Red Rain: Allies and Childer

Miranda, Kinfolk

Matt's little sister grew up quickly the night she and her brother were kidnapped by renegade members of the Sabbat pack 25:17. Used in an insidious trap for her brother, Matt was forced to choose which of his siblings to save, and which to damn. Fate took a hand in delivering Michael from the evil to which he fell, and Miranda, somehow, blessedly forgot. However, much to her family's chagrin, her brush with vampires had left her hungry for more -- a fatal curiosity since her relatives were Garou and she herself was Kinfolk.

For years she fought and traveled with the pack; she stayed with them when her Uncle Joe led the pack; she stayed with her brother and cousins when their parents left to join the Apocalypse before the Umbra closed; she stayed when Matt, again a mortal, rejoined them and they took up their post as the last line of defense against the few remaining fomori which remained to assault their new home.

But when the end-time came and pack loyalty was never more important, she found something she felt was even more important. She met Decker.

Despite Matt's vehement denial and protective instincts, Miranda had her way; and when the final confrontation came, she remained by Decker's side, her sole wish to spend her last moments with him.

Fortunately for them, the end was just the beginning...

 

Jacob, Rain's Blood Brother

Once, Jacob was just an ordinary guy, just like Rain. He had a life, a personality, and maybe he was even happy. But, just like Rain, Ezekiel took all that away from him in a brutal moment of passion and pain. He was one of the disposable War Party created in the Boston subway to accompany the battered remnants of 25:17 to make one last assault on their enemies... or make them stronger... by attacking Geneveve Orseau's house -- leading the Garou straight to them. Of that War Party, he alone survived. Stolen away by the Giovanni as they escaped the slaughter, he was kept and coddled by the Necromancers. He took the name Jacob when he couldn't remember his own. He put the shards together as best he could, but still wasn't whole. They taught him everything they knew... and then he repaid them in kind by behaving just like the viper they'd raised him to be. None of that Giovanni family survived.

Armed with the terrible knowledge of their black arts, he sought out the one surviving member of 25:17 he knew of: Cairo. He choose her as his mentor, and she accepted the task, continuing his education, giving him all the powers and talents any good antitribu Toreador should have, and reminding him of his ancestry: Ezekiel may yet live through his Childe. Together they sought out those victims who didn't make it out of the ground that fateful night in March, years ago. They freed the poor souls who'd so long been interred there, and again Jacob proved to be every bit the snake he'd been fostered to become: he fed the elder Cairo to the fledgling Sabbatlings to slake their awful thirst long enough to get them under his control. Thus the "Next Generation" was born. What they did between 1995 and the time you were reunited with him remains a mystery. Perhaps some night he'll tell you.

Or perhaps, just like Rain, he'll choose to keep his secrets to himself.

A sculptor in life, Tommy was fascinating, misunderstood, and never quite fit in. Self-possessed, she knew exactly what she wanted. Unfortunately, she was born several centuries too late. During the Renaissance she may have found an eager outlet for her talent; in the 20^th century however, she had an uphill climb.

When the Darkness came, Tommy discovered well-springs strength she didn't realize she had. She survived, as she always had, but in this adversity she also flourished... because she willed it to be so. She helped those she could; and those who would not help themselves, she knew well enough to leave behind.

She was captured along with dozens of other women less than a week after the Darkness came, and fought relentlessly to stay alive. That's why the terrible necromancer Nathaniel and his bestial minions left her alone so long, snared in her iron cage: she knew they'd save her to last, or nearly so, because she resisted.

Rain and his coterie discovered the prisoners in Nathaniel's lair, sparing her and two others from that dire fate. They rescued them and took them back to Gideon's cathedral, where they were cared for. The two with her wanted to get as far from Kindred as they could; they'd seen too much. Only Tommy turned toward this preternatural power, and desired to have it for her own. If this was to be a world of darkness, then she wanted whatever she could have to help her survive. Even if it meant dying to get it.

Decker wanted her for his own, but feared the repercussions of creating progeny. She was, as he put it, the most rational woman he'd ever met. She was a stabilizing influence. A healthy, well-adjusted individual who may become a great ally. Rain was the next logical choice to sire her, but he was remarkably reluctant. After many nights of tribulation, Rain gave in to Tommy's repeated requests and affirmations that this was, indeed, what she wanted; and Embraced her.

A week later, by opening up to his new childe, Rain rediscovered parts of himself he had never before considered. He found himself, the parts he tried to put aside; the parts that hurt and the parts which ached. He made himself vulnerable by opening up to his childe, this artist, this woman; and in return, she gave him her honesty and her truth, her strength and her support. They shared blood the night before the end came. They found within each other the final pieces they'd been searching for.

Were Katherine and Arnaud reunited through Rain and Tommy? Were they brought together in this time and place because spirits guided them? Perhaps... then. But now, in the dawn of a new heaven and a new earth, Tommy and Rain are again just themselves... and that is enough.

and

Gwen, Daughter of Prophesy

Her mother was fourteen when she gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby girl. Gwen never knew the name Sara called her, never knew there was a mother somewhere out there who loved her deeply. Gwen's parents provided her with a good life, and the child grew up wise beyond her years. She began writing in high school and won several distinguished young adult author awards by the time she graduated. Her parents encouraged her literary pursuits, and within a few years Gwen had become an accomplished horror and mystery author with several published novels.

Gwen had inherited Sara's intelligence and determination, but she had also inherited the Kyle family's emotional instability. Autistic as a child, Gwen would later explain that the terrors she captured in her novels were inspired mainly by the things she saw when she "went into herself."

When Trevor Black reappeared in the Cathedral just two nights before the end came, he had Gwen with him. He said she possessed a "mark," and seemed to feel that meant something. He allowed Sara to be reunited with her, and for a brief time, Sara and Gwen shared a world that only a mother and daughter could.

While in Rain's house, Gwen would shift between lucidity and rambling, autism and reversion to a younger self; she quoted from Revelations, and Matt discovered she did indeed possess a mark: a crescent moon at the nape of her neck. Just like the crescent moon mark upon his own chest given to him by the Garou; just like the crescent moon symbol which flew above the Sidhe Duke Alabaster's pavilion. Just like the sliver of the moon which cut through the black sky the night of March 22, 1993 -- the night Rain, and Matt, and Sara lost their lives.

It was prophesied in the Book of Nod:

The last hope took the form of a sacrifice. As Caine sacrificed his beloved brother; as Abraham would sacrifice his beloved son; as God would give up his only Son; so would mother sacrifice her precious child, the only child she would ever bear, her greatest heart's desire, to restore the world.

Joyously, her hand was stayed by Caine... the true Caine, who came to collect his wayward progeny's progeny, Rath. The terror of the world under the blood moon was ended in a soft rain which more than restored the earth: it created it anew.

Perhaps the most integral part of your evolution, and nearly the author of your destruction. It was both the Holy Cup of salvation and the Cup of Sorrows which would not pass. Does it prove that God exists? Was it the cup of Christ? Possibly. Jonathan explained to you that the Grail was but one of many names for the artifact, that it had been ancient when he was a newborn in his first life in Egypt millennia ago. Mythology has recurring strings throughout all cultures, all ages, all peoples, all times. There are threads which strike the aware as Truths, and the Grail represents one of them.

Caine exemplified it when he took up the Grail: by embracing the malicious childe of his childe, Rath, despite his sins; by restoring the sun and the moon; by releasing those enslaved to evil and returning the lives of the innocent.

You, too, embodied the greatest parts of this Truth: by sacrificing yourselves; by being willing to give up everything you were -- your immortality, your eternity, your heart's desires, your happiness, your very lives.

You, and Caine, were instruments of the ideal the Grail represents.

The healing power of love.