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Holly knew what she was doing was wrong.
She knew that doing it would end her career. She knew that it went against every law the Council had ever written. She knew it was against the order of nature itself. She knew that it was a perversion of magic fouler than she had ever thought possible.
She knew doing it was wrong.
She knew she was going to do it anyway.
Getting The Book had, in some ways, been the easy part. She had borrowed a Section Five stealth suit, and some camera bugs from Foaly. After that it was just a matter of getting into the Restricted Archive, it would've been difficult for the underworld's best thieves. But she was Holly Short, and she was Recon's Best.
Recon's Best had broken into the Grand Library's Restricted Archive, had slipped past the guards, looped camera feeds and cracked open bio-locked, hermetically sealed magnetic doors.
Artemis would've been proud of her. She crushed that thought down. He would be proud of her, would be.
The Book had been heavy in her grip. It was old, older than her by several hundred years. Never made for Fairy hands, it was too large for that, written in a language that very people could speak fluently, above or below ground. Bound in thick leather, blackened and cracked with age, some legends said it was bound in human skin, Holly didn't know if she believed those stories, but holding it in her hands it didn't seem impossible.
It didn't have a name, it didn't really need one, it was simply The Book. Anyone who knew anything about magic history knew about The Book. It's official designation was RA-H-1, "Restricted Article, Human, Number One".
As she was disappearing through one of the Library atrium's huge glass sky lights, an ironic thought washed over her, the oldest human book in Haven, one of the few known tomes of human magic, and it had been locked in a file cabinet that she had popped open with nothing more than her omnitool. After all that effort to get into the Restricted Archive, one of the most dangerous articles was in a cheap steel box that she could have opened with a sharp kick.
Artemis would shake his head in disbelief when she told him. She knew he would.
Getting the dagger had been easier than the book, physically speaking at least.
All it had required was a visit to No.1. The little imp had come back from the moon for the funeral, but he was still continuing his research, studious as ever.
She had stepped into his workshop, looking around at the worktops and tables, each one scattered with pieces of stone and bone and books. No.1 had pattered up to her, chattering excitedly about something, she wasn't quite sure she understood half of what he'd said but she'd been happy to listen. It took her mind off the fact she was going to betray him.
"How are you doing?"
"Huh?" The direct question took her entirely off guard.
No.1 looked up at her, sat cross legged on one of the workshop's many stools, "How are you doing?" He repeated the question.
"Fine," She lied, "Fine, just, it's been difficult"
He rested a scaled hand on hers, "It's alright, none of us can imagine what you're going through, but if the plan works," He paused, considering his words, "when the plan works, we'll have him back."
She nodded, she couldn't answer, because she didn't want to lie to him anymore than she had to. If the plan worked, if the clone succeed, if they could get his soul into the new body, if he was still there at all. There was too many ifs, and even if there hadn't been, would he still be her Artemis?
"Do you still have that nice lavender tea?" She asked, hoping to change the subject.
"Oh! Yes, yes I do!" No.1 leapt to his feet, clambered off th\e stool and scampered across the workshop, "I'll be right back!"
She let out a sigh, deflating, letting her mask drop, eyes scanning back and forward, hunting for her prize.
After just a few moments of searching she found it: A ritual dagger.
They weren't uncommon, but most of the ones you could get on the civilian market were cheap mass produced shelf fillers and belt hangers, meant to look pretty and not for much else. They were for those Fairies who wanted to be "In touch with their ancestors". Holly had always considered it a bunch of nonsense.
What she was holding in her hands, what she was going to steal from one of her best friends, wasn't nonsense.
Both Human and Fairy media liked to portray ritual knives as long silvery knives with sweeping blades and serrated edges, horrendously false in a thousand different ways. The blade in Holly's hand was no such thing. It was a simple straight blade, double edged with a bone handle, chased with silver etchings, weighing like a feather in her grip, balanced almost perfectly. Understated excellence in all ways.
It disappeared into her bag with barely a whisper.
No.1 returned soon after, two steaming cups of tea in his hands. He continued to chatter about his work, about the joys of the moon, how happy he was to be back on earth even for a little bit. He told her how confident he was the plan would work, Foaly was one of, if not the, smartest person under the world, with some help from Qwan the plan would work perfectly.
Holly managed to smile through it, keep the mask up. She was even able to look him in the eyes when she said she was sure he was right.
Artemis would be proud of how he'd rubbed off on her, she knew he would be.
Now she was in the morgue.
She hadn't even had to break in. She'd just flashed her badge, the Gnome at the desk hadn't questioned the bag over her shoulder.
She was in the morgue. Artemis had been moved here once the LEP had swept into Fowl Manor in the aftermath of the Gate closing. He was laid on one of the autopsy slabs, she'd had to pull back the sheet to uncover his face.
They'd bundled him into a body bag, pulled him from her arms, carried him down here to be examined, they wanted to know what had happened to him, how the magic had effected him.
"It's a once in a thousand year opportunity" she'd been told when she tried to fight it.
A human with magic, who had been launched backwards and forwards and outside of time. When he was alive he'd turned them down time and time again, but now there was nothing he could say in his own defence to stop them, and try as she might Holly had been out ruled, out-ranked and simply ignored when she spoke against it.
"A human with magic, launched backwards, forwards and outside of time!" One of them had said to her, as if she hadn't been there to witness all of it, "He's entirely unique, we'll never get a chance to examine a specimen like this again!"
Entirely unique. Yes, he was. Which is why she knew she had to do what she was going to do.
She stood at the top of the slab, looking down on his silent, grey face. It was strange, she'd always considered him pale like a corpse, but looking at him now, it was different. She realised that there had been colour in his cheeks, a warmth to his skin, to his vampire smile and burning bright eyes.
Trying in vain to still her shaking hands, she took off her backpack, setting it on the slab. She opened it, taking out The Book, it's broad body and antediluvian leather felt impossibly heavy in her hands now, weighed with age or power or just the horror of what it contained.
It thumped onto the slab, the sound was dull in the tiled, silvery void of the morgue. It regarded her stoically, a granite tomb door. All she had to do was open it, to cross the point of no return.
Hooking numb fingers under the cover she lifted it, trying to ignore how her breath clouded in the air, trying to convince herself it was just the room's cooling system kicking on in response to her body heat raising the ambient temperature, she wasn't doing a good job of either.
The Book fell open naturally once she'd lifted it half way, the weight of the binding carrying it over, pages flickering and flipping past, till it came to rest somewhere near the middle.
Holly traced the lines on the page, sparking to life her gift of tongues to comprehend the antique letters. Even with magic dancing across her eyes, shifting and rearranging the ink before her eyes, it took several seconds for something she could understand to be dredged from the half-dead language, and even then she could feel herself going cross eyed as she read the tight, twisting script. The words at the top of the page were exactly the ones she was looking for, the ones part of her wished she hadn't found so easily:
Raising of and speaking to the Dead.
She remembered the first time she'd heard about this, about Necromancy, she'd thought it was a myth, some scary human story mistranslated and passed from fairy to fairy. That had been back in the Academy, when everyone was gossiping and telling tales and The New Drama changed with the time of day.
Then their Crime Scene Investigation professor had showed them the photos of the Taramella Case. They had been gruesome. Trouble had nearly been sick, so had she, but she'd hid it better.
Jakel Taramella had stolen his wife's body from the funeral home it was being prepared in for the recycling ceremony, then kidnapped and ritually murdered seven other fairies in an attempt to raise her from the dead. He'd found the ritual on the net, using image grabs of The Book's pages to create the symbology and placement required. The man swore he'd succeeded, that he had brought his wife back, that she had spoken to him, told him she loved him. He had been locked away in a mental institution. Most people believed necromancy was impossible, and that Jakel had just been a disturbed Pixie driven over the edge by grief. Others suggested he'd gotten the ritual wrong, working from blurry photos and only a rudimentary understanding of what he'd been doing. There was however a third group, that said he had succeeded, he had raised his wife from the dead, of course most people considered this group to be conspiracy theorists and trolls.
But the LEP had never found her body.
Now Holly was going to attempt the same thing. Unlike Taramella she didn't have seven kidnapped fairies, but she did have the original text, a ritual knife, and the willingness to do anything to get Artemis back.
She made sure she disabled the cameras and jammed the morgue's door. Then began setting up the ritual: tracing the long symbols and circles on the floor; the black chalk a stark contrast to the clean and perfect white of the tiles; arranging and lighting the collection of small candles she'd brought with her. She stood at the head of the slab, looking at Artemis' silent grey visage. Her heart was pounding in her chest. It was now or never, and she knew she couldn't let it be never. She knew Artemis would forgive her.
The words felt strange on her tongue as she repeated them from the book, the gift of tongues only able to do so much for her here. She had to twist her mouth into unusual shapes and give voice to syllables that hurt her throat.
Her hand shook as it held the knife, before she clenched her grip tight, forcing her fist to steady itself. Drawing the razor tip of the blade down her palm she split skin, unable to bite her lip to distract from the pain, still uttering the profane words. She had to close her eyes to concentrate for a moment, fighting her magic, fighting it's natural want to leap forth and seal the deep slice in her flesh.
She held out her hand, clenching her fist slowly so her blood would drip, drip, drip, across the ritual circle and across Artemis' forehead. The sanguine colour was stark against his skin. She shifted her hand, a few drops spattered across his thin lips. Then she retracted her hand, quickly putting down the knife and taking a bandage from her pocket, wrapping the wound tight. She couldn't risk wasting even a drop of magic on herself.
Through out the process, she'd continued to speak, repeating the strange human words over and over, the sound reverberating around the cavernous tomb of the morgue. Now she changed tone, eyes moving down the books page, starting the next verse. Hands out stretched above his body, her voice rose, she fought to keep it steady, to keep the terror and fear and hope from her tone. She had to get this right, she would get this right.
The chill of the morgue wrapped around her, a silent shroud. She could see her breath starting to mist in the air ahead of her. Her chanting climbed to a fervour pitch. Magic sparked in her fingers, drawn up from the depths of her soul. It flickered and jumped. Blue and black and white and blood red. She threw her head back and wailed out the last words of the twisting, tearing chant. Light flashed before her eyes, she squeezed them shut, but the light continued, dancing around the inside of her head, her body was jerked forward, crashing her hip against the slab, she cried out, hand scrabbling to catch the lip of the metal so she didn't fall, she was cold, so cold, her body felt empty, her arms were shaking, weakly trying to push her back up to standing.
Slowly, hesitantly, she opened her eyes. The candles were had all gone out, smoke trailing in the air like incense at a funeral. Her arms were still shaking, but she managed to get her legs back under herself, her knees not much stronger than her elbows. Her breath now created great, draconic plumes as she sucked in frigid, dead air.
She lowered her eyes. Artemis lay on the slab, eyes shut, skin grey. Still as stone.
She began to cry then. Her knees gave out, her arms could no longer hold her up. She collapsed, pressing her head against the edge of the slab. The tears were hot against her frozen skin, they pattered against the tiles, the sound like rain against a roof of a chapel. She didn't know how long she sat there, fingers numb around the broad metal rim, forehead pressed against uncaring stainless steel. She knew she would be caught, she knew she would be tried and sentenced, she knew she didn't care. She knew she would never see Artemis again, and she knew nothing else mattered any more.
"Why does thou sit, upon my grave, and will dead lips to speak?"
She stopped, head snapping up.
There was strength in her arms now. Her heart pounded with excitement. She practically tore herself to her feet. Artemis! He was alive! He was…
"Why does though weep, upon my grave, and will not let me sleep?"
His eyes stared up at her. Where one had been blue like the early winter sky, it was now like cut ice. The other, once like amber in sunlight, was now dark, like grave dirt in the rain.
"My breast, it is as cold as clay, my breath is earthly strong."
His lips moved. Once they had entranced Holly, so slim and perfect, how they had curled when he smiled, or split in the slash of a grin when she had made him laugh. Now they were thin as a blade, stained crimson with her blood, moving in slow patterns she couldn't quite understand, caught somewhere between his native tongue and his adopted Gnomish.
"It is an old poem, Holly, 'The Unquiet Grave', quite fitting, no?"
Her name sounded wrong. She knew it was wrong. His voice was that same lilting Irish accent she'd fallen head over heels for, but it rose and fell in stuttered, scratching steps, not the smooth hills and valleys that so matched his home.
"You're not Artemis." She finally managed to speak through numb lips.
He smiled, that special smile he reserved for those he truly cared for. It was worse than the most cruel of his vampire grins, "I am Artemis Fowl the Second, son of Artemis Fowl the First and Angeline Fowl, atleast, this is his body, and I speak with his voice, my thoughts come from his memories."
"You can't be him."
"I am what you created Holly, I am his body, his mind, given rise once more, but you've forgotten what truly drew you to him, and him to you in the first place, haven't you?"
She stared, dumb struck. This corpse, this thing, had she really done this? Danu, what had she done?
"His soul." The corpse continued, jerking her from forming spiral, "I am his body and mind, but I have not his soul, so I cannot truly be him."
"So… I failed?" She asked, tears again forming in her eyes, "He's gone?"
A cold, grey hand was lifted from the slab, sliding from under the sheet that covered the body. It moved gently, carefully, wiping away her tears with a thumb. The corpse's head turned, glancing at the book laid next to it's head.
After a few moments, it spoke again, "No, you didn't fail, you did exactly right, marvellously in fact," It paused for a few moments, simply holding it's cold hand against her warm cheek, "You did the best you could have in this situation, and of that I am incredibly proud."
Holly nodded slowly, lifting her hand to cup the grey skin of Artemis' hand. Standing there just for a scant couple moments, shutting her eyes and pretending. Pretending that she had done the right thing, that he wasn't still laying on a slab of stainless steel.
"Do you trust me?" Again he spoke, breaking her from her reverie.
"What?" She opened her eyes, letting go of his hand as he lowered it.
He rolled his eyes, rephrasing his question, "Do you trust Artemis?"
"Yes." She answered without hesitation, she knew she did.
"And you know I, he, whichever, had a plan yes?"
"Yes."
"A plan which I assume Foaly has figured out, and put into motion?"
She paused, thinking on this for several seconds. She knew Foaly was the best at what he did, she knew No.1 had faith the pan would work, she knew Artemis would never have done what he did if he didn't think it would work. She nodded.
"So why are you here?" He asked, tilting his head to one side.
Holly didn't have an answer to that, atleast, not right away. She paused, pulling in a long breath and shut her eyes. After what felt like eternity but could have only been a few seconds she opened them again and answered: "What if he's not Artemis? What if he's not my Artemis? What if he's not, not, you?"
He didn't laugh, but he smiled in that way that said he wanted to, but wasn't rude enough to allow himself to do it. Tilting his head in the other direction this time he said, "Then he will be the luckiest Artemis in the world, for he will get the chance to fall in love with you, all over again."
Holly laughed, she didn't know what else to do. She was stood in a morgue, speaking with the corpse of the man she loved, who'd died protecting her, while her other best friends worked on cloning him. So she laughed, hands leaning on the slab to keep from falling over. Vision growing blurry as she began to cry, laughing till she couldn't breath. Collapsing again, leaning her head on the slab again, shoulders jerking as she tried to bring her breathing back under control. Slowly, she forced herself back to standing, still breathing heavily, the odd giggle bubbling up from her.
Artemis watched her all the time, simply raising an eyebrow, "Quite finished Major?"
"Yes, yes I am, I'm sorry it's just…"
He smiled, shaking his head, "You've no need to explain Holly, frankly, hearing you laugh, one last time, has been truly fantastic."
She shook her head, "It's not the last time, it can't be," She glared at him, "Got it?"
"Of course Holly, of course, but our time here is running short, and you need to clean up, it would be a shame if Artemis were to return, only to find you locked away in the depths."
"You're right, of course you're right…" She ran a hand through her hair, before she looked back down to him, "Can I have one last thing..?"
"What would that be?" He asked, that same I-Want-To-Laugh-But-Won't smile tugging at the corner of this mouth.
"A kiss," She returned the smirk, "From your cold, clay lips."
"Ah, but if you were to kiss these cold, clay lips, your time would not be long" He replied, continuing the poem.
"Maybe, but if I can spend it with you, it will be worth it."
She leaned down, pressing her warm, soft lips to his cold, quiet ones. When she stood back up his eyes were shut and he was once again still as the grave.
Cleaning up the ritual was easier than she thought it would be, she could smudge and sweep the chalk with her foot so the janitor wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of what it had once been, she tossed the cooled candles back into her bag, along side the ritual knife, which she wiped down slowly, taking care not to cut herself again, then cleaned up the blood she'd splattered across Artemis. It wasn't perfect, but it should be enough that no one would do more than shrug and go 'Huh, weird' before going on with their day.
Last was The Book.
It was still heavy in her hands, more so now she had seen what it had been capable of. She shoo her head, wrapping it back in the cloth she'd first bound it in, before shoving it into the depths of her bag. She would decide what to do with it later.
She knew what she was going to do next, she knew what she had to do. She had to be there for when Artemis woke up.