Chapter
10
~
Again With the Shanking ~
While Pugh and his vampire buddies
slept peacefully back in their hotel rooms, trouble was brewing somewhere
halfway across town, inside a certain Catholic church. A large group of priests and nuns had
gathered inside the building, filling up nearly all of the pews and staring
forward as a higher-ranked official in a pointy hat and a more elaborate set of
gold-and-white robes approached the pulpit, carrying a long golden staff topped
with a cross. As he reached his position
and stopped walking, another priest sitting nearby stood and announced their
leader's arrival to the rest of the group.
"All rise for
the Most Reverend Johnald Ronathan Frumpleton, Bishop of the Diocese of
Providence."
Another priest,
sitting on the left side of the bishop, stood and added yet another bit to this
already extraordinarily long title.
"And," he
said, "Grand Poobah of the Holy Order of the Shanking."
Hundreds of
black-robed priests and nuns stood in unison.
If they had been soldiers rather than members of the clergy, you would
have expected them to salute. Instead,
they just remained standing for about a minute until the bishop motioned for
them to be seated.
"Brothers and
Sisters of the Shanking," he said, addressing the entire group, "I
have called this emergency meeting in order to inform you of an unexpected rise
in vampire activity in this state of Rhode Island."
He turned and nodded
toward the priest on his left, who walked over to a storage closet hidden in
the wall of the church and produced a projector. He then wheeled it back to the far end of the
building before turning it on. The
priest on the right of the bishop stood as well, pulling down a projector
screen that was large enough to almost entirely cover up the massive golden
crucifix that usually adorned the wall.
"Brother
Frederick," the bishop said, directing his voice toward the priest
operating the projector. "Show us
the evidence of these vampires' presence."
The priest nodded,
then placed a slide onto the projector.
A newspaper article from that day's edition, titled "Local
Residents Capture Farting Monster," became visible on the screen at the
other end of the room. Displayed
prominently below the headline was a picture of six vampires standing in the
middle of a street, with a few of them smiling nervously and others just
looking a bit annoyed by the fact that they were having their pictures taken.
Suddenly, another
priest from the crowd stood. He was a
very pale man, with gray hair almost as light in color as his skin.
"Grand
Poobah," he said, "These are the same vampires I saw walking in the
streets near this very church yesterday, shortly before sunset."
"Ah," the
bishop said, "You have seen them as well, Brother Reginald? I presume this
was during your time disguised as one of them?"
"Yes, Your
Excellency," he replied. "I
convinced them that I was a 200-year-old vampire who had managed to sneak his
way into the clergy. They seemed to be
newcomers to this area, searching for places populated by local vampires."
"I see. And do you believe that they are still in the
area now?"
"Yes, most
certainly. They appeared to be searching
for a place to live, and I doubt they could have covered the entire town in one
night."
The bishop nodded,
then motioned for the older priest to be seated. He bowed in response and then sat down.
"Now... as you
can see from Brother Frederick's newspaper article, these vampires were capable
of defeating and capturing the werebuttweasel that has terrorized this town for
the past three months."
He raised his crosier,
pointing to the part of the newspaper article that mentioned a "farting
monster." He then moved the staff a
bit further down, pointing toward the main text of the article, which mentioned
the fact that the monster reverted to a human form again when the full moon was
no longer visible.
"I'm sure you're
aware by now exactly how powerful the werebuttweasel was," he
continued. "No ordinary vampire
would be capable of defeating it. Even
six of them would have trouble keeping up with such a beast."
He began pacing back
and forth behind the pulpit, continuing to speak as he went.
"That this group
was capable of capturing it without suffering any significant injuries shows
that they are likely far beyond the abilities of the typical vampires we deal with
on a regular basis... and should be considered a serious threat."
Several hours later, the vampires
were beginning to awaken. Pugh, as
usual, was the first to get up, pouring himself a glass of orange juice and
taking a packet of blood out of the refrigerator for breakfast. The smell of fresh blood in the room soon
awakened Zamboni, who yawned and stretched his arms before getting up and
changing into one of his many dark-colored suits before getting some breakfast
of his own.
A few more minutes passed
before Elvis, Rhombus, and Crurotarsi woke up, opening up the doors connecting
their rooms and having some breakfast while watching TV. Steve, as usual, was still snoring loudly at
this point despite all the talking going on around him and the sounds of the
television blasting away just a few feet from his head.
"So,"
Rhombus asked, "Where are we going today?"
Crurotarsi shrugged.
"Well, we never
did get a really good look at that vampire bar."
"True,"
Elvis said, nodding slightly.
"Thanks to that werebuttweasel, we didn't get a chance to do much
of anything last night."
There was a knock at
the door, and Rhombus walked over to see who it was. Pugh and Zamboni, apparently, had finished
their breakfast and decided to come over and see what everyone else was up to;
since only two of their three rooms were connected, they couldn't just come
over through the door in the side of the wall, so they had to come in the usual
way.
"Any plans for
tonight yet?", Pugh asked, walking into the room and sitting down on one
of the chairs around the table.
"Eh, not
really," Elvis said. "We
thought we might head back to that vampire bar again, since our visit got
interrupted last time... but that's about it so far."
Zamboni reached into
one of his pockets and pulled out a rolled-up newspaper.
"By the
way," he said, passing the paper over to the other vampires, "Did you
guys see the paper this morning?"
Elvis grabbed the
newpaper and unrolled it, then stared blankly at the first headline on the
front page for a good thirty seconds before groaning and passing it over to the
rest of the group.
"Oh crap,"
Crurotarsi said. "Looks like we're
gonna have to move away again..."
"Maybe
not," Rhombus said. "It doesn't
say anything about us being vampires."
"That's right,
they missed the ears," Pugh said.
"And, more surprisingly, the fangs."
"So,"
Zamboni added, "The most we're going to have to worry about, for now
anyway, is people running up to us on the street and thanking us for taking
care of the werebuttweasel."
At this point, Steve finally
woke up, slouching halfway up onto his pillows and stretching his arms. He then rubbed his eyes and yawned so loud
that it could easily be heard over the television.
"Hey," he
mumbled, "What're you guys doin' up already?"
They all stared at
him for a second.
"Already?",
Crurotarsi asked. "You're half an
hour late getting up."
"Yeah,"
Pugh said. "Better go get some
breakfast before we head out for the night, Steve. We're probably going to head over to that
vampire bar again."
With that, Steve
almost jumped out of the bed and ran off to get some food. Apparently, he really wanted to go to that
bar... though he probably wouldn't have much more luck buying booze there than
he did back in New York.
While Steve was busy
eating, the rest of the group began to put on their sunscreen in preparation
for going out in the hour or so of daylight that was left. They didn't want to show up at the vampire
bar looking like a bunch of pointy-eared boiled lobsters, after all. Once Steve had finished his breakfast and put
on his layer of sunscreen as well, Pugh opened the curtains and stepped out
onto the balcony to take a look at the city around them.
The first thing that
caught his eye, however, was a large, dark-red van with a large golden cross
painted on one side. When the vehicle
turned into the hotel's parking lot, he spotted something written on the other
side: "Holy Order of the Shanking."
Immediately, he rushed back into the room and closed both the sliding
door and the curtain behind him.
"Hey, you know
what we were saying about not having much to worry about even after being in the
paper?"
Everyone turned
toward Pugh, most of them looking slightly confused.
"Yeah,"
Steve said, "What about it?"
"Well... we
might not be quite as safe here as we thought.
This red church van just pulled into the parking lot."
Crurotarsi tilted her
head to the side slightly, looking even more confused.
"And... what's
so bad about a van?"
"It's not the
van, really... it's what the logo on the side said. 'Holy Order of the Shanking'... sounds like
some sort of religious vampire-hunting group to me."
"Oh crap!",
Steve blurted out. "I don't wanna
get shanked! We've gotta get outta here now!"
"Exactly what I
was thinking," Pugh said. "But
you've got to calm down a bit. If they
see a bunch of vampires running for their lives out the front door of the
place, they'll just come chasing after us."
Elvis nodded.
"So... what's
the plan, then?"
"I'll get
someone from the hotel to wheel all the luggage out to the Bloodmobile. While they're doing that, we'll sneak out
down one of the fire escapes on the other side of the building, then hop the
fence where the pool is to get over to the front parking lot without bumping
into anyone from the van."
Everyone gathered up
their luggage while Pugh headed down to the lobby to check out, get a luggage
cart, and ask one of the hotel's employees to take everything outside for
them. By the time he had returned (with
the cart), there was a large pile of suitcases, duffelbags, and other assorted
containers sitting outside in the hallway.
The group of vampires then gathered outside of the now-locked doors. Elvis was the first one to speak up.
"So... which way
to the nearest fire escape?"
"I'm not
completely sure," Pugh answered. "There should be one outside the
window just down the hall from here."
The other vampires
nodded, then immediately took off down the hall while the very confused hotel
worker showed up behind them to push their very full luggage cart down to the
ground floor. Shortly afterward, they
found the window where the fire escape was located, opened it up, and started
to climb down as quickly as possible without making too much noise.
"Okay," Steve
whispered rather loudly, "We made it down, now where do we go?"
"The pool,"
Pugh said.
Steve nodded in
response, then turned and took off in the direction of the fenced-in area where
the pool was located. The rest of the
vampires followed behind him, jumping as they reached the fence and clearing it
easily. They then ran around the pool
and jumped the fence on the other side, ending up on the far side of the front
parking lot where the Bloodmobile was located.
"Almost
there!", Steve shouted.
Just as he started to
run across the open parking lot toward the Bloodmobile on the other side, a
wooden stake came flying out of nowhere and jabbed into the asphault at his
feet. Steve leaped back and yelled,
nearly stumbling over backwards in the process, and then started looking around
wildly in an attempt to find the source of this unexpected attack. Eventually, he looked up to the second floor
of the hotel and spotted a priest with several more stakes strapped across his
chest like an ammo belt.
The priest let out a
"hmph" and then climbed over the railings before jumping down to the
concrete below, apparently landing without any trouble.
"I'm afraid
almost doesn't count, vampire."
As the rest of the
vampires came to a stop around where Steve was standing, more members of the
Holy Order of the Shanking came out of hiding.
A rather old nun walked out of the hotel lobby, wielding a ruler and glaring
menacingly. A priest and a nun both
popped up from behind some of the parked cars, taking out wooden stakes and
walking over to join the others. Two
more priests popped out from the bushes around the hotel's entrance, and
finally a third nun jumped down from one of the second-floor balconies.
"Unholy spawn of
Satan," the oldest of the priests said, pointing his cross-tipped staff at
the vampires, "Prepare to be wiped from the face of this Earth by the
wrath of God."
"God's wrath is
a handful of grumpy old humans in black robes, huh?", Zamboni said,
grinning slightly. "Funny, I was
expecting something a little more... wrathful."
Steve glanced over
toward Zamboni, and then back to Pugh and Elvis, looking a bit nervous. Finally, he turned back to Zamboni and asked
a pretty obvious question.
"Uh... are we
about to get in a fight?"
Zamboni just nodded,
shifting his hands and feet into a fighting stance. Pugh and the rest did the same, and several
of the priests and nuns brandished their various weapons as well.
And then, Steve
reached up with one hand and tore off his own shirt before charging into battle
with his wooden sword.
"Hiiiiyaaah!"
The nun raised up her
ruler and blocked his first blow, then stepped back and proceeded to block
every other strike that followed. Steve
stopped for just a second and ended up slapped into the face with the flat side
of the ruler, leaving a nasty-looking red mark behind.
"Ow!",
he yelled, taking one hand off of his sword and feeling his face. "That hurt! A lot!"
"You deserved
that," she said, lowering her ruler for a moment and shaking a finger at
him scoldingly. "You've violated
the twenty-seventh commandment... thou shalt not be shirtless in public!"
By this point, the
other vampires had also begun their respective fights. Two of the priests attempted to surround
Pugh, only to find that he was more than capable of keeping up with both of
them at the same time. Elvis was facing
off against one of the nuns, who was attempting to stab him with a short wooden
stake but missing every time. Rhombus
and a fat priest had begun to circle around each other, each waiting for the
other to make a move, while Crurotarsi and Zamboni had teamed up to fight a
priest (brandishing a cross-shaped staff) and a nun (swinging around
stake-nunchucks with the chain replaced with what appeared to be rosary beads.)
Pugh dodged two
cross-shaped boomerangs simultaneously by ducking to the ground, then knocked
one of the two priests off of his feet with a sweeping kick while he was busy
avoiding the other priest's cross-a-rang.
Rolling out of the way as the other priest attempted to stab him with a
stake, he stood up and let loose with a roundhouse kick to the priest's back,
causing him to drop his stake and sending him toppling to the ground. The other priest ran toward the vampire and
thrust another stake toward him, but Pugh sidestepped this attack and caught
his arm. He then grabbed the priest's
other arm and started to swing him around, quickly picking up enough speed to
easily lift the man off of the ground.
"What are you
doing with Brother Adelbert, foul demon of--arrrrgh!!"
Before the second
priest could even finish his sentence, Pugh stopped spinning and flung Adelbert
into him. Both of the priests
immediately slammed into the ground, and while Adelbert bounced off and rolled
along the pavement for a few feet, the other priest was now lying completely
motionless.
A few yards away,
Steve swung his sword in a wide arc in front of him, forcing the nun he was
fighting to jump back to avoid it. She
raised her ruler and rushed forward to counterattack, but the length of the
young vampire's weapon had put enough range between them that he was able to
get in another swing and knock her back before she was close enough to actually
strike.
"Ha! You'll
never hit me with that thing again, old lady!"
He lunged forward and
brought his sword down toward the nun, but she rolled out of the way just in
time and the weapon slapped against the pavement instead. As Steve stood up and got back into his poor
imitation of a fighting stance once again, his opponent pulled out a small
Bible and began quietly reading a verse.
"Huh?",
Steve said, taking a step closer and looking confused. "What's that?"
A few seconds passed,
and the nun closed the Bible and put it back into one of her habit's
pockets. She then held the ruler in
front of her face with both hands and pushed a very small, well-hidden button
near the number three.
"That was the
longest verse of the Bible, you fool," she said, almost cackling. "The longest verse of the Bible... and
the key to activating this ruler's true power!"
The ruler vibrated
rapidly for a second, and then it instantly sprouted two more feet of
length. The nun's hands, formerly on
both ends of the foot-long ruler, were now holding onto only the first foot of
a much larger yardstick.
"So... saying a
Bible verse turns a ruler... into a really big ruler? I don't get it."
The nun scowled.
"It's a yardstick,
you idiot child!", she snarled.
"A ruler is only a single foot long! A yardstick is three!
Do you vampires not even educate your children!?"
"Hey, that's not
a very nice thing to say," Zamboni said, leaning a bit closer to the nun
for a moment after sending his priestly opponent flying with a kick in the
stomach, "Don't lump us all in with Steve here. The rest of us know what a yardstick
is."
She turned and swiped
at him with her newly-lengthened weapon, but missed horribly as he jumped out
of the way to avoid a wooden stake that the priest had thrown after getting
back up again. While the nun was
distracted, Steve ran in for another attack, swinging his wooden sword up over
his head and then bringing it down... directly into the nun's yardstick, which
wobbled slightly but didn't seem to be affected much otherwise.
"Don't you dare
attack me while my back is turned, boy," she said, pushing him away with
the yardstick and then taking a few steps back.
Steve shrugged, then
went in for another attack.
Unfortunately, it wasn't any more successful than the last; with the
reach advantage of his sword gone, Steve was having a hard time finding any
openings to get a good hit in. It
probably didn't help that he didn't really know how to use his sword all that
well in the first place. After several
more clashes of weapons, Steve backed up a bit and took a short break to
attempt to come up with a different strategy.
"Getting tired,
eh?"
This time the nun
charged, raising her yardstick high above her head as she went and then
slashing downward with the metal-edged side.
Steve yelped and pulled his sword up in front of him to block it, and
for a few seconds the wooden weapons clashed against each other again.
And then, there was a
loud crack as the blade of Steve's sword split cleanly in half. The broken piece clattered to the ground, and
its wielder jumped back just quickly enough to narrowly avoid being hit by the
yardstick on its way down.
For a few seconds,
Steve just stood there and stared at the broken stub of a blade attached to his
sword's hilt. Before he could say
anything, the nun was back on the offensive, and Steve, deprived of his weapon,
was forced into falling back on his usual battle strategy: running like hell
and making a lot of noise.
"Oh crap oh crap
oh craaaap!"
While Steve ran
around like a chicken with his head cut off, the rest of the vampires continued
their fights. Crurotarsi barely dodged a
cross-shaped boomerang thrown by her nun opponent, then countered by lunging
forward and socking the old woman in the face before the boomerang could
return. When it did come spinning
back toward its owner, she was too disoriented by the blow to the head to catch
it; the wooden cross smacked her in the chest, knocking all of the wind out of
her and sending her toppling to the ground.
Pugh's remaining
opponent, the priest known as Adelbert, pulled a shiny, round object out of one
of his pockets and held it up to the light of the setting sun for a moment
before grinning evilly. He then held it
up above his head and prepared to throw it.
"Do you know
what this is, vampire?"
"Some kind of
bomb," Pugh said, shrugging.
"It's pretty obvious."
"Not just any
bomb," the priest continued.
"This particular bomb is filled with a mixture of garlic oil and
holy water... blessed by the Pope himself."
Pugh rolled his eyes,
then calmly raised his cape up over his face as the bomb fell to the ground at
his feet and exploded into a cloud of garlic and holy water. Well, more like "holy fog" now, but
close enough. The priest laughed, but
was abruptly cut short when Pugh came walking out of the garlic-scented fog
looking virtually unharmed.
"That's
it?", Pugh said, scratching a reddening patch of skin on one of his
hands. "Just a little garlic rash
on one hand? Not much of a bomb if you ask me."
The priest's jaw
dropped.
"What!? But how?
That should have... arrgh! How did you survive that?"
"It wasn't that
hard," the vampire answered.
"Holy water is just water... it doesn't actually hurt
vampires."
He jumped at the
priest and kicked at him in midair, only narrowly missing when the old man
jumped to the side. Upon landing, he
returned to his fighting stance, but instead of attacking right away, he
continued his explanation of why the bomb didn't work.
"Yep... holy
water's useless against vampires. What
it is good at, however, is diluting garlic juice. A bomb with pure garlic might've actually
done some damage."
Pugh threw a series
of punches, sending the priest staggering back despite the fact that he had
managed to block them all with his arms.
"Rrrgh...
accursed spawn of Satan," the priest grumbled, reaching into his pocket
and pulling out what appeared to be a silver cross with one end carved into a
knife.
Before he could do
much of anything with it, however, Pugh sent it flying with a swift kick,
causing the weapon to land with a sploonk in the pool nearby, causing
Steve to look away from his own fight for a second and get smacked in the chest
with the flat side of the oversized ruler.
"Owwww!",
he shrieked, jumping several feet into the air and away from the nun.
Steve then ran away
in terror, diving behind a line of parked cars and occasionally poking his head
up from one of them to see where the nun with the yardstick was (and how each
of the other vampires' fights were going.)
He glanced across the parking lot and spotted Elvis dodging a volley of
stake thrusts from the nun he was fighting; several stakes were lying broken on
the ground already, and the nun seemed to be down to her last one.
After dodging a punch
from the vampire, the nun suddenly lunged forward just a bit too fast for him
to avoid it. Steve stood up, revealing
his position behind the car, and yelled.
"NOOOOOOOO!!"
From the young
vampire's point of view, everything seemed to move in slow motion as Elvis fell
to the ground, the blunt end of the wooden stake protruding from his
chest. The rest of the vampires, briefly
distracted from their own battles, all turned and watched with mouths hanging
open and eyes widening as one of their friends was apparently stabbed right in
front of them.
The nun turned away
from the vampire lying motionless on the ground, bowing her head and saying a
brief prayer before grinning and cackling like some kind of deranged Halloween
witch. The other priests and nuns paused
their fights to join in, but suddenly stopped when they noticed the supposedly
dead vampire behind her standing up and pulling the stake out of his own
chest. The nun also failed to notice
Elvis calmly unzipping his jacket and throwing it aside, revealing some sort of
lightweight body armor underneath. When
he finally tossed the wooden stake to the ground, the noise alerted her to the
fact that something was wrong; her laughs were suddenly cut short as she spun
around to face him again.
"What!? But how?
I drove a stake through your heart!", she screamed. "You should be dead right
now!"
He pointed to the
left side of his chest, approximately where his heart would be. Rather than a hole in the armored vest, there
was only a slight dent.
"Stake-proof
vest," he said. "You'd have to
stab me a good four or five more times in the same spot to break through one of
these babies."
The nun looked
absolutely horrified; apparently, she had never even considered the possibility
of vampires compensating for their own weaknesses (though really, being stabbed
in the heart wasn't really an exclusively vampiric weakness, since it would
probably kill pretty much anyone.) She
had just a few seconds to reflect on her mistake before she was knocked out
cold by a swift elbow-strike to the face.
While all of the
remaining priests and nuns were distracted, the vampires (minus Steve) decided
to finish the fight all at once.
Crurotarsi jumped into the air and did a backflip over her nun
opponent's head, clobbering her with a sudden haymaker as soon as she landed;
the blow hit with such force that the old nun's false teeth went flying out of
her mouth as she hit the ground, immediately falling unconscious. Just as the nearby priest turned toward
Zamboni, he spun around and performed a high kick that slammed right into the priest's
jaw, sending him staggering back for several seconds and then slumping to the
ground. Rhombus made an impressive leap
from several yards away and body-slammed the fat priest that he had been
fighting, pinning him to the ground and quickly causing him to pass out.
"Whoa,"
Steve said, standing up from behind one of the cars again and staring as his
vampire buddies kicked copious amounts of Catholic ass. "I wish I could do that kinda
stuff..."
Before he could even
start to imagine himself beating up priests and nuns, the nun with the yardstick
popped up from behind the car next to him and flashed a creepy smile, holding
the yardstick menacingly over her head.
"Wait, what--aaaaah!!"
Steve took off
running once again, screaming all the way as the nun chased him around,
swinging her yardstick at him like some kind of axe-murderer every time she got
within range. After easily dodging
another of Adelbert's "holy garlic grenades," Pugh turned and noticed
this; he was just about to rush over to help Steve out when something
completely unexpected happened.
Steve was
cornered. The nun raised her yardstick,
positioning the sharpened metal edge down.
Pugh took off running in their direction, but he was too late--the nun
swung her weapon down, and though Steve pressed himself up against a pizza delivery
van in order to avoid it, he wasn't able to create enough distance between
himself and the yardstick.
And, with a splash of
blood and the loudest cry of "OWWWW!!!" that anyone had ever
heard, the yardstick came down and sliced off both of Steve's nipples.
Everyone suddenly
stopped whatever they were doing and stared at the nun. Steve just stared down at his wounded chest,
holding his hands out to each side of his body and yelling as if he thought
that a loud enough sound would somehow cauterize the wounds and make everything
better. The nun, on the other hand,
waved her yardstick around and cackled.
"That's what you
get for tearing your shirt off like some sort of heathen," she said, once
again shaking her finger at Steve. She
then readied her weapon for another attack.
"And now... this
is what you get for being a vampire!"
Before she could
carry out this threat, Pugh came up behind her and grabbed her neck, pinching a
certain major blood vessel between his fingers and completely cutting off the
blood supply to the nun's brain. Before
she had even realized that she had been attacked, she blacked out, dropping the
yardstick and flopping to the ground.
The last remaining priest growled and pulled a wooden stake out of one
of his pockets, but before he could run up and attack Pugh, he was sent flying
by a spinning kick from Elvis and then knocked out by a single punch from
Rhombus.
Steve, having a brief
moment of clarity, ran over into the battlefield and picked up his discarded
shirt. He wrapped it around his chest as
tightly as possible, using the torn cloth as a sort of makeshift bandage for
his nippular injuries. He then grabbed
what was left of his wooden sword and took off in the direction of the
Bloodmobile.
"Hmm... I think
Steve's got the right idea here," Zamboni said. "Those guys won't stay unconscious
forever, and the last thing we need is the cops finding us standing here next
to the pile of beat-up geezers in robes."
Pugh nodded, and then
headed over in the same direction Steve had taken off. Fortunately for the vampires, all of their
luggage was sitting right outside the vehicle; they quickly loaded it into the
back, then shut the door and joined Steve inside. As soon as everyone was safely inside, Pugh
started the engine and began to drive out of the parking lot, carefully
avoiding the unconscious members of the clergy strewn about on the
asphault. Within a few minutes, the
Bloodmobile was out on the road again, and the vampires left Rhode Island, not
planning to come back again for a long, long time.
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