Episode Four (1/19/01)

"What are you talking about?" Lily Sloan had forgotten all about how this very teacher from her former school had recently spoken against her behalf and claimed she was too radical to be allowed to teach history. All that needed to be said--to even be implied--was that her lover was in danger.

"I said they took Rose!" Suddenly everyone else in Father Mario Garibaldi's church-then-homeless-shelter-now-refugee-camp hushed them to keep it down. For they too had loved ones to listen out for on the pirate radio sets their ears were glued to. The teacher from the high school that fired Lily, Barbara Hubler, then whispered, "Those wolf-men, they dragged her out of a car in front of a bar, and now I hear everybody's being taken to the Sin City Arena--or the amphitheater, I don't know!"

Lily shot a look back at Father Garibaldi, who only shrugged. "I wish I was wrong," he said gently, "but I told you I foresaw all this, and that you can help stop this."

"How?" Lily barked, not caring if she was too loud for those listening to the radios.

"Come back downstairs with me," and with that, Garibaldi turned and walked to the basement without looking to see if Lily was following him.

She did in fact catch up with the prophetic priest, and just as she did, he called out, "Lock the door behind you."

"Mrs. Hubler said 'wolf-men' took Rose. She couldn't be talking about the same thing you were--werewolves and whatnot..."

"The werewolves are only doing the vampires' bidding. It won't be long before they've--well, killed her, drained all her blood, and eaten her--"

"Stop!" Lily covered her ears and shook her dyed blond, dark-skinned head but only in partial denial since she was being left with little choice but to come to grips with what could very well be the fate of someone she knows and loves. "This is too much."

"That's too bad, because there's more." Father Garibaldi waved a hand in the direction of his twin tubs on the basement floor: Once one was filled with holy water and one with molten silver, now each was empty and bone dry. "What you bathed in last night was fully absorbed into your body. You're now a being of holy silver--"

"And you're full of--"

"You think I've lied to you?" Garibaldi raised his voice. "Then hit me--do it!"

With everything that had happened, Lily wasn't thinking straight, and was so agitated she forgot the distance between them, which would keep her from ever being able to connect a punch. And since the thought of how it would look for a woman to hit a man of the cloth was drowned out by the overwhelming feeling of being manipulated, Lily lounged. Then something amazing happened.

TO BE CONTINUED