“Beautiful? Aww, Lazlo, I didn’t know you had a crush on— Motherfucker.” He jockeyed the blade back and forth in my belly, which, ouch. On the plus side, it gave me the opportunity to jerk in his arms and fake a seizure-like movement, which I used to retrieve my own dagger from my hip.

Which I then plunged into his flank with relish.

The grunt that rose to his chest was like a whole symphonic orchestra to my ears. “Now we’re even,” I gritted out.

“Are we?” Lazlo’s expression did not give me the satisfaction of changing a single millimeter. Slayers, too, were unlikely to make a big fuss over some light stabbing. “What about when the sun rises? I have you pinned.”

I scoffed, ignoring the dribble of blood trickling out of the corner of my mouth. “Dawn is in six hours. I hope you have some fun ideas for how to pass the time.”

His lips twitched. “We could reminisce. Thankfully, we share many memories.”

“Thankfully. Like that time you tried to kill me in Constantinople. Or the time you tried to kill me in Lampang. Or the time you tried to kill me in a courtyard in Venice. Or the time in Saskatoon, where—and you may start to notice a pattern—you also tried to—”

“Hush, Aethelthryth.” His tone was harsh, even through the warmth of his small smile. He was bleeding profusely, and the scent of it wafted up, strong, metallic, divine. Saliva pooled in my mouth, and I wondered how I could feel such hunger while my internal organs were being minced into meat loaf.

How the hell did a slayer’s blood get to smell this good? “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.”

“Really? Well, allow me to point out that if you get your way, you’re going to be deprived of my company for a hell of a lot longer than—”

“Excuse me, you two?”

We turned, startled—both by the British-sounding voice addressing us and by the fact that, in the process, my forehead brushed against Lazlo’s lips, a gesture too similar to a kiss for comfort.

A shiver ran down my spine.

“We are with the BBC, and overheard you speaking English—would it be possible to interview you about your perspective on tonight’s events?”

Lazlo and I stared at the journalists idling in the dimly lit side street, speechless.

“Sir? Ma’am? You do speak English, right?”

Behind him, a woman was carrying a handheld camera, and an idea light-bulbed its way into my brain.

“We sure do,” I said with a dazzling grin. I freed my hand from where it was trapped between my and Lazlo’s torsos, wiped the blood off my mouth, then gently pushed against his shoulder. “Baby, will you get off me for a second?” I schooled my features into a pout, enjoying his clenching jaw immensely. “I wanna talk with the BBC. I wanna be on TV.”

“That’s great, ma’am. Will you move to that corner with us? The lighting is much better over there.”

One fun thing about the slayers was they had a governing body. And rumor had it that the Hällsing Guild didn’t love public displays of murder, especially not those caught on camera. Humans, after all, were fragile little souls—I had the right to say that, because I used to be one—and they couldn’t be trusted with finding out that vampires and slayers walked among them. Their reaction would have likely involved running to the grocery store, buying all the canned goods and toilet paper, and then never leaving the house again—they’d cause way too much of a fuss and disrupt the supply chain.

No, thank you.

So, starting with the twentieth century, the Guild had cracked down on slayers killing us in front of witnesses. And by doing so, they saved my life.

“Come on, baby,” I said sweetly, my eyes meeting the cut glass of Lazlo’s. “We can make out later, no?”

Lazlo’s yes was a deliciously disgruntled growl. I tried not to wince as he angled our bodies to hide the slide of his dagger out of my abdomen. I did the same with my knife and then glanced down to make sure that the blood wasn’t visible against the dark fabric of my shirt.

Meanwhile, the camera kept filming.

“I know you hate being in the spotlight, honey pie. Why don’t you wait here while I do my interview?” Lazlo’s shirt was lighter than mine, and what a poor choice of attire for a hunt. He was in no position to follow us to a place with better illumination, and he knew it.

“Until the next time, then,” he said with a deep frown.

“Right. That might be a while. Sorry!”

“As long as you don’t let anyone get to you before I do, Aethelthryth.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll always save myself for you.”

And that’s how I got away from Lazlo Enyedi on the night of November 9, 1989. As I walked side by side with the journalists, I did look back at Lazlo, once, mostly to treat him to my smuggest, most insufferable grin. He was where I’d left him, still scowling down at his dagger. 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.

It was . . .

Well. It just was.

A lot of things, among which the last time we were so close. I’ve caught glimpses of Lazlo a few times since—at a year 2000 celebration in LA, in the early aughts in Southeast Asia, after that Lilith Fair revival in 2010—but never had as close a call as it was in Berlin, and I always managed to slip away before he could get near.

Until now.

Today, nearly thirty-six years after that night in Germany, his arms wrap tight around me, his body is a heavy blanket above mine, and his only purpose seems to be shielding me from the sunlight.

Today, Lazlo Enyedi saved my life.

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Chapter 2

My mother didn’t raise a quitter.

Well, my mother didn’t raise me at all. She dropped me off at the abbey once my brother came into the world, after promising to Saint Fursey that if my father begat the male heir he so ardently wished for, she would dedicate her eldest daughter’s life to piety and labor. Dear Mommy was very generous with her pledges, especially when they involved sacrificing other people.

It was unfortunate for me, the eldest daughter in question—and, let’s be honest, even more unfortunate for the abbess—that my disposition wasn’t quite monastic material. Not that I was a rebel or a miscreant. That would have required scheming, hard work, or well-organized defiance, and Little Aethelthryth was too much of an absent-minded, stargazing dreamer for that.

Of course, that was an issue in and of itself, because I constantly wished for things that weren’t compatible with my destiny. 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. Despite being compelled by the Benedictine Rule to pray eight times a day, the abbess still found time to remind me that if I kept coveting a future that didn’t belong to me, I would end up in freezing water for eternity, and my bones would rot inside my body. Her credibility may have been slightly undercut by the fact that she also believed in putting the livestock on trial for misbehaving, and in plucking off the entirety of her eyebrows. (Regrettably, I cannot recommend growing up in a small nunnery located in eighth-century East Anglia.) Still, she wasn’t wrong about me: I want things that do not belong to me all the time. Chief of which: companionship.

My favorite part of being in the convent, of course, was the taste of sisterhood it gifted me. The women I lived with, they were my people. My family. My community. They taught me the beauty of sharing a life, and I naively assumed that this kind of fellowship would forever be within my reach.