Time Frame: A few years or so after both BtVS & AtS finales. Uses no canon after that.

Rating: T-Mature (cuz Faith still curses like a sailor)

Legalities: All B:tVS characters are that of the Mighty Whedon and his glorious intellect & Castle is the property of ABC. This work is meant only in celebration and nothing ulterior

Chapter 3 - Daddy's Girl

"Three and a half hours, Alexis." Richard Castle almost shouted.

His daughter wanted to yell back something smart and snarky. She had enough of people telling her mistakes tonight, first from that man - no, that vampire, Spike, now from her father who had no idea what she had just gone through. No idea yet that she may have more answers for the both of them. She decided to take a breath and stay cool.

"Dad, it's okay." the younger Castle put her hands up trying to soothe her obviously furious father.

"No, it's not, Alexis. It is not!" Richard Castle now raised his voice to a yell. "Three hours and thirty damned minutes, Alexis! Do you understand?" His face was red and his eyes threatening to spill tears. "That's how long I didn't know where my daughter was! That's how long!"

Alexis's heart broke a little hearing the quiver in her father's voice. He was right in his anger, the teen realized, and it was her fault; any self-righteousness she felt bled away instantly.

"And not even with your cell-phone." Richard Castle continued. "I am scared already, Alexis. I am near over the edge of terrified for you, with everything that's going on, with so many who-knows-whats going on, why would you just disappear like that, Alexis?" With his voice returning to a normal volume, his concern was easily heard. The question he asked almost sounded like he was pleading with her.

"I don't know." She sighed.

"What?" Castle asked not understanding his only child.

"I don't know, dad." Alexis repeated louder with a shake of her head. "I really don't. I woke up. I woke up and and when I looked outside, I just knew I had to go out there." she finished with a gesture to the window. "It was like there was some kind of pull, y'know?" She finished with an awkward shift of her feet hearing how weak the explanation she used sounded.

The elder Castle, sighed with frustration. He found his way onto Alexis' bed and sat besides her. "And where were you pulled to?" he asked grumpily. The girl brightened, realizing that was the end of the shouting.

"I ran across the rooftops dad!" the girl near squealed. "I was so into the night!" Seeing her father's get-on-with-it face, she hurried her narrative. "Then I ended up in the park."

"What did you find in Central Park in the middle of the night?" Castle said dismissively with a quirk of his brow.

Alexis paused a heartbeat. "Vampires." She said as sincerely as possible as she locked eyes with her father.

"No way." Castle snorted, almost amused. Alexis only gave a slow, deep nod. "Shut the front door." Castle spit out, his eyes getting wider as he accepted the news. "No way!"

"One of them gave me a card with a number to call." She held the piece of cardstock Spike slipped her.

"A card? He carried a card on him?" her father asked, taking it from her and examining it. It read The New Watcher's Council in pretty calligraphy. "What, he makes clocks?"

"Dad." Alexis rolled her eyes at him.

"Okay, the name does sound sort of ominous." Castle allowed, his eyebrows knitting reading the small piece of decorated card-stock. His eyes went back to his daughter, "You were about to call?"

"Yeah." Alexis nodded.

Castle thought a moment then spoke, "Don't."

"What?" His daughter asked,

"Don't call them yet, we don't know what these guys are about yet. Who knows what they could want with you." Castle scowled. "Let's do some digging, find something out on these people before we make any decisions." Alexis nodded, she had been so caught up in the moment she barely had time to process everything, her dad's idea made sense; use whatever data you can find to plan ahead before you make your first move. She took a moment to recall her time with the vampire in the leather duster.

"Dad, the guy, the vampire," Alexis started hesitantly, "he wasn't surprised at all when he saw me. He saw a girl hop into a fight and he treated it like it was the most natural thing in the world. He spoke to me like I should have known what I was doing and was surprised when I didn't."

"You got into a fight? With vampires?!" Castle's voice became high-pitched with fear and worry for his child.

"I totally fought vampires!" Alexis boasted but back-pedaled seeing her dad's face. "And I was so holding my own the whole time!" Her sideways glance alerted Castle that there was something more.

"But?" he pressed his daughter for more information with an angrily expectant look.

"But I went down from a sucker-punch to the head," Alexis admitted under her father's glare, "he helped me out when they came at me." The worry in the elder Castle's face was clear. "Then he talked about how I wasn't taking the classes and learning the lessons."

Her father nodded, he guessed it the night before. "There are others like you." He uttered the words, feeling the potential of them leaving his mouth. The ginger Castle nodded at her father.

"And he fights with them." Alexis added. "Well, not with with them, but like, helps them fight."

"Someone trains them," her dad assumed, getting up from the bed. "Probably some kind of clandestine group that's been doing this for centuries. They're probably cold and manipulating." Castle began pacing in his daughter's bedroom, "and I'm calling it right now, probably British." He added with a sure nod. His daughter only rolled her eyes at his far-fetched ideas but remembered that Spike had a Cockney-English accent. The girl held back that fact.

"Dad, focus. Let's see what we can find out about them online." Alexis went to her desk and woke her laptop from sleep

"Oh, come on. A centuries old clandestine organization isn't just going to have a MySpacebook account." Castle scoffed as his daughter began typing.

"Found them!" Alexis cried triumphantly. Castle's head whipped in her direction. He bolted off the bed and almost stumbled towards his daughter and her computer. "Dad, you've got to read this!" The ginger exclaimed.

The father squinted as he read the words on the screen aloud. "'Have you noticed huge changes in your life? Do you feel stronger, faster and more powerful? Do you need answers to questions you never knew you had?' Who wrote this? It's terrible!" Castle criticized.

"Dad! Focus!" Alexis scolded her father. "There's a link here for 'yes'. I'm going to click it." Castle only watched the little white cursor move over the blue hypertext lettering on the website. Alexis pressed the mouse button and they were taken to a video. A youngish blonde man in a poorly fitted suit spoke, his eyes darted back and forth into then off the camera, obviously reading from cue cards.

"Have you become suddenly stronger and faster? Do you have violent and terrifying nightmares? Have you also noticed yourself to be more aggressive and more willing to fight? If you answered yes to all of these question then you may be part of a long lineage of girls that have a special place in the world. I urge you to call..." a long squint off camera and the man whined "Xander, it's upside down!" an "Oh sorry, Andrew." Came from off screen. A moment later the young man read off number as they flashed across the bottom of the screen.

"We have help and answers ready for you. Don't hesitate to call us now." The phone number kept flashing at the bottom and the screen froze as the video ended.

"Should we call?" Alexis asked her father looking up to him, expecting an asnwer. Castle remained silent and his face stoic. "Dad?" Nothing.

"DAD!" his daughter finally yelled.

"I DON'T KNOW!" he matched her in volume, but mixed with his own blossoming frustration "I really don't know. I just want you to forget about everything." He pulled her into a hug, keeping his child close to his heart. "I'm okay with you being strong and fast, but god dammit, Alexis, vampires? And now this crap too? I wish you were six again, when I could just make things better with a joke and a kiss on your head. I wish none of this ever happened to you."

"But it is, dad." Alexis reminded her father, voice muffled from his tight embrace. "It's happening right now and we need to make a choice."

"I know pum'kin, I know." Castle ruefully admitted staring at the flashing numbers on his daughter's laptop computer.

A/N: Thank you so much the support shown from the readers. Thanks for the kind reviews and the favorites, they mean a lot. Also sorry for not having more Becket and the boys, I plan to fix the lacking of our favorite cops.