AWAKENING

London, 1910. Bram Stoker&rsquo,s Dracula had made barely a ripple in the pool of human consciousness, and it would be another 12 years before Nosferatu breathed ,life into a vampire on the big screen&hellip, but even then, in human society, vampires existed. Like a seam of gold running through the coal, they were there, but you had ,to look for them.Doctor Connor became a vampire, and had ,been dead for one hundred years. , But, will I survive the next one hundred? He was not so sure.The London of 2010 was ,a Vampire Hive. Immortality resembled ,a tightrope walk over the Grand Canyon, and the difference between having a prune or ,a plum for a brain was ,the hydration that could ,only happen ,when a vampire ,slept.Like all true predators, vampires ,evolved, learning how to &lsquo,sleep&rsquo, one compartment of their brain at a time. The down side was, that like the victims of a multiple personality disorder, although vampires were always conscious, they were not always in control.As though that were ,not enough, Mother Nature stepped in and dealt a cruel blow. An influenza epidemic killed most of the human population, created a food shortage, and forced ,vampires out of the shadows.Fifteen years had ,passed and humans have become ,a protected species, imprisoned, farmed as cattle and siphoned for their blood. The biggest cloud on the vampire horizon was ,that humans age, and choose to die rather than condemn their unborn children to a life sentence of blood-letting.Suddenly, immortality had ,an expiration date.Doctor Connor&rsquo,s blinkered existence was ,thrown into disarray when he treated a &lsquo,vampire girl&rsquo, and alarm bells inside his head were ,set ringing. The penny dropped ,that she was a &lsquo,free range&rsquo, human, and that hiding her would be ,considered as &lsquo,threatening the food su