Chapter 13

Disclaimer: I do not own, much to my displeasure, any BTVS or KTE characters you may recognize. I am just borrowing them for a bit and plan on returning eventually, though they might be a bit scuffed. The characters that you do not recognize are mine to use and abuse.

Warning: Potty language and violence

Everyone hurried to gather their gear. Emily collected the three bags (one for each of them) that they always kept in case of a need to make a hasty exit while Alex, after changing his clothes, went down to their tiny garage where he kept their small armory.

The storage cabinet was secure, complete with a keypad lock and thumb print identification. There was absolutely no way Alexia or any other kid or possible enemy could get into it. It was something that they invested in the day after Alexia came into their lives. The company they bought it from said it was one of the most secure ways to store anything and prevent any tragic accidents. Punching in the numbers 857219 and pressing his thumb to the scanner, the locks quietly clicked open, allowing him to turn the handle and open the door.

Once open, the storage cabinet, for that was what it was but only with steel plating and a secure locking system, their armory was revealed. He bypassed the AR-15, the M-16, a P-90 and his much beloved shotguns and instead took out two Glock 23Cs, quickly loaded them and the spare magazines. Alex then took down a small duffle bag and placed the extra weapons in it. He also found spare mags for his .40 S & W, loaded them and found two boxes of extra rounds for the Remington he kept in the car. While there was a part of him that wanted to have as much firepower as possible, logic won out in the end. Having his entire armory in the SUV would probably draw attention from even the stupidest cop. Also, some of the bigger pieces would be impractical and could not be used from such a confined area. Besides, if there was anything extra that he would need, he was sure Luna would have it already.

Once he had everything, he went over to the SUV, placed the bag on the floor board and went around to the back. He got out the .40 he kept in the car; he took the holster and placed it on his belt. With that done, he went back upstairs to the house.

Luckily everyone was ready and he and Emily herded everyone down stairs. They placed Faith and Tara in the back, on either side of Alexia, who had been strapped down with the seatbelt. Dawn, being the smallest out of the three in the back, was forced to sit on the floor. Emily took the wheel while Alex rode shotgun.

They backed out, all of them expecting something out of the Godfather to happen: a non-descript black sedan to pull up behind them, have people jump out, and hose the car with bullets.

Emily spared a look over at Alex, who was looking pretty damn grim. "Are you ready for this?" she asked.

Alex nodded and answered without looking at her. "You drive and I make with the mojo if anyone comes after us."

"Love you," she said.

"Love you more," Alex replied, offering up a small smile.

With that, Emily gunned the engine and tore out of the driveway.

Emily drove with the precision and skill that rivaled the drivers in IRL, F1, and NASCAR combined. She took a winding, circular route though the city, careful to make sure that she didn't go fast enough to attract the unwanted attention of a traffic cop.

As they were making their way down Market, Emily and Alex noticed a car following them. It had been trailing them for too long, avoiding opportunities to pass them up and go around them. The car suddenly sped up and hit the bumper of the SUV, causing it to swerve slightly, but Emily had such a tight control over the vehicle, she was able to correct the car's movement and avoid a large scale pile up.

With the tap from behind, confirming that the car wasn't being driven by some innocent, Alex closed his eyes and concentrated. In his mind's eye he could "see" the steering wheel. With a mental pull, he yanked the wheel to the extreme right, causing the car to veer off the street and on to the sidewalk. At the same time, he pressed the accelerator down, causing the engine to race.

The car hit a parking meter, a trash can, and then the wall of a building. The front end crumpled upon impact, throwing the driver and passenger to be thrown forward, smashing their heads into the front windshield. Bricks and stucco rained down upon the car, the building shuddered with the force of the impact. People screamed and ran from the site of the accident, frightened of how close they came to their early demise.

Emily didn't spare a look behind her, trusting Alex to have taken care of the threat.

Alex opened his eyes and turned around to see his handy work, his eyes glowing amber yellow as he surveyed the wreck, satisfied that the pursuers were incapacitated.

"Do you want me to stop?" Emily asked.

Alex briefly considered the possibility of blowing the shit out of the occupants of the car, with or without the use of one of his guns. "No, there are too many witnesses," was his terse reply. There were also too many people in close proximity to the car; the collateral damage that he had already caused earlier was not something that he wanted to repeat.

Emily nodded and continued driving, keeping a look out for any more possible threats. Luckily, nothing came at them for the rest of the way.

They reached Luna's mansion and were allowed to pass through with no difficulty. Cash was outside to greet them.

Alexia bounded out of the car the minute she was released from her seatbelt and straight into the arms of Cash. "Uncle Cash," she cried. "Bad men were after us!"

The Primogen knelt down and hugged the child. "Did your daddy take care of them?" he asked the girl while looking up at his childe with no small amount of concern.

Alexia nodded. "Daddy made the car go boom and then we ran."

"Why don't you go inside? I heard that Elsa," one of the humans Luna retained as a maid, "recently made a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Your dad, mom, and I need to talk."

Alex nodded at Alexia who ran up into the house, in search of Elsa and the elusive chocolate chip cookies.

The three Gangrels turned towards the humans who had joined them at the bottom of the stairs.

"Why don't you wait for us in the house?" Alex suggested, not happy with the idea of deliberately excluding the others, but he knew that Cash did not want to have a discussion about Kindred business in front of a bunch of humans.

Dawn started to protest but Faith grabbed her, gently, by the arm and dragged her into the house.

"What the hell are you doing?" Dawn snarled. "This concerns us too you know. We have a right to be a part of this conversation."

"Chill out Dawn," Faith snapped. "Xander saved my ass today and if he and his buddies want to have a private conversation, then by God, they're going to get what they want. Also, I have a bad feeling that we are not going to want to hear half of what they are going to be saying. Besides, if there are indeed chocolate chip cookies somewhere in that house, I'm going to find them. I don't care if they are stored next to five dead and rotting bodies, I'm hungry and I want chocolate"

Once the humans had disappeared into the house, Cash turned to his childe and blood sister. "What happened? The news broke in saying that there was a shooting at the beach and a car blew up."

"There was a shooting and a car blew up," Alex deadpanned.

Cash rolled his eyes. "No shit. I wanted the specifics smart ass, not your usual crap."

Alex grinned; he couldn't help himself sometimes. "I was down at the beach with Alexia and Faith. We were coming back and some asshole decided to turn us into Swiss cheese with an AK-74. I was a bit pissed at them for doing that so I blew this shit out of their car."

"Are you sure you were the targets?"

"There were Kindred in the car. I'm sure of it," Alex said, running his hand through his dark hair, feeling the strain start to bleed off of him.

"How did you blow it up?" Cash asked a bit weary. "Damage count?"

"Heat and energy don't mix well with gas tanks. Even I remember that from my high school science class," Alex reported. "The two in the car went up like Michael Jackson's hair in a Pepsi commercial. I know that there were several people hurt and at least two are dead because of me. I tried to save them all, pull them back away from the car, but I couldn't get to two of them," Alex tried to keep his tone indifferent, tried to make it sound like since they had been human, the people who died didn't matter. His abilities in deception were not that great. Cash and Emily could see how much this was tearing the young Gangrel up inside.

"You can't save them all Alex," Cash said, his tone gentle. "I know that you would never go out of your way to hurt innocent lives. You were protecting Alexia and sometimes, unfortunately, when we are doing the right thing, bad things happen."

Emily held tightly on to her lover's hand and looked up at him with her beautiful dark blue eyes. "You saved Alexia and Faith. That is what's important here."

Alex smiled briefly at her, thanking whatever higher power that was out there that she came into his life.

"Did you get a license plate number?" Cash asked.

"California plates, four, M-A-W, nine, one, seven," Alex repeated from memory.

"Good. I'll give that to Sonny and have him trace the plates back to the owner. Hopefully that will give us more definite proof which of the Brujah is behind this," Cash said.

Alex's eyes narrowed at that. "You goddamn know as well as the rest of us that Cameron is behind this! How much more proof do we need? It was at his warehouse I got shot, I brought in a flunky of his who is too stupid to ever conceive of an idea on his own, and Cameron's been a no show since last week."

"I know that, but Luna wants hard core proof. He wants to make sure that others don't see this as him starting a clan war," Cash explained Luna's position.

Alex looked like he was about to blow. "What about that little shit I brought in? Have you guys broken him yet?"

Cash looked pissed. "For a fucking Brujah, he's pretty resilient. We thought about starving him to death, but figured that would ruin any chances of getting something worthwhile out of him. He's resisted our normal means and threats do nothing for him."

Alex began to smile slowly, an evil grin spreading across his face. "Leave it to me Boss. I'll get the info out of him."

Mentally, Cash smacked himself on the forehead. While Alex wasn't one to overly enjoy torturing someone, he was very, very good at it. Unfortunately it had a tendency to be a pretty gruesome experience.

XanderXanderXander

Alexia, Faith, Dawn, and Tara were sitting in the kitchen, having just been served possibly the best tasting chocolate chip cookies any of them had ever had. While they were sitting there, watching Alexia color on some paper Elsa provided for her to occupy her self with, they heard the most blood-curdling screams ever, emanate from somewhere down below their feet.

The women looked at each other, then at Elsa who merely shrugged. Apparently this was nothing new to the elderly woman. Weirdly enough, Alexia didn't seem to be overly bothered either. However, Tara, Dawn, and even Faith were a little more than unnerved by the screams.

What they could not see, thankfully for them, was the Brujah, whom had been captured the previous week down at the docks, strapped to a heavy wooden chair in the prison of light. The sunlight had been blocked out, giving the prisoner a small amount of relief, albeit temporarily. He had even been allowed a bottle of blood to help restore his mind to a state of clarity. He had hoped that this was a sign that they were going to release him. The hope that had sprung in the prisoner's heart was easily crushed when he saw who walked in through the heavy iron door behind Cash.

Alex stood there, an evil grin on his face as he shoved another wooden stake into the thigh of Lucas Foley. The Brujah screamed as the wood pierced his flesh.

"Who is the mysterious new owner of the amulet?" Alex patiently asked.

Foley only snarled, refusing to give up his information. He was determined to not be weak and break.

Alex sighed. "You know Lucas, everyone breaks eventually. Even the military recognizes this. All it takes is the right amount of pressure and pain and people will give it up. Kindred are no different. Yeah, we can take a lot more punishment than the average human, but then again, we can dish it out to the point where Abu Ghrayb will look like child's play. And do you know the best part of it all?"

Alex waited a moment for the drama, giving the Brujah flunky a chance to shake his head no. "I really enjoy it," he whispered and slammed another stake into Foley's body, this time through his shoulder, close to his heart.

"Do you feel it, the burning pain of wood in your body?" Alex asked. "You see an odd thing happened today. Someone tried to kill my little girl and since I can't exact my revenge against those assholes, since I killed them when I blew up their car, I guess it's just you and me."

"Alex, you going to use your mojo on him, 'cause I want to get my video camera and record it. It'll be a blast at the next full moon party," Cash said casually.

"Oh, that's an idea. How about I cook him from the inside out? I slowly heat up his body until he bursts into flames. Then we could put the video on YouTube. I don't think they have any real videos of actual spontaneous combustion. It would fucking rule," the younger Gangrel said, his voice cheery and light. As he was saying this, he did the same parlor trick he had shown Faith back at the university, only this time the flame was bigger and dangerously close to the Brujah's face. "Imagine something like this frying you like breakfast sausage from the inside," he snickered, enjoying the horrified look on the guy's face.

Alex knew he was close to pushing the guy over the edge, breaking him. All he needed was one last push. He closed his fist, cutting off the flame.

He ran a finger through one of rivulets of blood that was running down the Brujah's torso. Alex brought the finger up to his mouth and licked it clean. He pulled a face, obviously displeased with the taste. "You know, you don't taste any better now than when I fed off you. One would think that even fear could make a weasel like you taste a tad bit better."

"You can't feed off me. It's against the rules," Foley managed to gasp. The pain he was experiencing was even worse than he could have ever imagined. Also, his fear wasn't helping; it was making him even more aware of how dire his present situation was.

Alex looked at Cash in confusion. "Hello, I already did that earlier. Its old news and no one really cares at this point. People have bigger problems to worry about than me snacking off of you after I got shot. Also, did you not get the memo that the Prince sent out to all Kindred in the city?"

"What the hell are you talking about you fucking psycho-path," the Brujah said, trying for one last bit of defiance, knowing that he wouldn't be able to hold out for much longer.

"You and your kind have broken enough rules that Luna doesn't care what I do. All he wants is peace in his city and as long as it gets to stay that way, he's letting me do my worst and you're only my first," Alex growled. "And since my little girl's life was threatened, I plan on having as much fun with it as possible. Nobody fucks with my kid.

"Now, can we stop with this needless violence? All you have to do is tell me who is behind the amulet and this insane attempt to grab power and I'll pull all seven stakes out of you. And if you don't, just to let you know because I am such a swell guy, the next two stakes," Alex held up two thin slivers of wood, "are going right into your two best friends. I'll even let you decide if you want lefty or righty to go first."

At this, Foley crumbled, telling them everything; typical guy – you threaten his nuts and he caves.

He told them that Cameron was behind the amulet's theft, the hiring of the Samedi to steal it from the church in Naples, and all of the chaos that he assumed had been occurring since he had been brought in.

"Where can we find Cameron?" Cash asked, twisting one of the stakes, letting Foley know that it wasn't over just yet.

"I don't know," he blubbered, no longer a fearsome Brujah but a broken man crying blood tears.

"Not good enough. Where can we find your Primogen?" Cash snarled, rotating the stake further in so it was even closer to his heart.

"Cameron's been moving around, he doesn't stay in the same place twice. I do know that the ceremony to fully activate the amulet is supposed to take place somewhere in Golden Gate Park. There's something about ley lines that is key to activating the damn thing. That's all I know! I'm just a grunt. He won't share much information with someone like me. Please stop with the stakes!" he screamed.

Cash and Alex shared a look. Cash nodded at Alex and together they pulled the stakes out of his body. Granted they weren't too careful about it, but the release from having them removed was a sweet sensation.

Then, before Foley could say anything further, Cash picked up a stake and drove it into the Brujah's chest, through his heart, placing him in a state of torpor. Apparently relief wasn't in the cards.

"Harsh," Alex commented, calmly looking at his sire.

Cash shrugged. "It's not like we're actually going to let him go, plus it gives Luna time to figure out what he wants done with him."

"No," Alex said, shaking his head. "I meant, harsh as in you didn't let me do it."

Cash smiled. "Next one I promise I'll let you stake him. Consider it a belated birthday present."

"Ah, Cash! You say the sweetest things," Alex said, grinning at his Elder as they calmly left the prison together.

A/N: Well, what do you think? Crap or not? Hit the shiny review button and let me know what you think. I'll hold my breath until you do…

Anyways, thank you for reading and if you just happened to leave a review behind, a double thank you to you. Suggestions and comments always help me out. Also, a thank you goes to Lorilei for making sure I wasn't slacking off and not writing. Her encouragement and kicks in the rear are appreciated and sometimes needed.

On a final note, I can't say for sure when my next posting will occur. The husband is coming home on leave for a few days (Yay!!!), so I want to be with him as much as possible (get your mind out of the gutter) and won't be working much on this story, if at all. I am hoping for something in the week after next, but who knows, I might get inspired and post earlier than what I am thinking. Also, don't forget, reviews are always a good way to get me to ignore real life and write (hint hint)…

Cheers!