Hot for Slayer

by Ali Hazelwood

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?

“You’re going to have to knock me out if you want me to shut up until sunrise.” “And deprive myself of your company?” He clicked his tongue. “Never.”

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.

I wished to travel. I wished to laugh. I wished for ballads and dances and tales. I wished for a life that I couldn’t have, which was, apparently, my greatest flaw.

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

“Why do I get the impression that you’re lying to me?” Dammit. “Because you hit your noggin, and your impressions are out of whack?”

I should swat his hand away, but I am paralyzed, unable to recall the last time someone touched me voluntarily without trying to hurt me.

“You wear sunglasses inside, for one.” 23 His face falls, mortified. Mafia boss? No problem. Douchebag? A line must be drawn.

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.”

At last, he smiled. I could have sworn I spotted an amused dimple dipping within his cheek, but he mouthed a few words at me. I am going to kill you.

I am taking. A vampire slayer. To my home. No: I am leading the oldest and most feared vampire slayer in existence to my place. Despite being a vampire myself. What a time to be undead.

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

Something that jumps from me to him, that flows from him to me. A current, a heat, a moment of confusion and deluge that clogs my senses, and . . .

The taste of the blood, even just a few scant drops, awakens my sluggish, dormant body in a way gallons of plasma could never accomplish. Heat blooms and fires through my nerve endings.

His hand lingers. When it finally drops to his side, his mouth curves downward, like he’s displeased to no longer be touching me.

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.

“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.”

may sound foolish, but I never get bored of watching 44the trees change, of seeing girls walk around hand in hand while giggling over a text from a crush, of finding a good poem.

Immortality can mean deep thoughts and philosophical pondering and the relentless pursuit of knowledge, sure, but for me it was always the opposite. I found it so easy, falling into the day-to-day. The humdrum. Staring out of the window with an empty mind. A crossword, a walk in the rain, a well-written book. Flowers blooming.

Still, I’ve learned to live in the moment, and to be happy, even on my own. I’ve learned to treasure little joys, like making other people’s lives better by lending a hand or a smile, doing small talk, laughing at bad puns.

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 should stiffen and push him away, but my body has already gotten used to being surrounded by his. The strength. The warmth. The sensation of being part of something.

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.

His touch is at once new and familiar, scorching and gentle.

He immediately puts the blade away, like sharing an activity with me is the only thing he has ever desired,

I can make my own meaning. I can find my own joy. But there is a different kind of happiness in this companionship.

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.

I’ve kissed and been kissed by many people. None, however, who were, fundamentally, at an atomic level, like me. None whose feel and scent and body I’d learned over centuries, through endless battles and close calls. None who were anything like Lazlo.

After a while on this earth, one rarely experiences new sensations. But nothing has ever felt as good as Lazlo’s leg slipping between mine and pinning me to the wall.

“There is nothing that I could discover about you, or about myself, that would make me want to do this any less.”

“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?”

I will remember him for as long as I live, and as long as I carry him in my heart, he will be here. With us.”

“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.”

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.

He doesn’t mind that I’m taking. In fact, he’s saying things in Hungarian that mostly boil down to fuck and yes and please. More.

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.