Episode Six (2/2/01)

"You can't quit," Father Mario Garibaldi pleaded. "You're the chosen one!"

"I don't care." Lily Sloan's dark skin flushed as she shot back venomously. Watching body parts of hers supernaturally turn to silver before her eyes had unnerved the former teacher so she would've spoken to the pope himself in the same way. "You preachers always claim we have free will, well, I choose not to be chosen!"

"And what about your--'girlfriend'?" Garibaldi could see what he said had stopped Lily cold, but those very words had paralyzed him in a way as well. "I have to admit, I personally find homosexuality revolting. However, the same visions that predicted the vampire invasion and your transformation have also told me homosexuals are a natural part of the divine plan. If everyone throughout history had desired to have children then there wouldn't be enough food to eat or even space to breathe because there would be so many--too many people."

"Traffic's bad enough during rush hour as it is," Lily half-jokingly murmured under her breath, despite the mood she was in.

"In order to remind His sheep of that, you were chosen to be the silver bullet He will aim at the minions of Satan who have taken over--who have taken your lover."

"Rose..." Lily stared into space and held her hands up to her face in frustration. "What am I going to do?"

"Stab the vampires' werewolf servants as you tried to stab me earlier," Garibaldi coached. "Silver will kill them, but if you run across a vampire--"

"That teacher, the one who helped get me fired from school," Lily interrupted. "She said they took her to the arena or the amphitheater. I've got to stop them!" Lily then spun on her heel and bolted up the stairwell in Garibaldi's basement.

"No! Wait!" the prophetic priest called after her as she hurriedly unlocked the basement door. "There's more you need to know!"

Lily silently stormed past those on the church's main floor listening to pirate radio sets for more news on the New Year's Eve invasion. After having lived with racism and homophobia most of her life, Lily wasn't about to make what she had just become public knowledge. And as Lily was still grasping the outlandish concept of possibly having to stab a werewolf of all things, she decided it would be best for all concerned if her face (not to mention her entire body) was silvery at the time. With Garibaldi's words still in her head about being God's silver bullet, she thought that would be as good an alias as any. The problem was she had been unconscious most of New Year's Day, the sun was setting even as the full moon was rising, and with Rose running out of time, Silverbullet didn't know which to try first, the arena or the amphitheater.

TO BE CONTINUED