Page 74 of Slayer Mom
I stared at him. “That’s the secret, that I’m going to be a weird vampire?”
“Well, that and all the other vampires who thinkit’s a good idea to have their own blood children are going to come after me to harvest my blood, so I’m going into hiding. Oh, Gloria told me to tell you that you owe her a whole case of champagne. We got married.” He raised his left hand to show me a diamond studded band on his finger. He’d gotten Gloria to marry him? If that was true then anything was possible.
He stood up, took two knives out of their sheathes and held them crossed at my throat, tips on my shoulders. “I’ve got to run. Do you wish me to slay you? I’m not going to offer again.”
I exhaled a breath and pushed his knives away, back towards the sheaths. “Thank you for the offer. I appreciate it, but I’m not the type to quit just because things are extra weird. And besides that, I owe Gloria a case of champagne. I can’t do that as a ghost. I guess he won. Hazen won.”
“Well, you have immortality and a family. Most people wouldn’t call that a losing hand. I’m glad I didn’t have to kill you. It’ll be interesting to see how you influence the Grand Master and the world.” He turned and headed for the window.
“Wait, is Gloria okay being on the run from vampires?”
He perched on the windowsill and turned to give me a delighted grin. “She loves it. She’s waited her whole life to be on the lam. She thinks it’s terribly romantic. When we eloped, she was dressed as a man. She didn’t look anything like a man, but the facial hair was impressive.”
I smiled and then gave him a hug. He patted me back and then I pulled away before I accidentally knocked him off the cliff. “Best wishes,” I said. “Let me know when you’re somewhere I can send a case of champagne.”
“Certainly. Don’t worry about the rage, theinstincts, the monster. Hold on to the love that you have, and you’ll always come back to who you are, because that’s your root, your core, even as an undead monster.” With those cheerful words, he disappeared into the storm.
I felt better after that. Tom had given me the choice that Hazen hadn’t been able to give me, and I’d chosen unlife, and family, even if it wasn’t the perfect picture that I’d had in mind. It was mine, and I would keep it.
I went to the armoire and pulled out a black silk velvet dressing gown and put it on. The other one was shredded from my mindless roll-around with Hazen. I dressed carefully, brushing my hair which was no longer purple, and down past my shoulders, as pale blond as it had been when I was young. I’d have to dye it again. I was a cool vampire mom. Maybe blue would be a good color.
I walked out of my tower bedroom, down the stairs until I got to the throne room where Hazen sat at court, Wat and Lock playing with knives behind him, slashing at each other like they were really trying to kill each other.
I ran towards them, picking up my skirt when I tripped and almost died. “What are you doing? You’re going to take out someone’s eye. Hazen, you can’t just let them fight like that, completely unsupervised!”
He raised his hand, and the boys froze in awkward poses, knives at each other’s throats.
I stopped running and dropped my skirt, trying to look dignified and somewhat attractive in spite of the lack of bra.
“I apologize. My thoughts were elsewhere.”
“You can’t think about everything. That’s what I’m here for,” I said, going behind his throne to peel the knives out of the kid’s hands. Without vampirestrength and a surge of rage, I wouldn’t have been able to get them.
“Mom, are you feeling better?” Wat asked once Hazen released them from his will. “You look a little better.”
“I am. I’ve decided to stop feeling sorry for myself and make the best of things. What are you two doing?”
“We were just practicing, you know, in case the Zombie Queen attacks again,” Lock said, like that was a really good reason to almost kill your little brother.
“Yes, I noticed. I was actually talking about school. Why aren’t you boys in school? You aren’t grown up. You need a proper education, or you won’t know what to do with your lives. You are alive. Both of you have half lives. I’m not going to watch you throw them away.”
“What would you suggest we do for their education, my queen?” Hazen murmured, his lips skimming the side of my throat, like that was appropriate in front of our sons. I shivered and prickled and craved his blood, and his fangs, and all sorts of things I hadn’t been coherent enough to want the last time I’d been with him and not trying to kill him.
“I don’t know enough about your world to homeschool them. They should go back to that school and learn more elemental magic, and how to control the monster.”
His breath slid over my skin as he brushed my hair over my ears. “That is an extremely agreeable solution, my queen. Shall we go at once, or do you wish a dinner and movie date first?”
I shifted and turned to face him, crossing my arms. “Your queen? Do I look like a ridiculously perfect zombie to you?”
He smiled slightly, his eyes burning with so much that I couldn’t quite hold his gaze. “It’s out of thequestion to call you the mistress to my master. You’re my respectable wife, even if you can’t knit. You are my queen, which means I suppose I’ll have to be a king. Your king. For you, I will become the vampire king, and you will be my vampire queen. The zombie queen can choke on her attempts to ruin all that is good and beautiful in every world, but most particularly mine.”
I sputtered. “I’m your exterminator, not a queen. A queen is more than just someone who married a king, she’s a symbol of whatever she’s a queen of.”
He took me in his arms and gazed down at me, his eyes so impossibly tender, much softer than a vampire should ever be. “You are the most dependable, determined exterminator I’ve ever had. You stayed on the killing field until the job was done, outperforming every other vampire who claims loyalty to me, in spite of being human. You cut off your own hand to save me. Do you understand how rare and brilliant you are? I have resisted turning you in spite of my anxiety about your safety, but you gave me your blood, your life, and forever. You gave me your forever. I heard that. I felt that. I’ve never been so happy.”
I could have told him that I wanted to haunt him forever as a ghost, but that would spoil the moment, and really, was I stupid enough to walk away from a package like this? Wat and Lock were exchanging intense looks that probably were whole conversations. They were adorable and mine. Hazen, well, at least I knew that he loved me.
I took his hand in mine and smiled at him. “You’ve never been so happy as the moment you were killing me? We’ll have to work on that. I think that we should go to school with the boys. You can be the headmaster while I work in the kitchen.”
