Read Artemis Fowl 08 - The Last Guardian for Free Online Page A

Sure and begorra everyone has heard of that smarty-pants.”
    These two are stupid, thought Artemis. They are stupid and talk too much, and I should be able to exploit those weaknesses.
    He tried a ruse.
    “I thought I told you to read your demands and say nothing more.”
    Pip’s face was literally a mask of confusion. “You told us?”
    Artemis hardened his voice. “My instructions for you two idiots were to read the demands, wait until the time was up, then shoot the pixie. I don’t recall saying anything about trading insults.”
    Pip’s mask frowned. How did Artemis Fowl know their instructions?
    “Your instructions? We don’t take orders from you.”
    “Really? Explain to me then how I know your instructions to the letter.”
    Pip’s mask software was not able to cope with his rapid expression change and froze momentarily.
    “I…ah…I don’t…”
    “And tell me how I knew the exact frequency to tap into.”
    “You’re not in Police Plaza?”
    “Of course not, you idiot. I’m at the rendezvous point waiting for Opal.”
    Artemis felt his heart speed up, and he waited a second for his conscious mind to catch up with his subconscious and tell him what he recognized onscreen.
    Something in the background.
    Something familiar.
    The wall behind Pip and Kip was nondescript gray, rendered with roughly finished plaster. A common finish for farm walls worldwide. There were walls like this all over the Fowl Estate.
    Ba boom.
    There went his heart again.
    Artemis concentrated on the wall. Slate-gray, except for a network of jagged cracks that sundered the plasterwork.
    A memory presented itself of six-year-old Artemis and his father walking the estate. As they passed the barn wall on the upper pasture, young Artemis pointed to the wall and commented. “See, Father? The cracks form a map of Croatia, once part of the Roman, Ottoman, and Austrian Habsburg empires. Were you aware that Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991?”
    There it was. On the wall behind Pip and Kip. A map of Croatia, though fifteen-year-old Artemis saw now that the Dalmatian coastline was truncated.
    They are on the Fowl Estate, he realized.
    Why?
    Something Dr. Argon had said resurfaced.
    Because the residual magic there is off the scale. Something happened on the Fowl Estate once. Something huge, magically speaking.
    Artemis decided to act on his hunch. “I’m at the Fowl Estate, waiting for Opal,” he said.
    “You’re at Fowl Manor too?” blurted Kip, prompting Pip to turn rapidly and shoot his comrade in the heart. The gnome was punched backward into the wall, knocking clouds of dust from the plaster. A narrow stream of blood oozed from the hole in his chest, pulsing gently down his breastplate, as undramatic as a paint drip running down a jar. His kitty-cat cartoon face seemed comically surprised, and when the heat from his face faded, the pixels powered down, leaving a yellow question mark.
    The sudden death shocked Artemis, but the preceding sentence had shocked him more.
    He had been correct on both counts: not only was Opal behind this, but the rendezvous point was Fowl Manor.
    Why? What had happened there?
    Pip shouted at the screen. “You see what you did, human? If you are human. If you are Artemis Fowl. It doesn’t matter what you know, it’s too late.”
    Pip pressed the still smoking barrel to Opal’s head, and she jerked away as the metal burned her skin, pleading through the tape over her mouth. It was clear that Pip wished to pull the trigger, but he could not.
    He has his instructions, thought Artemis. He must wait until the allotted time has run out. Otherwise he cannot be certain that Opal is secure in the nuclear reactor.
    Artemis deactivated the microphone and was moving toward the door when Holly caught his arm.
    “There’s no time,” she said, correctly guessing that he was headed for home.
    “I must try to save my family from the next stage of Opal’s plan,” said Artemis tersely.