Page 67 of Slayer Mom
I tsked and faced front. “You’re the one who told me all about the horrors of soda, the high fructose corn syrup, the carbonation, the caffeine, the food coloring.”
“It won’t hurt him. He’s an immortal.”
“I gave up coke because you convinced me that it was going to kill me, but you’ve been slipping it to my children? That’s just wrong.”
“Ah, you’re jealous. Well, if you turn into a vampire, you can drink all the soda you want with absolutely no effect.”
“Don’t listen to him, mom,” Wat warned, seriously.
I patted his hand. “He’s joking, Wat. Even as a vampire, soda will dissolve your organs.”
Hazen laughed, or I should say, the Grand Master laughed, because that wasn’t my husband’s laugh. It was gorgeous, though, all deep and perfectly pitched with a slight rumble that caught on your nerves and gave you goosebumps.
The battle started suddenly, with zombies coming out of the ground, slowly at first, and then more and more as they made large tunnels from wherever they’d come from.
I gripped the arm of my chair while the zombie numbers grew in the empty center. “The bases are loaded,” I said.
“Seriously, mom, that was a lame pun,” Wat complained.
“It was pretty bad,” Lock agreed.
“How is that even a pun? It’s a joke, not a pun. Hazen, tell them that it’s a joke, not a pun.”
“Of course, your mother is right.” He leaned over and took my hand.
I froze for a second, because his hand felt so right and so wrong at the same time. I didn’t know if I should pull away or climb in his lap and kiss him to take my mind off nerves, instead of making bad jokes, puns, whatever it was.
He released me before I could make up my mind and then he said, “Exterminators, begin.”
Begin what? I was his exterminator, but was I supposed to kill all those zombies by myself? I stared at him until I noticed all the other people in the stadiums getting up and walking down to leap gracefully into the seething mass of undead. Exterminators, plural. All of them looked much less human than me, as in less delicate, and most of them had cool longcloaks that fluttered beautifully as they slashed brains and ripped out spines. Like this one guy, just grabbed a skull and yanked out a spine, and then used it to flay the other zombies. It was a little more messy than the woman with the sledgehammer who just slammed brains like that jumping moles game. I’d always hated that game. It reminded me of trying to get rid of mice or cockroaches.
I gave Hazen another look in case he wanted to stop me from messing up the real exterminator’s pretty show, but he didn’t say anything, and I was his exterminator, and I was wearing armor. I should at least get it covered in a nice layer of zombie brains.
I took a deep breath and smelled nutmeg, and then I walked past Hazen and Lock, noticing the red flash in Lock’s eyes before he looked away, and I felt bad.
“Don’t feel bad,” Wat said from right behind me.
I turned to frown at him. “Where are you going?” Lock was standing up directly behind Wat, but Hazen was still sitting.
“We’re your first guard,” Lock said and pulled out a pretty hammer. “Is it as disgusting as it looks?”
“Well, I mean, it is, but it doesn’t seem necessary for you two to put yourselves at risk.”
“They’re your first guard,” Hazen said, smiling slightly. “You’re my exterminator, so you may proceed.”
That was a command. He’d put it delicately, much more than last week’s Grand Master would have ordered me around, but it was definitely a command. I scowled at him. “Sure. I may.” I spun around and headed down the aisle, trying not to be overprotective of my children. If it was safe for me to go down into the seething zombie mass, it was safe for my vampire offspring. The trouble was that it wasn’t safe for me. I was a delicate human. Still, we were all here to do ourpart, and if Hazen thought it was best for us to have a nice bonding zombie exterminator evening, that’s what we’d do. Heaven forbid the Grand Master tell me what the whole plan was, or ask for my opinion. He couldn’t help it. He was older than Genghis Khan.
“He thinks that you’re hilarious,” Lock said, frowning as we hesitated on the edge ten feet over the field. Most of the exterminators just threw themselves over, but I’d have to climb down.
“Because it was a joke, not a pun.”
He grunted.
“What’s with the grunting?” I asked, delicately climbing over the corner edge to see if I could get some purchase on the corner pole with my boots. Maybe I’d have to slide down it like a fire pole.
“That’s what he does when he doesn’t want to explain why he said something that answered what you were thinking instead of saying. He does it a lot,” Wat said, scowling at his brother and then vaulting over to land down below in the small spaces between seats.
“You were reading my mind about jokes and puns?”
