Edgar stood at the front of the comic book shop, arms crossed. He watched each and every passerby closely, wondering which of them was and wasn't a bloodsucker. Pretty girls. Jocks. Punks. Surfers. Old grandmothers getting last minute trinkets for their road trip treasures. Could be all of them. By the process of elimination, he knew if he picked one person there was a good chance it would be a vampire. After his first real hunt, he was sort of excited to try again. How would he convince Alan, though, when his brother was so hellbent on proving what they were first? The other Frog brother just didn't have Edgar's killer instinct. He didn't have the eye the way Edgar did. Alan was lucky to have him, he thought. No other real vampire hunter would be as patient as he had been all these years.
Things were different, though. They'd actually taken out five of them! Edgar confidently claimed each kill as his own by relation. After all, if it wasn't for him they wouldn't have had the courage to go to that weird cave clubhouse and do what needed to be done.
"Hey, you think he's coming back?" Edgar tossed over at his shoulder. Alan was at the counter handing out change to a customer.
The other Frog brother nodded. "That was the plan. Stay in the light, track the crowds, find his brother and test for fangs."
The customer gladly took his comic and rushed from the shop after giving both of them a funny look. Edgar was sure he had to be a bloodsucker.
Alan glanced over at their parents, who'd passed out standing against the back wall. This was one of the rare occasions they showed up at the shop to act like adults. Sort of. The Frog brothers were used to seeing the pair in semi-conscious states at home, work, and all manner of public settings. If there was a difference in their behavior from night and day, Edgar would happily stake them.
"I'm not even sure I really saw his brother," Alan remarked, walking around the counter. "Maybe I was wrong and he just looked like him. A lot like him. I mean if there's vampires, there's gotta be things like doppelgangers too, right?"
"You saw him," Edgar insisted, "no other explanation. Once Sam finds him, we'll help him take the bloodsucker out if he's one of them. Not sure we can trust Sam to do what needs to be done." In fact, he was positive Sam wouldn't do it. Sure, he'd apparently dusted one at the Emerson house, but how could they really know for sure? Edgar didn't recall seeing the body at all or actually seeing it happen. Then there was the fact that Michael was missing. It all added up to a pretty cut and dry case. Sam was a wimp, and the real hunters would have to clean up his mess.
Edgar held back the glee he felt rising in his chest at the thought of taking another one out. Watching blood and guts explode or pop under the force of one good, solid, stake. He wished it hadn't taken that dumb dog to push the blonde one into the holy water bath. Edgar blamed Alan for his fear in the moment. He was sure if he'd been alone, he'd have done just fine.
"You don't think…" Alan trailed off, sidling up beside his brother to look out across the boardwalk crowds. He looked visibly upset.
"What?" Edgar asked, arms remaining crossed.
"You don't think he'd go out somewhere without people? In the dark?"
"No," Edgar shook his head, "he knows better."
"Right," Alan nodded, "you're right. Yeah." He looked visibly upset now, and Edgar had to slug his brother on the shoulder to shake him out of it.
"Even if he did, and he comes back to eat us," Edgar began matter-of-factly, "we can take care of ourselves."
Alan rubbed his shoulder, scowling, "Edgar, you can drop the act. Nobody's around. I like Sam. I don't want him to get hurt."
Edgar narrowed his eyes. "This isn't an act. It's war."
It was the other Frog brother's turn to narrow his eyes now, "you're being a dick."
"And you," Edgar began, jabbing a finger into Alan's chest and poking him to emphasize each word he spoke, "need to get a hold of yourself. Sam's useful, but if a vampire gets him, I'm prepared to do what we have to. Just like I'm prepared if it happens to you, or mom, or dad, or anyone else."
Alan rolled his eyes, stepping further back from Alan and patting at his chest confidently, wincing a little at the pain of having been poked by his brother. "I've got a cross right under here," he informed him, then patted the back pockets of his green cargo pants, "and plenty of sharp pencils. Don't act like I'm not just as dedicated to fighting evil as you are. It doesn't hurt once in a while that you give a shit about other people, Ed."
They separated from each other to avoid a fight, Edgar finding comics to mark with a price gun and Alan going on shrink duty to keep an eye on window shoppers. Every once in a while they'd look back at each other as if they had something to say, but then think better of it.
"Guys! Code red! Code blue! Shit, what was the stupid code again?!" Sam came tearing into the shop shouting, his dramatically popped shirt collar fluttering in the wind with his speed.
"What's going on?" Alan jumped to attention, rushing up to the blonde, inspecting him quickly for bite marks. Edgar came up behind him with a hand on his pocket and ready to defend himself if there was something off.
"He's–Mike–" Sam gasped, gripping at his chest and letting out a dry sob as he leaned over, "-Mike's dead. Undead. He's a vampire. I think, and I don't know how, but I think they're all back. All of them. They're not dead!"
The customer or two left in the shop quickly shuffled out, anxious to avoid the effects of whatever they probably assumed Sam was huffing.
"That's code yellow," Edgar spoke up, "code blue is if your mom got bit. Code red is if you aren't bringing pizza this Sunday, which you promised you would. You can't use code red, that'd make you a traitor."
Sam looked at Edgar, "Ed, my brother is a vampire. I don't care about pizza right now. They're coming here, and they're coming tonight."
"What?!" Alan blurted out, "why?"
"They told me they would," Sam explained, miserable. "My own brother, a goddamn shit-sucking vampire, and he's gonna kill me!"
Edgar took a deep breath and looked about the comic shop, hands fisted against his hips. "We gotta close early. Prepare. Alan," he directed his attention to his brother, "time to dig into the emergency supplies."
Alan nodded, "right."
This was great. Edgar could finally go through some old stock, make good use of the preparations they'd been making all year. It would be great practice, too, for the future. They'd killed these guys before, and they could do it again. He didn't know how they'd come back, but maybe they just needed to do a little bit more research. Maybe they had to say prayers after the preliminary kill, bury them on consecrated ground. Chop off their heads. Stuff it with garlic—ok, garlic didn't work, but probably holy water rags or something might.
Edgar giddily counted a dozen new ideas in his head as they rushed to get the shop ready for war. They started by closing early and locking the pull-down gate.
"Alright, Sam," Alan intoned, "we've got a jug of holy oil here," he shook a canister of Crisco as he spoke, "got the priest to bless it and everything. Cost us a couple month's allowance, but it's just as good as the stuff you get at a church. It's easier to spread, too."
Sam looked at the Crisco with a dubious expression, eliciting a frown from Edgar.
"We know what we're doing here. Just get to work, we only have a couple of hours before the boardwalk shuts down and those monsters come calling."
Hastily, Sam snatched the vegetable shortening from Alan's hands and looked about for something to spread it with. Edgar tossed him a dust rag from under the front counter.
"Rub it on the floor and the entryway. Then we'll maybe spread some on the outer walls. Anywhere that has an opening."
With that, they got to work hanging makeshift crosses of popsicle sticks and leftover sharpened pencils Alan and Edgar had gathered for stakes. Garlic didn't work, Edgar reminded himself, a little disappointed that the many strings of old bulbs they'd gathered earlier that year had only gotten use out of them once. What a waste.
In no time the comic shop was an impenetrable fortress of holy protection. They'd even managed to dig up some old Christian comics from their backstock with pictures of Jesus and Noah on them. They might not do anything, but proudly displayed on the front comic stands had to give their store a tiny bit of protection he imagined. Edgar marveled that their parents still didn't bother waking up from their stupors during the whole process, but they'd slept through worse than this. They'd even been in the living room when he'd dragged Cassidy out through the front door…
"Edgar," a tiny voice whispered.
"Huh? What?" Edgar jolted, wobbling on a small step stool he'd been using to climb and adjust one of the crosses on the ceiling.
"I didn't say anything," Alan told him, looking up from the front counter where he'd been flipping through a vampire comic.
"You didn't?" Edgar asked, a dark scowl forming on his face when he looked over at Sam, "what?"
"Wasn't me," Sam replied. He was standing peering out through the dropdown gate in front of the comic shop, watching the crowds on the boardwalk thin out by the minute.
"Edgar, I can't sleep," the voice repeated itself. That was when he started to get really irritated.
"Stop it, Alan!" He snapped, jumping to the ground and dusting his hands off on the back of his pants.
"You're freaking me out, dude," Sam said, looking back and forth between the Frog brothers. "Nobody said anything."
Edgar grabbed the stepstool and gave an audible grunt, stomping towards the backroom of the comic shop to see if he could find anything else that might help fortify the comic shop from the undead. He slipped behind the beaded curtain, nearly tangling it in the process. Those two were really beginning to get on his nerves tonight. This was no time to be messing around.
Once he'd put away the stepstool to inspect two rows of metal shelving and boxes of supplies, Edgar was beginning to calm down a little. He was a hunter. A master killer. This was no time to let his amateur associates phase him.
"Edgar." The small voice whispered in his ear this time, tickling his neck. Edgar spun around, wild-eyed. No one was there.
"Jesus Christ," he grumbled, running a hand through his hair and yanking his headband off in the process so he could re-adjust it. That was when he saw her. Standing in front of the beaded curtain. Wearing the same teddy bear nightgown he remembered when he'd lit the match.
"Read me a bedtime story," she spoke, voice reed thin like an echo of a memory reaching out. Her tiny hands reached towards him, pale fingers stretching and grasping in a plea for a hug.
Edgar, the greatest hunter Santa Carla had ever known, let out a shriek.