Page 14 of Hot for Slayer (Scared Sexy Collection #1)

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 H?llsing 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.