Hot for Slayer (Scared Sexy Collection) - 6

I guess Lazlo is wearing a towel around his hips.

But spiritually, culturally, metaphysically, he feels naked . And yes, he does have ink all over his body, but it seems to be less focused on narrating the misdeeds of Vlad the Impaler and more on commemorating . . . his childhood, perhaps? Family? For the most part, it’s that same old Hungarian script as on his neck and arms, but I also spot flowers that I’ve only ever seen in Eastern Europe, a castle, a coat of arms. On his chest, right on top of his heart, is an ornate Venetian eye mask that looks eerily familiar, but I cannot place it.

“Why are you holding your breath?” he asks after a long stretch of staring, because I’ve been a little too immobile. Vampires do need air, but given the slow crawl of our metabolism, not nearly as much as humans. I could inhale one day, exhale the following, and still be in peak shape.

And yet, I’m suddenly winded. “Sorry, I was just . . . admiring.”

His eyebrow rises.

“The artwork ,” I hurry to add.

“Sure. Right. Because it’s the first time you’ve seen it.”

“Yeah, of course it is.” Why is he smiling like we’re sharing an inside joke? “When would I have seen it?”

He stares as if to challenge me, then folds his arms in a beautiful ripple of muscles and colorful ink. “This place feels familiar. But I’m sure you’ll tell me that I’ve never been in your apartment.”

If he had, I’d be dead. “Maybe you did some pest control work for the previous tenant?”

“I must have done a piss-poor job of it, considering.”

“Considering what?”

He points at a spot above my head. When I turn around, there is a giant—

“ Spider! ” I scream, running to duck behind Lazlo. It’s big and streaked in yellow and gross, and God, I’ve always hated arthropods.

“Interesting,” Lazlo muses.

I whimper, “What?”

“An entomologist who is afraid of spiders.” He turns to face me. “How unusual.”

Shit. Fuck. I straighten and collect myself. “It’s a very rude assumption,” I say haughtily, “that just because I study insects, I have to like all types of—”

“I have a lot of scars,” he interrupts, conversational. “All over my body.”

“ . . . Okay.”

“Some are big.” He points at a thick, knotty line that bisects the middle of his abdomen. “I wonder how I got this one. It must have been deep.”

Unless I’m mistaken, I gave it to him in Bath during the 1800s. I was having a grand old time choosing ribbons for my bonnet when he galloped into town and forced me to move to France, where Napoleon was still pursuing his military dreams.

I clear my throat. “Pest control is a dangerous profession.”

“Must be,” he says, meaning: No, it isn’t.

“Does it hurt?”

“No. But since you asked, something is bothering my left rib. Could you check?”

Absolutely fucking no, I plan to say. But just like all the other noes I should have said today, it remains stuck in my throat, and I’m somehow sliding my fingers up his flank and over his flank.

For a split second, we both freeze, and I’m not the only one who’s not breathing. The room falls into an unnatural layered silence. Lazlo glances down at me with that inquisitive, slightly accusing expression that seems to chew at the lining of my stomach, and I try to return the stare without looking too wide-eyed and guilty, but there is something here. 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 . . .

You’re just not used to touch, I tell myself.

Yes. That’s it. It must have been a handful of years since the last time. I like to choose very bad people as meals, so I limit my physical contact with them, while Lazlo . . . He is not food . He is a person, an immortal just like me, surprisingly solid in a world where everything drifts past, disappearing too quickly.

It’s disorienting, is all.

“Why are your hands so cold?” he asks, voice curt and gravelly.

“Bad circulation,” I mumble, hurrying to bend my neck and search for the wound he mentioned. “Vitamin deficiencies. Gets chilly at night outside.”

“You just gave me three different excuses.”

“I gave three reasons , all valid, so get off my— Shit. There’s a shard of glass stuck between your lowest two ribs. I think you may have healed around it.”

“Can you take it out?”

“I’d have to cut it open a bit. You’d bleed again.”

“That’s fine.”

It’s not fine at all. But I do it, taking one of the thirty switchblades hidden around my place, carving a small cut over the one already healed.

I’m not an unfledged youth. My bloodlust is long quenched, and I can control my impulses even when I’m injured or hurt or approaching starvation. The scent of Lazlo does not make me lose my mind, because I’m better than that.

But God, it’s sweet .

Always has been. Every time we fought, every blade I sank into his flesh, every breakneck chase, the allure of his blood was there, calling. I’ve injured and killed plenty of slayers before him, and they all repulsed me, but Lazlo . . . I have no idea why his specific blood feels so overpoweringly, mouthwateringly delicious , but now that the glass splint is out, I should probably take a step back.

Yeah.

I’m gonna.

Any second now.

“All new,” I say, not meeting his eyes. My voice trembles. The wound is already closing, and I’m scurrying to the sink to wash the drops of his blood off my hands, but once the faucet is on, I cannot help staring at the running water like it’s my enemy, because it would be such a waste to give up this precious—

It’s a truly terrible idea, but my thumb and forefinger are already inside my mouth, licked clean, before I’m even aware of it. 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. I feel the telltale itch of my fangs pushing against the roof of my mouth, elongating, and I have to grab the edge of the sink so tight, I’ll never get my security deposit back.

Then Lazlo comes to a stop beside me. “Already feels better,” he’s saying. “Thanks.”

Before turning around, I beg my fangs to retreat. Promise them lots of firm necks to bite into, very soon, if they behave. “You’re welcome.” I take a fortifying breath and then face him. “I’m going to make food now. Hope mac and cheese is all right. I also got you spare clothes, they’re in that paper bag over there.”

“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.

I swallow. “Yeah.”

“Good.” His hand lingers. When it finally drops to his side, his mouth curves downward, like he’s displeased to no longer be touching me. “Your body found some B12.”

“Guess so.” I try for my most triumphant smile and start puttering around the kitchen, letting out a relieved breath when he leaves to get dressed. The apartment came furnished, which is the only reason I have kitchen utensils. Unfortunately, by the time Lazlo comes back wearing his new and annoyingly flattering clothes, the stove looks like it just hosted a rave.

“I’m sure you’re good at other things, Ethel,” he says with an undertone of warmth. He wrestles control of the pot so effortlessly, I’m still wondering what happened ten minutes later when we sit at the table with steaming plates in front of us.

There is no damn way my kind and his have ever done this before. Sharing a meal, that is. Talking politely. Even just not killing each other. I wish I had a group chat to share this fantastic occurrence with. Even a single friend would do. Maybe I should yell it out of the window and hope the raccoons will hear.

“So,” he asks while demolishing the food, “where did we meet?”

“Me and you?”

He nods.

I play with a few shells trapped within each other. “Well, we . . . I’m a little older than you.”

“By how much?”

“Not sure.” Lazlo appeared during my third century, and was relatively easy to overpower in our first few encounters, which I attributed to him not having fully grown into his slayer strength.

How I miss those days.

“You were just doing your job,” I add.

“Here in New York?”

No, because at the time I wasn’t aware of the existence of this continent is not the best answer. I lived in Córdoba back then, because it was one of the largest cities in the world, and I desperately tried to go unobserved. By then, I was very much an adolescent vampire, still sorting myself out. I had retained an appreciation for human life, was years from deconstructing the Christian notions of good and evil the abbess had inculcated, and after every meal I drank, I spent several regretful weeks in feverish prayers for forgiveness. I hated killing people so much, I’d resorted to skulking around places where healthy humans might drop almost-dead at any second, in the hope of finding a guilt-free meal. Jousting tournaments, for the most part.

Pathetic, I know.

“In the suburbs,” I lie. “You were with your . . . boss.” Or mentor. Or something . An older slayer whose name I never learned. “He quit shortly after.” I killed him. But he so had it coming.

“Were we nemeses from the start?” It’s obvious that the question is meant to make fun of me, and it’s obvious that he wants me to notice. So I pretend not to.

“Pretty much.”

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 (he had seen me at the market and become infatuated despite my intimidating riches and beauty) but also a future (I would reassure him that his lack of wealth mattered nothing to me; we would talk for hours and fall deeply for each other; I would confess my vampiric nature, and after a brief spell of appalment, he would realize that not even my monstrous character could stand in the way of our love; then, forever would begin). As I said, I was very much an adolescent. Still, this was an uncharacteristically pipe-y dream, even for me.

But when Lazlo came after me brandishing one of his favorite weapons, two sickle blades tied together with a metal chain, I wised up real quick.

“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 .” A pause. “Why are you not eating?”

“Oh. Um, I was so hungry, I scarfed down a candy bar at the register,” I recite. It’s the one excuse I could come up with, and he doesn’t buy it, but he accepts my plate when I push it in his direction.

The sweet heat of his blood still churns through my body.

“Why did you become an entomologist?”

Christ. I can’t remember the last time someone asked me this many questions. “It wasn’t really planned.”

“How do you become something without planning to?”

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.

“It wasn’t my decision,” I tell him instead. It wasn’t my maker’s decision, either. Even vampires are not sure why some people turn and others don’t. There are necessary conditions—the person has to be on the brink of death but strong enough to sustain the transformation and some of the vampire’s blood has to be ingested by them, but it’s not as simple as that. Many tried and failed. Many didn’t mean to welcome new souls into the night, but . . . here I am.

“You enjoy it, though.”

I shouldn’t. At least, that’s the stereotype, right? Immortals are supposed to be sullen and full of regrets, always a hairbreadth away from stepping into the sun and get it all over with. But mal de vivre , meaninglessness, pain and suffering . . . They’re not really my thing. I consider myself lucky, because I’m not prone to ennui. It may sound foolish, but I never get bored of watching the 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.

Perhaps the abbess was right, and I romanticize insignificant things too much—although, if I recall correctly, the way she put it was more like, Life is not a brightly painted knight’s tale, Sister Aethelthryth. Stop wasting time on fancies and follies, and go scrub the privy, child. 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.

Sometimes I’m lonely. Sometimes I want more—whatever that means. Not everything is ideal. But I’m capable of finding my own meaning.

“Yes,” I say firmly. “I didn’t choose it, but I enjoy it.”

“I feel the same,” Lazlo says after a pensive beat.

My spine straightens. “Have you remembered something?”

“No. But what you said about becoming something without wanting, and still trying to make the best out of it . . . It makes sense. On a visceral level.”

“Oh.”

We finish eating in silence—and by we , I mean he efficiently shovels food inside his mouth, and I play with the worn edges of the place mat I found in the drawers. Afterward, he stands and heads for the sink to do the dishes like it’s a reflex, a simple courtesy after a meal. I cannot help but wonder who taught him that.

Maybe he is married. Maybe during the Reign of Terror, while I was milling around the falling guillotines to get a good drink out of people who’d have died anyway (hate wasting food), Lazlo was having a beachside wedding with a colleague. Maybe his partner is currently worried sick about him, tossing and turning in the bed they usually share, because he hasn’t come home and . . .

My train of thought stops, and my head explodes into a panic.

“You okay?” he asks, still drying the plates we used as though he heard my entire brain detonate.

“Yeah,” I say. But no, I’m not okay. Because I just remembered something very important.

There are no beds in this apartment.