Read Adrift 2: Sundown for Free Online

in a similar fashion. Failed by a wide margin.
    “‘Authenticity,’” he spat bitterly, and snatched up the almost-empty brandy bottle. He took a mouthful. “That sounds about right. Lies piled on top of lies; that’s the Rennick way. Tell me, Jeremy, did he know, before all this? Did he ever give you any indication that there might be people out there who the vampires can’t control?”
    “No. There’s nothing in the texts, Herb, nothing that—”
    “The texts ,” Herb snarled. “More lies.”
    Jeremy blinked at the ferocity in Herb’s tone . “Even if that’s true, nobody has found any evidence to contradict them. Think about it, Herb. Your own family has searched for information on the vampires for centuries, and what have you found? Nothing. The Order exists in more than thirty countries; families just like yours, all of them searching for exactly the same thing. Christ, the entire Order has devoted itself to uncovering the truth, and all they have discovered is evidence that these things can’t be resisted.”
    He sighed.
    “So maybe your friend Dan Bellamy is one of a kind. Good for him. But what use is that to anybody? The vampires have nests across the entire planet, probably including many that we don’t even know about. We’d need an army of Dan Bellamys to fight them.”
    Herb felt his irritation rising. It was exactly the same sort of argument that he had heard countless times back at the compound. Devout belief in a bunch of ancient artefacts which claimed that the vampires were gods and that servitude was the only option. Nobody would listen to Herb when he tried to tell them that something being written a long time ago didn’t necessarily make it true, and that recent history was full of lies concocted by the Order, which made it likely that ancient history was as well. It seemed that only he was able to countenance the idea that the ancient clay and stone tablets which formed the bulk of the Order’s knowledge might be inscribed with lies.
    “And what if he’s not one of a kind? What if there are thousands like him? Millions? What if it’s something to do with his genes, or his upbringing, or the fact he eats Tasty Wheat for breakfast? Dan was one of three thousand on the ship. What if those are the odds? If one in every three thousand people can resist them, there’s an army. I mean, how many of these things can there possibly be out there? Why all this trouble just to feed three ? Doesn’t that suggest that there are a lot less vampires out there than the texts claim?”
    Jeremy shook his head firmly.
    “If anyone had found evidence—any evidence at all—that there were ever any other Dan Bellamys out there, we would know.”
    “Would we really? You think my father would have shared that information with the rest of the Order?”
    Jeremy said nothing.
    The more Herb thought about it, the more certain he felt. His father would have killed Dan Bellamy at best, or handed him over to the vampires at worst. Anything to preserve the status quo.
    “Do you know that virtually all historians agree that the Great Fire of London only killed five people?” he asked.
    Jeremy stared at him, puzzled. He did know plenty about the Great Fire of 1666, of course. It was an event that was branded onto the mind of everybody who lived at the Rennick compound, the exact date celebrated annually like a twisted Christmas.
    “It’s amazing, isn’t it,” Herb continued, “how the truth can get twisted until it no longer exists? By 1667 my family was wealthy beyond all measure, fattened by meat plucked from the bones of a burning city. It’s the same story all over the world, everywhere the Order exists. They get fed, we get rich. We become people of influence and wealth. We get to shape history. I wonder, if a Dan Bellamy had been walking around London in 1666, whether my ancestors would have viewed his existence as a good thing? For all we know, other families have stumbled across people just