Guildhall Guardian: Thamesian #1 (Thamesians) (11 page)

  "Thamesian?" she asked with a cokney accent.

  "Eden Foster?"  A fairly easy guess.

  "Wait, you know each other?" said Gioia.

  "No one knows my full name." said the Huntress, emotionlessly.

  "Don't be so naive." said Roydon.

She was young, barely out of her teenage years.  Rather slow in reflexes if he was to judge of that. An oddity she was in the top ten list. Hunters too could get sloppier, it seemed.  At last she had managed to break into the Guildhall. It would do wonders for her resume.

  "Can I see them goods?" she asked.

Gioia chuckled "Best hook-up line I've ever heard."

  "What are you talking about?"

Eden smirked. "The vamps. The ones you're selling."

*

  Okay, I was held hostage by some sort of wannabe ninja Huntress.

It didn"t mean that her slightly ridiculous side prevented me from being scared of her.

It only made the fear more confusing.

  "I am not bloody selling anything." stated Roydon.

  "Come on, stuff has leaked out all over the Internet. This is legendary, I'mean someone like you giving them away."

Roydon's eyes gleamed sulphurous.

  "On the internet? What exactly does it says?"

Eden produced a printed page. "The picture with the graves and the advert. It's for all the hunters out there. Before the big auction, saying you're willing to sell to the highest bidder and beat the auction. It's a massive buzz right now.."

  Clearly, Roydon Thamesian was caught in a web which was designed to appear of his own making. As the Medieval social media PR, he was in a slippery position. Someone was well-aware of the breach in the Guardian's armour.

It was of no use to try to wriggle free from the Huntress' grasp. I had absolutely no clue in self-defense. And I couldn't certainly beat her with my uncensored thirst for knowing.

  "Rumor's it, collectors are betting on you showing up at the auction's sale."

  "So much for all the secrecy." I whispered.

Roydon's pupils were dilatated, giving his face a very intense leonine look.

  "It will happen in London, right?" he asked.

Eden shrugged ''No way to know for sure. Everything happens in London.''

  "Thanks for this insighful comment, Eden. Now be a dear and release the lady or I'll have to  end your life."

*

  He had to pounce on the bloody amateur to get her to relinquish. She was mediocre at best. He had her tackled and with broken limbs before she even got warmed up.

He refused to let Eden go right away. At least he had the kindness not to have her killed. He rarely killed women anyway.  He put the huntress into the hands of Tennys. Good luck with that cockney bountyhunter.

  "Tell me what happened here, Ms. Di Terzi? Once again a nocturnal discovery of yours?"

Gioia denied it firmly "I didn't do a thing this time."

  "What do you call it then?"

  "Fate?"

  "Prepare for another stroke of it. Tomorrow we are off to London."

  "What? I have work. Here. Pay the bills.Unlike some posh hybrid of my acquaintance. "

  "Being the Guildhall's Guardian makes me a lot of things but not a
very
rich man." he said casually.

  "Oh please, Roydon." Gioia grinned.

VII

  At seven in the morning I had found Roydon's scrolling  what looked like satellite maps on a giant screen over the mantelpiece. Quite the tech-savy immortal.

  "Are you sure you can leave the Guildhall just now? " I tried to suggest, to talk him out of it.

I was still not at ease with the idea of calling sick at work for almost an entire week.  And I had the nagging feeling that the Guardian was being removed from his true place like a chess pawn.

Maybe I was just anxious to get to London. I had spent some many years of my life fantasizing about visiting the British capital that it scared me now.

Delving into its underworld even more. It gave me a great reason to go. Beat this fear away.

  "I put Tennys and three other men on watch around the graves and the whole Quarter is in alert. I also warned Hendry against another unscheduled walk out.

They want me out of the lair, I will get them a run for their money." he said with cold determination.

Okay. If he was going, I was going.

*

  Roydon had spent all night trying to locate the possible setting of the auction sale.  London was a vast area of possibilities.

He was also trying to locate Camden Deemer, it would be good to know if the hunter stood in a threatening perimeter. Before meeting Gioia, Deemer had been the only human Roydon respected and dreaded.

It was still unclear why Deemer had brutally left the Security Service, but to this day his statistics remained the highest ever achieved by an agent. 

No one wanted to be surprised by his sudden reappearance.

*

  We were ready to leave around eight. London Calling was stuck on repeat in my head. I had listened to it too much on my MP3 player since my arrival here.

At least it was a good song. And an eerily accurate one.

Now war is declared, and battle come down

London calling to the underworld

I hummed while Roydon ignited the car. After all, I could as well make the most of the trip.

Roydon looked super brooding.

  "It'll take less than two hours, Ms. Di Terzi. And then you'll be all over London, a totally unleashed scoundrel." he said with dry humor.

  "Speaking of tentacular city, how are we supposed to find where the auction takes place and get in?"

Roydon's knife-edged, tawny face was imperturbable.

    "We shall find a way. I trust you're never short of plans. And I'm never short of means. And Brand, my brother, is never short of connections."

My interest spiked up.

  "So I'll get to meet him?"

  "Grievously, yes."

I laughed. "Come on, I'm sure he is nice."

    "Oh, he is" said Roydon "Very efficient and enterprising too. But a bit of a bored Byronic nightclubber sometimes."

    "You make it sound like he has some serious dualistic vibes going on."

    "Well, he is my young brother." Roydon stated.

*

  He had clearly stated in his last messages to Brand that sometimes big was happening.  His brother had answered" Bigger than you leaving the Guildhall and coming to the City? I can't hardly believe it." Insufferable Londoner all the way.

Roydon could bet he would be looking forward to come with them when told about the secret auction. Brand
loved
this kind of things.

He put some music on.  Let's not make the ride tedious.

Gioia smiled at the beginning of the song.

  "It's a gift from the Paranormal Disembodied. Nice young band, aren't they?"

*

  I was assaulted by the returning feel of last night. The music carried it all.

How I had felt a slow and spreading burn on my skin when Roydon had embraced me. An unbearable ache.

Just touching like that, crushed against each other almost by chance, it betrayed desire better than a kiss. At least it was a flag sign of my wanting Roydon.

It had been fleeting, and it had been good. The extinct moment would never find its match again in my imagination. I longed for a repeat.

Again and again, touch by touch until I could find a truer evidence of something happening between us.

Replaying the scene for my personal pleasure one last time, I jumped to a conclusion.

  "Roy." I said "The singer called you Roy."

  "Yes. The plague of nicknames."

I looked for a piece of paper to write it down.

  "The card is a King of Hearts. Roy it means king in French."

Roydon stared at me. "In Old French, yes."

  "From the beginning, you're the centerpiece of the attacks. The card's message might be more direct and practical than a blurry warning."

  "You mean, a username?" he asked low.

  "You heard Eden, you're expect to appear at the auction..."

  "Someone has been working hard to keep up the facade that I was interested in selling,no,  betraying the Lancasters. That's why their is such a build-up behind this."

  "Now we need a password."

Roydon smiled and his yellow eyes popped up. "Well, if the username is correct it will be easier to crack the password. I know someone who can do that."

I spoke over the ethereal voices of the band "If we can go to the auction, it doesn't mean we should go."

Roydon smile got wider "Ms. Di Terzi, you should know this better than anyone, shouldn't you? The better way to avoid the trap is to walk straight into it."

*

  A given username, an arrow in the arm, blockading the wine. It quite didn't go together. As if these were several disconnected occurrences. It was well-thought.

Not enough to prevent his retaliation.  Anger was swelling inside him, a wrath like no other before.  A wrath which was too heated to care about the consequences.

*

  I was eagerly looking out the window, waiting for the first signs of London to show up.

Two hours in a car with a nice musical background and a darker and less posh  of Roydon elegant driving was by no means a hardship.

Guilty of lying to skip my job had some rewards. Wicked.

I was beyond excited when I saw the first little suburbs with their identical English houses and the Thames riverboats.  I could already feel the City creep beneath my skin, I knew I would love it as much as it had terrified me. A lot like the whole vampire thing in fact.

Roydon's jaw looked painfully clenched. It drew the lines of his face and the jutting stubbornness of his features. His dark blond stubble had grown again into a light beard and I wanted to touch it badly.

  "We're getting seriously urban here" I said, as we drove past the first  tall buildings.

  "You just have to wait until it becomes plain barbaric."

  "Architecture didn't stop after the Middle Ages, you know."

Roydon nodded in silent disapproval.

*

  They soon reached the dreadful Congestion Charge zone of London.

Roydon had lived briefly in the capital for several months in the eighties. He didn't keep the best impression of it. For what he remembered.  He had occasionally travelled to meet up with Brand and solve some Guildhall's business.

However he couldn't deny that London had the best to offer to their kind. Trendy hideouts, nice streets and shops, a world bustling with small luxuries. And an underworld apparently so blatantly nonexistent that even the immortals doubted it.

A city of blending, it would give them tough work for that very quality. You couldn't tell who was a faker and to what extent. Here the vampires and other supernatural inhabitants had lost their hereditary marks, their customs.

  London almost tolled the decadence of their order, if you asked him.

*

  Whoa. The City was expanding before my eyes, in dazzling snapshots. Nobody told me that London was real life Instagram. Everything looked so picturable.

I was totally turning into a fawning tourist. Well, I would just enjoy it a little and then shake myself out of it.

  "Come on, rejoice" I urged the very morose Thamesian specimen by my side.

  "I don't know if I'll let you out of the car Ms. Di Terzi. You would run amok in the streets and end up suffering from an irreversible mania."

  "Too late for that.Why do you think I left my country?" I said faking a lunatic smile.

Roydon's left hand tapped my forehead.

  "That funny mind of yours."

*

  He stopped the car before the entrance of St Pancras' station.

   "Here we are."

Gioia was speechless. For once.

    "You definitely have a type of buildings." she finally said.

Yes he liked the grandeur of a place, its inherent liveliness and to be alive, beautiful places also needed history.

Sharing a suite with Gioia would be the ultimate trial.  Somehow he had set himself for a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, he willed it to happen.

*

  St Pancras station was one of the most magnificent things I'd ever seen, and I've had my share of monuments. 

It was a huge, red-bricked, beast of Victorian Gothic architecture.