Guildhall Guardian: Thamesian #1 (Thamesians) by Aidan Ladsow Read Free Book Online

himself.
    Brand had looked quite unaffected yet, but then his brother was not bound by the fabric of his memories and he seemed to cope much more.
    He was quickly disintagrating.  Saor Wholesale Ltd was the only vintner of this kind. Had been for three centuries now. 
       With only one gulp he would have been able to lose the reminiscence of soft, rosy lips crashing against his hardened mouth. To annihilate every bit of pleasure Gioia had sparked into his undead being, to erase the sinful mortal down to her name.
    He browsed the Guildhall's website but was totally unable to concentrate.
    With the surge, too much information to process for his brain, he was losing the ability to dissociate the recent events from the much older memories.
    A whiff of Gioia's perfume clogged his nostrils and the face of Mary flickered briefly, to the kiss succeeded death, he saw the medieval streets and the corpses of the Black death. 
    Then his father was sweeping his hands, spreading the smell of rotten fish all around him.
    Roydon groaned. Flooded by the sensations of his primeval life, he was close to  surrendering. As an hybrid he needed not to drink the blood of innocents.  But the withdrawal was bringing out a more vicious side of him, as the head of the Medieval Quarter, he needed a remedy.
    For the first time ever, he would drink a Stonehenge.
    *
      It turned out, the internet being this bottomless well of curiosities, that I wasn't alone believing in vampires. Okay, that might also be the reason why asylums are crowded these days. After removing the first layers of TV shows and movies references, Dracula was not an option either, I was seeking a more...how could I put it, a more rational way to think about it? A pratical knowledge of bloodsuckers.
    It was bound to be stuck somewhere in the twilight zone of webpages.
    It only took me four hours to sniff the beginning of a trail, not so bad.
    Generating information through a multitude of keywords, more or less subtle such as "immortal", "crypt", "graves", "vampirism", "sepultures", "supernatural", "artifacts", "tombs", "heritage".
    The first glimmer of hope was a forum link leading to an auction website in .co.uk .  The layer was very sober, less is more, all black with a  thin, red outline.
    It had a countdown until the opening of the auction in 4 days, 11 hours, 32 minutes. Unfortunately everything else was locked, no access to any information. When switched to code or HTML version it revealed nothing more. Crap.
    *
      Roydon scrolled down, now pumped up with the liquor.
    The Stonehenge had an immediate quenching effect, it was the side effects he dreaded much, a very strong beer made for hybrids and human alike it chemically overpowering and said to breed madness.
    The photographer's job was good if even a little redundant. It made the Guildhall and its surroundings look nice and and sunny, the light caught in the stained glass.
    Cathedral, statue, bench, lamplight, Guildhall porch, streets signs, Guildhall again.
    He scanned the pictures, looking for details, forwarding all the photos to Rob, asking him to analyse them in depth.
    The graveyard. One picture had gone unnoticed at first, it was a view of the small graveyard from behind the stonewall, a ray of light falling over a very visible tombstone. Quite the blunder. He should have checked this thoroughly before going along with it.  The graves should never appear in any shot. The leaflets even forbade the tourists about it, and there so carelessly it was featured on the website.
    Bloody hell.
    After so much centuries going smoothly, the worst worry of his masters vampires was actually happening.
    Get rid of the Guardian and you could destroy the slumbering vampires.
    Simple as that.
    Roydon's time to keep true to his word and fulfill his role was up.
     
     
     
    V
     
       What better way to spend my Sunday than deciding to find the Guildhall again and go pester Roydon the vampire.
    At 10AM I left the house, my laptop