Chapter 3: Truce and Dare

Fire.

It illuminated the deep black night ahead of her, warm and comforting on her skin.

Probably not the way the screaming vampires inside the burning building would describe it. Nora felt their agonized presences fading one by one, like a weight gradually lifting off her shoulders.

"They're coming. It'll happen in the blink of an eye," a deep, dark voice said right next to her, and she startled. That vampire—Levi—was suddenly standing by her side. His eyes glinted silver, burning brighter than the flames as they locked with hers. "You think you can do it all alone?"

What the hell was he talking about? How was that even a question? She was a Slayer, and the only one within at least a 70-mile radius. In the end, she was always alone. She'd fight alone, and one day, she'd die alone. Probably sooner rather than later.

"What choice do I have?" she asked him, eyes stinging.

Levi cocked his head ever so slightly, pondering her question. Pondering her. "There's only the one, I guess." Slowly, he reached out to touch the bare skin above her neckline—covering her cross pendant with his hand. His skin sizzled as her necklace burned him. Smoke rose between their faces. He did not flinch, didn't even blink or deepen his frown. When he spoke again, his voice remained calm and steady.

"I devote my heart, you devote your soul."

#

Nora opened her eyes to the ceiling of her bedroom. The coolness of his touch lingered on her skin, more so than the warmth of the flames.

Shit. What the hell had that been?

Before she'd been Called, dealing with dreams of any sort—good, bad, or plain bizarre—had been a simple affair. The elusive depths of her subconscious mind were a strange and inscrutable place at best and a torturous one at worst. Best not to question it, just forget—a process that usually started seconds after awakening—and move on.

Then came the Slayer dreams, and their intense, prophetic nature might just be Nora's least favourite part of her superpowered existence. Dying a violent, early death she found easier to accept than the confusing or ominous or outright disturbing intrusions on her sleep. Sometimes it was flashes and glimpses, nothing she could get a hold of before it slipped her mind. Sometimes she retained every obnoxious detail, and there wasn't a doubt she was dealing with a Slayer dream; they felt different. Like more.

Sometimes she knew what they meant, often she didn't. Sometimes they predicted a possible version of the future, sometimes it was all rubbish as far as she could tell. They were rarely straightforward.

This one, too, had definitely felt like more. And it made no bloody sense to her. The details of their brief conversation were getting hazy already, but she surely wasn't about to devote anything to anyone, and neither would a sodding vampire. She had devoted most of herself to that stupid, sacred duty already.

That look, though, and that touch… Nora shook her head, rubbing the skin on her chest in an attempt to chase its remnants away. Her pulse and her breathing were elevated, she was covered in goosebumps, she felt ready to… she didn't know what. Must be her entire being rejecting the demon's proximity.

Either way, there was nothing about the dream that warranted a discussion with Hange. No hints, no names, no dates or places.

All it told her was, 'ooh, fire pretty', and that the vampire was a pain in her neck—just not in the literal sense. Yet.

She had the feeling it would stay that way for a while.

#

By the time she crawled out of bed, it was noon. After gobbling down a few bites of leftover pizza, Nora went for a brisk run. It was strange: before her powers had awakened, she had rarely felt the need to move like that. No physical exhaustion in the world had ever truly stopped her from ruminating, but since becoming a Slayer, all that pent-up energy inside her just kept building, and blowing off some steam now felt as inevitable as exhaling after taking a deep breath. There were several ways to go about it, but so far, she hadn't found anything more effective than killing demons.

That edge, that frustration, however, could not be quelled, only softened. She realised it came with the Slayer Package—yet, a predisposition for mental restlessness seemed to be hard-coded into her DNA. Nora scarcely remembered a time her mind had been entirely at ease.

Today, she'd have preferred to 'spar' with Hange while the sun was still up—as in, her poor Watcher wearing heavy padding while Nora used her as a glorified punchbag, semi-successfully doing her best to keep her Slayer strength in check—but Hange had already left for the library by the time Nora got up. So, running it was, followed by fruitless research using the books they had here. Then, finally, the sun set, and she could go on patrol.

Never mind that she'd originally planned to take tonight off. Resting just wasn't happening today.

Her Slayer sense started tingling not even a kilometre from her home. That was too close for comfort. She broke into a run, gathering her hair into a ponytail, following the demonic violence humming in the air.

It was farther away than she'd expected; whatever was going on must be pure chaos. Eventually, Nora came to a stop at the corner to the back alley between the worst pizzeria and the second-best bakery in town. Carefully, she inched along the brick wall, risking a look.

She had to stifle a gasp.

Four vampires were engaged in combat, their vicious, guttural snarls cutting through the night. Not a single human in sight. It quickly became clear that there was some order to the chaos: three of them were ganging up on the fourth—the shortest of the bunch, a dark, nimble blur from top to bottom. Nora's heart skipped a beat.

It was him. Levi. Of fucking course.

She already had one foot in the air when she caught herself, reining in her instincts. There was absolutely no reason to intervene just yet, no reason to put her life on the line and miss out on the perfect opportunity to do some actually useful research.

His three opponents were fighting like feral beasts, pouncing and recoiling without coordination, waiting for their opening to strike true. Levi, on the other hand…

It was the first time she was seeing his demon face. His golden eyes were flashing beneath the ridge of his brow, lips curled into a silent snarl, baring his fangs.

The cool calculation in his expression was like nothing Nora had ever seen on a vampire mid-fight. He was still so fucking recognisable, so much the sharp-featured man she'd spoken to twice before.

Two of the vampires attacked him at the same time, one from each side. Levi's movements were swift and fluent, kicking one of them square in the chest while driving his stake into the other. The former hit the brick wall so hard Nora heard it crack, the latter crumbled to dust before it hit the ground.

Levi hadn't let go of his stake; he leapt at the disoriented vamp sliding down the wall and pierced its heart.

This was fucking art.

Two down, one to go, and it—she, a tall woman with an athletic build—was about to jump at him while he had his back to her.

Nora couldn't restrain herself any longer. She sprang into action, sprinting the few metres distance.

The two vampires had just enough time to turn, their demon eyes widening. The woman forgot her original target for a moment, readying herself to meet the frontal assault fangs-on.

Too slow. Nora ducked below the vampire's outstretched arms and stabbed her chest before her hands or teeth could touch her.

Sweet, sweet satisfaction.

As the dust settled, Nora's eyes met those of a furious demon. She took a step back, tightening her grip around her stake. Just in case.

"What did you do that for?" he hissed. "You stole my kill."

She shrugged, trying to contain her grin. "Thought I'd return the favour." The intention was to play it cool, but some of her glee might have seeped into her voice. Hell, this had single-handedly made her day.

If not for his lumpies, Levi's expression would have been close to whatever was the murderously irritated version of baffled. "And you waited till the last one for that?"

He was one to talk. "You've been stalking me first, watching me fight, have you not? Fair is fair."

His demon visage melted away. His eyes lost all of their luminous colour, but not their dangerous glint. His fangs shrank. Before her stood, once again, what looked like a disgruntled man, nothing more. But looks were deceiving.

Still, he had sheathed his proverbial sword, or got as close to it as he could. Nora relaxed her stance, let her stake hand go slack.

Maybe the reciprocated gesture of (vaguely implied, certainly momentary) truce was what made him talk. Most likely, he'd have insulted her anyway. "I wanted to interrogate her first, you stake-happy moron."

Her brow creased. "Why?" she asked, too perplexed to insult him back.

"They were part of a nest. It's probably gaining members as we speak."

That was… not good. If it wasn't hogwash. "How do you know?"

Her mind was already running through possibilities, all too willing to dismiss the claim. He could be lying. He could be plain wrong. Had it not yet come to the attention of Hange's few demonic informants? Shouldn't Nora have encountered an angry mob of vamps, by now?

"Tsk." Even that little sound rang with condescension. "Any vampire around here that's older than a gnat knows. Don't tell me you haven't been slaying more than usual recently."

With increasing vexation, Nora went over the numbers in her head. "Not enough that I would think—"

"Because the smart ones are avoiding you, idiot."

"What does that say about you, then?" She pointed her stake at him, indulging in a vivid fantasy that ended with the prick reduced to a pile of ashes.

Levi didn't retreat an inch, his flinty gaze flitting back and forth between the stake and her face as he thought. Nora started to wonder what could possibly take him so long to answer this very simple, aggressive, and largely rhetorical question. (Rhetorical because she wasn't daft enough to expect an actual explanation regarding his motives.)

"Seems that either I'm dumb, or stronger than them," he said eventually. "Take your pick."

Given the evidence, the answer was quite obvious, loath as she was to admit it. Sighing, she lowered her stake again, putting aside her grievances to focus on the issue at hand. "You really think she would have betrayed her master?" Nora indicated the dust on the ground.

If she'd thought the man cold and intense before, the way he was looking now told her she hadn't seen shit, so far. "I can be very convincing," he said, his voice a low rumble.

A strange thrill ran down her spine. Immediately, her brain started envisioning all the terrible methods of torture he might have in mind.

Vampires, she reminded herself. All of them. Better not to ask for clarification. Efficiency was what mattered here.

"Let's assume you're telling the truth," she said, earning herself another annoyed click of his tongue. "What's their game, here? You lot aren't usually known for your sense of community."

"Hell if I know. Same old, if I had to guess: taking over the town as a first step toward world dominion or bringing forth the apocalypse. It's always one of these two when they flock together like that." He gave a weary shrug, jamming his hands in the pockets of his coat. Talking as if he had nothing whatsoever in common with those deluded, fellow demons of his.

"The Hellmouth is a gift that keeps on giving," Nora said dryly.

One ought to think that demons wanted to avoid places that stood under a Slayer's protection. However, the more ambitious ones weren't deterred easily; the power that Hellmouths promised was too tempting. Magic and all sorts of demonic energy galore.

"Keeps the real estate dirt cheap," said Levi, and added just as blandly, "At any rate, as soon as their numbers are high enough, they'll come for you. You're a major thorn in their asses."

"…Right."

This was feeling more and more like a particularly bizarre Slayer dream. What was the matter with this misfit of a vampire? Why was he even telling her any of this? Why would he care? It didn't look like he cared, that much she could ascertain.

"I know better than to ask about your motives," she said slowly, "but what's your further course of action in this? Torturing vampires left and right until you get the information you want?"

His eyes lit up in challenge, bringing life to his stony expression. "You got a problem with that?"

"Hardly. But barging into their den on your lonesome sounds like suicide."

To her surprise (and mild disappointment), Levi didn't seem to take offence. "Maybe, maybe not." He tilted his head a bit, sizing her up. "I got a better idea, though."

Forcing herself to keep still, Nora fought hard to hide her discomfort beneath equally as potent mistrust. "What?"

"I want to wipe them out, and so do you. Same goal." He waited, eyeing her expectantly, and only continued once she'd given him a terse nod. "So I suggest we make our move at the same time."

"You—" Nora was at a momentary loss for words. Was there any chance she was misinterpreting his meaning? But this seemed rather unambiguous; essentially, it could only mean one thing, no matter how carefully he'd phrased it. "You're saying we should team up?" Her eyebrows must be up to her hairline right now.

Levi folded his arms, poker face perfectly in place. "You were the one who just said going solo would be suicide."

So he was being serious. She barked an incredulous laugh. "You know what else I consider suicide? A Slayer, trusting a vampire."

"Tsk. I never said anything about trust. I trust you just as much as you trust me, brat. We don't need trust in order to work toward a common goal together." He kept dissecting her with his eyes, probably not missing even the smallest reaction. As though he was mapping out her every weak spot, deliberating where to sink his fangs in. "Without me, you'll have a hard time finding the nest anytime soon, let alone kill them all at once."

She wanted to disagree. She wanted to stake him. No—first, she wanted to prove him wrong, then stake him, and she wanted it now.

But she couldn't, not yet. Her own voice of reason (which might not necessarily correspond with common sense) forbade it; for better and worse, Nora was actually contemplating what he'd said, her mind spinning like a hamster wheel. She had always been a big fan of making Informed Decisions—which happened to be a valued trait in a Watcher.

Nora was not a Watcher. She was supposed to be all about carefully honed instincts. But even Slayer instincts weren't infallible—especially not when they screamed several contradictory things at once at her.

"Verdammte Scheiße!" She threw up her hands in frustration, her grip around the stake tight. "This is mental. Absolutely, bloody mental."

One corner of his mouth twitched. Other than that, all she got from his indifferent expression was impatience. "Just give it a think, brat. Or not. Do what you want." A few seconds of tense silence passed before he let out a deep, unneeded breath. "If you're interested, we can talk again once I got some details." He turned to leave. Damn it.

Before Nora could question herself, she blurted, "And how are we supposed to get in contact?"

He paused, facing her once more. "Let me think." There was that infuriating, hard-to-read twitch of his lips again. Paired with a hefty dose of sarcasm. "How about phones?"

"Oh." It was probably shortsighted to automatically assume a vampire wouldn't own a phone, but it had seemed perfectly reasonable, somehow. Many of them got kind of stuck in the decade they'd been turned in. Plus, they usually didn't officially exist.

This one, though. This one belonged nowhere and anywhere. This one had already mentioned social media.

Levi seemed to interpret her hesitation as caution instead of what it really was: mentally smacking her own forehead for being thick. "You can use a burner if you won't give your number to the undead." He pulled his own phone from an inside pocket of his coat.

This was getting more surreal by the second. She was doing this. She was actually doing this. She must be crazier than she'd realised.

"No, that's okay," Nora heard herself say. "It's my Slayer phone anyway." Which she tended to use more than her personal phone that was linked to her name. But that was a sad and pathetic fact she didn't need to share.

She fished it out of her jacket pocket, almost dropping it in the process. Smooth. Straight away, he recited his number. She sent him a brief text—a cross emoji—and that was that.

His heavy-lidded gaze fell to his screen as the phone pinged in his hand. She waited with bated breath.

He wouldn't give her the satisfaction. Not even the slightest twitch in his face. "Cute," he deadpanned, tapping the screen—probably saving her contact info—before pocketing his phone again. "What a time to live in."

"Tell me about it. I'm trading numbers with a vampire who owns a smartphone and knows how to use TikTok."

He rolled his eyes. "Just the bare necessities. I'm too old for that shitty user interface."

An audible puff of air left Nora's nose in her amusement. "Dreadful, innit?"

His blank stare was enough to remember herself, and the situation she was in.

This was risky business in the truest sense of the word, and she was absolutely fucking not bonding with a grouchy vampire over their mutual dislike for a perfectly average part of modern technology. How old was she, seventy?

How old was he?

Nora didn't even consider asking; for now, she was quite done with this awkward trip into bizarro world. She needed to recuperate, sort her thoughts, then confess to Hange tomorrow.

It was impossible to tell if Levi felt similarly, but they parted without another word, taking off in opposite directions.

Something occurred to her only once the growing distance between them had swallowed his presence. Something trivial, but… slightly off-putting.

He had never even asked her name.

#

Nora's phone chimed two days later, right as she was about to pour her afternoon cup of tea. With a sense of premonition, she put the kettle down, checking her messages right away. (Although, maybe premonition was too strong a word for a depressingly simple process of elimination: Hange had just left for a demonology seminar.)

Indeed, there was his name, right above Hange's, in bold letters at the top of her inbox. Weird time for a demon to contact her, though. Shouldn't he still be asleep for a few more hours?

I have news. I know you're paranoid, so you suggest a time and place.

"Dickhead," Nora mumbled, scowling at the screen. Paranoid? Pretty sure that was just common sense. Nothing screamed 'trap' like a vampire summoning a Slayer to a specific place at a specific time.

When she typed her answer, however, a tiny smirk played on her lips.

Picnic in the park tomorrow, 1pm? The weather's supposed to be gorgeous. ️

The sun emoji added a nice touch, she thought. Two seconds later, he was already typing.

Bitch.

Stop dragging this out with your shitty jokes and let's get this over with.

.

Twat.

Nora paused for the briefest moment. A mere formality, in all honesty, a half-arsed attempt at prudence to give herself the feeling that she knew what she was doing. Because the decision stood, and had since the night before yesterday.

She wanted that nest. And she needed to know more about that sodding vampire who seemed so keen on killing his kind.

She pulled up Google Maps, then forwarded him the location.

At your earliest convenience.

.

See you there right after sunset.

What a vampire way to set a time for a meeting.

And what a Slayer thing to know exactly when that was.

AN: Yes, the AOT canon references at the beginning were on purpose, lol. Couldn't help myself.