she heard him mutter. He walked into the kitchen and Valkyrie hugged him.
“You told her?” he asked.
“Nope,” her mum said. “She’s just in a hugging mood.”
Valkyrie stepped back. “Told me what?”
Her father looked down at her. “You grow taller every day, you know that?”
She made herself keep the smile. Suddenly she didn’t want to get any taller. She didn’t want to grow any older. Being taller and older and stronger meant being closer to the time when Darquesse would come for them. She wanted to stay the same height and age forever.
“We have news,” her mother said, wrapping her arm around her husband’s waist.
Valkyrie frowned. “What?”
“We’ve decided to get a pet,” her dad announced.
Valkyrie laughed, and it was a real and genuine laugh. After everything that she’d had to deal with over the past few months, having something so gloriously normal and fun as a new pet took on unimaginable levels of comfort. Plus, she’d always wanted a pet.
“Can we have a dog?” she asked. “And not one of those annoying yappy dogs. Hannah Foley has a Chinese Crested dog that doesn’t have any hair, and it looks like the little guy who hangs out of Jabba the Hutt’s ceiling. I don’t want one of those. I wouldn’t be able to take it for walks without being embarrassed for it.”
Her dad frowned. “You’ve seen Star Wars? When did you see Star Wars? I’ve been trying to get you to watch it for years.”
Valkyrie hesitated. Tanith had made her sit down and watch the movies over the course of one weekend. It had been an educational experience.
“I like the lightsabres,” she said.
“We’re not getting a dog,” her mother told her, bringing the conversation back to where it started.
“We can’t get a cat,” Valkyrie argued. “They don’t do anything except plot against you and multiply like Gremlins.”
“We’re not getting a cat either.”
“Can we get a snake?”
“No.”
“Please? I can keep it in my room and I’ll feed it mice and things and I won’t kill it.”
“No snakes, no hamsters, no rats, no guinea pigs.”
Valkyrie smiled hopefully. “A horse?”
“How about something a little smaller?” her dad said. “Like, I don’t know, a brother or a sister?”
Valkyrie looked at them. “What?”
Her mother’s smile widened. “I’m pregnant, sweetheart.”
It took a moment, and when that moment was over, Valkyrie found herself leaping across the room and hugging her mother and screaming “Oh my God!” over and over. Then she thought that she might damage the baby, so she jumped back and leaped for her father and hugged him, and he laughed.
And later, in her room, tears came to her eyes when she thought of what kind of danger this child would be born into.
His first successful recruitment had been in Phoenix Park. The recruit was a middle-aged man out for a stroll. Scapegrace had waited until there was no one else around and then slipped out from his hiding place. He leaped on the man and dragged him into the bushes, where he bit him. The man tried struggling, but the infection was surprisingly fast acting, and within sixty seconds, the man was dead. After a few moments, however, his eyes opened again and he was looking up at Scapegrace.
“Am I in heaven?” he had asked.
“Don’t be stupid,” Scapegrace snapped.
“Sorry,” the man said and got up.
Scapegrace had looked at his first recruit. A shabby specimen if ever there was one, who seemed to wear a permanently dazed expression on his face.
“What’s your name?” Scapegrace asked.
“Gerald,” said the man.
Scapegrace pondered. Gerald the zombie just didn’t have that fear-inducing ring to it. “I’m going to call you Thrasher,” he said.
Thrasher blinked. “All right,” he said uncertainly.
Scapegrace nodded. Thrasher was a good name. Thrasher would be his right-hand man in the new zombie army he was building for his Master.
“Come with me, Thrasher,” Scapegrace said, leading the way and liking the sound of it.
He had done a lot more recruiting that afternoon. In Phoenix Park alone he recruited Slasher, Crasher, Dasher and Basher, then they all took Crasher’s van and he recruited Slicer, Dicer, Wrecker and Boiler. Boiler signified the end of Scapegrace’s new name strategy, and from then on he just called them Zombie One and Zombie Two, things like that. He had more on his mind than thinking up stupid names for his zombies.
He had brought them back to his Master’s castle, and the first problem to arise was that none of the other zombies seemed to respect Thrasher’s authority. It was too late to demote him now though. Such an act would be seen as weak leadership. The recruits needed to see Scapegrace as infallible, much like a pope or a politician. Scapegrace couldn’t admit that appointing Thrasher as his second-in-command had been a mistake, and instead hoped that Thrasher’s head would fall off or something.
The second problem was that Scapegrace was starting to smell, but he was confident that new plans he had set in motion would take care of it. There might even be a cream out there that would help. He had taken to wearing car fresheners around his neck, tucked beneath his shirt.
Scapegrace walked the stone corridors, heading for the room which housed his new zombie army. He put on a fierce expression, opened the
