Which would be where we are at, right now.
Clearly, this slayer really wants me to die on his terms.
“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 could slaughter me himself. Now I’m stuck in an abandoned SoHo building with him, and I’ll have to spend the hours until sunset hunted by 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? You have to kill 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. “Who the hell are you?”
Chapter 3
The abbess once told me that the real problems are rarely the ones we spend our time worrying about. It was, I believe, in the context of me fretting over the pain of getting a tooth pulled—as opposed to, say, the fires of eternal damnation. At the time, I cradled my swollen cheek and rolled my eyes, but this might be the day I seriously reevaluate my centuries-deep poor opinion of her, because she was obviously right.
Lazlo doesn’t remember who I am, and I’m ready to panic about it. But that’s barely an issue, especially when confronted with an even more pressing discovery.
Lazlo doesn’t remember who he is.
“What do you mean, you don’t . . . know?” I ask. When he opened his eyes, I scurried back like the roach that I so clearly am, which means that we’re sitting against opposite walls in the hallway. I hide his dagger behind my back, wondering if—no, when—I’ll have to use it on him.
“Seems self-explanatory,” Enyedi mutters in the deadpan inflection I’ve long learned to associate with him. He sits up straighter in a flurry of muscles, rubbing the back of his skull. When the heel of his palm comes back bloody, he stares at it for a moment, then shrugs. “Where are we?”
“Ah . . . SoHo, I think.” I keep my eyes fixed on him, waiting for a pounce.
“And where’s that?”
“On, um, planet Earth?” His glare tells me I zoomed out a tad too much. “US. New York City.”
“I see. And who are we?”
“Do you really not—”
“Yes,” he interrupts with a low, irritated grunt. “I really do not. I don’t remember my name, yours, the reason I’m here, or the events that precipitated this moment. Moreover, I couldn’t list a single person I know. In fact, I don’t even remember when I learned the meaning of the words I’m using. What I do know, however, is the definition of amnesia, which is a not uncommon symptom following a blow to the head—”
“Lazlo,” I say, mostly to shut him up. Dickhead. “Your name is Lazlo Enyedi.”
He mouths the words. “What’s the origin of that?”
“I think . . .” I glance at the ink that seems to cover every inch of his body. Tattoos have been embraced by slayers since long before they became mainstream, but Lazlo’s art has always set him apart from his brethren—and always fascinated me. It’s made of ancient, angular runes that remind me of the Old Turkic script. Distinctively Carpathian designs. Colors and motifs calling back to Eastern European folklore. “Hungary, I believe.”
“Am I Hungarian?”
Is he? We haven’t exactly exchanged introductions over lattes. The only reason I even know his name is that he was turned into a slayer specifically to eliminate my bloodline. Many centuries ago, when I visited Athens and ran across another vampire originated by my own maker, she shared some intel with me before going on her merry way. That was back when Greece was still part of the Ottoman Empire. “I’m not sure where you are from. Do you understand what I’m saying?” I ask in Hungarian. My grammar has to be dated, because I haven’t spent significant time in the area since the Habsburg jaw was all the rage, but Lazlo replies fluently and without a hint of an accent. “I guess you are,” I say. “But I think you’ve been living abroad for a while.”
“You think?” His eyes, nearly brown in the dim hallway, narrow. “Do we not know each other?”
Why am I subjecting myself to this? Ah, right. He saved my life. I’m trapped. That kind of shit. “We are business associates,” I say, pleased by how much better it sounds than the more truthful mortal enemies, but only professionally.
“Business associates,” he repeats, skeptical.
“Yes. Because of our work.”
He stares, unimpressed. “And our work is . . .”
“You know. This and that.” I shrug, hoping he’ll assume we DoorDash for a living and leave it at that. But I should have known better than to expect some guy who’s been after me for the last thousand years to let go of anything. He pushes off the wall and scoots closer, close enough that his heat washes over me in waves. Maybe slayers have even more powers than I originally thought, because when his gaze latches on to mine, I cannot look away. “Why do I get the impression that you’re lying to me?”
Dammit. “Because you hit your noggin, and your impressions are out of whack?”
“Nah.” His voice is dark. “That’s not it.”
“No offense, but someone who won’t know whether he’s circumcised until he takes a peek inside his underwear may have less-than-excellent instincts when it comes to—”
“What’s your name?” He inches even closer.
I could tell him anything. Joan of Arc. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Fiona from Shrek. Sadly, immortality must have made me boring, because I say, “I go by Ethel.” When shitheads don’t insist on using my full antediluvian name.
“Ethel. Pretty.” His nod is pleased, but his tone suggests that he’s not above gutting pretty things. He reaches forward to take a lock of my hair between his fingertips, turning it back and forth. “What color is this?”