Hot for Slayer

by Ali Hazelwood

The last time Lazlo Enyedi and I made this much physical contact with each other, the Berlin Wall was falling. Literally. As the crowd energetically chiseled chunks of graffitied concrete off the sections surrounding the wall’s checkpoints, Lazlo’s body pressed so close to mine that his heat nearly melded us together.

Hottttt

All of this is to say: I was hanging out in Berlin and having a pretty good time—until I spotted Lazlo Enyedi. My least yet most favorite slayer. Or maybe just the only one I could have picked out of a lineup.

My familiarity with Enyedi was expected, considering that the Hällsing Guild had specifically tasked him with eradicating my bloodline. Still, most vampire slayers came and went, usually done in by a moment of distraction or by their own reckless, hateful hubris. Enyedi, though, had been around since the early Middle Ages. Probably because he was irritatingly skilled at his job.

“Vampire,” he whispered the second our eyes met across the festive mob.

I studied him for a split second. Took in the colorful tattoos that climbed around his neck to curl under his jawline. His dark hair and amber eyes. The towering stillness of his shoulders as people walked around him, instinctively stepping out of his way. “Slayer.” I sighed.

Hotttt

Not that I enjoy relentless harassment, but what’s a girl to do when the only constant presence during the last millennium of her life has been a guy who’s contractually mandated to murder her?

Fuck him and his dry-cleaning bill.

Lmaooooooo

“Look at you,” he murmured in his faded Eastern European accent, those yellow animal eyes raking down my skin. “Flushed and plump and beautiful. You just fed, didn’t you?” “Beautiful? Aww, Lazlo, I didn’t know you had a crush on— Motherfucker.” He jockeyed the blade back and forth in my belly, which, ouch.

“Now we’re even,” I gritted out. “Are we?” Lazlo’s expression did not give me the satisfaction of changing a single millimeter. Slayers, too, were unlikely to make a big fuss over some light stabbing. “What about when the sun rises? I have you pinned.”

His lips twitched. “We could reminisce. Thankfully, we share many memories.” “Thankfully. Like that time you tried to kill me in Constantinople. Or the time you tried to kill me in Lampang. Or the time you tried to kill me in a courtyard in Venice. Or the time in Saskatoon, where—and you may start to notice a pattern—you also tried to—” “Hush, Aethelthryth.”

How the hell did a slayer’s blood get to smell this good? “You’re going to have to knock me out if you want me to shut up until sunrise.” “And deprive myself of your company?” He clicked his tongue. “Never.”

“As long as you don’t let anyone get to you before I do, Aethelthryth.” “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll always save myself for you.”

When he noticed my eyes on him, he lifted the blade up to his face. And with a smile that did not feel like a smile, he began to lick it clean of my blood. It was . . . Well. It just was.

Today, nearly thirty-six years after that night in Germany, his arms wrap tight around me, his body is a heavy blanket above mine, and his only purpose seems to be shielding me from the sunlight. Today, Lazlo Enyedi saved my life.

Most vampires are extremely territorial. They cannot stand close proximity with others, crave competition even when natural resources abound, and are more likely to murder each other than to extend a dinner invitation. Vampires suck—no pun intended—and

My motto is: If I have to suck someone dry every few weeks, why not make it a Goldman Sachs executive?

If it makes you feel better, I thought fondly at him, willing the universe to pass on the message, I would have preferred it to be you. Apparently, I would have preferred it so much, my brain produced him out of thin air.

“Hey,” I told him with a small, amused smile. “Couldn’t bear to let someone else butcher me, huh?” “I know what’s mine,” he muttered in his usual clipped tone. He moved to free my tied wrists, and his hands felt so warm and assured and uncannily real on my flesh, I began to suspect that maybe . . .

Kill him now. Kill. Him. Now. But I don’t. Because I’m too busy listening to the five words that change my life forever. “Who the hell are you?”

He mouths the words. “What’s the origin of that?” “I think . . .” I glance at the ink that seems to cover every inch of his body. Tattoos have been embraced by slayers since long before they became mainstream, but Lazlo’s art has always set him apart from his brethren—and always fascinated me. It’s made of ancient, angular runes that remind me of the Old Turkic script. Distinctively Carpathian designs. Colors and motifs calling back to Eastern European folklore. “Hungary, I believe.” “Am I Hungarian?”

“What’s your name?” He inches even closer. 21 I could tell him anything. Joan of Arc. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Fiona from Shrek. Sadly, immortality must have made me boring, because I say, “I go by Ethel.”

I can feel that I have at least seven weapons strategically placed on my body—while you have been doing a poor job of hiding a single dagger behind your back. I would also easily be able to reconstruct the series of blows and relative positions that led to this”—the back of his hand brushes against my cheekbone, a barely there touch that has me pulling back and shivering at the same time—“specific pattern of bruises on your skin. This is a degree of situational awareness that doesn’t strike me as typical for a paralegal, so . . . what are our jobs, Ethel?”

Slayers are immortal until they’re beheaded. They are incredibly strong and enhanced in every conceivable way, sure. Deep down, though, they are still human. They long for connection.

“Aethelthryth,” he whispered the second I spotted him in the crowd, his yellow eyes glowing even through the cigarette smoke. I strove to remember what weapons I’d stuffed into my go-go boots, and thought, Come on, Enyedi. Stop ruining my fun.

But Lazlo didn’t jump on the stage. Didn’t throw a hatchet at me, either. He simply let me croon on for a while, with my trite fire/desire and love/above rhymes. Patiently, he stared with that icy, unsettling gaze as I sang something cringeworthy about how no one understands, I just want to feel his hands. When my masterpiece ended, everyone applauded except for him.

“I hope you loved the song.” At last, he smiled. I could have sworn I spotted an amused dimple dipping within his cheek, but he mouthed a few words at me. I am going to kill you.

If he were anyone else, New Yorkers would be pushing him into traffic. But Lazlo is tall; covered in striking, unique tattoos; built like a small skyscraper himself. He doesn’t exactly ooze agreeability. The most they level at him is a side-eye.

No: I am leading the oldest and most feared vampire slayer in existence to my place. Despite being a vampire myself. What a time to be undead.

His smile vanishes when he catches sight of his own face in a mirror. He stares, perhaps shocked by his own good looks—because, sadly, they are good. And he is handsome. Grossly so, despite the broken lines of his nose, the scars lining his skin, and his face that’s not fully symmetrical, like he was painted by an artist self-assured enough to bend the basic rules of anatomy.

All slayers have 34yellow eyes. It’s a by-product of what they’re put through to become what they are, which I’ve heard includes yearslong training by teachers who are not particularly nurturing, and a final rite that often ends in a massacre. Amber is the mark of a full-fledged, immortal slayer, whose eternal mission is to destroy vampire bloodlines. Something else I’ve heard: The Hällsing Guild has been struggling to recruit new members, because becoming immortal

I try not to think about it too much: that slayers, just like vampires, were once humans. We both had to adjust to becoming something new, to the idea of infinity, and that’s no easy feat. Maybe Lazlo’s self-image is tied to what he looked like before becoming a slayer, and his little brain is still buffering over it. But it’s going to catch up any second now, and when it does, he needs to be gone. He can stay the night, sure, but tomorrow I’ll kick him out and—

I add a clean T-shirt and a pair of sweats to the basket—the largest sizes I can find, yet somehow unlikely to fit Lazlo. I run back to my apartment, and step inside just as he walks out of the bathroom. Naked.

I guess Lazlo is wearing a towel around his hips. But spiritually, culturally, metaphysically, he feels naked. And yes, he does have ink all over his body, but it seems to be less focused on narrating the misdeeds of Vlad the Impaler and more on commemorating . .

On his chest, right on top of his heart, is an ornate Venetian eye mask that looks eerily familiar, but I cannot place it.

“I have a lot of scars,” he interrupts, conversational. “All over my body.” “ . . . Okay.” “Some are big.” He points at a thick, knotty line that bisects the middle of his abdomen. “I wonder how I got this one. It must have been deep.” Unless I’m mistaken, I gave it to him in Bath during the 1800s.

“Bad circulation,” I mumble, hurrying to bend my neck and search for the wound he mentioned. “Vitamin deficiencies. Gets chilly at night outside.” “You just gave me three different excuses.”

Always has been. Every time we fought, every blade I sank into his flesh, every breakneck chase, the allure of his blood was there, calling. I’ve injured and killed plenty of slayers before him, and they all repulsed me, but Lazlo . . . I have no idea why his specific blood feels so overpoweringly, mouthwateringly delicious, but now that the glass splint is out, I should probably take a step back.

“You are getting warmer,” he murmurs. Not suggestively. An observation, followed by the back of his hand tracing my cheek. As if to probe a portentous flush with his knuckles. I swallow. “Yeah.” “Good.” His hand lingers.

Lazlo appeared during my third century, and was relatively easy to overpower in our first few encounters, which I attributed to him not having fully grown into his slayer strength. How I miss those days.

In fact, I remember his eyes on me from across the square, constant, never leaving. I thought—stupidly, mistakenly, disappointingly—that maybe that handsome young man was attracted to me.

“It was one-sided,” he tells me after he’s done chewing. “From you.” “What?” “The dislike.” “I assure you, it was not.” “And I assure you, when I look at you, I feel anything but that.” A pause.

Well, Lazlo, sometimes a gang of bandits decides to rob your nunnery—because why not?—and you see what’s happening to your sisters and decide that you’d rather throw yourself out of the window than allow the raiders to come any closer to you—because why not?—and a vampire passing by spots you in your last moments and decides to suck you dry—because why not?—and then you wake up in the middle of the night, and for some reason, you’re a damn vampire, too. “It wasn’t my decision,” I tell him instead. It wasn’t my maker’s decision, either.

“Pretending what?” His chest heaves. “I might not remember my name, or anything about who I am. But I could never be near you and not know exactly what you are to me.”

“Thank you,” the girl says solemnly. “I’m going to be a vampire when I grow up.” “And I’m going to be a vampire hunter,” says the boy. “And we’re going to get married.” I try not to choke on my tongue.

It’s casual, the way he tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. His touch is at once new and familiar, scorching and gentle. “Strawberry blond,” he says to himself. Then asks me, “We rarely what?” Vampires don’t blush. We simply don’t have enough blood for it. I thank whoever cursed us for that small grace, glance away, and mumble, “Nothing.”

“Do you, um, maybe wanna play cards?” He immediately puts the blade away, like sharing an activity with me is the only thing he has ever desired, and it’s . . . Nice, kind of. Shared. Pleasant. Not really what I usually do during the day, which is . . . maybe not lonely, but definitely on my own.

“What we are to each other,” he clarifies, a note of Come on, Ethel, don’t be obtuse in his tone that I should take more offense to. But I am being obtuse. And he is being remarkably forbearing. “Should I redefine work nemeses for you?” I ask archly.

He bends toward me slowly enough that I could conceivably stop him, but I don’t care to conceive of it—before his lips touch mine, or after. I’ve kissed and been kissed by many people. None, however, who were, fundamentally, at an atomic level, like me. None whose feel and scent and body I’d learned over centuries, through endless battles and close calls. None who were anything like Lazlo.

After a while on this earth, one rarely experiences new sensations. But nothing has ever felt as good as Lazlo’s leg slipping between mine and pinning me to the wall. As the warmth of his hands closing around my lower back and my nape to turn me into him. As his tongue sliding against mine with no hesitation.

I can’t make us stop. Instead, I reach up, fist his shirt, and deepen the kiss. I press myself to his body and listen to the faint, pleased groan he lets out. I rub my core against the meat of his thigh while...