The Valkyrie Read Online Free PDF Page A

made a conscious
decision three decades ago that she was going to reclaim the word
nymphomaniac for the nymphs. She wore it as a badge of pride as one
rightly should. Plus it was factually true Glory, Liberty and her
were all nymphs, and nymphomaniacs.
    “My mum’s a sea
nymph.” Glory twiddled a strand of her hair, “It has had little
effect on me bar an irrational fondness for boats. I bloody love an
armada. Liberty’s mum is a river nymph.”
    “My dad’s the
Zambezi. Glory, I can’t stop thinking about naked girls now and
it’s your fault entirely. Bea let me show you your new room and
then I can give you a tour of Valhalla. Have you sent home for your
things?” Honour asked to which Bea merely nodded. Honour wasn’t
fond of the shy; she hoped that Bea would liven up later. “We
should even be able to go and train the new recruits for a little
bit.” Honour led Bea out of the kitchen and up the stairs to Bea’s
new room/Valour’s old room. She had gone in there once she’d done
her shift that morning to see if Valour was asleep after she hadn’t
shown up. After Liberty had had a bad morning trying to predict the
future, Honour had assumed that Valour had just gone home with that
elf like Glory said she had, although she hadn’t expected her to
shack up with him. The room had been removed of all of Valour’s
possessions. Her vanity table was stripped bare, neither a lick nor
a slick of mascara was to be found. Her books had migrated from the
book shelf and her dresses had breezed away. The naked room had
made Honour feel morose. She imagined that that must be how mortals
felt when a relative died and they looked at their empty chair, you
know because they had always sat there and it was their chair,
although sometimes she wondered whether mortals had feelings at
all.
    ***
    Bea sat down on
her new bed and took the room in. She thought it would do quite
nicely, quite nicely indeed. She’d made her judgement of Glory and
Honour and was pleased that everything was as she thought it would
be.

Going Blind
    Glory waved Honour and Bea off to
Valhalla from the doorway, went back into the kitchen and made a
cup of tea. Not that she could drink tea – gods were limited to
ambrosia, wine and hard liquor – but she understood that the act of
making tea would make her feel intrinsically better. She kept a
secret stash of UHT milk and Tetley’s tea bags at the back of the
barbiturates cupboard for such purposes. Glory sat there and
sniffed the creamy colonial liquid whilst she listened to the
Shipping Forecasts on BBC iPlayer.
    “There are
warnings of gales in Viking, Forties, Cromarty, Dogger, Fisher and
Trafalgar, Sole, Lundy and Shannon.” The nice man from the wireless
said. Glory loved ships; she’d even made it the basis of her
mother’s erstwhile empire. Ships brought hope. Ships brought goods,
people and ideas, they also brought war. Was there anything as
splendid as the sound of cannon fire? As much as she tried her
damned hardest to suppress her nature, Glory thrived in situations
of destruction. She was irresistibly drawn to those who destroy.
That was why she liked being a Valkyrie: she was close enough to
all the action without always committing it herself. She was
testing her limits by putting herself in there and savouring it. In
the shallow depths of her was a killer and her restraint was
drowning.
    Glory heard
Liberty unlock the door and so she poured her clandestine cuppa
down the sink and swilled the mug out. Liberty walked into the room
all of a fluster. She put her bags down on the counter having
evidently ram-raided Bond Street in a flurry of angst. Not that
Liberty had any money. Money was far too human for her to
contemplate. Liberty only had to look at the poor shop assistants
and they bagged things up without even thinking about it.
    “So what did
you get?” Glory asked.
    “High heeled
shoes.” Liberty said. She had just sat down in the chair next to
Glory and had rested her lovely