Chapter 284

Evileye grasped her chest reflexively and rolled her eyes at herself behind her mask, 'Why am I still grabbing my chest when I'm startled, it's not like I can get a heart attack.' She reproached herself and relaxed, hunching over while the red haired beauty slid with the smoothness and silent grace of moonlight over water to put herself in front of the diminutive masked caster.

"I… a lot of things? I don't know, just… things." Evileye answered and folded one hand into the other.

Lupu looked up at the sky with wide eyes and an exaggerated, open mouthed and empty headed look on her face, she put a finger on her cheek just at a dimple and replied, "Oh, things. Are you also thinking about… stuff? And what about that other thing… or… maybe…?" She giggled and took on a lecherous look before pointing at the sleeping Momon, "His thing, little pervert girl?" She giggled again as Evileye sucked in her breath and shook her head so rapidly in her denial that Lupu briefly wondered if the short adventurer's head would go flying clean off of her shoulders.

"No! Nothing like that! And hush, you'll wake him!" Evileye hissed.

"Oh? You're not?" Lupu scratched her cheek with one finger and looked away, briefly curious it seemed, in how she cast her eyes from Evileye and back toward the sleeping Momon. "I guess I should tell him you're not really interested in him then… he did wonder why you looked at him… I suppose I could just tell him not to think about that at least. It'd be better for us to travel together without such ah… misunderstandings."

'Why do I imagine her wagging a tail right now?' Evileye asked herself and shivered with dread, anger, and general frustration. "No! Don't tell him that!" She hissed at the fire haired cleric, "I-"

Lupu's nose came close to her all of a sudden, dreadfully close, looming over Evileye's personal space, and the radiant woman seemed a dreadful mix of erotic and predatory, her nose audible in the way it sniffed at the vampire adventurer, Evileye raised her hands to the cleric's shoulder's and gently pushed her back.

"Too close. Give me some space, okay?" She asked, and Lupu sat down at Evileye's feet and crossed her legs.

"I can smell it, you want him. I'm a mimidoshi, I can tell a lot more than you think, even behind your mask. I see you watching, and I tell him every time I catch you." Lupu said, her jesting manner gone, the face was hard as carved stone.

"You do?" Evileye eeped out in a tiny and mouselike voice.

"I do, he's my partner out here and I have to watch out for him, you never know who might be a problem." Lupu said, and Evileye relaxed just a little, such a close bond made the often bizarrely fearsome cleric infinitely more comprehensible.

"So… what?" Evileye finally asked.

"So you should tell your friends before you tell him." Lupu jerked her thumb toward the sleeping Momon.

"Tell my friends… what, they already know I'm in love with him…" Evileye stopped her words dead, but the silence didn't last long.

"No, tell them you're a vampire." Lupu replied.

"I could never tell them that." Evileye slapped her hands over her mask where her mouth was as soon as she spoke, and in one instant after having been thrown so completely for a loop, she was rushing through her options about how to keep Lupu silent.

Almost as importantly, she wanted to know, 'How… how did she know?!'

Lupu leaned back, appearing as non-threatening as someone with her monstrous skills could reasonably look, her palms rested flat on the ground just a few inches behind her and her legs stretched out. "It's not hard with a nose like mine." Lupu reached up and tapped her nose. "You can hide a lot of things with magic, you can hide your face, your aura, disguise your body temperature, all sorts of stuff. But there's one thing you can't hide, at least not from me." Lupu began to titter again as a disbelieving Evileye leaned forward to learn what gave her away.

"For… reasons, I know what a vampire in heat smells like, and that isn't something many spells cover up. I wonder if all vampires are perverts…" Lupu mused aloud as Evileye burned with shame at Lupu's revelation.

"Please… tell me you're joking…" Evileye begged.

"Nope, that's it." Lupu's smug grin burned as much as anything else, and Evileye fell silent.

"You know if this gets out, I'll be an outcast… stripped of my guild status, my plate rank… and that's if I'm lucky. I might be killed… if they can find people strong enough to kill me… or is that why you're telling me, Lupu, you plan on killing me." Evileye's voice dropped an octave and she glared at the woman from behind her mask, shame giving way to threatening anger.

But to her surprise, Lupu barely moved except to shake her head, "Nah, I just like screwing with all you idiots and seeing what you do. Ninya started a rebellion that ended up putting the Wolf Queen on the throne. The Swords of Darkness became royal guards, the Wolf Queen became kinda slutty. Screwing with people doing stupid things is sooooo much fun, like poking at an anthill and watching them scramble around all confused."

Evileye felt very much the idiot, and did not like it. She kept her glare behind the mask, "I haven't done anything."

"That's what makes you dumb. You did nothing with your team, you've spent years of their lives lying to them, and you think you can muster up the guts to 'confess' to Momon the Black the things you haven't been able to say to them for years?" Lupu began to laugh so hard that she made no noise at all and struggled to speak out loud for several lengthy seconds.

"Oh boo hoo, a rank and status… whom are you kidding, pervert girl. How do you see this playing out for you? You keep the secret long enough and maybe they won't care? Or you keep the secret long enough and they die, then you don't have to worry about getting caught? It's kinda pathetic, if you think about it, you know? You bleed, fight, risk your lives together, I've heard stories of you folks, from the big oaf to your tiny self, it's kinda… dumb, you still wearing that mask, hiding this big secret so that the people you love won't try to murder you, or throw you away like trash after all you did for em. Loyalty ain't really your strong suit, eh?"

"They… we… what do you know about it?" Evileye stammered, "We've bled together many times, we fought to the death, we saved each other more times than I can count…"

"And yet here we are. I know what you are, and I don't care at all, it only matters to me what you can do, and what you do do. But with your only… family right? That's how you said you were? You're terrified they'll hate you if they actually know the real you. Maybe you're a coward, maybe they're trash, but it's sure fun to watch you struggle to do what we both know you haven't got the guts to do. If you can't tell them, you damn sure can't tell Momon." Lupu pointed an accusing finger up at the vampire girl.

"You want me to keep quiet, here's my price. Tell them. And only then do you get the right to tell Momon and ask my partner to have you and do pervy things together. Lord Momon shouldn't screw cowards who are afraid of their own families. That, I'm sure of. But don't tell me your answer pervert vampire girl… I'll know your answer by what you, and they do." Lupu lay back and then slowly began to curl onto her side.

"What if… if they try to kill me?" Evileye asked. Though whether she meant that to go to Lupu or not, even she herself was unsure.

"Meh," Lupu paused and let out a deep yawn, "they go to their own personal hell, and your problems are over, either way, I'm sure I'll get a kick out of watching you twits." She chuckled and closed her eyes to fall asleep at last, leaving Evileye awake and more uncertain than ever.