EXCERPT: "THE RED CROSS IN THE RAIN"
CHAPTER 12: THE EALDWIC PROTOCOL
[Found on a dusty bookshelf in the Templar Chapter House, London. A dried rose is pressed between the pages.]
Richard Sonnac did not look like a man who spent his nights arguing with demons. He looked like a man who spent his nights arguing with his tailor. Yet, when the Ghouls breached the South Bank in '09, it was Sonnac who stood on the steps of the Albion Ballroom, his coat flapping like a wet wing. He didn't use a sword that night; he used a cell phone and a very specific type of Latin.
"Order is not the absence of chaos, it is the mastery of it. We are the lions because we are the only ones who can survive the roar."
He was a man of tradition in a world of variables. He kept the largest occult library in the world not out of a love for books, but out of a need for ammunition. To Sonnac, a prophecy was just a tactical report from a source with bad grammar. He led the Templars with a zeal that bordered on the terrifying, yet he never missed the Thursday night tea at the pub in Ealdwic. Even a lion, it seems, enjoys a good Earl Grey.
— From the unauthorized biography of Richard Sonnac, p. 214. (Status: Confiscated by the Council of Venice)