Read Online Adrift 2: Sundown by K.R. Griffiths - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: K.R. Griffiths
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buried at around 5,000 B.C.
Such a discovery would have made the scientific community at large take a keen interest in the tablet, had the scientist who collected the data been permitted to live long enough to share it. The earliest known etchings on clay were dated at around 3,000 B.C., and current academic thinking on the first human civilizations would have been turned on its head in an instant by the discovery that recorded history was at least two thousand years wide of the mark.
More importantly, as far as the Craven family was concerned, that carbon dating test had confirmed that the tablet was the earliest known written record of the vampires by a distance. No part of the Order claimed to possess any artefact more than five thousand years old, though of course they would keep such a discovery to themselves. After all, there was a slim chance that any object which was that old might even contain something close to the truth .
The word hermetic didn’t appear anywhere else in the known texts, and its meaning remained shrouded in mystery. No matter how thoroughly the Craven family searched for anything that might corroborate the story the clay tablet wanted to tell, nothing had ever been discovered.
Until a Princeton professor made an ill-advised phonecall from Kentucky, and Jennifer Craven herself saw the bones.
It was all the confirmation that she required.
Vampires could be struck down by humans, just as that ancient tablet had suggested, and for some reason, some ancient civilization had buried a man who actually did just that right alongside his monstrous victim. Perhaps the man had died of injuries sustained in the battle with the vampire, and the burial had been a celebration; perhaps that ancient people had wanted to warn future generations of something, who knew.
Who cared?
For a man to kill a vampire with a hatchet could only mean one thing: the vampires had not been able to control him in the way they did everyone else. He was the Hermetic. The word literally meant ‘sealed off,’ and that’s exactly what the ancient vampire slayer must have been: his mind sealed away from the vampires’ grasp; untouchable.
The trouble was that there had been no record of any such person having existed in the past seven thousand years. Maybe the hatchet-man was part of a race that had long since died out, his genes containing some treasure that extinction had buried, never to be found again.
Finding out whether that was true or not would have been all but impossible, given that the only way to know whether a person could resist the psychic assault of a vampire was to put them in front of one.
Jennifer had long ago filed away her curiosity about the possibility that Hermetics might actually have existed, because there was another, more pressing problem.
She was barren. The sole remaining Craven. A long time ago, she had attempted to conceive with several of the men at the ranch, but her efforts were for nothing. Finally, a doctor revealed the terrible truth: she would never have children. Her name would die with her, and some other bloodline would take control of the Order in America.
Unable to further her line, Jennifer’s thoughts turned to her legacy. The legacy of the entire Craven family; a crushing burden on her shoulders. Despite being only thirty-eight, she thought about her remaining years constantly; how to imprint her name onto the Order so that it would never fade from history.
The rest of the Order was so focused on the past that it rarely thought to look to its future. But Jennifer did, and she saw trouble on the horizon, approaching like twister season.
As far as she was aware, there hadn’t been a vampire rising anywhere in the world for more than a centur y, and in that time, the world had changed greatly.
Way back in 1999, Jennifer’s father had seen the future, and he predicted that it was a cellphone in every pocket and a camera on every street corner. He hadn’t lived to see just how
Such a discovery would have made the scientific community at large take a keen interest in the tablet, had the scientist who collected the data been permitted to live long enough to share it. The earliest known etchings on clay were dated at around 3,000 B.C., and current academic thinking on the first human civilizations would have been turned on its head in an instant by the discovery that recorded history was at least two thousand years wide of the mark.
More importantly, as far as the Craven family was concerned, that carbon dating test had confirmed that the tablet was the earliest known written record of the vampires by a distance. No part of the Order claimed to possess any artefact more than five thousand years old, though of course they would keep such a discovery to themselves. After all, there was a slim chance that any object which was that old might even contain something close to the truth .
The word hermetic didn’t appear anywhere else in the known texts, and its meaning remained shrouded in mystery. No matter how thoroughly the Craven family searched for anything that might corroborate the story the clay tablet wanted to tell, nothing had ever been discovered.
Until a Princeton professor made an ill-advised phonecall from Kentucky, and Jennifer Craven herself saw the bones.
It was all the confirmation that she required.
Vampires could be struck down by humans, just as that ancient tablet had suggested, and for some reason, some ancient civilization had buried a man who actually did just that right alongside his monstrous victim. Perhaps the man had died of injuries sustained in the battle with the vampire, and the burial had been a celebration; perhaps that ancient people had wanted to warn future generations of something, who knew.
Who cared?
For a man to kill a vampire with a hatchet could only mean one thing: the vampires had not been able to control him in the way they did everyone else. He was the Hermetic. The word literally meant ‘sealed off,’ and that’s exactly what the ancient vampire slayer must have been: his mind sealed away from the vampires’ grasp; untouchable.
The trouble was that there had been no record of any such person having existed in the past seven thousand years. Maybe the hatchet-man was part of a race that had long since died out, his genes containing some treasure that extinction had buried, never to be found again.
Finding out whether that was true or not would have been all but impossible, given that the only way to know whether a person could resist the psychic assault of a vampire was to put them in front of one.
Jennifer had long ago filed away her curiosity about the possibility that Hermetics might actually have existed, because there was another, more pressing problem.
She was barren. The sole remaining Craven. A long time ago, she had attempted to conceive with several of the men at the ranch, but her efforts were for nothing. Finally, a doctor revealed the terrible truth: she would never have children. Her name would die with her, and some other bloodline would take control of the Order in America.
Unable to further her line, Jennifer’s thoughts turned to her legacy. The legacy of the entire Craven family; a crushing burden on her shoulders. Despite being only thirty-eight, she thought about her remaining years constantly; how to imprint her name onto the Order so that it would never fade from history.
The rest of the Order was so focused on the past that it rarely thought to look to its future. But Jennifer did, and she saw trouble on the horizon, approaching like twister season.
As far as she was aware, there hadn’t been a vampire rising anywhere in the world for more than a centur y, and in that time, the world had changed greatly.
Way back in 1999, Jennifer’s father had seen the future, and he predicted that it was a cellphone in every pocket and a camera on every street corner. He hadn’t lived to see just how
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