Free Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith Page A

with a needlepoint portrait of Mary, complete with halo, pimples, fangs, and the words O UR L ITTLE A NGEL —M AY G OD T AKE H ER B ACK S OON floating over her wispy hair. All were shocked into silence when the stranger marched in, boomed “To the dojo—
now!
” and immediately marched back out.
    “Come along, girls, come along,” Mr. Bennet said, waving them toward the door.
    “Who was that?” Lydia asked.
    “Our new master of the deadly arts, apparently,” Elizabeth said.
    “Our new—?” Kitty began. She looked over at Lydia, broke into giggles, and then both girls raced for the dojo with idiotic grins on their faces.
    Even Mrs. Bennet was charmed by the stranger despite his best efforts to the contrary, asking “Who is that rude, handsome man?” after he brushed past her in the foyer.
    He lost some of his comeliness, if not his rudeness, once he was in the dojo, for the state of the place puckered his perfect features into a prodigious grimace.
    “Are those
daffodils
?”
    Mr. Bennet peeped over at Elizabeth and jerked his head at the flower pots crammed into the corner.
    “I wasn’t expecting anyone from the Order quite so soon,” he said as his daughter hustled the flowers out and tossed them over the nearest hedge.
    The stranger let his scowl reply for him. When Elizabeth was back inside, he nodded at the floor and said, “Sit.”
    Mr. Bennet and the girls seated themselves in the warrior way—legs crossed, spines straight—and though the stranger didn’t compliment them on it, he did allow his glower to fade.
    “My name,” he said, “is Geoffrey Hawksworth. You will call me ‘
Master
Hawksworth’ or simply ‘Master.’ I have been sent by a party whose name your ears are, as yet, unfit to hear. Suffice it to say, I represent a fellowship to which your father, Oscar Bennet, once belonged—a secret league of warriors sworn to eternal vigilance and readiness. As part of hisoath of fealty to the Order, he swore to raise all his progeny in the warrior way. But he broke that vow. He chose to live as a gentleman and bring you up to be ladies . . . and now you find yourselves helpless at the very hour The Enemy returns.”
    The young man pointed a redoubled frown at Mr. Bennet.
    It pained Elizabeth to see her father bow his head, looking cowed.
    “I have been tasked with setting right your father’s failing,” Master Hawksworth went on. “You
will
become warriors. I will make you so through exacting instruction, unremitting discipline, and a complete and utter absence of mercy. Do not mistake any of this for cruelty. It is a mercy to you, one for which you should be thankful, for it
might
save your lives. You will show your gratitude—and your devotion to your training—through absolute obedience. Anything I say, you must do without question. This is the first step on the path to preparedness, and you must take it with me now.”
    The young man paused then, and when he spoke again his voice was so soft it sounded almost tender.
    “Do you understand?”
    “Yes,” the girls said.
    “Yes,
what
?” Hawksworth prompted them gently.
    “Yes, Master,” Elizabeth said.
    The Master nodded and almost—
almost
—smiled.
    “Good,” he said. And then suddenly he was spinning on his heel and stabbing at Kitty with an outstretched arm and a pointing finger, and everything mild or kindly or
human
about him was lost behind a mask of raw contempt. “
YOU!
Jump through the ceiling and catch me a swallow!”
    Kitty blinked at him. “Ummm . . . Papa hasn’t taught us how to do that yet . . . Master.”
    “I did not ask what
Papa
has taught you,” Master Hawksworth snapped back. “I told you to jump—and you did not.” He pointed at the floor now. “Fifty
dand-baithaks
.”
    “Dandy-whats? Uhhh . . . Father hasn’t taught us about those, either.”
    Master Hawksworth threw a quick, cold glare at Mr. Bennet, then shrugged off his coat and began unbuttoning his vest.
    “Then I must