Page 4 of Space Vampire
They’ve left the station entirely? That’s new. Cowardly and unsurprising, but new.
And they’ve also left this fragile, clever creature behind. “You’re sure they left?”
“Positive. I’m not normally alone for this long. I checked the escape pods, and they’re all gone. We’ve been left with whatever it is that’s terrorizing this place. I’m surprised you haven’t run into him.”
I take a step forward in the darkness, then another toward her. Blood pulses under her skin, and I can smell the faint notes of it. I put my hand over the light panel, and she quickly moves to the side, her pulse skittering and the blood scent growing stronger.
With my claws, I rip the light panel out of the wall so she can’t use it.
“Bad news,” I growl, echoing her words.
“Oh?” Her voice is a little uncertain, and she shivers even as she tilts her head back as if to look at me.
I lean in close, mouth watering again at her delicious scent. “Little one, Iamthe monster they fled.”
Chapter Four
Dana
Ipress myself harder against the wall.
He’s ... the monster? He’s the reason everyone fled the station? Panic flares in my chest, and I tamp down the urge to run.Be cool,I remind myself.If you’re having a normal conversation, he’s not as monster-y as you think. He’s just saying that to freak you out.“You’re messing with me, right?”
“I do not understand.” His words are measured, calm. I can’t see his face in the darkness. All I can hear are his movements ... and I can feel the heat coming off his body. He sounds like he’s breathing heavy, but he’s also an alien. How do I know how heavy or how light he breathes normally? But the fact that his deep voice is even is a good sign, I think. “What is this ‘messing’?”
“You’re teasing me,” I clarify, wishing I could turn the lights on. He just clawed the panel out of the wall, though, so that’s a vote against him being cool and calm. I shiver, chills prickling on my skin. “You’re not therealreason they left, are you?”
“I broke out,” the stranger says simply. “Their poisons and their shock-sticks could not hold me. So they left to savethemselves because I said I would kill them if I caught them and drink their blood.”
He says it all so casually, as if two dozen well-armed aliens and a handful of scientists abandon ship every day. I glance up, because I can’t see him in the darkness, but I can feel him looming. He’s taller than me, and the nearness of him is starting to unnerve me.
“So that is why I am here,” he continues in that too-calm voice. “Why areyouhere?”
“Because I’m a poodle.”
“A pooh-dull?” He echoes the word, mangling it. “I still do not understand.”
It suddenly occurs to me that being seen as a poodle is going to work for my benefit. “I’m a pet,” I explain. “Aliens—the big blue guys—stole me from my home planet a few years ago. The guy that owns me makes me sleep in a cage and treats me like I have no functioning brain cells.”
He huffs.
The sound of his response is vaguely amused, so I keep going. Haven’t I been learning how to deal with those bigger and stronger than me all this time? I can handle one more. If he’s not on their side, he’s on mine. If they think he’s a monster, he can be my monster. “So you’re really the big bad that’s got them all running scared?”
“Big bad . . . what?”
I ignore that and feign confidence I don’t feel. I push off the wall as if it’s every day I’m trapped on an abandoned space station—in the dark—with a stranger. “It seems we’re the last two left here. What’s your name?”
“I have no name. What is yours?”
“I’m Dana. How come you don’t have a name?”
“I have a batch number. Do you have one?”
“I’m not a clone.” I step forward and immediately stub my toe on something metal. A loud clang echoes in the room, and I wince. “Ow.”
“There is a mess,” Captain Obvious the clone tells me. “You are not wearing shoes.”
“They don’t give me shoes. Poodle, remember? I get to keep my cute little toesies on the cold floorsies because my master is a huge dicksies and thinks it’s cutesy.”
