betas by LapLor
Time: 9 PM Monday, 4 May through Tuesday, 5 May
Place: The Fiendish Glow
Follows: Winken,
Blinken, and...Tinkerbell ?!
and
Adventure
Downbelow or, How I Ticked Off the Fanfic Fairies
Permissions from all live people depicted.
NOTE:
Angela Rynan is Pen Durrell and vice-versa.
Javier Vachon appears by permission of the Vaqueras (wave to Tracy Sue)
[Monday, 9 PM]
Pen picked her bags up from the curb and headed toward the private entrance. From the street, she could hear the cacophony of a small crowd in the pub below ground, and the strains of Mexican "mood music" coming from the cantina. She showed her pale forearm to the biosensors. When the doors opened, she flew up the steps, dumped her bags in an unoccupied bedroom, and started looking around for her fellow Glow Worms and Fiends.
From the moment she had had that strange, glowing dream, she'd known something had gone wrong, terribly wrong, and that she would have to go to Toronto to fix it. Heather's having answered the phone only confirmed her fears. Pen called in sick from work and booked the next flight out.
She searched the entire upstairs, and, finding nobody, went down to the cantina and asked the bartender for a Cuervo Gold™. Seeing nothing askance at the cantina, she went back through the private areas to the master control room. She opened the door to find Dennis and his crew hurling every invective known to their four most common languages -- and then some -- as they pulled apart, stepped around, checked out, and put back racks upon racks of electronic and optical equipment.
Pen cleared her voice to get their attention. "What's going on here, boys?" she asked, all business. The men snapped to as close an approximation of attention as the equipment would let them.
"Unidentified equipment failure," Dennis muttered. "Either that', or a security breach." He tossed the woman a 7" high formerly-rack-mounted box of equipment. "Put that behind ye, please?"
"Already?" Pen sighed, setting the box down. "We've not been open a week yet. What happened?" She picked her way to point-blank range of Dennis. "What really happened?" she demanded.
Dennis tried to shrug and hide, but finding that useless, admitted, "The cameras an' recorders all went strange this moarnin'. There was no suyn of forced entry, an' there's noathin' missing -- so we're checking everything t' make sure it's not equipment failure."
"And?"
"So fair, everything's wairkin' fuyn."
"Are the auxiliary rooms up?" she asked the young engineer.
Dennis nodded.
"Do you have the tapes that were running during the incident?"
Another nod.
"Okay," she said, "Prep one of the auxiliary rooms. I want to see what happened. I'll be back in fifteen minutes." That, she felt, would give her enough time to check out what was happening in the kitchens and the pub.
The entire establishment was business as usual, though Pen noticed that the pub staff all had a peculiar sort of glow to them. Well, we're not called 'Glow Worms' for nothing, she reasoned, knocking the image out of her mind.
She returned to the prepped control room and donned a headset. Cueing the tapes, she noted the time stamps and gave her full attention to the wall of video screens. A few minutes of predawn silence, and then static. Complete, utter static -- and only static. Neon green, glow-in-the-dark static. Pale pink confused static. MacIntyre Dress tartan static. More pink static. More green static. . . She fast-forwarded through until the static began to clear. The boys would frame-by-frame the tapes for anomalies, anyway. The last monitor to clear was the one just outside the office. A neon green glow spilled out under the door from then through the end of the tape.
"I don't believe this," Pen muttered to herself. "They're redecorating already?" She removed the headset, set the tapes to rewind, and headed toward the office. A soft neon glow emanated from under the door, along with a stream of expletives and sounds of near panic. She knocked. Hearing no answer, she let herself in.
"Brenda?" she asked, staring at the frazzled woman seated at the desk, who was staring blankly at the appointment book. As the woman looked up, it became obvious that she was the source of the neon-green illumination.
Brenda blinked, focused, wrinkled her brow, and softly asked, "Pen?" Something was different about the faction head. . . something she'd never seen. She'd remembered Pen's hair as being a couple of inches longer, but that wasn't it. She grounded herself and looked again. Pen was glowing in the shades of a tequila sunrise.
"Did you know you're. . . glowing!" Pen said. "Bright, glow-in-the-dark, neon-green glowing!"
"Been that way since this morning," the heavier woman frowned. "Lora's been missing since around midnight. Seems to have disappeared into thin air. I went looking for her on the astral plane. . . "
"Missing?"
"Took the night off; said she needed some sleep but she'd be down for closing. She never made it down, and she's nowhere to be found. What's more, none of the monitors show her as having left anytime last night."
"I knew it, I knew it! It had to be something serious for me to have those strange dreams. . . "
"Well, the Fair Ones sent me back here, and when I awoke, I was. . . well. . . "
"Glowing?"
"Brightly enough to illuminate the entire province of Ontario, glowing!"
Pen shook her head. "I leave you guys alone for a week, and you come up with. . . with. . . this!" At a loss for words, she instead shook a finger at the increasingly-neon-green woman.
"It fades when I'm not upset or emotional. I bet we'll be back to normal the moment Lora shows back up. . . If she shows back up. . . " Brenda leaned her head into her hands and began rubbing her temples. "And by the way: we couldn't book anyone for the cantina tomorrow. Seems like everyone's already got their Cinco de Mayo plans out of the way."
"What do you mean, no entertainment? I took care of that weeks ago." Pen began rummaging through papers on the desk, found a phone number, then made a phone call. "Yeah, Marti, it's Pen Durrell of The Fiendish Glow. We're still scheduled to have Senior Luis Estoban y Rodriguez Miguelito Montoya and his mariachi band for our Cinco de Mayo entertainment tomorrow night, right?" Pause. "Thanks. We're looking forward to it." She hung up. "See? We're set. Didn't Nyx tell you?"
Brenda sighed audibly as she continued to rub her head. "She left too quickly, I guess. She might have told Lora. Maybe Lora forgot to tell me."
Pen looked closely at her neon-glowing friend. She was exhausted, and although she wasn't feeling too hot herself -- six hours on a plane wore her nerves a little thin -- she couldn't let Brenda go on like this: the woman needed rest. The taller woman moved behind the desk and helped her friend up, saying, "You're going to bed for some rest. I'll take over from here and wake you when it's time to close."
Brenda started to argue but knew her comrade was right. The stress of the past week was more than she'd expected. This was supposed to be a near-vacation, helping out a couple of friends. Brenda hadn't expected a war, or to have to handle the place alone. She and Lora had worked their tails off.
As she walked off to the service elevator to take her upstairs to her room, Brenda hoped that wherever Lora was, she was at least getting some sleep.
[Tuesday, 10 AM]
The tables had been set in both the pub and the cantina, the day's specials written on the blackboards and inserted into the menus. It was but an hour to opening, and when she checked an hour before, Brenda was still fast asleep. . . or whatever passed for sleep in the woman's current glow-in-the-dark-neon-green state. Pen was still fighting three hours' jet lag, but the pot of Cafe Bustelo™ was helping her along nicely. Nevertheless, it was high time Brenda awoke. Pen headed for the stairs and nearly ran into a dazed, but very much conscious, Brenda.
"What are you doing up?" she asked the shorter woman. "And more to the point, what are you doing in that outfit?!"
"That outfit" was a pair of close-fitting lime green stretch jeans, with a matching poly-cotton peasant blouse and wool beret. The jeans fit tightly enough to accentuate every bump, bulge, and roll of fat on Brenda's body; the peasant blouse was cut wide enough to add forty pounds to her figure and low enough to show several inches of cleavage. The stem of the beret stuck straight up, making her look like nothing so much like an oversized pepper...
"Same thing you are: getting ready to open shop," she yawned. "And looking for Lora. I'm convinced there's another entrance to this joint I'm missing." Her glow brightened momentarily as her mind checked for possible hidden entrances. Finding none, she changed the topic. "Gonna be busy today, I hope. It would be nice if we could get a good crowd for the fiesta."
"Yeah, babe. What are you doing in that outfit?"
Brenda sniffed the air. "That coffee I smell?" she asked.
"Yeah, babe. WHAT are you doing in that outfit?!"
"I express ordered it through Lane Bryant -- it's the only place that can come up with something this tacky, this quickly -- although Regalia and Roaman's do sometimes give them a run for their money. . . " Brenda smirked. "I figured, as long as I'm glowing this shade of green, anyway. . . "
"Do you know what you look like in that. . . that. . . that. . . get-up??????!?!?!?!?!"
"I was hoping I looked like a big jalapeño pepper!"
Pen's expression was halfway between incredulity and hilarity. "Oh, you look big, alright," she said, dryly.
"The coffee's hot?" Brenda asked, trying to change the subject.
"Yeah."
"Great. Let me grab a scone and some OJ and I'll join you."
[Tuesday, 10:55 AM -- Cue the mariachi music on the boom box, it's show time!]
Pen slipped back the latch to the doors to the cantina while Brenda did the same for the pub. Together they brought out the tent billboard with the day's specials written in red, white, green, orange, and yellow chalk. Through one of Pen's "I thought I told you guys we had licensed the rights" deals, Los Lobos' rendition of La Bamba was playing in the background; a number of other popular Latin tunes were set to play until the mariachi band came in for the evening hours.
"Happy Cinco de Mayo" she told Pen, picking up a pair of marimbas and shaking them.
"Put those down," Pen chided. "Do you want to scare away the customers?"
"Just getting into the spirit," Brenda replied.
"It looks like you've already gotten into too much spirits!" Pen snorted.
"Come on, baby, shake your body, do the conga," Brenda sang, as the music changed, putting her body into the words.
Pen massaged her forehead with one hand, using the other to guide her way towards the bar and her first Cuervo™ of the day. . .
[Tuesday, 5 May, 9:00 PM, outside the Vaqueras' church]
"Hey, this looks interesting!" Paloma said, looking at the neon green and bright orange flyer tacked to the church door. "When did it get here?"
"What?" Javiette asked her.
"This," Pal replied, taking down the flyer and showing it to her friend. "A Cinco de Mayo Fiesta at The Fiendish Glow."
"Cinco de Mayo," 'Viette repeated. "It is May fifth today, isn't it? Mexican food, Mexican music."
"And tequila," Pal reminded her. "Can't celebrate without tequila."
"C'mon, what're we waiting for! Let's go!"
[Tuesday, 9:00 PM, at an undisclosed location]
It had finally gotten dark enough that the hungry Spaniard could safely go out on a food run. Bottled stock at the church had been sporadic, at best, during the War, and his followers had even considered bleeding themselves once on his behalf. If he couldn't rustle up anything from his usual suppliers, he would be forced to resort to hunting.
Fortunately, the orange and neon green flyer assaulted him as soon as he landed in an undisclosed neighborhood.
|
FIESTA DEL CINCO DE MAYO May 5, 1998 at Corner of Luminescent Lane and Cactus Court
|
Of course, in his currently famished state, he read: "Good band! Live food!" -- which suited him fine. He took his bearings, levitated into the sky, and homed in on the glowing area indicated on the flyer.
[Tuesday, 9:20 PM, in and around The Fiendish Glow]
Liam O'Neal got up from his position from watching The Fiendish Glow. His careful preparation had paid off: he'd seen a vampire enter the establishment; it was time to save these fair colleens from the fate that befell his parents -- death by vampire. It was time to save the world from an Irish Republican Army of vampiric gun-runners. It was time for him to play the hero. He stilled his beating heart, and deliberately rose and crossed the street to the establishment.
His hunter sense told him the long-haired Latino would choose the cantina over the pub, so he went in the cantina entrance -- conveniently avoiding the red-headed bouncers in the process. Fortunately for him, the lazy-looking sombrero sitting outside the door didn't bother to search anyone entering the establishment.
Had O'Neal's hearing been fully vampiric, just after he entered the door, he would have heard the sombrero whisper, "'Patriot Games' run south of the border." The message was picked up by an almost invisible repeater by the front entrance, relayed to the master control, and repeated to the entire security staff in less than a second.
"Pawn to King Four," another voice transmitted over the same network.
Less than a minute later, two leather-jacketed Vaqueras rolled up the street. The sound of mariachi music was as welcoming as it was incongruous.
"Mariachi music in the evening?" Pal asked.
'Viette shrugged. "Dunno. . . Maybe they're not Mexican."
"But it says, 'Authentic Mexican cuisine'."
"Doesn't matter. I'm hungry. I say we go in, anyway."
"Sure. Okay. But if it's awful, don't come whining to me."
Once inside the door, Liam pulled out his specially-forged lambsblood-bearing "Shamrocks of Approval" from the Irish Culinary Heritage Preservation Bureau and pasted them just outside each door jamb, essentially caging his quarry. Then, cross in hand, he bellied up to the bar, ordered a lager and lime, and started asking questions. Dangerous questions. All the while, his eyes prowled the cantina floor, looking for one black-haired vampire in a sea of Latinos and Latinas, and people just looking to have a good time.
O'Neal's strategy was to get close to the vampire, then hit him with a curare dart from his blowgun-modified pennywhistle, which would hopefully disable him enough for him to drag him somewhere a little less public. While he also had garlic darts -- which would ordinarily be less harmful to any human who got in the way -- they would enrage the vampire and increase the chance that he or she would damn additional souls to walk the darkness, creating a host of fiends to besiege the earth. No, the cost of a human soul or two would be worth the price of ridding the world of a monster such as that.
His opportunity came when the mariachi band finished their set. As the band members stepped up to the bar, the Irishman started questioning them about their instruments and the rhythms of Mexican music. As they opened up to him, he began to talk about Irish music and the importance of wind instruments in Celtic music. Describing how each tin whistle was in a different key, he took out his F whistle and handed to the guitarist. He handed the C whistle to the lead singer, and kept the D whistle for himself. The vampire was not too hard to spot, bottle in hand, and sniffing around the higher-hanging piñata like a dog who'd chased a squirrel up its tree.
"How about some real music?" he asked the crowd, placing the D whistle to his lips and readying a curare dart in his hand. To the few boos and catcalls of those that actually heard his announcement, he half-fell off his stool and started playing the Kilfenora Jig while strolling through the room.
Señor Luis Estoban y Rodriguez Miguelito Montoya and his Mariachi Band put the two tin whistles on the bar, looked at the small Irishman, and shook their heads. Hopefully, the establishment's security would get rid of that nuisance before their next set. . .
When he got to the piñata, Liam covered the extra hole on the bottom of the pennywhistle, leaned his head back, and blew the worst possible off-note one could imagine. The whole cantina covered its ears in response.
The whole cantina, that is, save six -- one of them being the quarry in question who, shocked by the intensity of the note, jumped up, his head hitting and breaking the piñata just as a small pinprick pierced his flesh. He landed on his rump, followed by a veritable rain of little unmarked liquor bottles, shrink-wrapped packages of brown-red lozenges, and little wax bottles filled with viscous red fluids. He put his hand up over the pin-prick, feeling for damage that was probably healing even as he felt it out. What he wasn't expecting was a foreign object lodged deeply enough to draw blood. Fumbling fingers ripped the small dart away from his skin just as an odd sensation of dizziness swept over him. He found himself fighting to stay awake and alert. "Curare," he mused, smelling the dart.
"I thought this was supposed to be a classy place," Paloma said, hearing the commotion.
"Hmm. . . I don't know. It's new," Javiette shrugged. "At least, the restaurant is new." She was trying to ignore the cacophony that passed for the Irishman's "real music". She wasn't having much luck, though, ending up following the jig-playing figure toward the piñatas. . .
"Pal," she said, excitedly nudging her friend. "Isn't that -- ?"
"Yeah, it is. Must be here for the vamp fare."
"Let's go and say hi."
"Uh, I don't know, 'Viette. Don't want to disturb his par -- " Her comment was interrupted by the loud crash of a vampire falling on his buttocks.
"Vachon!" the two women cried, running towards him.
"Bishop takes pawn, check," the radio whispered. "Acknowledge, rook: bishop takes pawn."
"Bishop ta' pawn, aye," the sombrero said, rising. "Castle," he said, tagging O'Mannion and entering the cantina with him.
Never yell "fire" in a loud, crowded room. If you do, one of two things will happen: either everyone will ignore you, or everyone will panic and make a beeline towards the exits. Or if you are particularly unlucky, both.
O'Neal pumped another dart into the fallen vampire as he yelled, "FIRE!!!" at the top of his lungs.
Half the people in the cantina ran out, each to the nearest exit, trampling over the other half, who either hadn't heard, or who had taken the shout for the ramblings of a mad man. In between, Paloma and Javiette, and Ronnie and the sombrero, fought their way through the panicking crowds until they arrived at the piñata where Vachon was lying in point-blank firing range of O'Neal's gun.
"Inspector!" Ronnie said, as he and the sombrero cornered him.
"Vachon!" Javiette and Paloma cried as they saw the object of their devotion sprawled across the cantina floor, looking for all the world like one who has tied one on.
"Come, let's get out of here!" the Vaqueras said, trying to drag the vampire from the floor while the getting was good.
"Why?" Vachon asked, dazed. "I was just beginning to like it here." A big, lazy smile crossed his face as he bit into one of the little wax bottles and drained the contents in a single slurp. He lazily rummaged through the pile to find some more like it while the two women tried to drag him from the floor. In their movements, Paloma's hands came across something rough sticking through the vampire's trademark black Henley shirt.
"Give it up!" the sombrero said, stepping in front of the gun and, with O'Mannion's help, locking the Dubliner's arm in a "safe" position.
"Wha' d'you think yoa're doin', Inspector?" asked Ronnie at the same time.
"Saving yoar sorry soals from th' divvil," O'Neal returned, pulling the trigger. The released round quickly embedded itself in the remaining piñata and spread, breaking it and releasing candies on top of all six persons in the center of the room. The stench of garlic quickly pervaded the area.
With the sound of the gun going off, most of the rest of the thinning, trampled-on crowd made its way to the door.
"I think I'm going to be sick," the vampire said. Despite the suffocating odor of garlic, he made no attempts to move.
"What's this?" Paloma asked, removing the dart from where it had landed, near Vachon's heart.
"Don't touch it. . . um, the tip. . . uh. . . don't. . . touch. . . . the. . . TIP!!!" he slurred as the Vaquera inspected the piece. "Ucur -- Quer --- Ker --- Curare!" he finally spat out.
"Curare?" the two women looked at each other. No wonder Vachon wasn't moving anywhere -- he was "drunk", and ripe for the Irishman's taking.
"You are oat of here!" O'Mannion said, as he and the sombrero picked O'Neal up and bodily threw him out the cantina door. "And don't ever try coming back."
Just at that time, Pen and Brenda burst through the kitchen door with another three security types and a clean-up crew.
"Garlic," Brenda frowned, sniffing the air. "I thought we decided to cook without garlic because of the vampires."
"We did," Pen replied, the two of them trying to calm the few remaining patrons en route to the disturbance. The smell of garlic increased as they approached the piñata area.
They finally got close enough for Brenda to see the vampire laying on the floor. She tapped her compatriot on the shoulder. "Pen -- is that Vachon lying there?"
Pen looked over at where Brenda was pointing. "Yeah, babe. He came in for the celebration. If it weren't for the garlic, I'd say he's celebrating already."
"Looks like the crew has already taken care of O'Neal," Brenda said, seeing only a downed vampire and two women trying to get him to move. "You want to take the vampire or the door?"
"Door, babe, door. Can't afford to lose all those customers. McAllister, Fitzpatrick -- you're with me," she said, heading to where O'Mannion and the sombrero were already trying to calm patrons and get them back inside. "Knights take bishop," she said into her radio. "Pawns retreat. And we're going to need an Ulsterman's special in the cantina."
Brenda squatted down near where Javiette and Paloma were trying to move a nauseated and very spaced-out looking Vachon. "What happened?" she asked. "Besides the garlic."
"Curare dart," Paloma said, carefully fingering the culprit.
"O'Neal?" the manager asked. "The balding Irishman?"
"The bad tin-whistle player?" Vachon asked, vaguely.
"Figures," Brenda frowned. "Looks like the bouncers have gotten to him. Meanwhile, let's get you to a table and away from the garlic while the cleaning crew straightens up a bit," she said. "And hits the place with enough Ozium™ to disguise a circus," she added loudly for the benefit of the cleaning crew.
The three women and remaining security person managed to get the uncooperative vampire up and seated at a table as far from the spilled piñatas as possible. Unfortunately, this was right near the door, which the "drunken" vampire kept shying away from as a horse shies away from fire. The small knot of people ended up seating him at the door nearest the kitchen instead, just as O'Malley stepped out with a privately labeled wine bottle and a corkscrew. "On the house," he said, putting the bottle before the vampire.
"Gracias," Vachon said, opening the bottle.
"De nada," the manager and cook said, together, before disappearing back into the woodwork.
The vampire being settled, Brenda went to check the door for clues as to what had spooked Vachon. Prominently positioned on the small windows by the door jambs were two kelly green "Shamrocks of Approval" from the Irish Culinary Heritage Preservation Bureau. "Funny, I don't remember seeing them before," she remarked. Then she recalled Liam O'Neal's first pretense of entering the establishment, before they opened. She took his card from the pocket of her jeans. There it was: Irish Culinary Heritage Preservation Bureau. "Green Queen to Rook," she whispered into her radio. "Verify entrance decals. Do we have from the Irish Culinary Heritage Preservation Bureau?"
Back in the control room, Dennis quickly rewound the previous day's tapes, centering on the cantina entrance. "Negative," he observed.
"That organization is a front for the Irish Police," Pen's voice came over the headset.
"Then our friend the inspector may have just set a booby trap," Brenda observed. Security to the entrances. Get those shamrocks off the doors and into the service elevator. Now."
Calmed by Pen's assurances that this was not a usual occurrence, and that the troublemaker had been taken care of, slowly, but surely, the customers began to return to the cantina. A round of drinks on the house smoothed over any difficulties, and the fine music of Señor Luis Estoban y Rodriguez Miguelito Montoya and his Mariachi Band put everyone at ease. By the evening's end, the unpleasantness was all but forgotten.
After removing the shamrocks, the security crew swept for any other devices the vampire hunter might have left. Finding none, they declared the entrance safe and brought the bogus shamrocks to the control room for later inspection. When they had finished enjoying the celebration (and had sufficiently "sobered up"), Vachon and the two Vaqueras left the same way they came in.
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PARALLEL STORIES: LA FIESTA DE LOS
NIÑOS
and
AN
UFFER TAKES ON A FIENDISH GLOW
NEXT STORIES:
FAERY RINGS AND OTHER THINGS
and
GLOWING
PERSPECTIVES
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