Guildhall Guardian: Thamesian #1 (Thamesians) (13 page)

He kicked himself to the curb. No distraction, especially now.

He hailed a cab and gave him Brand's nightclub address.

The fabric of her dress slyly brushed against his legs.

It was done.

He had turned into a dumbstruck human lover.

*

  We were going to Soho first. Brand owned a club there. Clearly the hype Thamesian brother took to the night ,as a good vampire would do, for his own entertainment.

I wondered if he ever could be tempted to reveal who he was to his human patrons.

Like anyone would believe him anyway.

Was the third brother, Benedict, a somewhere in between Roydon and Brand? Or just as dissimilar?

Roydon was looking at his watch.

The proverbial British sense of punctuality.  He had been pretty disrupted from his Guildhall routine lately. He wasn't clean shaven anymore, not so impassible, not quite untouched since an arrow had been shot right through his arm.

I wanted to see more of his rough side.  To crease his Englishman phlegm and muddle his prim behaviour. To get RAD Roydon to come out and play.

Only if for a night.

  Branded.

Naturally, the name of Brand's establishment.

It sounded fabulous and at the same time I doubted the intentional use of irony.

   "I can't believe your brother had the nerves to name his club after himself" I said, taking Roydon's arm to exit the cab.

  "Quite tacky, yeah. Now let me usher you inside"said Brand who had used his hybrid speed to appear by our side.

Fuck. I just dissed his place with him being within earshot.

Good way to make friends.

  "It takes a Thamesian to be an open brandisher" said Roydon, keeping a straight face.

"Is that you joking, Roydon?God have mercy on us. Couldn't find another way to announce your intent to leave a good burn on the Londonian nighlife?"

Slow down boys, I was overwhelmed by the explosive fuse of their brotherly exchanges.

*

They got a first drink at the bar.

   "Interest by a mixing it up with hunters and corrupted human youth?"

Roydon arched an eyebrow.

   "I thought you had every intention of remaining far from the maddening supernatural crowd?"

   "I'm trying to fix it for my dear brother." said Brand. "What do you think of Camden?"

   "Deemer has gone missing , I already checked on that."

   "I'm speaking about Camden Town. This where we're going right away."

   "I'm not too fond of the place, what's to be found there?"

   "The Underworld."

*

  A three stories nightclub with howling wolves on its facade, The Underworld was not lacking in setting an enigmatic mood. It was human owned, but obviously flaunting its assets in order to appeal to supernatural patrons.

I wished I had looked at a map of London. From St Pancras to Soho, to Camden, I had no clue where the heck we were.

Camden Market was entirely new to me, and Roydon didn't seem quite happy with the location.  I guessed the whole thing was a little too much Boho for him.

The underground of the club was spectacular.  It connected with what was apparently called the Stables market ,a former labyrinth of stables through subterranean Camden.

  "I feel like all of this is a lacklustre." whispered Roydon into my ear.

I was almost undulating to the music.

  "You trust your brother, you know he has good reasons for bringing us here."

  "I am not so certain, to be honest.He could've done it for the sake of wordplay."

From afar I watched Brand talking to the landlord.

We were in a middle of a faceless crowd.  Drunk stylish young people, an entity in half-darkness just like everywhere around the world, giving in to the music.

Roydon was so close his wood, leather perfume rubbed off into me.

  "Will you dance with me?" I asked boldly.

Roydon eyes held me pinned just above a blaze. If he stopped looking at me like that, I would fall allright and crash into the fire.

He didn't answer with words, instead, he gripped my hand, and dragged me deeper into the dancing audience.  I was just a body seeking rapture between his hands. We danced together as if some invisible wire linked us and got us electrified if we came to close to each other. In fact it was mostly me doing the dancing. Roydon stood as a magnet and his body riveted me completely. His hands slipped around each sides of my face. His knuckles brushed my cheeks. He dragged me against him so astutely that for a second I just believe I had fell on him by chance. His hand on my lower back, I closed my eyes and breathed in.

The loud beating of my heart mimicked the music pounding from the speakers.

Roydon's mouth scraped mine, and the kiss exploded as he pressed on the nape of my neck and groaned into my mouth. It was hot and dirty, my legs parted and acted on their own, wrapping around his strong thighs.

Roydon Thamesian was finally untamed. And it was
smoking. Red-hotness.

I was shamefully all over him. Never had been so enthralled in the short extent of my
trivial life. I knew kissing was good. With Roydon it was past the point of physical satisfaction.  Drugging.

I tugged at his gorgeous hair, kissing back as if my life depended on it.

I finally heard Brand's disruptive voice saying "As much as I would like to videotape this and watch the two of you make out while eating a scoop of ice cream at the end of a straining day, Roydon the targets are in."

*

  
Breaking away from Gioia, he tried to ignore his brother's smug face.

They hadn't been far from intercourse on the dance floor. He would deal with that later.

So there were two hunters at once. Incredible opportunity to shorten the list. They looked like an upgrade from Eden Foster.

  "Their names?" he asked.

  "Let's find out" said Brand with a smirk.

Gioia was flushed and bloody divine.

  "I'm going to the loo" she excused herself.

  "It's been worth waiting all these centuries to witness you being brought on your knees by a human lady" said Brand.

Roydon smacked him on the head "F off, bro."

Then they stalked their way to the two hunters. 

The Hunters were drinking heavily, their faces dull and expressionless.

"Gentlemen, I am Roydon Thamesian, I supposed you've heard about my bargain?"

*

  After this last, scorching kiss I had resumed with my habit of hiding in bathroom stales.

My mind was on the verge on falling for good into full fantasy mode. I had to drag myself out of the Underworld's bathroom and forget about it.

Roydon was a busy man, he was endangered and he we were running out of time before the auction sale.

In the corridor, opening into several stales of the underground stables, I was ready to go back to the oh so lovely Thamesian brothers, when I picked up the card on the stairs.

A queen.

No way in hell this could be a coincidence!

And at this point, you surely know me well enough to guess what I did next.

Yes, instead of going back to the dance floor, I took the stairs down, for a visit of the Camden Catacombs. Girl gotta have her thrill from time to time.

The card could be lead me straight on the trail of the hunter who had arrowed Roydon.

Or so I thought...

*

    "So how much are you ready to pay, guys? Do you have a policy against names reveal?"

  "I'm Ishvi, and this is Kirk. That's all you need to know. How old exactly are your vamps? We expect a very good profit out of them if we resell to the dealers."

Ishvi Koen and Kirk Kipling. Brand's job was spotless . Roydon guessed knowing your supernatural landmarks did shrink the City after all.

  "They are genuine 13th century, from the royal House of Lancaster. Are you sure you can afford them?"

  "Wouldn't want these vamps to decorate my sitting room" laughed Kirk.

Roydon didn't let anything show . So there really was a market for the vampirical artifacts.  Well, good to know that after centuries of guarding the most coveted merchandise this kind of collectors could come across.

  "Don't worry about your money" said Ishvi "the sponsors are loaded and ready to fight over the precious corpses."

  "Ah, the sickliness of Art." said Brand.

The hunters ignored him.

  "This is my phone number. You have until tomorrow to send me your proposition in behalf of buyers." said Roydon haughtily.

He knew no one of them would be keen on betraying anything.  The hunters were only middlemen after all. 

And somebody was well hidden behind them, out to get him.

  But he was getting closer.

*

  Catacombs. Not as creepy an as an open grave, but still.  It covered a much larger perimeter. Maybe there was nothing to find here. A card couldn't always be a message. There were people out there who truly enjoyed playing cards.

I walked in some random direction, and let me take back my words, this was top notch creepy. Like horror movie spooky. With the deserted underground passages, ominous underbridges, pipes, litter and waterflooding warning signs. At least no dead bodies so far but it sure was industrial nightmare.

Please, please let me find a way out of this I thought.

The search was not worth the fright. I had limits into my imprudence. I expected a killer to jump at me from every corner.

No sounds except for my own steps and breathing.  I felt too vulnerably exposed walking here in a little evening black dress.

Thanks God, a new sign in sight 'Emergency exit'. Haha nice sense of humor around here, really.

I ran toward it, skin covered in goosebumps.

Really lovely night, the hottest kiss ever, like we were ready to have some on the dance floor and then playing to be scared to deflect the attraction.

I was almost out of this ghoulish underground, when I felt like the ground had been removed from under me. Then I felt the pain.

I shrieked as if I had been surgically amputated from my calve and leg.  It burned like hell. I choked, crying face against the ground, where I fell. I begged with undistinguishable words.

I was almost into unconsciouness when the attacker lean over me. Face masked, and I couldn't see anything through the white curtain of pain.

I vacillated, between reality and a knocked out state.

And then a cloaking darkness fell over me and I blacked out in the catacombs of Camden.

*

  "
Where's Gioia?" he asked.

It has been a moment since she had disappeared into the club's bathroom.

  "You're such a losy kisser that she ran away with one the Underground's waiters. Too bad she didn't know how to tell you without breaking your heart" said Brand.

Roydon crashed their glasses on the floor, to Brand's utter bewilderment.

  "She isn't safe around the Guild. We have to find her, get your overhyped arse out of this chair, Brand."

They searched the Underworld, beginning with the ladies bathroom, in vain.

Roydon was getting unusually angered. He shouldn't have brought her to London in the first place. Never removed her from her uneventful job and let her believe she could completely handle the world he lived in.

If something happened to Gioia di Terzi, he would just have to ask the Lancasters to severe his head and find a new Guardian.

*

  I woke up trapped in this central-city version of the Inferno, unable to move my left leg. I had been shot in the calf with a tiny syringe. Mistaken for a wildlife Italian animal on the run it seemed.

Damn if I couldn't fight a way to crawl to the near exit. I was so damn close.

Numb, I could try as hard as I wanted, my lower body was stuck to the ground.

Retribution for my restless curiosity. These catacombs were really not a pretty sight.

I didn't want to become one of those skeleton engineers finally dug out when they begab working on a mall's construction site.

Okay, rational thinking, ignoring the fact that these underground could be flooded, the effect of this thing on my leg could wear off. Or it could be permanent.

The attacker could also come back to finish me. And then it would set his views on destroying Roydon Thamesian.

I couldn't let that happen! Over my dead body.

I struggled to push myself up.

Oh the disappointing limitations of wishful thinking.

I had been so ready to be ravished by Roydon, and now I would never know. Perfect moment to think like a whiny luststruck little thing, really.