Free Adrift 2: Sundown by K.R. Griffiths

right he had been. By 2015, there was a camera in every pocket, and the world had become obsessed with filming itself and sharing the result indiscriminately.
    The days of keeping the existence of vampires a secret were coming to an end, one way or another. Unless the next rising took place in some extremely remote part of the world, the chances of any one family successfully covering it up were very slim.
    The last recorded rising had taken place in rural Russia, consuming an entire village; leaving a ghost town. If something like that happened in the modern era of always on and rolling news , the truth would travel around the world like wildfire. If it happened in a densely-populated area like northern Europe or parts of Asia, the next rising would probably be streaming live on Youtube within minutes.
    What if the next rising occurred in her own homeland? What if—God forbid—the Great Nest rumoured to be buried deep beneath Yellowstone was next? North America hadn’t seen an awakening for more than five hundred years; as far as Jennifer was concerned, that meant the country was overdue, in the same way scientists claimed that Earth was overdue a massive asteroid strike. Not a matter of if , but when.
    It was just a matter of time, and the possibility that Hermetics might once have existed was not important. The only thing that mattered was accepting that the true—global—vampire rising was as inevitable as the onset of winter, and figuring out how to twist that fact to her advantage.
    Hermetics or not, vampires could die.
    What she needed was an army. The Order remained as small as possible in other countries, trying to conceal its importance, but if Jennifer was right, and the next vampire awakening was the equivalent of The Big One, secrecy would no longer matter. Strength would.
    Shortly after the turn of the millennium and the passing of her father, Jennifer began to build the American arm of the Order into the world’s largest underground religion. The huge Colorado ranch which served as her base of operations had been expanded several times, and was now home to almost fifteen-hundred people. New initiates were young, of course, and subjected to anything up to a year of psychological and physical abuse, coupled with enormous quantities of LSD, before their loyalty was tested to determine their readiness to learn the truth and ascend to the position of cleric.
    The test itself was simple and, so far, infallible. Two initiates, one knife. It was an equation that always equalled one devout believer. The only way to join the Order was to walk through a storm of blood, and nothing guaranteed a person’s obedience quite like making them kill.
    Jennifer’s army grew slowly, and she waited.
    For sixteen long years.
    Until her phone rang, and an anxious-sounding British man introduced himself as Jeremy Pruitt, and said he needed her help.
     
    *
     
    Jennifer stared at the now-silent phone for a long time, running through Pruitt’s words in her head over and over, until their ramifications began to solidify in her thoughts. She already knew that vampires could be killed, of course, but now they actually had been . She hadn’t truly expected to witness such an event within her lifetime, and certainly not to discover that when it happened, it wasn’t even the headline news.
    A living Hermetic had been discovered, and had survived the encounter with the vampires. Even better, the English Order already had its hands on him.
    The potential ramifications of that refused to settle properly; they sloshed around her skull, full of messy possibility, lighting her up with anticipation.
    Judging by what Pruitt had told her, the Order was finished in the UK: now led by an emotional boy who sounded like he suffered from some sort of hero complex—or simply wanted to die. Charles Rennick and his immediate successors were dead, and Herbert Rennick had no idea what he might be transporting, how important this man Dan Bellamy could