Meanwhile, in another part of town...<br/><br/>The woman was standing in the door to her snow-filled gothic balcony. She was wrapped in several layers of fabric, her dress looking something like a black toga. She was insanly beautifull, with olive skin, dark hair and deep, brown eyes. She was rather tall and slim, but still managed to be curvy somehow, with a good sized bust and a magnificent butt. They way she usually applied her make up made you think of ancient egypt, most people who met her immediatly thought: "This is what Cleopatra could have looked like."<br/>She frowned as she stood there with the door open, looking out at the storm, the cold didn't seem to bother her. She looked absolutly majestic, a figure of incredible beauty in the middle of a snow storm. "Has the sun set?" she asked. "It's so hard to tell these days, the storm makes day almost as dark as night." She finally closed the door and walked back into the room. The room was very dark, with dark drapes hanging from the walls and the windows. Behind many of the drapes you could glimpse bookcases. The room looked like the mix between Leonardo daVinci's workshop and a crazed alchemist's laboratory. There even were a stuffed aligator hanging from the roof.<br/>"So, tell me about the storm, Vizier. Tell me what you have learned."<br/>A shape disengaged from the shadows. It was a rather short man, dressed in robes that made him look out of place in the 21th century. He was arabic looking, with a sharp, beaklike nose. His eyes seemed to contain a sharp intellect.<br/>"My Prince," he said with a raspy voice, like sand grinding away at stone, "the storm is clearly not natural."<br/>The woman snorted impatiently. "That much I already know," she said with a scornfull voice. "I sponsor you and your infernal experiments, and this is all you got for me? The storm isn't natural?" The man seemed unfaced by the venom in her voice, and waited patiently for her to finish.<br/>"There is more, my Prince. I may not yet be able to say for certain what is causing it, but I can tell you what isn't. I have ruled out both Warlock and Lychanthrope involvment. They do posess the means, but not the motive. They stand to lose just as much as us if the world at large learned of our existance. A storm like this makes people start questions, it's not healthy, not for them, not for us." The woman nodded.<br/>"I accept your logic, but what of mentaly unstable members of those two groups? They could be to deranged to care if the masquerade was broken."<br/>"True," the small man agreed, "but I have been in contact, unofficially of course, with members of both groups. They deny it, and my instinct tells me it is not what we are looking for here." The Prince of New York nodded again, she had come to trust his instincts.<br/>"But if not them, who? Who has both the means and motive to interfere with the weather like this? Who stands to benefit?" The vizier shifted uneasily, obviously struggling with wether he should vocalize his suspitions or not. The Prince felt a chill rush up her spine.<em>NO!</em><br/>"No, don't say it! she snapped before he had a chance to say anything outloud. "It is preposterous, it's superstition!<br/>"My Prince," the vizier said patiently, trying to calm his mistress down,"all the legends and written accounts agree. The arrival of the Strigori are always heralded by..."<br/>"No! I refuse to believe it, they have stayed put in the Carpathia for over 100 years now, why would they be on the move now, and why would they come here?"<em>I am here</em>a voice inside her head said, a voice she didn't want to listen to. She tried to push it even deeper down the dark depths of her mind.<br/>"Besides," she said, taking comfort in hearing her own voice, "it's imbossible. A storm of this magnitude, do you know how many it would take?" Her vizier hesitated, he knew what he would say next would not go over well with his mistress.<br/>"Perhaps not. What if there are not many, but one? One that..."<br/>"No!" roared the woman, her beautifull features now twisted into an image of animalistic rage. "That is not possible, I will not hear it! I tire of your wives tales and your superstition! Leave now before I send you to your Final Death! Gather to me my Hound and all my mortal servants! Maybe they will be able to give me answers unburdened by your folly!" The small man bowed respectfully, keeping his suspitions to himself for now. He stepped into the shadows and disapeared from view.<br/>The woman pulled her clothes tighter as she looked out the window. It was like she finally was able to feel the cold, but she knew it wasn't the snow that made her feel frozen to her bones...