After the tragic non-appearance of Jade, Charlene, and Gareth, the group consists now of only Tim (Shepherd), Nick (Vincent Cray) and Bruce (Cyrus Billings). All of this rump group appears.
Before the session starts, Cyrus spends 15 experience points (leaving him with 1 unspent point) to buy Protean 4 and the all-important ability to change into a bat or a wolf. Vincent Cray realizes that he's got 18 free experience points, and agonizes over what to do with them for a while until finally committing to buying Thaumaturgy 4.
The characters spend about a month killing time and bystanders.
Cyrus, engaging in a slightly unguided attempt to locate Sabbat scouts in San Antonio, practices transforming into his new wolf and bat shapes and runs around town. He discovers that while his wolf form is limited to being a wolf, as a bat he can choose between a small fruit-bat shape (standard cost) and a menacing, 1-meter-wingspan vampire bat (1 extra blood point).
After spending some time flapping around and scaring the people of San Antonio, Cyrus decides to do something more useful. He heads back to Lackland Dump, hoping to find the Brujah Angel making another buy. On Friday, September 21st, he gets lucky and spots Angel and several of his Hispanic gangsters pulling into the dump. They meet a Hispanic male in cast-off military fatigues who appears from nowhere. Angel's people are surprised, but Angel simply talks to the guy. The contact walks over to a nearby refrigerator and pulls out large packages, each about the size of a shoebox and wrapped in brown paper. Angel tests the contents, then brings out a large aluminum briefcase and a manila envelope and gives them to the man in fatigues, who walks behind a mound of garbage and does not emerge. After the man leaves, Angel pulls a blue object from one of the packages, drinks from it, and puts it away with the care normally reserved for a junkie dealing with his stash.
Afterwards, Angel and his compatriots drive away rather violently. Cyrus expends heroic efforts making tremenous Stamina+Athletics (+ Fortitude) rolls to follow them. He finally finds their car parked in front of Atlas Fun Spa. The compound contains two buildings, one aluminum prefab that apparently contains the workshop and one trailer up on concrete blocks. Cyrus convinces himself that nothing his happening in the workshop, and ventures over to the trailer. At the trailer he hangs himself upside-down from the roof and peers through the window to see a Hispanic guy with a shotgun drinking beer and watching bad Mexican movies on TV. The table next to the guard is scattered with brown paper packages and another aluminum briefcase. After an hour, Cyrus concludes that the guard isn't going to be doing much else this evening, so he claw-over-claws his way over to look into several other windows. He swiftly concludes that the Hispanic guard is the most interesting thing going on the site.
Shepherd prevails upon Cyrus' access to the police to try and learn the identities of the Hispanic family he killed at Screamin' Joe's haven so long ago. He works diligently, and manages to find a photograph of the child under a listing of runaway children. He uses this tidbit to determine that the child was Johnny Rodriguez from Yucca Gulch, CA. His parents were Antonio and Josephine Rodriguez. He also finds that Yucca Gulch is a flea-bitten desert town in the middle of Anarch territory in Southern California.
Shepherd tries to call the Rodgriguez family, but his broken Spanish is insufficient to be able to speak with them. He asks around among the characters' ghouls and discovers that Mr. Davis (the grandfather from Austin) speaks Spanish.
Vincent, faced with the prospect of time to do what he wants, locks himself in the Tremere library after only the minimum bootlicking required and continues working upon his top-secret ritual to hide the signs of diablerie upon an aura.
Shepherd convinces the character that everyone should go with him on a field trip to Yucca Gulch to try and make amends with the Rodriguez family. They take along the special van (with the spare parts and the body bags), Cyrus' car, and Mr. Davis (for his knowledge of Spanish).
Prior to their departure, Vincent realizes that it is now October 1st, and that this trip will almost surely mean he'll have to miss a Tremere meeting. He goes to Nastasha to beg permission to be absent. She immediately turns around and asks, "Why?" Vincent responds with some mealy-mouthed answers about going to Southern California to help one of his coterie members not die. She checks a map, and tells him that that area is currently contested between the Camarilla and the various Anarch gangs. She also notes that though the Anarchs are generally fairly weak, they are extremely good at manufacturing and using pipe bombs. She then asks Vincent, "You wouldn't be doing anything in the next two hours?" Vincent, always the cooperative sycophant, allows as how any of his plans would surely take second place to her needs. She leads him through a secret passage into her lab, where she orders him to sit in a chair with leather straps. She straps him down over his rather feeble objections, then reassures him that this will only hurt him if he's recently been Dominated or placed under Thaumaturgical control. After ensuring that he is truly of 13th generation, she strips him bare and paints a series of intricate mystical runes on him.
After Vincent has been decorated like a South Seas Islander, Nastasha proceeds to ask him a series of questions intended to determine if he's planning on defecting to the Anarchs or betraying the Sabbat. In particular, she asks:
Vincent, ever the dutiful lackey, answers truthfully up until the last question. On the last question, one of the sigils on his arm burns brightly and vanishes, indicating that Vincent had been Dominated into forgetting something.
Nastasha orders Vincent to write down every order he has given to his political pawns over the last six months, and to return on the following evening to repeat the ordeal. The two of them finally determine that Vincent has been ordered to forget something associated with zoning laws for the Dickinson Cancer Research Institute.
It takes the characters and Mr. Davis two days to drive to Yucca Gulch. Yucca Gulch appears to be a very small town with a surprisingly large population considering the number of houses around. The town also appears to boast a couple of icehouses and bars, but little else. The characters manage to locate the address Shepherd wants with little trouble.
Shepherd approaches the Rodriguez's apartment accompanied by Mr. Davis, and starts asking the Hispanic man who answers the door about the boy Juan Rodriguez. In a quixotic attempt to inculate trust with the man at the door, he passes himself off as an FBI agent. By the end of the conversation, Shepherd determines that the man living at the house is Mr. Rodriguez, but he doesn't recognize the child and has never heard of either Antonio or Josephine Rodriguez. Even when Vincent tries using Dominate upon the man, he gets nothing else useful. Vincent is convinced that Shepherd is at a dead end, but Shepherd does manage to convince him to try asking the maintenance man.
The maintenance man, aided by liberal application of Dominate, does provide more useful information. He says that the family who had previously occupied the apartment had also been named Rodriguez. The father, mother and the youngest child went off to Texas some time ago to visit family, and never came back. Their two teenage children, Miguel and Maria, lived in the apartment until they were evicted. The maintenance man comments that he still has some of their stuff. From old family photos, Shepherd confirms that they are the people he is looking for. The maintenance man doesn't know where they are, but remembers that Miguel had some musical talent, and may be working for a band in another town.
After Shepherd and his ghoul work the phones, they manage to locate Maria. She still lives in Yucca Gulch. He manages to confirm this only by calling her at 02:00. Since the disappearance of her parents, she has married and settled down. It appears that she believes that her parents were caught by the INS and deported. Shepherd stops by immediately after calling her, and is greeted by her rather irate husband, who is more than a little curious about why some anglo wants to talk to his wife at 02:30 in the morning. Shepherd tries his FBI agent routine and explains that he wants to talk to Maria about her parents and brother. The husband's rather brusque response is, "They are dead. You will upset her. Go away." He then shuts the door and turns off the light, though the characters can still see him peering at them through the battered venetian blinds.
Shepherd wants to send Mr. Davis back sometime during the day, but nobody else (including Mr. Davis) is really sure what he should do. As a compromise, Shepherd decides to leave several hundred dollars in their mailbox. He reflects that though this might not seem like much, considering the dilapidated condition of their house it probably will be a lot to them. He accompanies the money with a note, "Maria: This is for you and your brother." He resolves to send them about $500/month afterwards, at least until he comes up with a way to help them out in a more "permanent" way. The room disintegrates into sick laughter.
The characters stick around just long enough to make sure the family gets the money, then head back to San Antonio.
The characters elect to head back to San Antonio through Nevada. Several times through the trip, Shepherd realizes that Cyrus drives extremely fast. He tries to keep up, then quickly discovers that Cyrus is also much more adept at spotting speed traps than he is. Shepherd makes this discovery moments before he gets pulled over by the Nevada Highway Patrol. He manages to call Cyrus up to let him know what happened, as Cyrus is nowhere in view at the time. The officer tells Shepherd that he wants to look inside the vehicle. Shepherd demurs until the officer tells him that he can have Shepherd's car impounded in Las Vegas until the proper papers can be written up. Shepherd then decides to fall back upon his seldom-used Dominate powers to keep the officer talking until Cyrus and Vincent can get close by.
About this time, Shepherd starts to get a feeling like he's in danger. Shepherd recognizes where this feeling is coming from when he recognizes first that the officer's partner is sidling around the other side of the van with a shotgun, and the officer has drawn his gun and is apparently no longer affected by Shepherd's Dominate: "You're a weak Jedi. Your mind powers don't work on me." Shepherd uses Auspex to verify that the officer isn't a vampire, but determines that the interior of the van is getting brighter as if from sunlight, and that Shepherd is feeling rather drowsy as a result.
Shepherd reacts to these developments with great vigor, by turning on Celerity and Obfuscate and trying to force his way out of the van. Much to his distress, he discovers that the officer is a ghoul, and is stronger than he is. He compromises by stumbling his way to the back of the van. Meanwhile, Mr. Davis is slumped down in the passenger seat.
During all this, Cyrus and Vincent scream by at high speed. Noting Shepherd's problems, Cyrus drives by for a bit, then kills the engine and the lights and slews the car behind a stand of cactus to hide it (and hopefully make it look like they just continued driving). Vincent, taken aback by Cyrus' driving style, Obfuscates and heads out one side of the car. Cyrus becomes a vampire bat and heads out the other side.
As Cyrus and Vincent approach, Shepherd makes a break out of the back of the van. A brief exchange of gunfire follows during which nobody is seriously hurt. Shepherd finally stops shooting, commenting that, "I don't want to die in Nevada." The officers order Shepherd to lie down, noting that the shotgun is loaded with bullets that will hurt him, "a lot." About this time, a strange ball of sunlight drifts out of the back of the van.
It finally develops that the two ghouls are working for Charlie Giovanni, the Prince of Las Vegas. The Prince's rules prohibit using vampiric powers upon those who enforce his law. Shepherd is obviously in violation of these rules, and must accompany them to present himself to the Prince and beg for mercy. Shepherd asks them, "Which one of you is creating the ball of sunlight?" They respond, "The one of us that you can't see." Shepherd again asks, "Remind me again why I dropped the tommy gun?" The officer notes that it was probably because they asked him nicely. They then sketch out how they're going to handcuff and blindfold Shepherd, and take him in to the city.
Things start to fall apart when the two cops start to put Shepherd into the car. Cyrus, who had been hiding on top of the squad car as a little fruit bat, changes into a huge vampire bat and attacks. Meanwhile, Vincent opens fire from Obfuscated cover with his silenced pistol. The two ghouls are incapacitated in quick order. Unfortunately, the ball of sunlight turns it's lambent gaze upon Cyrus, who drops like a sack of potatoes before he's able to grab Shepherd and drive away. Vincent then endangers his saintlike humanity by gunning down the one wounded officer before he's able to call for help on the radio.
By the time Vincent has managed to suppress the two ghouls, he notes that there are additional vehicles approaching from the distance. He attempts to rescue Cyrus and Shepherd, but is driven to unconsciousness by the sunlight ball.
The characters come to in Cyrus' car to hear Mr. Davis shrieking about how everyone is going to die. They're on the road, with one Highway Patrol vehicle in front of them and one behind, plus a chopper overhead. Cyrus gets behind the driver's seat, while Shepherd and Vincent argue about how best to shoot their way out of this situation. Despite Cyrus' reservations about the value of violence in this situation, Shepherd decides the issue by pulling out Cyrus' autoshotgun and blazing away at the police car in front. Meanwhile, Vincent pulls out Cyrus' ordinary 12-gauge and fires on the car behind. The fatalities induced by this attack are enough to discomfit the drivers sufficiently to let Cyrus pull free of the two patrol cars.
Shepherd suddenly realizes that while the helicopter following them has police markings, it is actually a Huey, built to deliver eight armed men into combat. Normally, helicopters like this are also equipped with two door-mounted machine guns. Urged into action by this knowledge, Shepherd finally succeeds in shooting out the helicopter's searchlight. Moments later, the helicopter opens fire with what appears to be a heavy machine gun. Cyrus responds with a series of bootlegger reverses while Shepherd and Vincent throw lit railroad flares out the windows to disable any night-vision devices the chopper might have. Vincent finally manages to get the helicopter to back off by using Thaumaturgy to set the machine gun on fire.
The immediate pursuit behind them, the characters head out of Nevada using back roads to evade the roadblocks. They pause to stop at a motel right across the border where they steal a dun brown station wagon, then drive off to a distant location and torch Cyrus' car. They take the station wagon to a truck stop, where Vincent locates a truck driver heading towards Texas and Dominates him into taking the characters along as surreptitious passengers. A couple of days later, the characters get back to San Antonio, somewhat poorer but intact.
The session ends with the characters sneaking back into San Antonio, richer for their adventure by five experience points but somewhat poorer in terms of equipment.