An Intergalactic Halloween

She rounded the corner and was approaching the elevator. Nick followed her, urging her to wait and slow down. Suddenly, Nick's eyes bulged and he stifled a sharp gasp as a spike of pain ran through his left leg. He saw stars and he fell to his knees on the floor as the worst pain that he'd felt since the accident flowed through his injured leg.

Val spun around as she heard the sound of a body hitting the ground. She saw Nick lying on the floor clutching his leg and quivering. Her fangs retracted back into her gums as the carnal hunger was suddenly gone and replacing it was genuine concern for the human male that she'd met.

"Nick? What's wrong?" she urgently asked him, walking back up to him.

His leg was still shaking uncontrollably and his teeth looked to be chattering like he was stiflingly cold. After a moment he managed to utter out, "Painkillers...wore off."

She looked between him and the quivering leg that he was clutching. "There's something wrong with your leg?" she asked. This actually surprised her; he had seemed to carry himself very well out on the dance floor, after all.

"Sad, huh? Grown man thrown to his knees by a leg ache," he sighed, his leg still quivering.

She frowned, observing his leg intently, wondering what the extent of the damage was. "Where is your apartment?" she asked him.

Nick blinked a few times as he could see clearly again and the stars had dissipated. "Tenth floor," he replied.

She nodded, moving over to his left side. She took his left arm and pulled it around her shoulder to support him.

"Let's get you up on your feet, we'll go slowly," she said. "One, two, three..."

She hoisted Nick up onto his feet and, bracing him against her so as not to strain his left leg. With her support, he hobbled his way along to the elevator. After the door shut behind them, the elevator began its quick ascent to the tenth floor, all the while the man in the Dracula costume and the female in the nurse uniform stared at each other silently.

After a few moments, Nick felt he had to bring up the matter of Val's early departure from the party.

"Val?" he softly asked her. Her eyes were still blood red as she looked at him.

She shook her head at him. "I'll explain everything when we get to your apartment," she replied.

Nick leaned back against the elevator wall, nodding to her in reluctant acceptance. The elevator came to a stop and the doors drew open. By now the kids were almost completely gone from the corridor, with the exception of some of the older ones. Val led Nick along the empty hallway, acting as a replacement leg for him to put his weight on in place of his injured one.

"I'll just warn you, this may not be a pretty sight, cleaning my apartment is not one of my strong suits," he laughed, inserting his room key into the door.

She grinned. "I'm sure I've seen scarier," she replied as they stepped inside.

Nick gaped from what he was when he walked in. His apartment was completely spotless and clean. The clutter that had littered the floor was gone, as was the pile of used clothes that had been lying on the couch. Not only was the apartment fully cleaned, but several orange Halloween candles had been put out on his dining room table, as well as the dresser in his bedroom. On his kitchen table was a freshly-carved jack-o-lantern with a lit candle on the inside of its smiling mouth cut-out. The final detail was an atmospheric melody of jazz music vaguely similar to what they had been dancing to only a half hour before.

Both Nick and Val blushed profusely with embarrassment. He looked up at his ceiling with a wry grin.

"Jan, thank you for cleaning the place, but the decorations and music really weren't necessary," he laughed.

"My scanners indicated that you had a guest arriving, so I felt it prudent to make a relaxing atmosphere," the robotic female voice replied.

Val smiled as she led Nick over to the couch. "Thank you Jan," the yvon said kindly.

"It was my pleasure, Ms. Raahana."

Val gently deposited Nick onto the couch, taking great care with his leg. She took one of the pillows and propped his left leg up on it. She looked at him with a kind smile.

"Is there anything I can do?" she asked him sweetly.

He stared up into those red orbs peering down at him with wonderment and curiosity, before replying, "A couple painkillers would be great. They are in the bathroom cabinet in the blue bottle."

Val nodded and was about to comply before a pair of Jan's arm extensions came forth from the ceiling carrying a tray with a bottle of water, the painkillers, and two glass cups filled with a hot, copper-colored drink.

Nick picked up one of the glasses and looked at it curiously. "What is this, Jan?"

"Apple cider, Nick," she replied. "I made some while you and your female friend were on the way here."

Val smiled, picking up the other glass. "She is very helpful," she said.

Nick downed his two pills followed by a large gulp of water behind it. Val sat on the couch next to him, looking down at his leg that had finally stopped quivering of its own accord.

"How did it happen?" she softly asked him.

Nick put down his water and looked up at her, scratching his chin as he recalled the accident.

"A few years ago, I worked with the Federation fleet in the colony redevelopment division. Basically, we would remodel residential housing on the colonies, fix downed transmitters, repair the atmospheric processors; nothing special," he explained.

"One of the colonies out in the Alpha Centauri system had taken severe structural damage from a hailstorm. We had to go in and fix the building's plating and install an extra sealant that could protect against abrasion from future hailstorms."

"Toward the end of the day, a bunch of the colony kids were outside playing baseball, a common human sport, while I and the other guys were fixing the radar tower. The kids' mothers had apparently told them to stay inside in case another hailstorm came, but they stayed out anyway."

"Anyway, one of the kids hit a home run toward us while another kid ran to retrieve the ball. In that next instant, a massive gust of wind blew into the valley. The radar dish was completely ripped from the tower, because the hailstorm had done so much damage to it."

"I was busy fixing the support beams when I saw that the radar was about to fall. What I saw next though was that one of the colony kids was right under the tower trying to recover his baseball. My next impulse was getting the kid out of the way; I didn't think about anything else."

"Everything happened so fast next that I can barely even remember it. I scrambled for this kid, a vithian boy, and shoved him out of the way just as the dish was falling. I tried to make a jump for it to save myself before it came down, but by then it had already fallen. The fact was; it was either me, or the vithian kid. I made sure that I was the one to be caught in the dish's path when it fell."

Val gulped. "So...the dish, and, your leg," she continued.

Nick sighed and nodded. "I remember feeling the most excruciating pain I'd ever felt in my life, just before I blacked out almost instantaneously. When I regained consciousness, I was in a stretcher and they were carrying me back up to the ship for a medevac. I couldn't even feel my leg at that point. The other guys later told me that it took all five engineers plus a couple colonists to pull the dish off of my leg."

"I'll never be able to walk on the leg properly again. The doctors were able to make sure that I didn't lose the leg completely, but still, most of the tissue and bone damage is irreparable...at least by current Federation doctors," he said.

"The vithian parents of the kid that I saved paid for all of the medical treatment. They must have thanked me a hundred times while I was in my hospital bed," he concluded.

They sat in silence, Nick sipping from his apple cider. Val licked her purple lips, reconciling what to say next.

"What happened to your career in colonial redevelopment?" she asked.

"I was thanked for my efforts before being honorably discharged about a month or so later," he replied.

She looked at him, shocked. "Discharged that quickly?! They didn't award you a commendation? You saved a child's life!" she gasped.

He shrugged. "The colonists appreciated what I did and the fleet basically gave me a Purple Heart medal or something similar to it. I found that rather funny since I wasn't even a soldier or a marine. Still, because of my leg I suppose the fleet considered me dead weight and wanted nothing to do with me anymore. Colonial redevelopment calls for a great deal of mobility," he explained bitterly.

She shook her head at him. "I for one feel that they should have treated you better. That sounds like a heroic thing that you did; putting your life on the line to save someone else."

She reached down and gave his hand a squeeze, smiling down at him.

"So anyway; a few weeks later, I was flipping through the paper, found an ad in the help-wanted that called for dock workers to operate the freight mechs on this station, and now here I am," he grinned. "Luckily the job didn't involve me moving my legs too much."

He then frowned and his demeanor showed a hint of a pained expression.

"The worst part was when my girlfriend, Casey, left me. You see, we'd both been in the fleet together. She'd worked as a requisitions officer aboard the ship that I'd worked on. After the accident, we tried to make things work long-distance, but the fact was that she was always out traveling from place to place in space, and I was here, on this station. So...it just didn't end up working out, the distance between us," he said, looking away from her.

She nodded with a frown as he finished his story. She felt even more humbled to have met this man because of what he'd been through.

She looked back up at him to see that he'd been using a wash cloth and water from his bottle to wipe down the baby powder mask that he'd cloaked his face with. When he was finished, he took another drink of his apple cider.

Val looked down at her own cup of the hot drink, sniffing at it like it was something bile and unpleasant. Nick smiled at her curiosity.

"Val, you don't have to drink that you know."

She raised the glass to her lips. "It looks delicious. I'm curious as to how it tastes."

Nick gulped as he watched her take an experimental sip of the apple cider. "If she really does have to drink blood to survive, will this be toxic to her somehow?" he wondered.

Val took some of the liquid into her mouth and let it settle there for a few moments. She tasted the drink in her mouth, doing her best to make it look like she was enjoying it, when in actually, it was obvious how unpleasant it was for her. She made a face that almost looked like she had just tasted something very sour as her lips puckered. Soon after, she swallowed the mouthful of the hot drink down as if she were reluctantly inhaling it, rather than drinking it.

She looked at the still-full glass and grimaced slightly, placing down onto the tray. She frowned, looking down at herself sheepishly like she'd somehow disappointed him.

He empathetically rested his hand on hers, looking at her face with a kind, sincere smile.

"I told you, you didn't have to drink it if you didn't want to. It's alright," he said, soothingly stroking her hand.

She bit her lips. She wanted him so badly. It was now or never. He had to know the truth; that way there would be no surprises if she lost control of her emotions. He had to know that he needed to protect himself if he had to.

"Nick," she whispered. "I need to tell you something."

He sat himself upright on the couch, looking into her violet face intently. He slowly nodded his head, noticing the ominous change in her tone. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves before continuing.

"How much do you know about the yvon?" she asked.

He gulped, shrugging slightly. "To be honest, not very much. You are actually the very first I've ever met."

She nodded her head casually, not at all seeming offended by this revelation.

"There is a good reason why my people are so reclusive. Some of the Federation races knew who and what we were long before we joined. The yvon have garnered a certain...reputation for the past few centuries," she explained.

"You see, biologically my race has an instinctive urge that runs deep within each of us. We are required to survive on one thing and one thing alone," she paused, taking another breath before continuing. "Please understand, Nick, that what I am about to tell you is like a massive stone in my heart, but I think you should know the truth."

He interrupted her. "Val...I think I already know."

She blinked, looking at him open-mouthed. "You...you do?"

He just smiled at her in response. "Do you really think I was going to go running and screaming out of here when you told me that you have to drink blood of other species to survive?"

Her violet face went a shade paler. He knew. By gods, he already knew.

She sat in silence for a few moments, looking away from him in terror as if he would at any second bolt up from the door and run for station security.

Then in that next moment it all hit her at once. Wait a minute; he knew. He'd known what she was the entire time, and yet he'd still been spending all this time with her!

She struggled out, "You're...you're not afraid of me?" she asked hopefully.

He shook his head with that same passive, contented smile. "I did dress up as a vampire, don't forget," he laughed.

Val made that connection for the first time; the plastic fangs and the baby powder. This Count Dracula that he'd dressed himself up as was a vampire...like her.

"Val," he said, causing her to look up at him again. "If you don't mind my asking, how did the yvon become part of the Federation in the first place? If there was animosity between you and the rest of the races because of your...hunger, then how did you convince them to become a part of the galactic community?"

"Two decades ago, my people's science academy diverted all resources into coming up with a solution to our...affliction. We were tired, we were tired of being a pestilence, tired of being monsters to be feared and abhorred by the other races of the galaxy," she explained.

He looked into her face, continuing to rest his hand on hers all the while. "Did it work? Were you able to cure yourselves?"

She shook her head. "No. Our tendency is instinctive and chemical. It's not something we could use science to alter or cure. We did however, come up with another reprieve. Using the combined genetic material of all the other Federation species, we were successfully able to replicate the blood of other species for nourishment," she said. "Now that we finally had a solution, over three hundred thousand synthetic blood factories were built on our home planet within the next decade. Soon after, we appealed to the Federation council and proposed to them that we were no longer a threat, and we finally become accepted into the community soon after."

He nodded, fascinated with the story of her species. "Synthetic blood; so, you guys can actually survive on that?"

She gave a half-nod. "Yes, it does give us adequate nourishment to survive. But, just put it this way; the difference between regular and diet food brands."

He nodded with a knowing grin. "Ah, I see; although the synthetic stuff is ok enough, it's nothing compared to the real thing?"

She nodded blankly. "Yes. Don't get me wrong, we were overjoyed that we could finally be part of the Federation and not be outcasts. But...it is definitely difficult for us, now more than ever."

"Are you allowed to drink from living people at all anymore? Well, without killing them of course," he asked.

She bit her lip, looking at him strangely before answering. "The yvon high council has tightened their noose on the policy of interspecies live feeding. In very few circumstances, such as yvon/non-yvon matings and marriages, we may be allowed to drink from our partner, as long as it is completely consensual," she explained.

"Since we joined the Federation five years ago, nonconsensual feeding has become the worst crime that a member of my species can commit. The yvon high council has longed to become part of the galactic community for years. They will do whatever they can to keep their new alliance intact. They don't want cross-species incidents to threaten what they have achieved."

Nick looked at her with a concerned expression. "What is the punishment for nonconsensual feeding?"

She gave a worried grimace. "Generally, public execution back on the Yvon home planet. They want to send a message that the old ways must not exist anymore," Val replied.

"Have you ever fed on a live person before?" he asked her, staring right into her eyes.

She looked away from him sheepishly. "Yes," she croaked, shaking her head sadly. "It's been a long time, but yes, I have fed on live victims before; unwilling live victims. I was born of the last generation in which feeding on live victims was an accepted practice among my people."

"Now, every new generation of the yvon will grow up learning not to feed on others. I envy them. Gods how I envy them," she said, shaking her head in shame, averting his gaze.

Nick reached over and cupped her cheek in his hand, turning her head to look at him. She had tears welling up in her eyes as painful memories came back to her all at once.

"I'm a murderer, a monster," she croaked. "I still see the faces of the poor colonists that my father and mother would bring back for me to feed on. I still remember the fear in their eyes," she sobbed into Nick's hand. "I was so close, I was so close to being born into the next generation. A few more years and I would never have known what it feels like to drain a person dead," she cried.

Nick propped himself up, ignoring the pain in his leg as he moved forward to wrap his arms around Val. He pulled her against him, stroking his fingers lovingly through her silky silver hair as she cried into his shoulder as the flood of emotions poured through her.

"You aren't a monster, Val. Do monsters cry or show remorse?" she whispered into her ear soothingly. "You are different now. It's why you became an ambassador. You want to help people, to become friends with the other races. You are not a murderer," he reassured her, keeping the beautiful violet creature pressed against him.

"I'm not different," she sobbed. "Even now, all I've been thinking about is sinking my teeth into your neck and drinking from you! It's not natural! This is no way to live!" she bawled miserably.

Nick looked shocked at hearing this. She wanted to drink from him.

Nick mulled this over in his head. Was this a bad thing? Did that mean that she was attracted to him? Was that why she ran out of the party earlier, because she couldn't control her emotions? Maybe she will be able control herself. Maybe it's better if he give her what she so craved.

Nick pulled back from her, staring right into her tear-streaked face. He reached his hand out and brushed a lock of silver hair from her eye.

"Do it then," he said to her simply.

She wiped her eye. "What?" she asked confusedly.

"Do it, Val. Drink from me. I want you to."

Her face contorted at this. "Haven't you been listening to what I've been telling you, Nick?!" she hollered. "I am sickened by my nature!"

"You are sickened by the idea of forcing yourself on someone and feeding from them against their will. I am willing. There is nothing wrong with consensual feeding. I want to share my life-force with you, Val. I want you to drink my blood," he declared to her with absolute certainty.

She looked at him, dumbstruck. Her mouth was quivering as she was completely at a loss for words.