Hot for Slayer

by Ali Hazelwood

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.

“Vampire,” he whispered the second our eyes met across the festive mob. There were several million decibels and the equivalent of an Olympic-size pool between us, but I could hear him as clearly as if he dwelled inside my head. 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.

I beamed up, hoping that it would irritate him. “Hey, friend.”

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?

“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.

the way this is written tho. for SURE not enemies right?

Still, she wasn’t wrong about me: I want things that do not belong to me all the time. Chief of which: companionship.

My favorite part of being in the convent, of course, was the taste of sisterhood it gifted me. The women I lived with, they were my people. My family. My community. They taught me the beauty of sharing a life, and I naively assumed that this kind of fellowship would forever be within my reach.

🫶🏻

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

the small portrait of Donna Lucia, a human who correctly guessed that I was a vampire and still traveled all over Europe with me, painted by Botticelli in the 1400s;

Apparently, I would have preferred it so much, my brain produced him out of thin air. Enyedi, the worst Hällsing slayer to ever set eyes on a vampire, was standing in front of me. One last mirage before the end.

It led to a three-way scuffle during which I lost track of who was doing what, and then to a very cinematic sequence that ended with Lazlo throwing Teenage Dirtbag off the fire escape.

That’s when Enyedi sprinted to bodily push me out of the light, hit his head on a collapsing ceiling beam, and fell unconscious on top of me.

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

Do you also remember when he cut off your chin with his dumb Crusade sword? It took, like, five weeks for it to grow back to the right shape. Correct. That’s why I have to do this. It’s him or me, and—

LOL

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

“Ethel, since the very second I regained consciousness, I have been very alert to my surroundings. Perhaps too alert, if you take my meaning.”

Oh?

so . . . what are our jobs, Ethel?”

Idk but that was hot

I huff. “You wear sunglasses inside, for one.” 23 His face falls, mortified. Mafia boss? No problem. Douchebag? A line must be drawn. “Do I really?” “No,” I say, feeling a little guilty. “I’m not even sure you own sunglasses. But you and I, we don’t get along very well.”

AHAH

“Maybe you don’t like me, because I clearly . . .” He stops. Shakes his head. Declares, as though the truth exists only to be molded by his words: “We aren’t nemeses. I don’t want to fight with you.”

I CLEARLY WHAT

“Right. I was wondering: Do you think they really exist?” He stares. Stares. Stares. And right when I’m sure he’s going to end me, he says, “Ethel?” “Yeah?” “I know that I hit my head. But what happened to yours?”

Sleeping off the concussion—big no-no for humans, but a nonissue for slayers.

This is true about any solid or liquid item that isn’t human blood—no matter how close they may approach it. I once took a sip of a bonobo, and hurled intermittently for the following six months. Our species has a clear case of hot-girl tummy, and I’m grateful to the twenty-first century for giving us a final diagnosis.

I guess Lazlo is wearing a towel around his hips. But spiritually, culturally, metaphysically, he feels naked.

for sure spiritually, culturally, and metaphysically.

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

STORY TIME PLZ

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.

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. In less than two minutes, not only had I concocted a backstory for us

“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.”

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.

“No.” I halt, momentarily speechless. “No?” “We both sleep on the couch,” he declares. “Together.” “We can’t sleep together.” “Are there laws against it?” “No.” “Then we sleep together.” Goddamn this man.

AHAHA WHAT EVEN

“I’m not married.” His tone is final. “And I have no children. Some things, a man just knows about himself.” My eyebrow lifts. “Really?” “Really.” He turns away and starts stripping the cushions off the couch to make it more spacious.

A moment 48later, I’m horizontal with him, wedged tight between the length of his body and the back of the couch. “Oh,” I hear myself say. Just that: Oh. Lazlo’s reply is a vague grunt, followed by a tightening of his grip. I can feel every cord of his muscles pressing against me, and it should be a new and destabilizing experience, but it seems disturbingly familiar.

HEHEHE HE REALLY SAID NO TALK LETS CUDDLE NOWWWWW

“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. “Good luck with that,” I mutter,

AHAHA LOL

His arms bracket me on each side, and his chin brushes the crown of my head as he works with a cursory, expert grace that I find equally pleasing and irritating.

Hehe

I pretend not to notice the way his lips press against the back of my head before he moves to the stove to scramble a number of eggs that could feed a family of five for two weeks.

“More formal than that.” He chews some more. “I liked your dress.” A smile starts. Turns into a private thing—between Lazlo and his own thoughts. “A lot.”

“I’m serious. We rarely . . .” 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. “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.”

It’s possible that I am, like the abbess said, just a fanciful, too-distractible girl. But for the first time in nearly one and a half millennia, I forget to keep track of time, and I don’t feel the need to run outside the exact moment the sun has set.

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.”

LOL

His smile just widens. “I think you’re tired, too.” “Of what?” “The lies.” 60 I look down at my shoes. Back up. “How are you so sure that—” “I told you, Ethel. I know how I feel about you. And I know how you feel, too.” “And what would that—” 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

HEHEHEHE

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 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.”

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.

I feel disoriented. As though someone is spinning me around blindfolded to make fun of the way I stumble to my knees. There must be something I’m missing. I certainly don’t know why I let him lean even closer to me, his own movements causing my knife to press against his throat and break the skin. The scent of his blood melts into me, tantalizingly sweet. His lips find my ear, and he asks, “Where do you think I’ll go once I’m dead?” And then it’s my turn to remember.

“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?”

Yes, the mask tattooed on his heart is an exact copy of the one I’d worn.