“Oh, my lord,” said Contessa Irina Kostovich, and swooned into the arms of a Scottish oil baron.
“Gather whatever you can, and we meet back here in fifteen minutes.”
The contessa was muttering something.
“What was that?” asked Kirkenhazard.
“She said she has a pedicure booked for the morning.”
Kirkenhazard held up a hand, listening. “No. Not that. Does anyone else hear rumbling?”
The animals charged through the open cage doors with savage glee, hopping, jumping, flying, and sliming. Lions, leopards, various monkeys, parrots, gazelles, hundreds of creatures all with one idea in mind: Escape.
Opal was not amused.
“I cannot believe you did that, Mud Person. I will wring your brain out like a sponge.”
Artemis ducked his head low, not caring at all for the brain/sponge imagery. If he avoided Opal’s regal stare, then she could not mesmerize him. Unless her augmented powers allowed her access to the brain without the conduit of the optic nerve.
Even if he had not ducked, he would have been shielded by the tide of creatures that engulfed him, snapping, buffeting, and kicking.
This is ridiculous, he thought as a monkey’s elbow drove the air from his lungs. If Opal does not get me, the animals will. I need to direct this stampede.
Artemis squatted behind one of the operating tables, pulling out the tiger’s anaesthetic drip as he passed, and squinted through the spokes of passing legs for an appropriate animal.
Opal roared at the creatures in an amalgamation of their tongues. It was a piercing sound and split the animal phalanx down the center so that it flowed around her. As the herd passed, Opal took potshots with pulsing blasts of energy that erupted from her fingers, and scythed through entire rows of creatures, knocking then senseless to the ground. Cages tumbled like building blocks, refrigerators spewed their contents across the tiles.
My distraction is being chopped down, thought Artemis. Time for an exit.
He spied a set of hooves stomping toward him, and steadied himself for a jump.
It’s a quagga, he realized. Half horse, half zebra, and there hasn’t been one in captivity for a hundred years. Not exactly a thoroughbred stallion, but it will have to do.
The ride was a little rougher than Artemis was accustomed to on the Fowl Arabians. No steadying stirrups, no creaking saddle, no snapping reins. Not to mention the fact that the quagga was unbroken and scared out of its wits.
Artemis patted its neck.
Ludicrous, he thought. This entire affair. A dead boy escaping on an extinct animal.
Artemis grabbed tufts of the quagga’s mane and tried to direct it toward the open doorway. It bucked and kicked, whipping its striped head around 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 midair, their momentum utterly drained, dropping to the ground like statues, immobile but for their terrified rolling eyes.
She is powerful indeed. I have never seen a force like this. Opal must never be allowed to capture Jayjay.
Opal was running out of magic. Her bolts fizzled out or spiraled 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 and quickly thumbed that 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 its face that said Not again. Several more followed, cut off in midscreech, howl, or hiss.
Artemis hauled back on the quagga’s spiked mane, jumping it onto 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.
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 around 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.