about that?’
‘Opal Koboi,’ said Artemis. ‘Opal is behind everything. She’s harvesting animal fluids to increase her own magic. If she gets her hands on Jayjay, she’ll be invincible.’
Holly did not have time to be incredulous. ‘That’s wonderful. Opal Koboi. I knew this little trip was missing a psychotic element. If Opal pinged us, then she’ll be on our tail in something a little more war-worthy than this clunker.’
‘Shields?’
‘Nothing much. We might fool human radar but not fairy scanners.’
‘What can we do?’
‘I need to keep us up here in the air-lanes with all the human traffic. We stay sub-sonic and don’t draw attention to ourselves. Then at the last moment we make a break for Fowl Manor. It won’t matter if Opal sees us
