Chapter 1

Fowl Manor, Ireland

Holly groaned. Being unconscious wasn’t that bad, it was sort of like a deep sleep. The only bad thing about it was waking up; that hurt.

Holly groaned again and opened one eye. This didn’t go very far to identifying exactly where she was so she opened the other eye as well.

Her surroundings were strangely familiar but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She sat up, looked around and laughed. Then she stopped laughing because that hurt. What she had seen to make her laugh also explained where she was. She was in a bed at Fowl Manor and Artemis was sitting in a chair next to her, arms and legs sprawled and fast asleep. His hair was a mess and his suit was damp. Holly had to suppress another burst of laughter when he shifted in his sleep causing him to fall out of the chair.

Artemis looked around, startled by the sudden awakening. When he saw Holly looking down at him he jumped to his feet.

“Holly, you’re OK!”

“Yes,” She said darkly as she remembered the reason for her trip to Fowl Manor. “But others soon may not be.”

“Holly, I think you had better tell exactly what is going on and don’t leave anything out.”

A street in Chelmsford, Essex, England

The first thing to be heard was not, as you might expect, the blast of the bombs, nor was it the shattering of windows or the crumbling of bricks. It was the screams that awoke Hestia from her already troubled sleep.

She jumped from her bed and her own scream quickly joined the rest of those in her street. It wasn’t what she could see that made her scream, it was what she couldn’t see. Her house and every other house, as far as the eye could see were held up purely by their wooden frames. The bricks of the walls and shards of the glass windows lay in smoldering heaps everywhere.

“No!”She thought bewildered. “How could they have found me?”

And this was the last thing that passed through her mind before a second round of bombs came cascading down upon the inhabitance of Hutchins Street, causing the roof to give way and come plummeting down towards her.

The last thing she heard before she was claimed by the blissful ignorance of unconsciousness was the cry of her younger brother calling her name…

“Hess!!”

And the sound of sirens screaming clawing at the night.

Little did she know that this same scene was being replayed in different streets all over the country.

Some other stories by Kcool:

• Update to AF and the goddess of fire