There is a small subculture in St. Claire; they never seem to actually /do/
anything to survive, they just kind of drift along, somehow getting fed
enough to keep from starving, somehow getting good looking clothes, somehow
getting into the clubs every night. Some of them have patrons--parents,
rich lovers, trust funds. Some of them, however, have learned the delicate
art of living off of the kindness (or indifference) of strangers.
A parasite. A leech.

You'll never guess which kind the Priest is.

He didn't start out this way--in fact, he was a doctorate student at Stanford
with a lovely wife who was working to keep him in school, and treasurer for
the Stanford Black Student Organisation.
But that would be a fairly boring story to tell, if that were all.
One rainy spring night, on the narrow and twisty Highway One, above Half Moon
Bay, returning home after a party at an instructor's home and a few glasses
of a particularly piquant local white wine, he took a turn too quickly.
Their little Mazda plowed headfirst into a Volvo coming the other way. It was
two hours later that a rescue team finally made it to the scene and pulled
the sole survivor from the wreckage. Two hours, alone with the corpse of his
lovely wife. Drip. Drip. Drip.

At the end of that quarter, he had flunked out of school. Not that he cared.
When he left the school, he took with him some surgical knives, a goodly chunk
of the Black Student Organisation's funds in a secret account, and a macabre
fascination for blood and cutting. He never practiced on an unwilling subject,
and he never had to. In San Francisco bloodsport was a side dish at KFC, like
macaroni and cheese.

To a great extent, the Priest never had much interest in anything during this
period beyond the next ten minutes. But the next ten minutes were very
important to him. He was known by many, beloved to some, but for the most
part he was warily enjoyed by those who recognised him for what he was.
His life became an unconnected series of vignettes, a music video without
the soundtrack. He hung out with famous people in penthouse apartments having
lush parties, he hung out with transients in urine-kissed dark alleys getting
violently ill on questionable alcohol.
He took ten thousand dollars from a bi-curious rock star for a blowjob and
his silence, and inside of a month there was no trace of it aside from empty
bottles, some serious property damage and some very pleased-looking friends.
At a party, a local named Rick decided to get utterly pissed on rum and Cokes,
having just survived an unpleasant divorce. He gave the Priest the keys to
his brand new Lexus (CD Player, AC, alarm, the works) and asked him to hold
them. Four days later, the Tacoma PD pulled the car out of the Sound.

The Priest drifted into Seattle, finding a thriving new scene to infiltrate
and suck dry. However, here he found somebody better at the game than he.
Suli was a tiny asian woman; some people called her the Fairy Queene, and
she did have a certain fey air about her. She also had a way of looking at
people which made them really want to comply with her wishes.

Like going to St. Claire. From what talk he'd heard, St. Claire was Seattle's
poor little sister-city, generally disparaged and mocked among those who
felt quite pleased to be here rather than there. But Suli saw it as a fresh
new market, a place where she could avoid the calcified social levels in the
city and establish a new power base.

And that it was. It was also a backwater hick town, to his mind. It wasn't
full of onion farmers, it was full of lumberjacks and starry-eyed college
students away from home for the first time. Oh. And werewolves.

Suli quickly established a Court for the Fairy Queene, and settled in at a
club called The Temple. Which happened to be, by default, a place the
UnTouchables considered their territory.
By comparison, the UnTouchables were practically the welcome wagon when
compared to Dante, however. (For a log of a standard encounter, please see
http://www.nog.net/~cyrano/rp/logs/Angelo23.09.98.html)


Back