Influence

Disclaimer: I don´t own any characters or anything

Summary: Kate is dating and starts to change. When she takes a drastic step, the rest of the team starts to wonder. A series of murder turns up and they find themselves in the middle of a nightmare…

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2- Meditation 101

Kate didn´t drive home right away. Rick had left her a message to meet him at the community center in Norfolk. He was member of a church called Spiritual Guidance, which had seemed a bit odd to her at first. After he had taken her along to meet others from his church and showed her their services, she had grown accustomed to this. She had been raised in a strict catholic household, but never before had she met anyone who could answer those questions her religion had left open.

She couldn´t explain why or how, but somehow she felt really save with him and the people from his church. They were meeting three times a week. After joining the meetings as a guest at first, she had started to take lessons from a woman who lived just a block from her apartment. Some of the things she heard there were odd, but the more she dug into the subject, the clearer it seemed to become. The basics were yoga and meditation, which Kate didn´t find too odd. After all, she had been taking pilates and yoga classes for some time now.

At the meeting, they would pray and share something that seemed similar to what her church called sacrament. It was taken with eyes closed as a sign for ultimate trust in the head of the congreggation. The touch of cold metal to the forehead was the sign to open the mouth and swallow a few drops of some sweet liquid, called goldblood. They said that it helped to meditate and face the spirits, which Kate found surprisingly true. At first, she had been rather sceptical, but after her first encounter with the bright spirits, she lost all doubts about it.

Meditation was a kind of a mixture of prayers and silent questioning of the spirits. It took about an hour, if not a little more than that. The first few times, Kate had been exhausted afterwards and so weak that Rick had to half carry her back to the car, but as she went to the meetings more regularly, she adjusted to the feeling rather quickly. It was around the time that she started to get into more and more conflicts at work. Suddenly, her co-workers, whom she had thought to be her friends, started to question her about what was going on, but Kate felt that it was her privacy and denied any comment on it. She even jumped at Gibbs as he tried to question her about it.

It was about two weeks later that Rick pulled her into his car after a meeting for a rather unpleasant talk. "I talked to Bill Brock about you. He said that you have great potential, but to reach divine purity won´t be easy. He said you could be ready within a few days, but that job of yours, especially the people there seem to disturb your spirit. They hold you back from becoming pure, Katie." He told her and looked into her brown eyes.

"But NCIS is my life, Rick." Kate replied and met his gaze. She saw warmth and care there. Her heart was beating faster as she lost herself into his green eyes again. After a few moments, she nodded slightly. "All right. I´ll take care of it. What was that about initiation?" She inquired then and made a note to drive by at the office after talking to Rick.

"Initiation is done at new moon. It´s the only way to become pure. The next ceremony will be tomorrow at 11 pm at the usual place. You really need to be ready if you want to be taken for this turn. There is only one person per new moon, so chances to get to divine purity are rather slim. I could put in a good word for you though..." Rick told her and caressed her face. "I´m really proud of you, Katie." He said and kissed her softly.

He drove her home and returned to their community center afterwards. There was a lot to prepare for the ceremony and since he was the second highest priest, he had to make sure that everything was ready when the hour came. They had to uncover the stone plate out at the old Chisenhall Cemetery. It was surrounded by trees that hid their ceremony from anyone driving by. The cemetery had been abandoned years ago and was just perfect for their needs.

Whistling a soft tune, Cuttling pulled the golden knife from the drawer just beneath the goldblood and started to polish it with a soft cloth. Initiation was a strenous thing and required a lot of strenght, both physically and mentally, but he had guided many others before Kate. Tomorrow would be a new moon and it was the time to pay the spirits for their guidance.