2026-03-16 14:04 - 23:46 PST
Gabriela met with Kiryu at Serena Bar. There was a recent string of killings1, and she needed backup while investigating. Lucky for them, the Prince had used his pull to keep the bodies in the morgue indefinitely, one of his ghouls presiding over the case file. When they arrived, they read over the reports.
According to the report, Brown and Thomas were found two days apart, Brown floating dismembered in his pool, and Thomas in a sewer. Both decomposed slightly before they were found, devaluing forensics, but still, it was determined that they both died around midnight, were both ripped apart by what seems to be claws of some kind of large creature with considerable strength, and were both completely exsanguinated. No camera footage for Brown, but street cameras show Thomas having his ankle grabbed as he stepped on the curb, and dragged through a sewer drain, smashing his head in the process.
Neither reported being stalked or approached prior to their deaths. The case details are being concealed as much as they can. Then, of course, there’s the calling cards, which have, frustratingly, slipping the Prince’s grasp, still in the custody of the police departments. But they were tested to be alligator skin.
Then, when they examined the bodies proper, they discovered the following:
These wounds were so deep, so strong, and so sharp that they tore right through in one go. Paul Brown probably died in one blow, Mark Thomas died before he even entered the sewers, from blunt force trauma. The rest of this mauling and exsanguination is just for show. Or from a beast that can’t control themselves.
Their next stop was the police station, where they hoped to get a closer look on one of the calling cards. The initials “K.Y.” were scratched in as though by a knife, and the scale itself was plucked off precisely either off a willing alligator or a dead one. As alligators aren’t native to California, maybe the killer was importing the scales from elsewhere. There hadn’t been any break-ins or break-outs at the zoo or any reptile sanctuaries lately.
So they headed down to the sewers, tracing their way from the scene of the crime to a hideout with a hastily ransacked backpack, a sleeping bag, and a lantern that hadn’t been out for more than an hour. Then, Gabriela saw a vision. A shape made of two.
She sees it, scattered in the refuse of the camp, the blood stains, and the marks of the stone. The shape of not one, but two creatures. A large lizardlike creature, maybe the fabled alligator. And then another, a dog of some kind, a scavenger picking after old prey, and maybe even tracking it anew. Symbiosis, circular, forever. She blinks and the shapes she saw perfectly converging cease.
This was a collaboration. They weren’t looking for one killer, but rather a hunter and a scavenger; brawn and brains. Gabriela, as a long-shot, called out to anyone who might be there, urging them to reveal themselves. This worked, and they were met with a french, southern alligator of a woman named Kymaw.
*For a few moments, nearly a minute, there is silence.
Her voice simply echoes. And then…
One of the pipe grates pops off, violently, the covering shooting across the room. Something lunges out, and lands in the center of this small chamber. An alligator, bigger then any these two have seen, releases a guttural roar. As suddenly, it shifts. Changes, into a bipedal figure. A woman, with caramel skin and curly brown hair, with slitted yellow eyes and a long tail that looks like that of an alligator. She wears tattered short cut pants and a t-shirt which reads “Stay Golden, Pony Boy” with a faded graphic. Finally, atop her head, is a cowboy hat.
She looks at the pair of them and grins. “Well, I’ll be! Honest to goodness Camarilla!” She speaks like if you fused your average cowboy accent with…french?
She explained she was a member of the Sabbat, a Scout for the Rangers, here to see if the city was worth Inquisitor Angel’s time. Gabriela and Kiryu made some conversation, reached an impasse, and got to fighting. Thanks to some determined wrasslin’ and Kiryu’s trusty five-seven, they managed to beat Kymaw. But there was a second. Ypolta.
Turning around, they see a skeletally thin woman, wearing almost stereotypical cowboy attire. She looks like if you put a corpse through a blender and pieces it back together again, except her mouth and jaw are unnaturally posable. The good news is, this nosferatu looks fairy easy to take in a fight. The bad news, is she has both her hands on her phone, holding it up. “Smile for the Special Affairs Division. If I lift my finger, this goes straight into their anonymous tip form.” A sickly smile spreads. “Good job with Kymaw. She hasn’t had a good fight in ages. She gets antsy. Sacramento is definitely worthy of the Inquisitors attention.”
Kiryu managed to shoot the phone out of her hand, and getting a lucky guess2, they managed to catch the Nosferatu Ypolta and apprehend her before she made off with the torpid Kymaw.
They returned to Elysium and informed Mark and Luke about the night’s events. They were both granted a minor boon as payment, and Gabriela went to dispose of the bodies. Before, though, her and Kiryu exchanged their goodbyes. They’d see each other again at the gala tomorrow.
She waded into the river and bled them like cattle, letting their bodies drift down the water and meet the sunrise. When she reawoke to her own bloody handiwork, she almost lost herself.
When her vision returns and she sees two bodies floating down the river, one who’d looked human, both who she’d talked to. They spoke like people she’d met. She watches their bodies drift away, sunrise bound. Cut up, and shot, and beaten, and bloodless. It’s a grisly sight. She looks down at herself, covered in blood. It’s terrifying. Then, she remembers.
Gabriela hates vampires. Each time she’s killed one she thinks of the one face: Marouth. Marouth was a tyrant. She tormented her village, killed her sister. She was the reason Gabriela chose to die, so that she could turn her to ash. She’d never felt remorse for any of the targets she’d killed because of this. Even the ones that looked human, and acted human, and begged to live, half lucid with a stake in their chest, poison in their veins. They were all monsters. They were all vampires. Like Marouth.
She remembers her face. Then, she remembers last night. Her Marouth, inextricably blended with memories of the tyrant. Robbed of the anchor of her conviction, she flounders, trying to remember these are not people. These are vampires. She focuses on their inhumanity. She focuses on her own. She focuses on the blood on her body, and the disgusting act she’d just committed. She is disgusting. She is a vampire. They are vampires. They are disgusting. What just happened was good. They are monsters because she is a monster. And because they are monsters, she was right to kill them. This was a good thing. She’s a monster, so she’s human.
She stops thinking as soon as she is able. She’s learned well how to leave an unsteady thought be. She crosses her heart, doesn’t think about what that means, and wades out of the water.
Footnotes
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Thanks entirely to Kiryu’s player, that’s the fucking goat holy shit ↩