It was supposed to be a relaxing get away. No troubles, no commitments, no outside issues to confuse things. Terry and I would have a chance to get to know each other, and relax from the chaos that is our normal lives. Cancun in the winter is still a heck of a lot warmer than Detroit. Of course, that would have required the chaos to decide it wanted to play along.

First, Leigh’s apartment picked up a supernatural visitor. An odd little thing that really didn’t like light and seemed to be a rat-man-ghost. Not the most pleasant of house guests. Well, we did all get this bounty on some terrorists, and it wouldn’t be safe for Leigh to have to deal with the thing while we were gone (Justin and Karen have been talking about getting away after Christmas, and Aiden and Angie are heading off somewhere, too), so I picked up and extra ticket for Leigh.

Then we went to dinner with Karen’s soon to be demon, er, father, and it turns out that dear sweet Edward is sending them to Cancun, too. Then we get to the airport, and discover that Aiden and Angie are intending to head to Cancun as well. Almost as if the Elder Evil things out there were conspiring against us, which they were.

We arrived in Cancun, and the first couple of days were actually nice, other than the Mayan god that flew over head. Terry and I were having fun teaching the kiddies on the jet skis how to do chase and pursuit in the whole bumper tag on the high seas. We were also having a grand time playing our own version of “what’s my line” with the tourists, picking out what their lives were like when they weren’t on vacation.

We had some fun with Justin and Karen, although they did not seem to think it was nearly as humorous as the rest of us. The “peek-a-boo bouquet” took on a whole new meaning with the camera hidden in it (not recording, that would be wrong), but for some reason, Justin and Karen didn’t find it funny. Of course, the joke is never as funny when you have to explain it, and we actually had to send them a note for them to find the camera. Boom-boom seems to have decided sending listening devices in other flowers would be fun, too. Justin and Karen were quite paranoid by the time they got to Mexico.

Of course, Angie doesn’t take a joke as well as she gives one. She seemed miffed when I gave her a little observation/reflex test with a mock bomb on her door in the ultra cheap hotel she and Aiden were staying in. She showed up at my room full of bad intentions. I explained to her that we were now even for her attempting to play matchmaker between Terry and myself on the Wendigo adventure. It turns out the big thing she was upset about was bruising Aiden so badly because he was walking into what she thought was a bomb. We agreed that if I bought them dinner, we’d be even. I didn’t see the need to continue the practical jokes any further, and decided to let her relax and enjoy the rest of the vacation.

Then the damn Mayan Bat god decided he needed to fly off with Terry. Fucking Elder Beasties. Apparently, he can make things silent, since it looked like Terry put up a fight, and I didn’t hear anything in the next room. Why is it the bad guys get all the fun powers? Needless to say here the vacation turns into a rescue mission. This is the short version, because the long version just pisses me off.

We find the local bat-demon-god experts, and discover they just made this great find, and pulled the mahogany stake out of super bat demon, setting him loose upon the population. Of course, being archeologists, they don’t realize that there was a damn good reason the Mayans sealed up the temple and put the stake right where it was. “They were a primitive culture, and obviously couldn’t have had a good reason to seal away a temple and leave it all alone in the middle of a jungle.” Modern archeologist = unwitting minion of Evil. This is important to know. Unfortunately, they also tend to gather the useful tidbits that are helpful in putting big ugly creatures in the ground (more on that later) so we can’t just shoot them all.

Anyhow, I ‘reacquire’ the stake so we can shove it back into uber-bat demon, and we head off into the jungle to see if we can keep Terry from becoming tasty blood snack #3,458,156 for the bat-vampire thing, we get to the dig site, we find the dead archeologist (come on, you saw it coming – you freed me from being trapped and loosed me on an unsuspecting population, even though I should reward you, I am an evil piece of shit and hungry, so now you get to be tasty blood snack #3,458,156).

Now we know where the temple is and have to go on a bug hunt to find the darn bat-beast. We wander, we kill spiders, we wander we find a temple, suddenly I can’t move. Okay, this could be a problem. As super bat demon drops from the roof looking to make me blood snack #3,458,157, Leigh reminds me why it is good to have her along and brings up a mental shield. Everyone opens fire on the bat of doom, and since I am suddenly able to move I make a mad grab for the stake and pretend to be a pikeman in an ancient army. Fortunately, the uber bat was blind as a bat and impaled itself on the stake.

Terry, it turns out was not intended to be a snack, but instead the bride of Batula. Why is it that demons have the same taste in women I do? I could spend hours analyzing that question, or why it even popped into my brain. In any case, to make sure no more archeologist try to de-stake the bat demon, we have concreted it into a piano case in the jungle. So it will probably be 200 years from now that the next archeologist will decide they just have to know why someone buried the block of cement in the middle of the jungle and that they just have to see what kind of time vault it is and bust it open. Did I mention that archeologists are minions of evil?

Terry is holding up pretty well, considering the fact that this is the second time that a flying creature of the unknown has decided to carry her off. We spent the rest of the vacation very drunk, and holding each other to make sure neither one of us disappeared in the night. Assuming our heads don’t explode, I think things might work out between the two of us.