The Monster Squad Page #14

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neatly to being bumped off the top

of the food chain.

She flips open a page. It shows a yellowed old woodcarving

showing a battlefield; on one side are an army of what look

like KNIGHTS TEMPLAR, while the other consists of all kinds

of fanged and winged monsters. The text reads "TURNING

POINT".

MRS. SHROUD

And for nearly as long, these

bastards… (Pointing to the

Templars) the Order of the Dragon…

have been tasked with ensuring that

evil doesn't get its hands back

around the neck of humanity.

86.

They've held the line since the

collapse of the Roman Empire,

beating back the enemy's advance

while the world's gotten smaller

and smaller, and while normal

people have forgotten all about the

realities of things that shed blood

and go bump in the night.

MRS. SHROUD(cont'd)

Shroud flips another page. It's a map of the world, circa

1850. There's all kinds of hand-written notes, and what

appears to be a route scrawled into the yellowed paper in

black ink.

MRS. SHROUD

But they're out there. Watching.

Waiting. Just because nobody

believes in monsters anymore

doesn't mean they've had the good

grace to die the f*** off.

Shroud flips a page. There's a woodcut of KAZIGU BEY; crude

in comparison to the real deal, with devilish eyes and sharp,

slanted features, but easily identifiable. Liam swallows.

.

MRS. SHROUD

This piece of sh*t look familiar to

you?

LIAM:

That's him.

MRS. SHROUD

Christ.

She slams the book shut and rises from her chair, puffing on

her cigar and pacing about the room.

DEACON:

This the Q and A portion of the

program, then? Like… where we ask

who the f*** that guy is and why

the f*** we should care?

87.

MRS. SHROUD

Alright kid, look at it like this.

On a scale of general malevolence,

there's some nasty things. You run

the gambit from your underling

ghouls all the way up the the worst

of the worst… lupine warriors,

force-three poltergeists, real

black magic. Then you twist the

dial up another full rotation, and

you'll find him. Kaziglu Bey.

Butcher of Wallachia, and a bunch

of other cute nicknames I can't be

f***ed to remember.

D'JUAN

You're saying that's a real

vampire.

MRS. SHROUD

I'm saying that's THE vampire.

Ancient, dyed-in-the-wool, bleed-a

thousand-peasants-for-a-pound-of

lost-gold, bonafide and double

f***ed evil. Bey's been a blight

since before Christ was born, and

out of all the sons of b*tches who

have tried to topple mankind, he's

come the closest.

DEACON:

And he decides that f***ing

Seatonville's the place to try

again. Yeah, right.

Shroud throws the book she's got in her hand at his chest.

Deacon fumbles it, flipping its front cover open in the

process. An inscription is written there; its signature reads

COLTON DARROW.

88.

CHUD:

Colton Darrow. This was the mummy

guy's?

MRS. SHROUD

Darrow wasn't just some cornpone

cowboy, despite what the Chamber of

Commerce makes him out to be. Way

before he ever came to Seatonville,

he was one of the finest vampire

killers on the face of the planet.

He fought Kaziglu Bey for his whole

life, even after Bey had murdered

his wife, killed his sister and did

things to his children that are so

horrible that there's no actual

account of them. Darrow kept coming

after him, until he managed to

steal something from the bastard

that was so valuable that it

practically ended Bey's reign of

terror in one fell swoop.

.

CHUD:

What? Like… his heart or something?

MRS. SHROUD

Better than that. There's only a

few vampires who have ever achieved

Kaziglu's standing, but they all

had one thing in common: knowledge

of a ritual that divides one's…

animus, or humanity, or soul, or

whatever the hell you want to call

it… from the self. The bloodsucker

sacrifices their potence for

security, since they can't be offed

in this state by conventional

means. Half-undead, half-alive.

LIAM:

But he got Darrow, eventually.

89.

MRS. SHROUD

No. Darrow fled Europe and came to

the States, running from Bey's

agents. He came all the way across

the country, and eventually just

ran out of new world… so he struck

out to go north, hoping to vanish

into the wilds of Canada. On his

way, he got popped by robbers in

the desert and died there. Hell of

a denouement for a guy probably

saved mankind about ten times.

Shroud drops back into her seat, slouching comfortably and

gnawing on her cigar.

MRS. SHROUD

Which was fine, until some d*ckhead

with a pick and a shovel dug up his

remains. Shipped him here, slapped

him up in a glass case, and charged

admission. The minute they ran a

DNA test and figured out who the

hell the guy was, the deal was

sealed, and Bey was bound to show

up looking for him.

D'JUAN

And you know all this sh*t how,

exactly?

LIZE:

She's a vampire hunter.

MRS. SHROUD

Not quite, honey. My husband…

Peter. He was a vampire hunter. I

was just born into a proud

tradition, and followed in his

footsteps, learning what I could.

90.

CHUD:

Did he get… you know.

Chud gestures at his neck with two fingers, pantomiming

fangs.

MRS. SHROUD

No. That would have been much more

poetic. Pancreatic cancer. Five

years of fighting tooth and nail,

and then… it was just me. And the

final directive.

.

LIAM:

Final directive?

MRS. SHROUD

Come on, kid. You seem to be the

stoic one, the brains of the

operation. You haven't put it

together?

LIAM:

You and your husband. You were here

because you know where Darrow hid

what he stole.

MRS. SHROUD

Close. Peter took the final resting

place of the Essential to his

grave, with my blessing. We gave up

enough of our lives in the name of

that sh*t. I was happy to wash my

hands of it.

Shroud leans forward, and tamps out her cigar in an ashtray.

MRS. SHROUD

So, consider yourselves brought up

to speed on current events.

91.

LIAM:

"Brought up to speed"? That's it?

You outline the end of the world

for us, and now… what? We go home,

go to sleep?

MRS. SHROUD

I don't really care what you do,

honestly. But yeah. That's it.

LIAM:

That's bullshit, lady.

DEACON:

It's ONE vampire and a guy who

looks like a varnished dog turd.

Why don't you just roll up there

like you did out back, put the

barrel in his mouth…

MRS. SHROUD

You fight a lot of vampires, kid?

DEACON:

No, but I can f***ing count. One of

him. One of you. Call some friends

and make a tailgate party out of

it.

MRS. SHROUD

(Chuckling)

Anything or anyone that gets done

by those of a vampire's blood

become converts TO that blood. So

even if there was "just" one leech

up there-and it wasn't f***ing

Kaziglu Bey-you can get good odds

on the fact that there'll be

hundreds of his followers trucking

around here by the week's end.

92.

CHUD:

So what are we going to do!?

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