The Selfless Gene

Chapter 25

A potential child. A guaranteed psycho who hates him, running the richest organisation in the world. An army of incarnations of his brother being bred. And his own people seemingly ready to kill him to retain their own power and wealth.

He needed to contact the London contingent of The Order, those loyal to Dragon. It'll eventually leak that he visited them but, for now, they would be a source of information on his son and the gathering. But first must be his friend Andrea. He needed someone to guarantee he was alive, to know what happened. And deep down, he just wanted a hug from a friendly face. Somebody who could see the person he was before his life partner awoke from his slumber.

*

"Oh. My. God!" Andrea is completely dumbfounded as a now human-looking Thame turns up at her door. There's a breath of momentary silence before adrenalin shoots through them both.

"Come in! Come in!" Andrea grabs him for a long hug. "You're back then, and well rocking the gap year hair."

Thame puts his hand through his long unstyled overgrown mop, which he'd partly botched at Paimona's. There hadn't been time to fix everything about his appearance since the cave.

"Next on the list I assure you." He follows Andrea to her kitchen, where she puts on the kettle, still reeling at seeing him out of the blue.

"So. She turns back to him."Where the fuck have you been?"

"It's a very long story, but would you believe me when I say barely anywhere?"

"You were on a work trip and then, bang! You've taken a year off to travel. I was worried sick. You have a breakdown? Are you okay?"

"Well yes, it was a touch out of the blue." Thame wondered what he should reveal. He didn't want to endanger her, and the truth would sound too fantastical anyhow.

"Your messages were a bit weird too. Like you'd changed your whole personality."

"Can I have a look?"

Andrea shrugged and gave him her phone while she made the tea. Despite their best efforts, they hadn't quite picked up his personality. The cheeky asides or straight sarcasm were replaced with a lack of energy and fun. They could match the words and pace, but not the feeling. In the end he couldn't stop himself: it all came spilling out.

"I was kidnapped in Turin after my business meeting. Held in an actual Sicilian cave for a year by a mad old woman over a thousand years old. She kept me drugged until the end when she believed I was my alternative self. A being from another world, a King with magnificent physical powers and supporters around the globe. A beast who lives through me, in my blood. An ancestor I never knew I had. I was let out and escaped to a nearby port, where I was a stowaway on a tanker heading for the UK. There my own supporters, the King's Order, turned on me, tried to take my sperm to continue the bloodline and then kill me. Instead I stopped them, kicked them off the tanker and saved the crew. I swam some three or four miles to shore where I then bought the most awful jumper, headed back home and then came here."

"So, on the piss then."

Thame felt the pressure dissipate as he exhaled. It felt good.

"Obviously. Not a care in the world." He picked up his tea. They were both sitting around the breakfast counter.

"So tell me about you. Still in luuuurve?"

"Yes, Daniel is great. Finally a good one and, if you hadn't noticed, now my co-habitor." Andrea replied. Thame was pleased. They were a genuinely lovely couple and it was obvious that Daniel adored her. Thame checked out her left hand in an exaggerated manner.