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“Aethelthryth. At last, we meet again.” I beamed up, hoping that it would irritate him. “Hey, friend.”
“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.
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.
“I go by Ethel.” When shitheads don’t insist on using my full antediluvian name. “Ethel. Pretty.” His nod is pleased, but his tone suggests that he’s not above gutting pretty things.
He reaches forward to take a lock of my hair between his fingertips, turning it back and forth. “What color is this?” I swallow. “Um . . . strawberry blond?” “Strawberry blond,” he repeats, and even though he doesn’t say pretty again, I can almost hear it.
I am taking. A vampire slayer. To my home.
“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.”
He’s as hot as the sun’s core. I must be the opposite, because he murmurs something about my icy limbs and how my poor body must have misplaced all its vitamins, and what can we do to find it again?
“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 drift off, because he’s taking a strand of my hair between his fingers and rubbing it gently, watching the flow of light orange across his own pale skin. His mouth murmurs a few words in another language—one that I speak, but I pretend not to, because this is not— It shouldn’t— What is even— 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.
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 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.”
He finds you disgusting. He hates you. His entire purpose is to eliminate you, which . . . Doesn’t explain why his eyes, all of a sudden, seem so soft. Or the fact that instead of pushing me away, instead of hitting back with his own weapons and his own strength, he touches me tenderly. One hand lifts to cup my face, and he gently thumbs my cheekbone.
“Aethelthryth,” he says, calm. His voice is the same as it was before the attack, and yet completely different. He is the man who saved my life two days ago, the man who kissed me, the man who cleaned up the mess I made in my kitchen, but also something more. “If you want to kill me, I’m not going to stop you. But first, I’m going to need you to tell me something.”
“Some lives run invisibly. Undetected by most. And when a person comes along who sees those lives for what they are, who acknowledges their reality, who reminds people that there is value in different ways of existing . . . A minute of that is worth more than a thousand nights with a lover. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“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 didn’t suddenly find you anything. I always knew you were . . . cute.” His lips curl as though it’s the first time he’s used the word in all his eons, and it tastes too saccharine in his mouth. “You’ve never not been . . . that, to me. And no. That’s not the reason.”
“I had been raised to . . . 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.”
“I missed you. Watching you. Observing you. I just . . . liked you. It was a new feeling for me, wanting to know someone. Wanting to be known by them as I truly am. So I tried to do that.”
“Basically, you had a crush on me,” I summarize, my voice raspy. After several heartbeats, he nods. “I suppose so. It wasn’t . . . sexual. Not at the start. But then . . .” He bites the inside of his cheek, bashful.
“I liked you a lot. As a person. As a woman. 81You were beautiful. And whenever we were close, despite the fact that violence was involved, you felt . . . good.”
“I don’t know you well, Aethelthryth, but I know you better than you do me. And yesterday morning, even after I woke up and couldn’t remember anything, everything I felt ...
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It’s like he’s my own prey—one I’ve hunted down and subdued and captured. One I’ve decided to keep for myself. From the way the amber of his irises disappears into dark pupils, he seems to have no objections to that,
This is messy and uncoordinated and unlike anything else. The feeling of touching and being touched by someone who knows me and whom I know. Someone who likes me and whom I like. Someone I could fall in love with and who would love me back. The sweetness of it roars through me, and I savor it.
“You are so beautiful right now,”
“I was just thinking, we need to commission a commemorative plaque. Put it up right there, on that wall.” “Why?” “Because . . . A slayer and a vampire. Doing it. It has to be a first in all of history, right?”
Weird. But weirder things have happened.
