Текст книги "Hot for slayer"
Автор книги: Ali Hazelwood
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Chapter 13
I’m not surprised that it took me so long to make the connection between the man at the ball and Lazlo.
Yes, the mask tattooed on his heart is an exact copy of the one I’d worn. But I’ve lived countless lives, and objects tend to fade faster from my mind than people or experiences. In fact, I rarely thought about our conversation in the pleasure gardens over the last few centuries, and certainly never beyond the occasional spark left behind by a missed connection. An impression of regret. The feeling of lost opportunities.
Nothing of much importance.
My arm falls to my side, and I step backward, almost tripping over the already regenerating body of the vampire. Lazlo just looks at me, wiping the blood oozing from the shallow cut on his neck. His posture is unconcerned, almost relaxed.
I trace my own injury with my palm, feeling my skin as it rapidly mends itself. “Why were you there?” I ask, still reeling. The parade is in full swing—brass instruments and hollers, interrupted by the occasional recording of eerie organ tunes. “Two nights ago, when you saved me? How did you realize I was in danger?”
He gives me a silent look, one that demands to know: If you’re not stupid, why are you acting like it? Then he kneels down to take care of the vampire’s body, bending his head like a soldier who’s being knighted.
He is, once again, leaving himself at my mercy. He remembers who I am, who he is, and yet he does nothing to protect himself from me. “I think you know,” he says. “And if you don’t . . . I’m sure you can figure it out.”
I swallow. “How long have you . . . ?”
“Awhile.”
I shake my head, incredulous. “You—you are going to have to be more specific.” I watch him easily hack the vampire into smaller pieces of meat, tiny enough that he won’t be able to regenerate before dawn.
“About what?” With a scrunch of his nose and a pragmatic shrug, he kicks the pieces over to where the sun will hit them as soon as it rises.
“I . . . About everything.”
He sighs deeply, as though my inability to read his mind is an inconvenience, but one he will try to deal with out of the grace of his heart. He glances at the slice of revelry we can see from the alleyway, then back at me. “I don’t think here is the best location to do this.”
“Where, then?”
“I have a place.”
“Here? In New York?”
He nods.
“Where?”
His smile is small and wistful. “Across from yours, actually.”
Across is, somehow, an understatement. He lives in the house facing my apartment building, exactly two sidewalks and a narrow crossroad away from me.
I linger at the door, a little bewildered, and don’t follow him inside, even when he looks at me with that half-reproachful, half-impatient, scolding expression that I’m becoming all too fond of. “If I wanted you dead, you would be dead.”
“That is very presumptuous of you. You could try, but I would—”
“Aethelthryth,” he says, absolute. Tired, too.
I clear my throat. “I can’t.”
He frowns.
“I can’t come in. Unless you formally, verbally invite me.”
His eyes widen as though Lazlo Enyedi, Guild slayer extraordinaire, had forgotten about one of our most dangerous limitations. “Right. My bad.” He clears his throat. “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 try not to gasp, but it’s a blanket invitation—incredibly difficult to take back, and therefore stupid to extend. He must know that.
Suddenly, stepping inside feels dangerous for a whole new set of reasons.
I do it anyway.
Lazlo couldn’t quite see inside my apartment from his home, and I doubt he spent his days observing my every move. But he did have a view of my fire escape, and I cannot help but mentally go through all the nights I spent sitting on the steps, looking up at the sky and down at the city.
“How long?”
“Hmm?” In the kitchen, he takes off his sweater to wash off the worst of the blood.
“How long have you lived here?”
“Come on. You know how long.”
Right. “Why?”
“Why not?” He shrugs. “I have lots of free time. Very few interests. Just the one, really.” He glances in my direction.
He’s talking about you, a redundant, obnoxious voice screams in my head. I want to punch it. “What about . . . killing vampires? Shouldn’t you . . . Am I the last of my bloodline?”
“No. There are two more. But they are like you.”
“Like me?”
“They carefully select their food. No longer kill innocents.”
It still makes no sense. “Since when did the Hällsing Guild give a pass to ethical vampires?”
“Since never, I believe. But I wouldn’t know. I stopped working with them a while ago.”
“Oh.” I tilt my head. “I didn’t think that was something slayers could do. Retire, I mean.”
He kills the faucet and turns to me, leaning back against the counter, giving me a full view of the Colombina mask on his shirtless chest. “They don’t. Slayers just keep being reassigned to new bloodlines until they die. Some have tried to leave, but it tends to get messy. The Guild is not a particularly benevolent former employer.”
“Then why did they let you go?”
“They didn’t. When I left, they sent people after me.”
“And?”
“And I sent them back.”
“With a politely worded refusal to rejoin?”
“With their heads cut off.” Another shrug. “I didn’t choose to become a slayer. I was the youngest son of poor parents, and they sold me off to the Guild to feed my older siblings. Nothing was explained to me—I was molded and plied and ordered to slaughter what was described to me as a horde of beasts made in the devil’s image that threatened the very survival of humankind. But four centuries ago . . . things changed, and I no longer wanted any part of that. I left. The Guild tried to punish me, but after a while they realized that no slayer was powerful enough to take me, and they quit. There aren’t too many vampires left, and all I want is to mind my business. I may be a loose end for them, but I’m a harmless one.”
Four centuries ago. The 1600s.
When the masquerade ball happened.
I can’t wrap my head around it. “So, we talked about the meaning of life or some shit at a dance, and you had fun, and you changed your mind about killing vampires because . . .” I swallow. “Because you suddenly found me cute or something?”
“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.”
“Then what—”
“I spent years killing your kind. Then, at the ball, I exchanged a few words with you. And for the first time since I was turned into a slayer, I realized that you were not as soulless as I had been taught. You were rational. You had feelings. You thought of more than just your own desires.” He crosses his arms, unapologetic. “So I decided to do my own research.”
“Which would be . . . ?”
“You seemed wise. And interesting. But at the start, I didn’t mean to spare you. I just wanted to observe you. To learn more.”
“And?”
“I observed. Always from afar. And there was a lot of you to study. I learned that you didn’t kill indiscriminately. That you helped weak people carry heavy bags. That you shared your wealth and defended innocents and offered to walk your neighbor’s dog when she broke her hip.”
Oh my God. He’s talking about Mrs. Cole and Pumpkin, in the 1930s. “He was a very cute dog,” I say, numb.
Lazlo is so unreadable, I cannot tell whether he shares my opinion of Pomeranians. “I watched you, and your simple, mundane acts of kindness. They were small, but they made all the difference for those who received them.” He pauses for a moment as if waiting for me to protest, to roll my eyes, to scream at him for spying on me for centuries. But I have nothing to yell about, and he continues, “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.”
“But you still tried to . . .” Kill me, I want to say. Because he did. For centuries. Over and over.
“After I formed my opinion of you, I focused on the rest of your bloodline. Two other women who, like I said, don’t hurt innocents. I decided to spare them, too. But after that . . .” For the first time, I sense some hesitation. As though what comes next, he’s not too comfortable with. Something harder to admit. “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.”
“You tried to . . . what?”
“To talk to you. To explain that I no longer wished to kill you.”
“When?”
“In Italy. Then in Derbyshire, during the nineteenth century. In Turkey, a few years later. Thailand and Indonesia. A few more times, too.”
I remember. Or, more accurately: I remember him coming after me in all those places. Of course, I thought that it was part of a slayer’s hunt. Not that he was trying to . . . to what? Get to know me better? “You stabbed me. As recently as Berlin.”
His eyebrow lifts. “And you impaled me in Colombia. Aethelthryth, for people like us, that’s the equivalent of pinching. And after a while, hunting you became the only way to be close to you. I wanted to spend time with you, but I could only do it as the slayer tasked with bringing an end to your bloodline.” He looks out the window. “I gave myself permission to show myself to you once a decade. And the remaining time, I just stuck around. Made sure you were okay. Not that you haven’t proven over and over that you can take care of yourself, but . . .” He shrugs again, and for the first time since becoming a vampire, I understand something very important.
I may not need to breathe, but I still need to be able to breathe. And right now, I just can’t.
“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. You were beautiful. And whenever we were close, despite the fact that violence was involved, you felt . . . good.” I wonder if I’m imagining it, the slight flush dusting his cheeks. “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 for you was just . . . there. And it still is.”
It still is.
He can’t possibly have said– No.
Because: “You’re a vampire slayer.”
“In retirement.”
“So, what . . . what would you like to do? Now that . . . What would you . . . ?”
His throat works. “It’s your decision to make, Aethelthryth.”
Oh my God. It is.
It really is.
And somehow, despite how incredibly messed up all of this is, it’s the easiest decision I’ve ever had to make.
“I . . . I think you have an advantage. And you know things about me. That I . . . don’t. About you, that is. And it’s only fair that . . .” I fist my hands at my sides, feeling dizzy. Slowly, surely, an idea coalesces in my head. “It’s only fair that I spend time with you. And that we get even.”
He freezes like what I just said detonated a million bombs in his brain. But then he nods gingerly as if not to spook me.
“Maybe we could . . . Tomorrow night, for instance? Meet? And talk? But I’m going to need to leave now. I’ve bled a lot, which means that I’m going to need to feed soon, so I’ll have to find someone who—”
“I will help,” he blurts out.
I nod. Laugh a little. “You have a lead on someone very shitty?”
“No,” he says. But he turns around to open a drawer and pulls out a sharp, gleaming knife. Before I can grasp what he’s about to do, he closes his fist around it and lets the blade slice a deep cut across his palm. “But I’d be happy to provide you with what you need.”
My spine, together with the rest of my nerve endings, liquifies.
I feel my entire body tremble.
Try to make myself consider the impossibility of it: A slayer. Offering nourishment to me. A vampire.
Then the scent of his blood hits my nostrils, and all I can do is run to him.
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Chapter 14
We bump into several sharp corners before finally finding a flat surface—which happens to be the tiled floor of his kitchen. I hold Lazlo’s palm against my mouth, latch tightly on to the wound he created for me, just for me, and take deep, thick gulps as I climb on top of him to straddle his lap.
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, but to be certain that we’re on the same page, I roll my hips against him and watch him arch and groan like he’s in pain.
Yup. The very same.
Sex and blood have always lived in two separate buckets for me. Pleasure and nutrients. Luxury and necessity. Different, isolated, never to meet. But this . . . It’s good. The taste of Lazlo’s blood filling my mouth is delicious, vital sustenance, an addling drug that I’m already addicted to. It’s never been this way for me, and the reason hits me as I take another shameless deep pull: This is the first time I’ve drank blood that was freely given to me.
It’s such a turn-on, I moan into Lazlo’s hand and listen to him do the same. My whole body vibrates with pleasure at the simple thought of it—that this man wants me to be alive, to be healthy, wants to offer me something for the simple reason that he cares about my well-being.
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.
But he was injured, too, and I’m drinking a lot. I force myself to stop, pull back from his flesh, and say, “I don’t want to take too much—”
With a flex of his abs, he sits up from underneath me and presses his palm back to my mouth, a silent shut up with this nonsense and take all you want. So I do. Until my blood-drunk, glazed eyes fall on his lips, and I realize that there’s something I crave even more than his blood.
I pull back. He watches me lick what’s left of him off my lips, and his moan is pure agony. “Fuck,” he mutters, raspy, enraptured.
“Am I– Do you– Can I kiss you? I might taste like blood, so if you don’t want to—”
He closes the space between us, and his mouth strokes mine, slow, sensual, deep. I feel his groan of pleasure exhaled against my tongue. The cut on his palm has already repaired itself, and one hand travels to my ass, my breasts, my hips, while the other tightens at the back of my neck. We both gasp, bodies melded together as close as they’ll go.
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,” he says, his large body dragging against mine, and I feel a tingle in my spine, the desire to reach for more, to have his skin rub against mine.
That’s when it occurs to me that we didn’t discuss any of this. I just . . . I jumped him. I literally tackled him to the ground, and . . .
Crap.
“We don’t . . .” I start. And then: “I’m sorry. You just offered me blood, and I may have taken advantage, and we don’t have to do anything. I can stop if you—”
He turns us around until I’m underneath him, and it’s the loudest, most silent fuck no I’ve ever heard. The floor should be painfully hard, but I’m liquid underneath Lazlo, pliant and malleable, and if the feel of having me pinned makes him lose his mind a little, it has the same effect on me. A knot of heat and friction grows inside me, drags past rational thoughts, and then we’re pulling clothes off each other and he’s touching me everywhere, at once violent and reverent, frenzied and worshipful.
“Please,” I beg. “Please, please—”
He brushes against me. The head of his cock is beaded, leaking. It hits my clit, parting me where I’m already wet. “Okay?” he asks.
I nod, and then he’s inside me, big, a little too fast, incomprehensible. At once, everything recedes. The world slows down. All I can feel is the beat of his heart against mine. His fingers tremble in my hair, and my thighs shake around his hips.
At this age, I thought my body would hold no more surprises for me. No new feelings.
I was wrong.
“Holy shit,” he whispers, mostly to himself. Then he begins to move, the thrusts burning and buzzing inside me, my belly still full of the best blood I’ve ever had, his mouth against mine as he tells me how perfect I am, how long he’s wanted this, that he already knows he’ll need this forever. The thick length of him fills me, bringing me closer and closer to the edge until I whimper and clamp around him in long, pulling contractions.
He comes right after, with a deep grunt muffled into my throat.
And then I tighten my arms around him as he regains his breath, feeling the kisses he presses against my collarbone, my breasts, the soft flesh under my chin, and . . .
I start laughing. And laughing.
And laughing.
Lazlo lifts his head to glare at me. “Glad to see that you find the most meaningful moment of my life hilarious.”
“No, no, I . . . It’s not—” I try to stop chuckling, in vain. “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?”
He bends down to kiss me, but not before I see the grin on his face.
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Epilogue
We are still working on building our routine, Lazlo and I, but that’s okay. It’s early days, and for now it’s all about finding out what we like—and then doing it over and over and over again.
Together.
We talk. We kiss. We touch. We travel and we stay put. We dance. We fight. We cook. We choose books and movies and good poems. We watch plants grow and flowers bloom. We visit nature and big cities and rural farms, share crossword puzzles and coffee shops and museums.
We avoid other immortals, slayers and vampires alike, but discover that it’s not too hard to become friends with human neighbors and stray cats. During the winter, we go up north, where the sun barely rises. In the summer, we move south. Chile and Argentina. Halloween, though . . .
For Halloween, we return home.
We sit on our stoop. Welcome trick-or-treaters. Watch the festivities. Early in the night, Lazlo will have a candied apple; later, I’ll have a sip of his blood, and it’ll taste sweeter than it does the rest of the year.
“Are you a vampire?” I’ll ask a boy in a beautiful velvet cape, handing him a full-size candy bar.
He’ll nod, happy.
“And I’m a vampire hunter,” his friend will tell me.
“Weird, huh?” Lazlo will whisper in my ear, pulling me back into his solid warmth. His long arms will close around my torso, and I’ll smile and think to myself, Weird. But weirder things have happened.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my agent, Thao Le, as well as my fantastic editors, Maria Gomez and Lindsey Faber, and everyone else who has helped me work on the novella, including the production manager (Jen Bentham), the cover designer (Elizabeth Turner Stokes), the copyeditor (Michelle Hope), and the proofreader (Nicole Thomas). Also, many thanks to all the other authors included in the anthology. Above all, thanks to Jen for the stakes line: You’re a genius, and I don’t deserve you.
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Other titles by Ali Hazelwood
The Love Hypothesis
Love on the Brain
Love, Theoretically
Bride
Not in Love
Deep End
Problematic Summer Romance
Anthologies
Loathe to Love You
Novellas
Under One Roof
Stuck with You
Below Zero
Cruel Winter with You
Two Can Play
Young Adult Novels
Check & Mate
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About the Author
Photo © 2022 Justin Murphy, Out of the Attic Photography
Ali Hazelwood is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of numerous novels and novellas, including Bride, Mate, The Love Hypothesis, and Love, Theoretically. Ali is also a writer of peer-reviewed articles about brain science, in which no one makes out and the ever after is not always happy.
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