The Valkyrie Read Online Free Page A

fully train you up to be an expert member of Valkyrie Unit
401.”
    Interrupting
Glory’s patter Bea asked “Fortune called you elite?”
    “You really
haven’t heard of us? Even after I’ve put in all those years of hard
work building a terrible reputation? Mothers tell their children
tales of us at night to stop the blighters from misbehaving.” Glory
said a little flustered. What was the point in being a badass if no
one knew it? “You should know that Unit 401 is the only combative
unit of the Valkyries there is. Everyone else just mopes around
battlefields. We’re the strategy wing of all of Valhalla’s
operations. Neither Odin nor Freya really can be arsed so Liberty
does the planning, Honour does the logistics, Valour always dealt
with the mortals and I deal with shit on the ground whilst
overseeing everything else, with Liberty as second in command. Over
the last millennium 64.3% of all conflicts came out of this unit
globally, whether the world knows it or not.”
    “Ah cool so I
get to blow stuff up?” Bea asked.
    “Oh sweetheart
there are actually three blows: blowing shit up, blow jobs and blow
coke. This, my young friend, is the life.” Glory was sincere.
    “So what about
the other, erm, perks?”
    “Free digs with
a mead tap in the kitchen; nice cars; decent armour we commission
ourselves from Wayland; oh and you’ll come out the other end of
this job with enough of a problem with alcohol that you’re
interesting at parties. Do you have any other questions?” Glory
asked Bea who just shook her head “Nope, cool. You’ve been to
Hackney before right? We like it here, it’s got nice pubs with pool
tables but is dicey enough that you might get stabbed and/or raped.
Honour says it reminds her of home. Fancy a line before I show you
around?”
    As Glory and
Bea got out of the car Glory couldn’t help but feel a little twinge
of what she thought could be nostalgia. Valour moving out like that
and in with her boyfriend felt like the end of an era, it also
served to remind Glory of how omnishambolic she was. Not that she
felt the need for a boyfriend. She just sometimes – very, very,
very occasionally – thought it might be quite nice to have one
again. She thought of Loki and considered calling him. She even
thought of calling Thor. Calling either of them would achieve
nothing. Loki had written his phone number on the top of her thigh
as a joke because she never called him when he asked her to and he
was adamant that she must have lost his number. Glory couldn’t
quite bear to scrub it off just yet. She couldn’t bear to scrub the
phone number of a married god that she was screwing off her thigh.
That thought would have been sobering had Glory not been so tanked
up. That being said the freedom of being a Valkyrie was like
nothing else: over the centuries she had seen her cousins reduced
to merely maternal consorts or whores. Glory had gotten to do
exactly what she had wanted and if anyone objected unreasonably she
could always just stab them. She very much liked it that way.
    The pair walked
past the rubbish bins. The big green recycling bin was full of
empties to the red door. There were cans of ready prepared gin and
tonics, Pimm’s that had been drunk neat, and desolate bottles of
port were overflowing – Honour demanded they recycle. Glory took
out her keys, opened the door and they both walked in to the house
and in to another era. On the small wooden table in the hallway
were Valour’s old set which she handed over to Bea. They were
accompanied by four piles of letters, one for each of the girls.
Glory took up Valour’s with the intention of forwarding them on and
her own. Of the seven letters in her hand addressed to her six were
silly love letters and the other was a bloody invitation from her
mother. Bea shut the door behind her with a thud.
    Bea strode into
the kitchen as if she had been waiting for that moment for
eternity, leaving Glory to reread the spidery written