Nicole slips into the cathedral warily stopping at the threshold.  She's dressed oddly tonight, not that anyone knows enough about her to know it.  On her way to a halloween party shes dressed in costume but ironically she looks like she belongs in her somber black preists ouutfit.  Tonight she's accessorized with a wide brimmed black hat which she clutches in her hands with her bible. Her steps seem so loud in the echoey chamber not helped at all by the pointy snakeskin boots on her feet.  Her free hand strokes the rattlesnake skull hanging from a thong around her neck.

She approaches the altar.  Shes stares at the iconography of religion knowing she doesn't really believe in a conventional sense, but she does believe in SOMETHING.  In any case, whether she believes or not she came for a purpose.

She bows her head and softly utters the phrase, "Forgive me father for i have sinned."

She waits quietly hoping that Solomon will appear tonight.  She hasn't been here long but she feels something more than simple clan kinship with this man.  He seems to have a code of conduct that seems to transcend petty Kindred politics.  Maybe she is wrong but she needs allies she can depend on to weather the coming storm.

"Perhaps he's busy strategizing against the Sabbat with the others," she thinks.  "If only that were the biggest threat this city will face."

In the meantime her thoughts drift to a wandering caravan and a fellow prophet.  

His name had been Jeremy Stillwell, a fire and brimstone tent revival preacher taking his message across the country.  He wasn't catholic but he liked the severe black suit and white collar look.  He was a messenger of God and he wanted to look that way.  

Nicole on the other hand had just returned to the States a short while ago, left to wander on her own by her sire.  She was a drifter and a vagabond and the idea of a traveling tent revival intrigued her.  The caravan consisting of a mack truck, a charter bus, RV and various vans and other vehicles that travelled during the day and set up for a show at night.  It wasn't hard to stow away among the crates of supplies and stage equipment.

Those first nights were like a dream come true.  She travelled for free and there was a steady flow of food moving to and from the tent.  Every night Nicole would stay a safe distance and listen to Jeremy's sermons.  She wished she could sit in the tent but there was a powerful radiance that built up inside  when Jeremy reached a fevered pitch that she was scared of.  It repulsed her like the wrong pole of a magnet.  It made her uneasy and it roused the Beast.  

Eventually her curiosity got the better of her and she approached Jeremy after the show was over and the people dispersed.  His reaction had been peculiar but intriguing.  

"I knew you wuz comin'.  Satan come to tempt me in the wilderness just like Jesus Chrahst."

From that night on an open debate had started about heaven and hell, sin and forgiveness, and signs and omens.  She tried to tear down his belief in God's plan.  He insisted that God had had shown him visions including her arrival.  She wasn't about to argue about visions.  She had her own visions but the Pattern had nothing to do with God.

The feeding became harder.  Jeremy was always wary of her presence and he wouldn't take to a "demon" feeding off his congregation.  The congregation was also emerging with that "holy" radiance.  Like they had been dipped in a pool of it.  She couldn't feed off them.

She should've known better.  Should've known it would come to what it did.  That night his words bit deep.  His belief in the human construct of religion infuriated her.  She fought against him.  She fought against God with a vengeance and he fought back with vigor.  As his fervor increased that light started to grow again in him and thats all the starved irritated beast needed.

When she regained herself she was covered in red.  Jeremy's body lay twisted at her feet.  The painful remorse was immediate but her lips still whispered, "Where is your Saviour now?"  Then the Vision came.  Jeremy's place in the Pattern.  All the lives he would touch. The impact he would make.  Now it was all stripped away.  His place in the Pattern stripped away and gone forever, sending seismic ripples along its surface.

And Nicole knew Sin.  She had destroyed a part of the very thing she sought to understand and protect.  She had defiled the Pattern by her own actions.  And there was no God to seek atonement from.

She had buried Jeremy in the desert and fled.  She had felt compelled to keep his preistly attire boots and all.  And tonight she was wearing them to a halloween party.  Tonight she was Jeremy Stillwell.  His sermons of sin and Armaggedon would intertwine with all things Kindred.  She would acheive a symbiosis for this one night and maybe see things from a new angle.  Most of all she would remember her sin so she never commited it again.

After a few minutes of silent contemplation Nicole stands and turns toward the doors.  She pauses there scanning the darkness, listening for any signs of Solomon's presence.  Before making her way towards the door she makes one last entreaty.

"Solomon, if you are here i wish to talk with you."

Samhain has been a busy night for Solomon. With the veil between worlds weakest on this eve, great was the troubles brewing about town. Dark things... creeping from the shadows... wearing the skin of children like costumes... He had dealt with them.

If Nicole was patient, she will still be waiting when he returns from his nightly patrol, two hours before sundown.

Entering through the main doors, he seems exhausted. His worn trench coat has several tears and blood stains mare the left side. He makes his way towards the cellar, mumbling to himself absentmindedly.  

--Last edited by Solomon on 2008-12-14 01:36:25 --