Episode One (12/29/00)

Lily Sloan didn't drink those dozen pints of dark Irish beer because it was a couple of hours before New Year's Eve, 1999. Lily drank because teaching that the CIA killed JFK in her high school history class has seen to it she won't be returning to work after Winter Break. "Or was it because I'm black with a blond afro?" Lily thought as she ran a dark hand through her short cut hair. One thing was for certain, she'd definitely have to be driven home by her girlfriend, Rose. For in the state she was in due to her misfortune, this wasn't a night Lily should be alone.

But before that call could be made, a priest, of all people, came into the bar, hurriedly made his way through the bustling New Year's crowd, and sat at the stool next to Lily's. For the next hour, the holy man who introduced himself as Father Mario Garibaldi tried to convince an increasingly despondent Lily of something utterly fantastic. That while in solitary confinement for one of his many protests of human rights violations, Father Garibaldi had a divine vision: a vision of Adolph Hitler sending agents across the globe in search of anything from the occult that could win World War II for the Nazis. Of one Colonel Krieg Kruger, who had his men ambush and kill the Dracula right after tricking the count into biting him. Of how committing suicide caused Hitler to barely miss being immortalized as a vampire by Col. Kruger--and how Kruger later took that as an omen to self-proclaim himself the new Fuhrer...

Garibaldi told a very intoxicated Lily how he saw from his cell visions of Colonel Kruger secretly amassing an elite of vampires and an army of werewolves over the decades and how they would strike when we're at our weakest: When the Y2K computer glitch will cripple the world. But the father also told the former teacher his revelation revealed how "a silver savior with golden hair will dispel the darkness," and how she was that savior.

Lily was just drunk enough to be amused and not threatened by Garibaldi's prophesy. A perfect end to a perfect day, Lily thought, that after everything she went through, a priest would walk into a bar and call her "the chosen one." But Garibaldi was quite serious, and wanted desperately for Lily to follow him back to his nearby church before midnight. Since he was wearing the traditional black shirt with white collar, neither the bartender nor anyone else thought anything of it when Garibaldi ushered a semi-willing Lily out into the street. The church was close enough to the bar to the point where Lily didn't have too much time to argue with her escort. Besides, curiosity had set in. But then Garibaldi led Lily to the basement of his church--where a tub of what he claimed was holy water and what was obviously a tub of molten silver were, and told her to first step in the former--and then into the latter...

TO BE CONTINUED