Silent Hill is in Texas

They stop by the lake to pick up the trails of the Nephandi, then hit the cult-infested town around 8:30 pm. Ambrose excitedly recalls how to draw out cults in movies: you rent a room and they'll come and try to get you. With no better idea, the others agree to it, checking into a motel. They're each given their own room.

Ambrose sets up mad surveillance, wards the place and chases out bugs, because eww. Danielle lies down and hears a buzzing--many bugs, of many sorts. She tries to leave, but her door won't open, and she bounces off the window when she tries to jump through.

Rey, who's dozing, feels like he's being watched. Opening his eyes, he sees a big fat beetle. Which, being a chameleon pooka, he eats. Mmmm, tasty juicy beetle.

Danielle squishes bugs after pounding on walls for attention gets her nowhere. They start pulling her into the bathroom, where she finds her reflection isn't being grabbed by bugs. It reaches out and pulls her into the mirror.

Ambrose gets a blip and calls Mark. They check on the others, who seem fine. Danielle asks how to work the TV, clock, and bathroom. Rey is shifty about the suspicious beetle he saw, which is 'mysteriously' not around any longer. They check around back.

Danielle wakes in her bedroom, and leaves to check on the others. There's no answer at their doors. A step-drag noise on the walkway turns out to be some messed-up dead thing, like a freakishly warped zombie. She backs away and goes out to the convenience store, looking for help. The cashier has his face buried in a newspaper, and she somehow doesn't want to see his face. She leaves without bothering him and heads for the edge of town.

There's nothing beyond it but darkness.

Behind the hotel, Rey rustles around looking for more tasty bugs. Ambrose narrows down the disturbance to the back wall of Danielle's room, then notices something moving around her front door--a Baali. The motel manager.

Danielle returns to the motel and sees five of those shuffling things. Dodging past, she sees a normal guy with a baseball bat, beating one of the shamblers down. He turns, sees her, screams and attacks (she's in Crinos). She tosses his bat, he runs, and she heads for her room, barricading herself in. Then she finds black ooze pouring from the mirror.

Ambrose wakes the Garou to tell them about the Baali. Jonas grabs his shotgun. "Does that work?" Ambrose asks h im. "Does now... Well, they're resistant, but..." Ambrose grabs it for a second and does something to it, then hands it back.

They jump the vampire, the shotgun blowing away his lower legs. He complains about Rey eating his bugs ("You're sick! It wasn't even expecting it!"), admits he was using the bugs to spy on them. Bugs start inching in. Ambrose drives them away with his sonic generator. The Baali notes that's what drove his bugs nuts earlier. He says most of the townspeople are cultists. Only 20 or so aren't. They sacrifice people to the thing in the lake, and feels they've made progress recently. "It noticed us a few weeks ago!" and "Demons like us! They sent us leaders!" meaningg the Nephandi, who come and go. Ambrose, curious, asks why he bothers to do this when he's got eternity to do and be whatever he likes. The Baali talks about demons appreciating their worshippers, granting them power, blah blah blah. Ambrose, unimpressed, points out, "You are a motel manager!" The Baali is offended, protesting it's just his cover. Rey breaks down laughing. Ambrose indicates that he thinks Baali sound like losers. Aila kills it before it frenzies.

Rey to Ambrose: "I am taking you to my next party!"

Danielle breaks out to escape the ooze, encounters the five lurching zombies, and fights them. She dodges, they stop moving, she backs into someone, who says, "How does all this make you feel?" She spins, swinging...but the scientist is standing behind an Asian guy who strikes her twice, numbing her arms. The labcoat guy tries to interview her about it as she attempts to duck away.

Aila wonders what to do while Ambrose cleans up the Baali. Mark thinks they must be controlling people by feeding them vampire blood. He suggests a vampire detector. Ambrose obliges, grabbing a sample of Baali blood and setting his detector to home in on the stuff. For their part, the Garou simply take a good sniff.

Ambrose detects five vampires in town. Two are at the bar--he bets that's where they're feeding people blood. Aila wants to start a bar fight. There's one stronger vampire in the cemetery--probably the creator of the others.

For Danielle's part, the Progenitor Nephandus is still bothering her about 'internal balances.' "This is for science. Please. Try to be helpful." An unhinged-looking woman in a puritan outfit comes out snickering about how it reminds her of The Princess Bride. Danielle won't answer the Progenitor, who points out that "Your value to me at this moment is in answering questions." He considers asking the double they made.

Danielle sees headlights, then the Nephandi get hit by a truck driven by the guy she previously abandoned (which costs her Honor renown). He looks at her, she hops in the back, and he drives off fast. After they get clear, he stops and tells her to run, giving her something to smoke that heals her arms--"I'm gonna worry about no arms on the person I'm running through Silent Hill with."--and yells at her for taking his bat. Her answers about who the Nephandi are are, as usual, uninformative.

After pondering the church briefly--"...No. That's always the worst."--the guy takes her to the bank to look for guns, complaining about how hiding never works in zombie movies. He pries info out of her (it's tough) about how she got here, hits on her for being a cat-lady ("That's kinda cool..."), and to her query he answers, "Oh no, I am very human. You know what's the first thing I did? I shit my pants! And I had to get a new pair. I'm human and those people out there will kill me." Giving up on getting her to tell him anything useful, he decides to head to the liquor store for flammable material.

At the bar, Ambrose rolls gas grenades in to knock out 8 ghouls. Mark turns the bar lights into sunlight. The pack contains the frenzying, freaking vampires that try to escape. They die quickly.

The guy--a mage; a Cultist if you know anything about them--speculates they could get back through mirrors. Danielle thinks the Nephandi are after her, so the mage says obviously they can't have her. "Awwwww, I don't wanna beeee here! I'm a sub-par stage magician with alcohol dependency!"

The pack skulks up to a house with two vampires inside. Aila senses something weird as she passes a mirror. Her reflection grabs her and hauls her in. The others see it. "Why'd she step sideways?" Sonya wonders.

Aila wakes in the mirror world with zombies slumping toward her. "Are you serious?" she asks the air, looking around. Then she crushes a zombie.

In the liquor store, the mage spots her. "Is one of your friends...a werewolf?" Zombies come out, led by a Native American girl with cybernetic implants that bleed black. Aila alerts the pack through their totem-bond. Sonya figures it's a spirit realm linked to the town with mirrors as gateways.

The Bastet and the mage run outside. The guy throws a firebomb. Everything it hits slows down. Aila rips up a light post and swings at the zombies. Squishy. She takes it with her, figuring it's a good weapon.

Turtle takes the pack to Aila. Ambrose: "We lost our werewolves!" Mark, annoyed, brings the others after.
"Statistically poor odds," notes the Iterator.
"Fuck me, you're real!" Ambrose blurts.
"Yes, I am."

Danielle is dragged back into the liquor store and replaced by her double. Someone behind her in shaman's facepaint says, "They're not going to hear you," when she yells at the others. She tries to dodge around the curtains she was dragged backward behind, but they keep hindering her. The shaman explains the double is living her life so the Progenitor can learn about her. For his part, the shaman is humoring their "play time."

Aila wonders about stepping sideways here. "You can't step sideways from an Umbral Realm," Sonya tells her, "but you can find exits." In fact, she spots one behind the Nephandi, who have clustered and are muttering.

Then the shaman walks out and calls truce. They're allowed to leave in peace, because he doesn't feel like dealing with a fight. He seems extremely confident that it would be nothing more than an inconvenience to him.

Ambrose notes his marks--binding sigils from the Nephandi the Technocracy and Traditions banded together to expell after WWII.

The mage--Bob Cramer, 'The Amazing Cosmo'--is thrilled with Aila's light pole. Ambrose identified him immediately as Cult of Ecstasy, and tells him about the shaman. Sonya guesses the mirror world might be an atrocity realm.

They check on Bob, who says he's okay. But he really wanted those guns, which he had to leave in the Umbral realm. He tells them about meeting Danielle, and how she ran away. Ambrose warns him never to work for Anastagio's Circus.

The real Danielle tries getting out through a mirror. Her reflection looks at her. "Yes?" She demands to get out. It suggests she try convincing it. When she asks what it is, it tells her it's just a gatekeeper. They make deals.

The pack goes to the house with the two Baali in it. One is getting glasses in the dining room. The other is in the kitchen with a hostage.

Rey hears whispers. Danielle promising to do what she can to free the gatekeeper...who releases her. Danielle pops out in the liquor store, where she runs into the IX girl, who explains that "Robert's so happy about this, we don't get to do it very often. So you stay where you are." Danielle tries to get out through the back, but the IX girl is there. "I know everything about you. You're not clever enough to get out."

"I got out," Danielle replies.

The girl looks her over, hugely amused by something, and lets her go. "By the way," she tells the werecat, "You're awesome."

The others notice the double is gone, and they spot Danielle coming down the street. Aila bursts into the house when someone screams. A vampire's starting to drain their captive. She throws a chair at him. Sonya intercepts the other vampire. RF grabs the splintered wood from the chair and stakes that one. Mark flips a table and kicks the legs through the other vampire.

RF and Ambrose help the poor captive girl. There are more vampires downstairs, so Rey and Dances free them.

A man in a priest's collar catches up to Danielle outside, asking if she's okay. One of the Inquisitors, he doesn't know she's a supernatural. They run toward the house when it goes crash-bang! and the Inquisitors take over from the pack. They happily tell the Inquisitors about the other vampires in town. A nun walks past Danielle: "You really should charge them for rides, dear." And the paladin-like one looks oddly at Mark.

The group leaves, and Danielle tells them the story. Sonya lays into her about stupid pacts. Ambrose notes she's now connected to some dream-thing. Sonya realizes: it's a pact with the Word-Eater.

Elsewhere, Jared wakes suddenly from a dream and calls Rey. He dreamed of the Green Court! Rey's actually shaken by this--a little--and Jonas explains the Green Court to Ambrose (the fear of the unknown, the nameless thing), who's offended by the idea that there's no room for bright hopes in the world when Jonas tells him Fomorians can walk but Tuatha couldn't.

Rey helps the Cultist steal a car. Ambrose sends a message to the Traditions with him. Sonya suspects the Bastet has taken a step toward completing the appeasement ritual, and the Thing in the Lake was sealed into the other side--the underside of the mirror.