“They might be kittens," she said hopefully."They're stalking us.""They might be shy.""I don't think it's kittens, Valkyrie.""Puppies, then?”

“Relax. This isn't the scary part yet.""Mmm, not helpful.""Try to think about puppies," he suggested. "No wait, not puppies. Think about kittens. Demons don't eat kittens. Too many hairballs.""Hey, maybe we could try not talking for a while.”

“Confront a child, a puppy, and a kitten with a sudden danger; the child will turn instinctively for assistance, the puppy will grovel in abject submission, the kitten will brace its tiny body for a frantic resistance.”

“As we get ready to leave, Georgina announces that she wants to keep the kitten. But of course she can't. We walk up and down looking for its mother, calling for its siblings. But the nearby kraals are deserted, of both people and animals. And eventually we have to leave it at the gate of an empty kraal, the closest one to where it found us, hoping that this might be its home. As we start to drive away, the kitten totters down the dirt road after us, a furry ball of khaki with irregular black spots, and Georgina bursts into tears.'Over the kitten? Really?' I ask, gesturing around the ruins of the torture base and the mass graves. 'With all of this?''No,' she sniffs. 'It's not just the kitten. It's everyone here. They've all been abandoned. No one gives a **** about what happened to them. They're completely alone.”

“That does it. It can't be true love. Mr. Willow has eyes like a sick kitten. You might love a sick kitten but you don't marry it, you keep it as a pet.”

“It means black kitten," I said with my pulse almost even again.Ares studied me. "And you're ok with them calling you their black kitten?""They're wererats, Ares," I said.He frowned at me."They're not calling me their little black rat. Think it through.”