Hot for Slayer

by Ali Hazelwood

We understand that time is a flat circle.

All that transformative, life-changing power is like a current coursing through our veins, and a luscious juxtaposition to the fixed immutability of our own existence.

My familiarity with Enyedi was expected, considering that the Hällsing Guild had specifically tasked him with eradicating my bloodline.

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?

He just saved my life. And I’ve known him since before the 1100s. I still remember his dumb Crusade outfits.

“I’m not sure where you are from. Do you 20understand what I’m saying?” I ask in Hungarian. My grammar has to be dated, because I haven’t spent significant time in the area since the Habsburg jaw was all the rage, but Lazlo replies fluently and without a hint of an accent.

“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 can make my own meaning. I can find my own joy. But there is a different kind of happiness in this companionship. A sense of something coming. Like the breeze picking up before a storm.

“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.”