I Can't Get the Vampire Rogue to Romance Me

Chapter 60 - Out of the Closet

"He's a vampire?!" Evangeline declared, just as confused and shocked as the rest of them.

"He looks like a werewolf to me," Artmond said, doing his designated job of stating the obvious, but in this case, it really did need to be said.

Valerian shook his head. "I know. I know what he looks like. But trust me..."

"That's asking a lot," Sigismund shot back.

"But druids, those with advanced levels, can turn into a hybrid person animal thing," Harrowheart said, wringing her hands.

"Thing?" Hagor questioned, taking offense at the word.

"You know what I mean!" Harrowheart shouted, getting more distraught by the minute.

Hagor was usually the most serene of the group, so this new cold anger sat strangely on him in Evangeline's eyes. But he was—he was furious.

"Yeah, but is this guy actually that high a level?" Valerian challenged, bringing them back to the point. "He's way too young, right? If he's the High Cleric's son, and they're both human, he can't be more than twenty at best.

"Look, I know what he looks like. I know that there are half a dozen things that can turn into what we see before us, but please trust me, he's a vampire. It's one of the rarer powers ... we can develop, especially amongst the turned. But him being a druid probably made him predisposed towards it."

"He's the one the black letter was for," Evangeline said, putting it together.

"That's my guess, yeah," Valerian confirmed.

"So you know him, vampire?" Sigismund challenged.

Valerian narrowed his eyes at her. "Know? Darling, we don't all know each other. But I could smell it. I smelled it the second we walked into the cave. This is the guy the letter was meant for."

"He did... he did just come back a few weeks ago from a long trip," Harrowheart admitted in a small voice. "He and his mother got into some sort of ... enormous fight last year. I didn't see it, I only heard about it. He left to find himself, and when he had come back, he had given up becoming a cleric and had respec-ed as a druid. Oh gods." She looked up, her face shattered as she laid out the pieces the rest didn't know. "That's when tensions shifted between the clerics and the druids. There was always an uneasy truce of sorts, but things escalated."

"Were the rest of those wolves vampires then?" Artmond asked.

Valerian shook his head. "No, no. I only smelled it off of him."

"They couldn't have known," Evangeline said. "No one here knows."

"If you don't know what to smell for, how would you?" Valerian agreed.

"And you want all of us to believe that you have nothing to do with or had any knowledge about any of this?" Sigismund uncrossed her arms and set them on her hips.

Valerian licked his lips. "Do an insight on me. All of you. I won't contest it."

"Gladly," Sigismund said.

Insight Skill: General. Success.

Evangeline saw the rest of the party go still, presumably as they all made their rolls. One by one, their eyebrows popped up.

"He's not lying," Artmond said.

"He could be lying about not resisting," Sigismund pointed out, this time with less conviction than she had before.

"I got a critical on the check," Hagor stated. "He speaks the truth. For now."

They all looked from one to the other for a moment, then Sigismund dropped her arms to stick a finger in Valerian's face. "If you come anywhere near my or his neck, I will incinerate you on the spot." She pointed from herself to Artmond to make her meaning crystal clear.

"Believe me, as soon as these collars are off, I will be leaving all your delightful company's immediately," Valerian said, giving a small mocking, court bow. "But believe me, my interests align with yours, and you can all trust me. I do not feed on my allies, and it would be rather stupid of me to upset any of you. I want to survive this as much as the next person." His shoulders shifted as he pressed a hand to his chest, then glanced over his shoulder to the avian savior once more. "And right now, that seems guaranteed only by my continued association with you all. I'm won't be any trouble."

"That's all well and good for you lot, but I have one really big problem, and if you all don't help me with it, I'm the next to be dead," Harrowheart declared, hugging herself in her distress.

"She's right. What are we going to do about him?" Evangeline asked. She wasn't going to let them just ditch Harrowheart now, even if this was all just part of the game. She cared about Harrowheart too much to abandon her.

And with a feeling of a wretched dread, she realized they could. In her world, she would have just wondered, what would happen to Harrowheart and maybe go watch a video of someone else making that choice to find out.

There was no reset here. Harrowheart stood alive and breathing before her. Valerian had been truly dead, not simply sleeping or unconscious, and it was only through the miracle rules of this world that he had come back. The stakes felt so impossibly high.

"We should take him back to his mother," Evangeline said, surprising herself as they words fell from her own mouth. "We will tell her what happened, whether she believes us or not is not up to us."

"Why would we do that?" Sigismuind asked, more from fear than contempt.

"Because she would want to know what happened to him. It will plague her the rest of her life not to know. I can't do otherwise and live with myself," Evangeline said. She saw so many questions on their faces, questions she didn't want to answer, because that was the other world, and it had no freaking place here. Instead, she went over to one of the waiting bedrolls in the alcove and unfurled it to cover the body. It managed to do the head and main part of the body, but the dead vampire's wolfish feet and clawed hands couldn't be covered.

"We should all get a long rest," Evangeline said once the task was done. "We can deal with everything else tomorrow."