Character Journal

• Los Angeles

  The Golden Vipers

  The conflict between the Iron Horsemen and the Golden Vipers had been six months in the making, ever since the Vipers attacked the Horsemen and their allies in Las Vegas. Months of hard work have tracked them down to Los Angeles, and the gathering hosted by Victor Temple, Nellie G, X, and others has provided the perfect opportunity for the Iron Horsemen to come together again in the City of Angels. The Vipers didn’t hesitate to escalate further, attacking Tyrus’s assets in the city. It was time to put an end to this feud once and for all, and extend the Horsemen’s reach to the Pacific coast. Tyrus had gathered extensive intelligence about the Golden Vipers, and the Iron Horsemen levied their considerable network of allies, contacts, and other resources to eliminate several Vipers while they rested through the daylight hours. All that remained was to strike off the head of the snake. The Horsemen had found its location: the See’s Candies headquarters in downtown LA. That night, the Iron Horsemen gathered their allies and prepared for the final assault. As Tyrus, Nomad, Weylan, and Lobo organized the assault teams, Alan the Butcher moved impatiently between the groups, running messages and making sure everyone knew where they were supposed to be. But as the groups were moving into position, Alan was already getting fed up with waiting. Fading from view into the shadows, he looked for a way into the building. He saw windows on the upper floors he could potentially reach, a side door that didn’t appear to be monitored, and even a damaged spot on one of the walls that he could potentially tear through. What he didn’t see was the open manhole, until he fell into it. Recovering from the fall, he realized that breaking in from below would let him crash their party in a spray of sewer water and shattered concrete. They’d never see him coming, and he could leverage that to create chaos and upend any preparations they may have been making. Rousing the blood to grant him vision in the near total darkness, he followed the sewer tunnel in what he figured was probably the right direction. As he approached a series of pipes leading up to the building, a whisper of scales sliding across concrete to his right was his only warning before a massive yellow snake the length of a city bus struck him. The serpent’s head was the size of his torso, and its foot and a half long fangs sank deeply into his right shoulder. The pain barely registered—pain was for the living. What Alan did register was the way the thing's fangs tried to drag him backward, into deeper muck and rushing wastewater. With a snarl that turned into a guttural laugh, Alan grabbed the snake’s jaws with both hands, planting his feet in the sludge and pushing back. Bone creaked—his, probably. Something popped in his shoulder, but he barely noticed as he forced the monster’s mouth wider. “You wanna chew me up, you scaly bastard? Gonna need a bigger mouth.” The snake thrashed, its muscular body coiling around him with crushing force. The world narrowed to stink, pressure, and darkness. Alan’s ribs cracked like popcorn under the squeeze, but that just made him angrier. Calling on the Brujah fire in his blood, he roared, twisted, and exploded upward—driving both elbows into the snake’s skull with inhuman force. The sewer ceiling buckled as snake and vampire slammed into it. Concrete dust rained down. Alan dropped with a grunt, landing on his feet as the Viper thrashed in pain, its golden scales catching what little light filtered from the storm drain above. He didn’t give it a second chance. It wasn’t just rage now—it was momentum. Alan charged, leaping onto the serpent’s neck, driving iron-hard fingers between slick, armored scales. He rode its writhing body like a bull, driving punches into its spine, tearing into muscle and sinew. The snake flung itself side to side, battering Alan against the walls, breaking bricks, cracking pipes—but he held on. It reared, slamming its skull through a rusted pipe and dragging Alan with it into a side tunnel, half-flooded and echoing with its furious hissing. Alan saw his moment—finally, a clear shot—and tore a length of rusted rebar from the tunnel wall. “Choo choo, mother fucker” he growled. And he drove it through the side of the serpent’s head. Its blood burst out—a black, chemical sludge that stank of death and drain cleaner that burned the air and made Alan’s eyes water. The snake shrieked, a high-pitched, awful sound that shook the sewer around them. It writhed once more, violently, then collapsed. Twitching. Still. Alan stood over it, soaked in ichor and sewage, ribs broken, one shoulder dangling uselessly. He stared down at the corpse for a long moment. Then he grinned. “This’ll make a nice pair of boots.”