Page 4 of Hot for Slayer
Teenage Dirtbag Vampire was there, waiting for me, and this time he managed to take me by surprise, knock me out, and drag me to an abandoned building, where he tied me to a chair bolted in front of an east-facing window. I regained consciousness a little before sunrise, just long enough toponder whether in my almost fourteen hundred years I’d left a permanent mark on the world and whether anyone was going to notice my absence.
At the very least,I thought,the raccoons will. Once they’re hungry.
Sunlight began to filter through the glass, and all I could think about in my last few seconds was something that hadn’t crossed my mind for at least a decade.
As long as you don’t let anyone get to you before I do, Aethelthryth.
Ah, yes. Lazlo Enyedi. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be too heartbroken.
If it makes you feel better,I thought fondly at him, willing the universe to pass on the message,I would have preferred it to be you.
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.
“Hey,” I told him with a small, amused smile. “Couldn’t bear to let someone else butcher me, huh?”
“I know what’s mine,” he muttered in his usual clipped tone. He moved to free my tied wrists, and his hands felt so warm and assured and uncannilyrealon my flesh, I began to suspect that maybe ...
“Hang on. Are youactuallyhere?”
Just as a sunbeam reached the chair, he tore through my bindings and pushed me none too gently away from the light. That’s when Teenage Dirtbag, who clearly had been waiting for a pyrotechnic show from somewhere in the shade, decided that he wasn’t going to let a random slayer interfere with his kill. It led to a three-way scuffle during which I lost track of who was doing what, and then to a very cinematic sequencethat ended with Lazlo throwing Teenage Dirtbag off the fire escape. I wish I could have watched him burn to death, but I was busy dealing with my own pickle—more precisely, the fact that before Lazlo had gotten to him, Teenage Dirtbag had managed to tackle me and break my legs, my hip bone, and my left shoulder, making it impossible for me to move. The fractures were going to heal quickly, but not fast enough for me to escape the rapidly approaching sunshine.
This is it,I thought.The end.
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.
Which would be where we are at, right now.
Clearly, this slayer really wants me to die onhisterms.
“Um,” I say as his limp weight flattens me. My tendons and bones are already reknitting together. I am a vampire. I have superstrength. Still, slithering across the sunny floor while covering myself with his body is a feat, and so is dragging the both of us to a windowless hallway.
So much so, my neurons must be too fatigued to work.
What the hell am I doing, pulling Lazlo with me? Propping him up against the drywall? Running my hand through his dark hair to assess the severity of his wounds? He’s a slayer. He only saved me so he couldslaughter me himself. Now I’m stuck in an abandoned SoHo building with him, and I’ll have to spend the hours until sunsethuntedby him.
Unless I kill him first.
The thought hits me along with a tinge of guilt, which I push down incredulously.Did the raccoons eat your prefrontal cortex, idiot? Youhave tokill him. Immediately.
Yes. I do. I have to behead him. The one thing slayers can’t heal from. But Dirtbag took my weapons, and I—
Lazlo must still have something sharp somewhere on his person. I throw myself into him, running my hand across an expanse of muscles that I would find more impressive if it weren’t exclusively dedicated to murdering me and my bloodline. He still has four—four!—blades on him, hidden in a variety of places. I take the longest one from his boot, lift it to his throat ...
And let my hands fall.
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—
“Fuck,” a confused voice says.
When I glance at him, Enyedi is blinking at me, massaging the side of his head.
Kill him now. Kill. Him. Now.
But I don’t. Because I’m too busy listening to the five words that change my life forever. “Whothe hellare you?”
