Hot for Slayer

by Ali Hazelwood

“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.”

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

“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.

There is no damn way my kind and his have ever done this before. Sharing a meal, that is. Talking politely. Even just not killing each other. I wish I had a group chat to share this fantastic occurrence with. Even a single friend would do. Maybe I should yell it out of the window and hope the raccoons will hear.

“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.”

Vampires don’t sleep. It’s part of the whole curse thing—no rest, no quiet, no respite from our evil deeds. We are condemned to an eternity of staring at empty walls and reflecting on what we have done, all in the hope of atoning for our very existence. The possibilities for self-flagellation are endless. But my white-hot take is that I’ve done nothing wrong, at least not since I began observing a strictly asshole-tarian diet. So I politely excused myself from the pity party and retooled that time for playing sudoku.

Oh my God. Is that a stake in his pocket, or is he just glad to see me?

“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.”

“I know your smell. I know your skin. Your hair. It’s all familiar. I have it all memorized. And I dream of you—of this. So many dreams, all so different, we must have done it a million times, in a million different ways. Tell me what you’re hiding from me, let’s get this over with, and then let’s do it a million more times.”

“Aethelthryth, nothing would make me happier than having you with me here, or in any other place that I will call home, for as long as I live. Please, come in.”

“I watched you, and your simple, mundane acts of kindness. They were small, but they made all the difference for those who received them.”

I was told that vampires were a detriment to this world. But it was obvious that you made others’ lives easier. And looking at you, I couldn’t help but think that the world was better. Because you were in it.”

“Basically, you had a crush on me,” I summarize, my voice raspy.