Page 4 of Space Vampire (Scared Sexy Collection #4)

Chapter Four

Dana

I press 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 the real reason 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 save themselves 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 are you here?”

“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.”

“. . . what?”

“Never mind. I hate being a pet and I’m venting and talking nonsense.”

He grunts.

I take another step forward, only for an oversize, warm hand to clasp my arm. “Don’t. You’ll step on glass.”

“Oh.” I remain where I am, because that was kind of him.

His skin against mine feels good, like a heating pad, and I’m reminded how I’m always cold because the air on the station is frigid and optimal for mesakkah aliens, not humans.

This guy is warm, though. He hovers over me in the darkness, and I suspect if I reached my hand up above my head, I’d find his face.

I’m really curious about his face.

I also think the hand on my arm might have claws, but I’m scared to check.

My heart hammers. Despite my fear, I keep a breezy smile on my face in the darkness, because you can still hear a smile.

“So you’re the project they were working on?

Were you the one making all the crashing sounds? I kept hearing glass breaking.”

“Mmm. I was trying to get to the packs of blood they keep stored here.”

“Why?”

“To drink.”

That makes me pause. Goose bumps move up my arms again. “You aren’t fed nutrient bars? Those shitty, tasteless square things? Kinda feels like chewing on wood?”

He hasn’t let go of me. His hand skims up my bare arm, as if petting me. I should be more afraid. This is the monster, right? But he’s not being particularly monstrous to me. He just skims a claw along my arm, as if testing to see that I’m real. “Haven’t had those, no.”

My stomach growls, and I’m reminded that everyone has abandoned us, and there’s no chance that anyone is going to feed me anytime soon.

“I don’t really recommend them. They’re crap.

But when you’re hungry enough, you don’t get choices.

And the doors here are locked. I don’t suppose you have access to get into the locked parts of the station? ”

“Don’t know that I do. Haven’t tried. I’ve just been ... here. In the lab.”

“In the dark,” I point out.

“The lights hurt my eyes and they make my skin burn.”

I take that in. Really take that in. He hates the light. He drinks blood. This is starting to feel like a prank. My fear bleeds away. “Are you ... trying to tell me that you’re a vampire?”

Man, the Halloween vibes on this ship are immaculate.

“What is that?”

“A monster that kills people. Hates garlic and sunlight and crosses. Drinks blood.”

“I don’t know what two of those things are, and I’ve never stood in sunlight. I do know that the lights here pain me, and I drink blood. I haven’t killed anyone ... yet. But I did attack some of the scientists, yes.”

I can’t tell if he’s being serious or not. “Why?”

“Because I was hungry.”

I suddenly feel like a rabbit having a casual conversation with a wolf. “And ... are you hungry right now?”

“Ravenous.”

Oh dear.

His thumb moves on my arm, and then he drops his hand. “I am more interested in talking to you than drinking you down, no matter how good you smell. You haven’t run away, even though you’re afraid. I can feel your pulse hammering.”

“Where would I go? I’m a pet, remember? And I’m not running away because if you’re their enemy, you’re automatically my friend.”

“Even if I am this garlic monster?”

Despite my unease, that makes me smile. “Actually it’s a vampire.”

“Whatever you call it, it is all the same. I am not normal. They changed something inside me. And now I am ... hungry.”

Well, that makes two of us, except I want to eat noodles and he wants to drink me like I’m a walking, talking juice box. “So what’s the plan?”

“Plan?”

“Yeah, you attacked the scientists, made them leave, and now you’re the king of the station here. Congrats. Good job. Now what’s your plan?”

“Why do you care what I do?”

“Because I do have a plan, and I need to see if it aligns with yours or if you’re going to just kill me.”

He makes another one of those amused sounds. “Why would I kill you when you’re so very interesting to talk to? And you seem to know what I am, which makes you cleverer than the scientists that left here. So I want to know more.”

“And you’re not going to kill me?”

“No.”

“Even if I smell really fucking good?”

He leans in close, warm, coppery breath infusing the darkness around me. “Creature, you smell incredible, and I can hear your pulse pound with every beat of your heart, and I have not attacked you yet, have I?”

That shouldn’t make me pulse between my thighs. “My name’s not Creature. It’s Dana. And if we’re going to be friends, you need a name. I’m not calling you Dracula. That’s another vampire, by the way.”

“I told you, I only have a batch identification number. Project va’DorV8.3.”

Well, that’s a mouthful. “You know what? Dracula’s a better name. Or how about Vlad? Vlad the Impaler?”

“I will use that one. It sounds intimidating.”

Yeah, I should have guessed he’d pick that. “Okay, well, if we’re friends, Vlad, can I get you to promise not to kill me?” When he pauses for longer than I’d prefer, I point that out. “An immediate answer would be better than one where you have to think about it. Just saying.”

He huffs, amused. “I don’t want to kill you. You’re the first one that’s talked to me like I’m a normal person, not a mistake.”

Then I’ll talk his ear off, like Scheherazade and her thousand and one nights. “I’m glad we’re in agreement. And speaking of agreements ...” I gesture at our surroundings. “My eyes are bad. Can we turn at least one light on, or do you have to have total darkness?”

“I know that they have had certain lighting in the past that did not injure me, but the ones you used were painful.” He pauses and taps my arm. “You are the expert on the garlic monster. You tell me.”

“Vampire,” I correct again. “And as far as I know, it was just sunlight that affected vampires. Natural sunlight.”

“I have never seen the sun. I have only ever been on this station.”

That strikes me as sad. “You’ve never been planetside?

You’d like it. The weather is different every day and there’s a breeze.

The air is fresh and doesn’t smell like old socks like it does here on the station.

And the skies at night are gorgeous.” I’m hit with a wave of homesickness.

I haven’t seen the sun or felt a breeze since I was acquired by Nasit.

“The station does smell bad,” he admits. “I thought it was only something I scented.”

I chuckle at that. “No, I smell it, too. It’s the air recyclers or something.

They always smell musty. And I want to get a look at you, Vlad.

See if you have other typical vampire characteristics.

” See what I’m working with. See if you’ve got the look of a cold-blooded killer on your face.

See if you’re looking at me like I’m a human or a hamburger. “Come on.”