Hot for Slayer

by Ali Hazelwood

This kind of shit, I mentally informed the universe, does not incentivize good deeds.

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?

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?

“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.”

“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.”

There is something painfully heavy about lying to someone who knows that he’s not being told the truth, but . . . what alternative do I have?

When a pack of sexy Slimers tries to step between us, he grabs my hand to pull me closer, and doesn’t let go, not even when a fortune teller tries to sell us a couple’s reading. 59 “We’re not a couple,” I explain just as he loftily proclaims, “I am a man, and I make my own fortune.” The teller’s eyes fall pointedly to where his fingers are closed around mine. “No matter,” she says. “Your fates are already intertwined.”

“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.”

“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.”