Read Online Artemis Fowl 08 - The Last Guardian by Eoin Colfer - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Eoin Colfer
Ads: Link
didn’t give him soldier’s orders. I ’gested to Beck that his bum might be itchy.”
This boy is not yet five, thought Juliet. Wait till the world gets a load of Myles Fowl.
From the corner of her eye she saw something triangular sail through the air toward her and instinctively snatched it. No sooner had her fingers closed on the material than it dawned on her what she was holding.
Great, she thought. Hoodwinked by two four-year-olds.
“Righto, boys,” she said. “Time to go back to the house for lunch. What’s on the menu today?”
Myles sheathed his sword. “I would like a croque madame, with chilled grape juice.”
“Bugs,” said Beckett, hopping on one foot. “Bugs in ketchup.”
Juliet hiked Myles onto her shoulder and jumped down from the tower’s low wall. “Same as yesterday, then, boys.”
Memo to self, she thought. Wash your hands.
The boys were waist high in the pasture when the faraway chaos began. Beckett paid the sudden distant cacophony little attention as his internal soundtrack generally featured explosions and screaming, but Myles knew something was wrong.
He headed back to the Martello tower and clambered up the stone steps, displaying a lack of motor skills reminiscent of Artemis, which amused Beckett greatly, as he was sure-footed to the same extent his brothers were not.
“Armageddon,” Myles announced when he reached the top step. “The end of the world.”
Beckett was dismayed. “Not Disneyland too!”
Juliet ruffled his sun-bleached hair. “No, of course not Disneyland.” In her stomach she felt a growling of disquiet. Where were these noises coming from? It sounded as though there was a war zone nearby.
Juliet followed Myles to the compacted mud floor on top of the tower. From there they had a clear view down into the distant city. Usually the only sounds to ride the breeze this far north were the occasional beeps of traffic-jammed horns from cars stuck on the ring road. But today the highway to Dublin seemed more like the road to hell. Even from this distance, it was clear that the six lanes of traffic had come to a complete stop. Several engines exploded as they watched, and a pickup truck threw an unexpected forward flip. Farther into the city, bigger explosions rumbled from behind buildings and smoke belches drifted into the afternoon sky, a sky that had troubles of its own as a small aircraft landed in the center of a soccer stadium and an honest-to-God communications satellite dropped from space like a dead robot onto the roof of the U2 hotel.
Beckett climbed the steps and took Juliet’s hand.
“It is Harma-geddon,” he said quietly. “The world is going boom.”
Juliet pulled the boys close. Whatever was developing seemed too big to be directed specifically at the Fowl family, though there was a growing list of people who would happily destroy the entire county of Dublin just to get at Artemis.
“Don’t worry, boys,” she said. “I will protect you.”
She reached into her pocket. In situations like this where things were violently weird, the first course of action was always the same: Call Artemis.
She scrolled through the list of networks on her phone and was not overly surprised to see that the only available one was the FOX system that Artemis had set up for emergency secure calls.
I imagine that Artemis is the only teenager in the world to have built and launched his own satellite.
She was about to select Artemis’s name from her contacts when a bulky forearm appeared in space ten feet in front of her. There was a hand at the end of the arm, and it clutched a fairy Neutrino blaster.
“’Nighty-’night, Mud Wench,” said a voice from nowhere, and a blue bolt of crackling power erupted from the tip of the weapon.
Juliet was familiar enough with fairy weapons to know that she would survive a blue bolt, but that she would probably suffer a contact burn and wake up inside a cocoon of pain.
Sorry, my boys, she thought. I have failed
This boy is not yet five, thought Juliet. Wait till the world gets a load of Myles Fowl.
From the corner of her eye she saw something triangular sail through the air toward her and instinctively snatched it. No sooner had her fingers closed on the material than it dawned on her what she was holding.
Great, she thought. Hoodwinked by two four-year-olds.
“Righto, boys,” she said. “Time to go back to the house for lunch. What’s on the menu today?”
Myles sheathed his sword. “I would like a croque madame, with chilled grape juice.”
“Bugs,” said Beckett, hopping on one foot. “Bugs in ketchup.”
Juliet hiked Myles onto her shoulder and jumped down from the tower’s low wall. “Same as yesterday, then, boys.”
Memo to self, she thought. Wash your hands.
The boys were waist high in the pasture when the faraway chaos began. Beckett paid the sudden distant cacophony little attention as his internal soundtrack generally featured explosions and screaming, but Myles knew something was wrong.
He headed back to the Martello tower and clambered up the stone steps, displaying a lack of motor skills reminiscent of Artemis, which amused Beckett greatly, as he was sure-footed to the same extent his brothers were not.
“Armageddon,” Myles announced when he reached the top step. “The end of the world.”
Beckett was dismayed. “Not Disneyland too!”
Juliet ruffled his sun-bleached hair. “No, of course not Disneyland.” In her stomach she felt a growling of disquiet. Where were these noises coming from? It sounded as though there was a war zone nearby.
Juliet followed Myles to the compacted mud floor on top of the tower. From there they had a clear view down into the distant city. Usually the only sounds to ride the breeze this far north were the occasional beeps of traffic-jammed horns from cars stuck on the ring road. But today the highway to Dublin seemed more like the road to hell. Even from this distance, it was clear that the six lanes of traffic had come to a complete stop. Several engines exploded as they watched, and a pickup truck threw an unexpected forward flip. Farther into the city, bigger explosions rumbled from behind buildings and smoke belches drifted into the afternoon sky, a sky that had troubles of its own as a small aircraft landed in the center of a soccer stadium and an honest-to-God communications satellite dropped from space like a dead robot onto the roof of the U2 hotel.
Beckett climbed the steps and took Juliet’s hand.
“It is Harma-geddon,” he said quietly. “The world is going boom.”
Juliet pulled the boys close. Whatever was developing seemed too big to be directed specifically at the Fowl family, though there was a growing list of people who would happily destroy the entire county of Dublin just to get at Artemis.
“Don’t worry, boys,” she said. “I will protect you.”
She reached into her pocket. In situations like this where things were violently weird, the first course of action was always the same: Call Artemis.
She scrolled through the list of networks on her phone and was not overly surprised to see that the only available one was the FOX system that Artemis had set up for emergency secure calls.
I imagine that Artemis is the only teenager in the world to have built and launched his own satellite.
She was about to select Artemis’s name from her contacts when a bulky forearm appeared in space ten feet in front of her. There was a hand at the end of the arm, and it clutched a fairy Neutrino blaster.
“’Nighty-’night, Mud Wench,” said a voice from nowhere, and a blue bolt of crackling power erupted from the tip of the weapon.
Juliet was familiar enough with fairy weapons to know that she would survive a blue bolt, but that she would probably suffer a contact burn and wake up inside a cocoon of pain.
Sorry, my boys, she thought. I have failed
Similar Books
