Disclaimer: The characters in the following story, with the exception of "Loral Williams" and a few other auxiliary characters

Disclaimer: The characters in the following story, with the exception of "Loral Williams" and a few other auxiliary characters, are owned by Spelling Television Inc. [A subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment Group Inc.]. Vampire: The Masquerade is owned by Mark Rein*Hagan/White Wolf Publishing. My use is in no way a challenge to their copyrights.

Note to the Reader: The vampire legend is not the creation of anyone person, and no one set of rules or myths interprets what a vampire is. Every storyteller redefines what is logical and permissible in his or her story's universe. If I stray from the World of Darkness interpretation, it is only because I am endeavoring to write a fuller and richer tale.

A Double Edge

Part I

Chapter 2

Sasha was in hysterics on the floor of the corridor, desperately fighting Jeffery as her tried to help her to her feet. Sobs racked her body and a large gash on her leg was still bleeding red. Her clothes were covered in the crusting brown of dried blood.

Loral slipped past Julian and Cash and slid to a halt next to her fallen friend. She rapped her arms around the flailing women and started rocking backing forth.

"Everything is fine now Sasha, everything is safe, everything is fine, I'm here Cash is here Julian is here. Everything is going to be all right. Everything is fine." Loral kept cooing in her ear.

Slowly Sasha began to recover herself.

"I'm so afraid." She finally choked. She turned around so she could see who was hugging her.

"Loral?" amazement and shock took over her voice.

Loral looked back at her friend equally stunned as she watched a steam of scarlet tears run down Sasha's cheek.

Cash seeing a chance to get his beloved away form the inquisitive mortal, quickly moved between them. Neither put up much resistance.

Loral's mind was running a mile a minute, but was only semi-conscious of Jeffery's hand on her shoulders guiding her to an empty room. What was she doing here? What was happening? Was Sasha going to be okay? What had they done to her? Who were they? What could she do?

Fight or flight?

Somewhere behind her, down the hall, Cash held Sasha, and Julian tried to reassure them both.

"Your safe, Sasha. I will never let anyone hurt you. Now tell me what happened."

Sasha looked up at her great-great grandfather, Julian Luna, Prince of San Francisco. There were times when she would just as willing have spit in his face, or run screaming form him, but come hell or high water, Carmon or Brujah blood, he was still her only family, and he would always protect her.

"Carmon sent us down to the docks to break up the strike demonstrators… Jerry, Bill, Erin and I. You know, rough up some people scare the others away…."

Julian tried to hide the utter disgust he held for Sasha's Primogen and encouraged her to continue.

"Jerry and Erin picked this one guy out of the crowd, and started kicking him, but he made a run for it. We followed him up to one of the old wear houses on pier 8. We followed him, but he was waiting for us." Her voice cracked, and a new wave of bloody tears flowed from her eyes. Cash gently wiped them away, but she seemed to flinch at his touch.

"He said we were murders, and monsters that our kind was dead and should stay that way, and then he shot Bill. He shot him dead Julian, with a phosphorus riffle. He was only a man." She started sobbing again. "He shot Erin too, Jerry and I took him down but he cut Jerry's head off……I'm the only one left."

"And the attacker lives?"

The hair on the back of Cash's neck rose at the sound of the newcomer's voice. Carmon, with bodyguard in tow, coolly returned the hateful stares he received form the couple until he caught sight of the prince. Suddenly Carmon found himself on the floor with a bleeding nose and a broken jaw. Julian's eyes had gone wild, and there was murder in his mouth. The Beast was hovering just below the surface of the Venture's controlled exterior.

"You have brought the hunters down on us. There will be punishment. " Carmon's guard had a gun trained on him in an instant, and Cash was by Julian's side ready to rip his long time foe to pieces.

"No please uncle. There was only one…..and he isn't a problem anymore."

Julian whipped around as the full implication of what she was saying hit him. Sasha had killed, and she had killed mortal. His heart was breaking for her. He wanted to hold her and tell her it was only a dream, he wanted to make her forget the pain, he wanted her to be whole, but she never would be again, so he just looked at her.

"Get out Carmon."

At dusk, in one of the exclusive private rooms on the second floor of the Heaven, a premiere night club in San Francisco, the members of the Conclave, sat around a large table with paler than usual expressions. Julian, the Prince, Lilly Primogen Toreador, Carmon Primogen Brujah, Daedalus Primogen Nosferatu, and Cash Primogen Gangrel, the Venture seat remained markedly vacant, waited in a silence, devoid of the usual inter-clan bickering. At any moment Sonny and his joint Venture/Brujah clean up crew were to return with there evaluation of the situation. A vampire-hunter had been found in San Francisco, every Kindred young or old dreaded a night like this.

The fact that the newest kindred in San Francisco had to be the one to dispense of the Hunter weighed heavily on Julian's face and heart.. Lilly's eyes traveled across the room until they settled on her one time lover. Julian appeared much as he had after returning form his final act as the Archon's enforcer. He looked like one who had seen innocents defiled, only this time he was not the one whose naivety had been destroyed. She wanted to comfort him, but the gap between them was getting harder and harder to cross. Lilly could only wonder at what Sasha was going through.

Finally the door to the meeting room opened, and Sonny followed by Jason, his Brujah counter part, somberly entered the room. Sonny quickly passed out a series of manila folders to his superiors. Each folder held a series of photographs; the first was of three corpses. Two were badly burned and had gapping holes in their chest the third was missing its head. The next picture held the smiling face of a young man in his late twenties. The third was of the same man, but it looked like his torso and his rib cage had gone to civil war. Carmon grinned at the gruesome scene. It appeared Sasha had little of her "Uncle" in her after all.

"His name is Cory Tan." Sonny spoke up breaking the silence. "Officially he is…. was a web-designer, but as of last year he lost all gainful employment after suffering an emotional breakdown at his workplace, where he began raving about how vampires were taking over the world."

"At this point he basically dropped out of the public eye, and assumed the title Hunter Trapper. From what we have been able to gather from his activities in other domains, he was responsible for the final deaths of eight neonates and one elder, not including his three most resent victims." Sonny indicated the first photograph.

"There is no clear evidence that he was ever connected to a larger organization, or that any collaborated or knew of his work. It is the opinion of this investigator that he was on a one-man revenge mission. He discovered the Brujah, and the Brujah only, by their connection to dock workers contract negotiations."

A collective sigh of relief could be heard as each Primogen realized that their clan was not in any danger. Well, all except the Brujah that is. If it could be proven that the Brujah had slaked in their maintenance of the Masquerade, there would be hell to pay. The prince could exact any punishment he wished and none of the other clans would stand against him.

Sonny pressed a button on the side of the wall. The lights dimmed and a panel slid back revealing a bright monitor. On it played out in the silent pantomime of a security tape a rather interesting meeting between Jerry, Carmon's lieutenant and one of the striking demonstrators. The dockworker was yelling at the suited Brujah. Suddenly he fell silent. The Brujah bared his fangs and sunk them deep into the mortal's throat. He fed until the man dropped to the ground. Arrogantly the want-to-be mobster swaggered away. The screen went dark and the lights came back up.

"This recoding was found in Tan's apartment. No other evidence of Kindred existence was found."

The tension in the room was thick as pitch. All eyes fell to Carmon. Carefully the Primogen cleared his throat remembering his earlier encounter with the Prince. Even though the Prince and his pet mongrel had fed, Julian was still very capable of losing control.

"The hunter was a Brujah problem, that the we have dealt with it accordingly. Is that not so?" He addressed Jason, with ice in his stare.

In all of San Francisco there wasn't a single kindred who wasn't a little afraid of Carmon, not even Julian. Jason squirmed and stuttered under his sire's gaze. "T-the offender has been di-disposed of, no one will follow his work, and all trace of him has been removed from the domain. Cory Tan, Hunter Trapper not only no longer exists, but as far as the mortal world is concerned, never existed."

"It seems," Carmon addressed the room with an assurance he did not feel, "the matter is concluded." Carmon moved to get up and leave, but the unkind hands of two very angry Gangrel guards pushed him back into his seat. Carmon's bodyguard was nowhere to be found.

Cold stares settled on him from every one present. The silence was unbearable.

Finally Julian turned to his left and addressed Lilly.

"How do the Toreador stand?"

The time to pass judgment had come.

"The imprudent actions of the Brujah have endangered all of the clans, we support any corrective action the Prince deems necessary." Lilly looked sadly at the poor idiot who didn't have then sense to keep his clan in line.

"Gangrel?"

Cash was livid. "We always knew it would come down to this. The Brujah will be the death of us all. Deal with them as you will Prince."

"What do the Nostferatu say?"

As was his right as the oldest of the Primogen, Daedalus always had the last word in the Prince's council.

"Sonny what makes you so certain that Tan was killing out of personal revenge?"

Sonny had been prepared for this question, and had already formulated the response in his mind.

"Cory Tan suffered a history of mental illness stemming from when he was orphaned at the age of twelve. His parents owned an eco-tourist company that for six months refused a merger offer with Parks and Reserves Eco Corp. Then his parent died. A month later Park and Reserves bought out his family's company."

"I don't see what this has to do with anything." Cash complained impatiently.

Julian shot him a look that could kill.

"Please continue."

"In addition to the Tan's company, Parks an Reserves, received a few hundred acres of undeveloped real-estate in the Dakota Badlands that the Tan's were keeping in trust for one of the local tribal reservations. Parks and Reserves as it turns out is a subsidiary of Pentex Corp. The land is now being used as a pumping ground for medical waste and by-products."

"Officially Mr. and Mrs. Tan died in a car accident, but when their burned bodies were pulled from the remains they had numerous and unexplainable injuries, not least of which included crushed backbones and neck support. If the Tans had gotten in the way of a Pentex operation, and Cory found out …….."

"He would have been given more than adequate knowledge and hatred of Kindred to explain his career choice." Daedalus finished.

Daedalus addressed his old friend.

"Julian, the Nosferatu as always are loyal to our prince, but request that your judgment be made in light of the facts. The Brujah, have already suffered a great loss at the hands of this hunter. They have effectively eradicated the problem, and the breach of the Masquerade was not theirs alone. The hunter had prior knowledge of our kind before his action in this domain."

Again silence fell as all waited wondering what Julian was thinking. Revenge was there for the taking, and the Brujah had given him good cause for vengeance, as the empty Venture seat testified to. Still there was Sasha to consider. Any harm done to the Brujah was done to her, and she had already suffered enough for one night

"The Brujah will concede five city blocks in the financial district to the Venture, five city blocks to the Toreador along the waterfront, and eight to the Gangrel along their boundary. The Brujah will not embrace new clansmen to replace the slain, nor will they embrace any mortal for the next three years. If the clan does not comply with in the next week, they will lose representation at this council, and will be driven form the domain."

She knew she was suppose to be sleeping resting, recovering but she seemed to be caught in a waking dream, where she was the monster that chased around frightened children old and young, where she was the nightmare which makes people afraid of the dark.

"Abomination, demon, vampire, evil, soulless" the world floated about Sash's mind like corpses in stagnant water. Any other time she would have shrugged them off as the ravings of the ignorant, but hadn't she just proven them. She was a murderer.

In fear and self-hate she waited with the rest of San Francisco to know the Prince's judgment.