Greetings folks!
Finally, this chapter is done. Sorry I haven't been writing for the past little while. Writer's block, school work, hell, high water...the usual's been keeping me busy. But this chapter is done and the next one is half written so I'll hopefully have that one up in a week or two. The funniest thing happened when I was beating my head against my desk while trying to write this thing. The plotline I worked out for the story now no longer fits where it's going. I swear these characters better make up their minds soon because every time I plan to write something it always turns out differently. So it's now official, I have no idea how this story is going to end. This ought to be one hell of read then...if I ever manage to finish it.
Happy reading
Bang! Bang! Bang!
"Open up! Frogs! Open the damn door or I'll break it down!" Tory shouted as loudly as she could as she pounded her fists against the locked doors of the Cosmic Comics shop, the one that was owned by the Frog parents but run and maintained by the brothers.
It hadn't taken Ian and Tory long to get back to the Boardwalk, especially since they had driven at break-neck speed to get as far away from the house in as little time as possible. Brooke had been surprised to see his bike returned to him before the hour was through but didn't say a thing when Tory handed back his keys without so much as a snarky side-comment.
"Tory will you shut up? You're going to attract the security guards if you keep this up!" Ian hissed between clenched teeth as he glanced around fearfully, fully expecting the brown uniformed guards to be breathing down their necks. Yet if Tory heard him, she didn't show it or she didn't care.
"FROGS! I know you're in there! Open…the…damn…door…!" Tory's voice rose higher and higher as she slammed her fists against the doors. Breathing hard she took a step back and eyed the doors for a second. Ian breathed a sigh of relief until Tory snorted and ran at the doors at full speed like a charging bull.
Wham!
"Oh Christ my shoulder!" Tory swore as she hopped around in a circle, cradling her throbbing shoulder with her good hand. Ian muttered something under his breath as he made a grab for Tory, but she jerked out of reach before he could touch her.
"Tory they're not here. Let's go already." Ian growled as he stared down his best friend. They were both scared silly but neither of them would outwardly admit it. What they had seen back at the house, neither of them could explain it, but that didn't mean they had to run around the Boardwalk drawing attention to themselves. They didn't know who could be watching from the shadows.
"We're not going anywhere until we get some answers." Tory growled back and she was the first one to look away. "Fuck this." Tory sniffed and braced her left hand against the door for balance before she raised her foot and began to kick the door for all she was worth. If her shouting didn't attract the Frogs attention then maybe a dented door would.
"Tory!" Ian cried, remembering to keep his voice lowered but all Tory did was shake her head and kick harder.
"Shut up and help me damn it." Tory snapped as she switched feet and began kicking with her left.
"What the hell is your problem!"
Ian jumped a mile when Edgar poked his head out from a small door that was just left of the main doors. He hadn't heard a sound until Edgar spoke up, glaring darkly at Tory who gave the store doors a final kick for good measure.
"Shut up!" She spat as she adjusted her jacket and stomped over to the side door that probably led to the back of the store.
"You shut up!" Edgar growled as he kept the door half-closed and didn't budge when Tory tried to push her way past him. He and Tory stared each other down, bristling like a pair of dog that were ready to take each other on while Ian gnawed on his fingernails as he kept shooting fearful glances at the shadows that surrounded them.
"What's going on?" Allan's voice cut through the heated tension like a knife.
"We need to talk." Ian stepped forward and gave Edgar a pleading look as he tried to haul Tory back a few steps. Ian could hardly get Tory to do anything she didn't want to do on a good day and today wasn't a good day.
"Move it you." Tory barked as she butted the door with her other shoulder, forcing Edgar back a few steps but once again Edgar took a stand and Tory realized that trying to push past this guy was pointless. He was just as stubborn as she was.
"Why should I?" Edgar gruffly asked as Tory looked him over, sizing him up just as he was doing to her. It was an all-out face-off and neither of them was willing to back down.
"Because you're about a second away from loosing a part of your anatomy that you really don't wanna lose, that's why." Tory gave Edgar a too-sweet smile as she cracked her knuckles. Ian knew what was going to happen next, having seen it all before and quickly tried to butt in but the doorway wasn't big enough to fit two people at once and Tory shoved him back with her elbow as he attempted to worm his way between her and Edgar.
"Tory will you chill for a second?" Ian clamped onto the back of her painted jacket and planted himself behind her in a vain attempt to keep her from doing something to the elder Frog that they were all going to regret.
"No." Typical Tory reply, Ian wasn't surprised. And neither was Edgar.
"You really think that's gonna intimidate me?" Edgar scoffed, taking a step forward so that he and Tory were standing toe to toe in the narrow doorway. Tory looked down at his crossed arms and after a moment she took a step back. Edgar smirked while Ian let out a soft sigh and that was when Tory made her move.
"Damn straight!" Tory barked as she slipped her arms out of her jacket and moved like lightening. Lunging forward Tory grabbed a hold of Edgar's right arm and yanked him forward. With both boys caught by surprised Ian let out a surprised squawk when Tory bumped into him as she ducked and shoved Edgar up against the open door, twisting his arm behind his back. It all happened in the time span of a few seconds and that was all it took for Tory to get Edgar pinned. Ian hadn't been joking the other night when he said that Tory as liable to pick a fight with a biker gang. Having grown up in foster homes Tory had learned fast how to defend herself and thanks to an ex-marine that she had lived with for a few months when she was thirteen, she did.
"Whoa!" Edgar wheezed as Tory gave his arm a swift jerk.
"Hey! Get your hands off my brother!" Alan lunged for Tory but jerked his hand back when Tory tried to bite him.
"Back off man!" Tory growled and Edgar swore under his breath as her grip tightened on his wrist.
"Tory!" Ian grabbed her and tried to pry her away from Edgar but she wouldn't let go.
"What do you know about vampires?" Tory demanded as she shoved Ian away from her.
"What?" Edgar gave her a sharp calculating look from the corner of his eye.
"You heard me. What's the deal with vampires in Santa Carla?" Tory asked once more. Allan frowned and looked from Tory to Ian, the Frog trademark scowl coming forth on both his and his brother's faces.
"Why do you want to know? Ow!" Edgar gritted his teeth and hissed when Tory twisted his arm just a little higher.
"Never mind that just tell me what you know." Tory muttered, making sure that the Frog got the message that she meant business.
"Let go of my arm." Edgar stopped struggling against Tory's grip and just stood there. He twisted his head around and glared at her as she hung on. He wasn't going to say a damn thing until she let him go.
"Then you'll tell me?" Tory asked as she looked at him and then his brother, trying to read their scowling faces.
"I haven't decided yet but I won't say anything if you keep touching me." Edgar gruffly chuckled, knowing that he had the upper hand now. Tory hissed something under her breath and butted him behind the knee with her own so that he stumbled a bit but Ian finally managed to intervene before Tory got the chance do something else.
"Tory will you let him go? Stop it!" He snapped as he grabbed her with both hands and yanked as hard as he could. Tory didn't fight him this time as he pulled her away and shoved the jacket at her. He positioned himself so that he was standing between the two, cutting off any chance for payback from the Frogs.
"You better keep your girlfriend on a leash Ian. If she starts crying vampire any louder you're both gonna end up with a set of fangs in your neck." Alan muttered darkly as he stepped forward from the gloom of the narrow hallway and stood at his brother's shoulder as Edgar massaged his wrist.
"She's not my girlfriend." Ian muttered as he flicked his unruly bangs out of his eyes.
"Oh spare me the dramatics." Tory snorted as she shrugged on her jacket and adjusted the collar. "So?"
"Hang on." Edgar said to them both before he stepped back and slammed the door in their faces. Ian gave Tory a warning look when she opened her mouth to object and a few painful moments later Edgar cracked the door opened and motioned for them to enter. Tory flashed Ian a "see, it worked" smirk before she stepped inside while Ian hesitated for a moment, giving the now practically empty Boardwalk a final glance.
"Before I say anything, would someone mind telling me why you want to know about vampires?" Edgar questioned as he shut the door once Ian had entered and began to do up the five bolts and two chain-link locks that he and his brother had installed months ago.
"Yeah, I thought that you said you didn't believe in them. Why ask us for help?" Allan questioned a second later, not giving Tory or Ian a chance to respond to the first question. With Edgar standing by the door and Allan blocking the way, Ian and Tory were sandwiched between the two. The Frogs weren't taking any chances.
"I'm not asking you for help, I just want to know about vampires. Is that such a crime?" Tory asked as she kept her face neutral. If they wanted to play that game then fine, she'd play too. She wouldn't give anything away until they begged her to. Something told her that despite their annoyed attitudes the Frogs would practically kill for any real information about vampires.
Edgar and Alan exchanged a look before they turned their attention to Ian.
"Ian?" Allan asked, arching an eyebrow. It was Tory's turn to scowl.
Ian looked at both brothers and then at Tory before he answered. "It's a long story but you're gonna want to hear it."
That was good enough. "Alright. Come with us. But if you breathe a word about what you see we will personally hunt you down and shut you up for good. Got it?" Edgar growled as Allan turned around and led the way down the narrow hallway. Everyone stopped and looked at Tory as Edgar waited for a response.
"Yeah, fine, whatever okay?" Tory muttered and rolled her eyes.
"This way." Allan jerked his head and they followed him in single file. There were two doors at the end of the hallway and Allan stopped in front of the one on the right. Digging into the pocket of his camo pants he produced a key and unlocked the door. He held it open as Edgar ushered Ian and Tory in and once they had all entered the pitch-black room, Allan shut the door and locked it.
"Just to let you know we don't have night vision." Tory piped up as she accidentally bumped into Ian as she tried to feel her way in the dark. Edgar felt his way along the wall and flipped the light switch and instantly the room was filled with blinding light from four different light sources. Ian and Tory instantly put their arms up to shield their eyes and Allan nodded in satisfaction when they didn't go up in smoke.
"They're cool." He said and Edgar killed the UV lights and switched on the normal ones so that the light was at a normal level.
"Whoa." Ian muttered as he stared slack-jawed at the room and Tory blinked twice to make sure she wasn't seeing things.
Every inch of wall space was either painted black or covered with cut-outs of every single monster known to man-kind. On the other side of the room was a roughly made work-bench with tools of every sort scattered onto it while a huge poster of Twisted Sister sneered down at the four from the wall. A large red stacked toolbox sat in the corner and had a huge silver antique crucifix sitting on it. The crucifix was surrounded by a number of hand-carved crosses that Edgar had made himself and there was a pile of newly made wooden stakes stacked up neatly on the ground beside the tool box. Edgar went over to his workbench while Tory and Ian checked out Allan's side of the room.
Books of all sorts pertaining to the paranormal were stacked in tottering piles that surrounded a battered old couch that had stuffing coming out of the arms. Covering the couch was a layer of comic books two inches deep, each one of them dealing with vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghouls, warlocks, aliens and just about anything else that could be of some use to the Frog's monster fighting enterprise. Tory's eyebrows shot up when she caught sight of the human skull that was grinning at her on a three-legged table that was covered with glass flasks, jars filled with liquids of every constancy and colour imaginable. Something that smelled like a cross between old gym-socks and wolfs bane bubbled away in a small pot that was on a battered looking hotplate.
"Talk about intense." Ian muttered to Tory out of the corner of his mouth and Tory just nodded.
"Do your parents know about this?" She asked Allan who just gave her an unreadable shrug and went over to the table to lower the temperature of the hotplate. Tory watched in fascination as he stirred the concoction and scooped out a bit of it with a spoon.
"You're not gonna eat that are you?" She asked as she wrinkled her nose at the smell.
"No." Allan shook his head and carefully poured the pea-soup looking stuff into a glass vial that he quickly corked and marked with a permanent marker.
"So, do you mind telling us why you tried to break into the shop in the middle of the night?" Edgar asked as he picked up a half-hewn stake and sat down on a stool as he started to sand it into a fine point.
Ian and Tory looked at each other and Tory subtly tilted her head to the side.
"Okay. Do you remember the girl from last night?" Ian began as Tory carefully picked her way through Allan's maze of books and cautiously moved aside some of the comics so that she could sit down on the edge of the couch. Allan's eyes followed her like a hawk but he didn't say anything as he went about arranging a few things on the table.
"The one who thinks that monsters have a soul?" Edgar snorted as he blew away a collection of wood particles as he switched the wad of sandpaper he had for another
"Uh, yeah. Well she was supposed to meet up with us tonight and she didn't." Ian ran his hand through his hair while Allan chuckled to himself.
"I wonder why?" He said under his breath as Tory gave him a piercing look that made him shut up.
"We figured that she bailed but then we saw her with the leader of the biker gang that everyone's so afraid of. You know the one I'm talking about right?" Ian asked the brothers and Edgar paused for a moment to think about it.
"Is it the gang that has one guy who looks like Twisted Sister?" He asked and motioned to the poster that was behind him.
"I think so. The leader, well I think he's the leader, wears all black and has a mullet." Ian said and Allan nodded.
"Yeah Mullet Guy. They're the ones that always go into Video Max to piss off the manager." Allan said and Edgar nodded in agreement. "So she was with him, so what?"
"So what? She was on that guy's bike and you know the rumors. Girls that are seen with those guys are never seen again." Tory growled and Allan just ignored her as he began to spoon out his concoction and pour it into various flasks and tubes to watch the reaction it had with other solutions.
"Anyways, we followed them to see where they were going because like what Tory said, we knew the rumors and we figured that Tink would need backup. And…" Ian trailed off as he looked over at Tory who crossed her arms and shook her head. He was going to be the one to tell the story, not her.
"And what?" Edgar asked as he blew on the sharpened tip of the stake and tested its point against his palm.
"Well, we followed them to this house up in the estates. Big place, lots of trees, hard to spot from the roadside. The guy's bike was in the driveway so we figured that they had gone inside. We managed to hide ourselves in the bushes and before we could get close to the house we heard screaming and some sort of commotion going on inside." Ian shuddered at the memory as a chill ran down his spine. Both Edgar and Allan had fixed their full attention on Ian and whatever they had been doing was now forgotten.
"Was it her?" Allan asked and Ian shrugged.
"We think so. We didn't see anything but it sounded like her." Ian swallowed hard and crossed his arms over his chest. Edgar remained silent for a while as he went over it all in his head and no one said anything until he spoke up.
"Then what happened?" He asked quietly, his eyes never leaving Ian's face.
"It got quiet and Tory said that we should call the police or something when this guy came out of the house. I don't think that he's from around here. I'd remember someone like that if he did. He…he walked out of the house and then he was gone." Ian looked from one Frog to the other, thinking that they thought he was nuts or something. But they didn't.
"Gone? How?" Allan asked as he went over to his book piles and quickly scanned them to find one in particular.
"Just gone. He was there one minute and then whoosh, gone the next. It was like he flew away or something…but we didn't seem him do that." Tory added quickly as she watched Allan select a black book with a cracked spine from one of the piles.
"You wouldn't have. Vampires move faster than we can and sometimes they move so fast we can't see them. If this guy flew away, you wouldn't have seen him. Heard him maybe but not seen him." Allan said as he flipped through the book and then put it down when it didn't have what he was looking for. "Move over for a second." He told Tory as he began to rifle through his comic book collection.
"Is that it?" Edgar asked Ian as Tory moved to the arm of the couch and watched Allan as he shifted through the comics. Ian shook his head.
"Another guy came out of the house. This guy looked like a Hell's Angels worst nightmare or something. He was…carrying Tink." Ian sat down on the floor then as Edgar put down his stake and walked over to Ian.
"How'd she look? Was she…did she have any marks or anything?" Edgar asked, quickly catching himself from saying something that Ian and Tory probably didn't want to hear. Tory answered for Ian with a shake of her head.
"No. It was too dark and they were too far away, we couldn't make out much. But we saw the guy's car all right. A '70's Chevrolet Chevelle LS6, black with two white stripes. I'd recognize that car anywhere." Tory muttered as viewed the car in her mind's eye. "He drove off with Tink and then Mullet Guy came out and took off. We got a good look at him though and he didn't look too happy."
Edgar paced the room, thinking things over while Allan gave up the search for the comic he was looking for and leaned against the table, careful not to lean on it too much least it tip over.
"You two have heard about the murders on the west side of town right?" Edgar asked Ian and Tory as an idea hit him.
"Who hasn't? Everyone's getting paranoid over them. They say it's a serial killer that's on the loose and that they're close to finding the guy." Tory said, repeating what she had heard on the radio that afternoon. Edgar and Allan snorted at the same time and shook their heads.
"It's not a serial killer. Serial killer's don't drain the blood from their victims and tear their throats out." Allan shook his head and glanced down at his wristwatch to check the time.
"So you're saying that vampires are responsible for all those murders?" Ian asked as Edgar sat back down on his stool, his mind working a mile a minute.
"Yeah and we think that you two might have found the ones responsible for them." He said as he turned around and opened one of the shelves of the tool box and rummaged through it.
"Well hurray for us. Now how do we find our friend?" Tory interrupted as Edgar began to pull out a number of steel files and other small hand-held tools.
"Forget your friend. She's probably buried in the land fill or somewhere else where no one can find her body." Edgar muttered as he yanked open another shelf and pulled out a small plastic bottle of holy oil.
Tory's eyes narrowed into slits as she grabbed the nearest book, which was a hard copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and threw it at Edgar, hitting him in the back of the head. "Don't you tell us to just forget her! What kind of monster hunter are you? We want to know how we can get our friend back and we are going to know now." Tory stood up, nearly toppling Allan's book piles, and glared at him as Ian scrambled to his feet.
"Tory calm down. Look guys we came here to find out about vampires and how to kill them. We don't even know if the people we saw even were vampires but Tink's our friend and we can't just sit here while some…fanged freaks use her as lunch. If you don't want to help us, fine. We didn't come to start anything but you two are the only ones who know about this stuff." Ian said as Tory stepped around the books so that she was standing beside him.
"Don't worry, those guys are vampires." Allan said as he remained where he was.
"So then why don't you guys help us do something about it?" Tory asked sarcastically as she baited her words. "What? Are you afraid?"
"Why should we? She's your friend not ours. And we are not afraid." Edgar growled without bothering to look over his shoulder as he quickly worked with his tools on something that no one could make out from where they were standing.
"Well you're sure as hell acting like you are." Tory retorted and Ian didn't even bother trying to smooth that one over.
"Listen. We just want to make sure if Tink's still alive. If she is then we'll figure out how to help her and if he's not…then at least we know. And if there really are vampires involved in this then it's up to you guys to figure out what you want to do because you're the experts, not us. Isn't this what you do anyways? Hunt the monsters?" Ian asked as he motioned to all the monster pictures on the wall.
"Let's just say theoretically speaking, that we were to help you guys on this wild goose chase. Where would we start? If we go anywhere near that house we're liable to get discovered because the moneybags who live up there have personal security patrolling the area night and day and if we get caught, game over for everyone because whoever lives in that house will know what we're up to. And those two other guys you saw, they could be long gone by now. No one in Santa Carla has a car like that except Crooked Jack who runs the auto shop uptown and he has a Roadrunner…." Allan trailed off as he looked over at his brother. "We could ask him if he's heard anything about the car. If anyone would know, he would."
"And if he hasn't, then what? We search every town along the coast from here to Los Angeles for the car?" Edgar muttered over his shoulder as he attacked what he was working on with a pair of pliers.
"What about Mullet Guy? He's a part of all this. Last night Tink said that she was hanging with a bunch of homeless guys near here. She could have meant those bikers…why is beyond me, but it sure looked like it from our point of view." Tory said as she caught on to the Frogs train of thought. It might not mean much but it had to be some sort of a lead.
"You said that those guys always hang around Video Max right? Well what if we followed them from there?" Ian threw out and everyone looked at him for a moment. It was as if someone had turned on the light bulbs over their heads.
"It could work…" Allan began as he waited for Edgar to say something. He took his cue from his brother and if they were going to help Ian and Tory, it would have to be on Edgar's say so.
The three of them waited as Edgar continued to fiddle with his tools and he didn't say anything until he was done. Putting down his file, he rose from the stool and turned around. In each hand he held one of his small hand-made wooden crosses with each of the four ends filed down into sharp points. Copper wire was wrapped around the middle of each of them so that they'd be easy to hook onto a belt and both crosses were covered in a glaze of holy oil that once dried would prove to be a fool-proof emergency vampire ward.
"If your friend is still alive, and there's a damn good chance she's not, then we don't have a lot of time." Edgar said gruffly as he handed Tory and Ian the crosses. "Keep those on you at all times 'cause you never know when you might need them and they sure beat trying to carry around one of the big ones. Less conspicuous this way."
"So you're going to help us?" Tory asked as she looked down at the cross and then up at Edgar.
"I want you two to give us a full description of everyone you saw and tell us what exactly you know about vampires before we fill you in on what we know." Edgar sat back down on his stool and pulled out a pad of yellow paper and a pencil from underneath a pile of Rolling Stones magazines that were lying near his feet. "We gotta know exactly what we're up against."
"It's one." Allan said as he lifted up his wrist and motioned to his watch.
"Right, we got a lot to cover before sunrise." Edgar muttered to himself as he scribbled something on a blank page.
"What happens at sunrise?" Tory asked as she and Ian exchanged a look and shrugged. Well, it wasn't like their parents were going to be scouring the streets with a search party looking for them if they didn't get home by a certain time.
"We start looking and asking around." Edgar replied and with that they got down to business as the hands on Allan's watch ticked away the hours. By that time tomorrow they were all going to wish that they had never heard of the words vampires or Video Max before.
