Page 12 of Space Vampire
Her eyes are bright as she regards me. “When the pod is fully charged and operational, we can override it. The station here is still in emergency mode.” She twirls a finger, indicating our surroundings. “So when the base ship is in emergency mode, pods can be manually rerouted to a viable planet without too much issue. The theory is that any escapeis better than no escape. Used to be that the Homeworlders would rig a ship to the captain’s biological imprint, but if the captain went down, so did the whole ship. Fascinating, huh?”
“Mmm. So when do we go to this Cassa world? Tomorrow?”
“If the pod is fully charged by then, yes. I’m already downloading the maps to the Cassa system. I’m also downloading ones to three hundred and twenty other systems, so by the time they figure out where we’ve gone, we’ll be off the radar. It’ll take four months for the pod to get there, but we can go into stasis through all of it and wake up to fresh air.” The look on her face turns to one of bliss, as if she’s already breathing in cool breezes.
My heart sinks. There’s one massive flaw in this plan. “I can’t go into stasis, Dana. A body in stasis is kept fed through a nutrient feed, and that doesn’t work for me. I need blood, and regularly.”
“Oh.”
“You can leave me behind.” I grit the words out reluctantly, but I mean them. If only one of us can escape, it should be her. Once they figure out my blood issues, they’ll sell me to some gladiator school somewhere. But Dana is miserable as an overlooked, half-starved pet. She deserves freedom and I want her to have it. It’s obvious that while this station is not human friendly, it’sreallynot made for vampires.
“Nonsense. I’m not leaving you. If we can’t sleep, then we’ll just both stay awake. You feed on me and I’ll snack my way to the Cassa system.”
I’m surprised at her offer. “The pod is very small.”
“Then I hope you don’t mind me being in your face,” she teases. “Besides, we’re already crawling all over each other every chance we get.”
“You’d truly do that for me?”
Dana leans back against me, looping her arm around my neck. She drapes herself over me as if she owns me ... and I love it. “You think I’d let you starve? Or stay behind so they can experiment on you some more?”
“No.” My voice is gruff, my fangs extending to brush my tongue in response to my emotions. “I just don’t want you trapped—”
“I don’t want you trapped, either. We’re in this together. The enemy of my enemy is my best friend.” She leans farther back in my arms, until she’s looking up at me. “My lover, in fact.”
“I like that.” I cup her fragile jaw, caressing her with my thumb.
“So, small change of plans.” Her hands flutter in the air as she talks, her mind already hard at work on the new problem. How her owner never saw her as intelligent is beyond me. I’m impressed at her craftiness. “I’ve got money and some clothes prepared for the trip. We’ll get supplies and cram as much as we can into the pod. I’ll craft a ration list so I don’t run short, and we’ll just squeeze a bunch of noodles into the pod with us. Luckily it’s just enough food for one person, right?”
I nod. If she’s there, I need no food but her. I don’t even need water. Dana’s all I need.
By the end of the day, I’ve helped Dana pack and repack the supplies we’ll be cramming into the emergency pod with us. The food is vacuum sealed into tiny pouches that expand when moistened, but each one still takes up some room and our quarters are extremely limited. To make matters worse, she’s going to eat only once a day. “It’ll be just like when Nasit feeds me,” she jokes.
I don’t laugh. I don’t like that she’s going to go hungry because I can’t go into stasis. “We can pack more.”
“I don’t think we can, actually,” Dana points out as she lines up the bags of supplies in the hall outside the still-charging pod. “We’re going to need room to move around.”
“Like you said, we can just be all over each other like we are now.” I move closer to her and wrap my arms around her, because I can’t get enough of touching her. Of tucking her smaller body against mine and feeling her warmth, her softness, her sweet scent. “We’ve got a whole station here, and we still end up sharing the same chair and the same bed.”
“True, but—”
“No ‘but,’” I say. “You deserve to eat just as often as I do.”
“Hmm.” She seems like she wants to argue, but her fingers stroke lightly over my arm. My cock—and my fangs—respond, both lengthening. “Well, we can pack the pod and see what we can squeeze in.”
“Let’s do it, then.” Because I’m absolutely going to find a way to get more supplies into the pod. She’s not going to suffer. Not under my watch.
Chapter Nine
Dana
Well. That’s all that’s going to fit,” I announce, my hands pressing against the stack of bags crammed into the far end of the emergency pod.
We’ve spent the last few hours playing Jenga with our supplies, trying to get as much to fit in there as we can. The interior of the pod is cylindrical and is designed for up to four people in very close quarters. We’ve got only two people, which is a bonus ... but we’ve crammed a bunch of food and clothing in. Rations are stacked on every surface and crammed into every cubby, and there’s still barely room to stand. There are weapons, too, and all the valuables that I’ve pilfered from the rooms on the station. Most of them are smaller, but there’s a crystalline vase that I know is expensive, because I’ve seen the owner polishing it regularly and snarling when anyone tried to touch it. That’s coming with us for sure.
One of the bags slides out of place, and I push it back atop the stack again, then turn to look at Vlad. He’s frowning with displeasure, his arms crossed over his broad chest as he studies the cram-pile of our belongings. “This is all we can fit?”
I nod, patting the bag on top. “The food supplies have to be here, because we won’t be able to reach them if we put them on the bottom. We’d have to unpack the entire pod to get to them. So the stuff near the floor is what we don’t need immediately—extra clothing and valuables.”
