“I cannot kill my own brother, so I need to get you out of his body without harming him.”
Gobdaw sneered. “That’s not possible, human. To get me, you must slay the boy.”
“You are misinformed,” said Artemis. “There is a way to exorcise your feisty soul without damaging Myles.”
“I would like to see you try it,” said Gobdaw, with perhaps a glimmer of doubt in his eyes.
“Your wish is my command and so on and so forth,” said Artemis, pressing a button on the desk intercom. “Bring it in, would you, Holly?”
The office door swung open, and a barrel trundled into the room, seemingly under its own power, until Holly was revealed behind it.
“I don’t like this, Artemis,” she said, playing good cop, just as they had planned. “This is nasty stuff. A person’s soul might never get into the afterlife trapped in this gunk.”
“Traitorous elf,” said Gobdaw, kicking his little feet. “You side with the humans.”
Holly waltzed the barrel trolley into the center of the office, parking it on the wooden floor and not on one of the precious Afghan rugs that Artemis insisted on describing in great historical detail every time she visited the office.
“I side with the earth,” she said, meeting Gobdaw’s eyes. “You have been in the ground for ten thousand years, warrior. Things have changed.”
“I have consulted my host’s memories,” said Gobdaw sullenly. “The humans have almost succeeded in destroying the entire planet. Things have not changed so much.”
Artemis rose from his chair and unscrewed the barrel lock. “Do you also see a spacecraft that shoots bubbles from its exhaust?”
Gobdaw had a quick rifle through Myles’s brain. “Yes. Yes, I do. It’s made of gold, is it not?”
“This is one of Myles’s dream projects,” said Artemis slowly. “Merely a dream. The bubble jet. If you delve deeper into my brother’s imagination, you will find a robotic pony that does homework, and a monkey that has been taught to speak. The boy you inhabit is highly intelligent, Gobdaw, but he is only four. At that age there is a very fine line between reality and imagination.”
Gobdaw’s puffed-up chest deflated as he located these items in Myles’s brain. “Why are you telling me this, human?”
“I want you to see that you have been tricked. Opal Koboi is not the savior she pretends to be. She is a convicted murderer who has escaped from prison. She would undo ten thousand years of peace.”
“Peace!” said Gobdaw, then barked a laugh. “Peaceful humans? Even buried beneath the ground we felt your violence.” He wriggled in Butler’s arms, a mini Artemis with black hair and dark suit. “Do you call this peace?”
“No, and I apologize for your treatment, but I need my brother.” Artemis nodded at Butler, who hoisted Gobdaw over the open barrel. The little Berserker laughed.
“For millennia I was in the earth. Do you think Gobdaw fears imprisonment in a barrel?”
“You will not be imprisoned. A quick dunking is all that will be necessary.”
Gobdaw looked down between his dangling feet. The barrel was filled with a viscous, off-white liquid with congealed skin on its surface.
Holly turned her back. “I don’t care to watch this. I know what it feels like.”
“What is that?” asked Gobdaw nervously, feeling a cold sickness tipping at his toes from the stuff’s aura.
“That is a gift from Opal,” said Artemis. “A few years ago she stole a demon warlock’s power using that very barrel. I stored it in the basement, because you never know, right?”
“What is it?” Gobdaw repeated.
“One of two natural magic inhibitors,” explained Artemis. “Rendered animal fat. Disgusting stuff, I admit. And I am sorry to dunk my brother in it, because he loves those shoes. We dip him down, and the rendered fat traps your soul. Myles comes out intact, and you are held in limbo for all eternity. Not exactly the reward you expected for your sacrifice.”
Something fizzed in the barrel, sending out tiny electrical bolts. “What the bleep is that?” squeaked Gobdaw, panic causing his voice to shoot up an octave.
“Oh, that is the second natural magic inhibitor. I had my dwarf friend spit into the barrel just to give it that extra zing.”
Gobdaw managed to free one arm and beat it against Butler’s biceps, but he might as well have been beating a boulder for all the effect it had.
“I will tell you nothing,” he said, his little pointed chin quivering.
Artemis held Gobdaw’s shins so that they would drop cleanly into the vat. “I know. Myles will tell me everything in a moment. I am sorry to do this to you, Gobdaw. You were a valiant warrior.”
“Not Gobdaw the Gullible, then?”