Never one to feel comfortable in a crowd of men, especially boisterous men, I was surprised to find myself gradually relaxing as late afternoon turned into early evening. Whether it was from the effects of the wonderful dinner we'd been served, or the additional two shots of Tequila I'd managed to down, I wasn't sure, but never being one to look a gift equine in the cuspids, I simply went with the feeling and didn't ponder it overmuch.

My five companions were certainly feeling no pain, particularly Nia, who now viewed her little corner of the world through reddened, half-lidded eyes while a goofy, drunken grin seemed to have taken up permanent residence on her face.

Increasingly outlandish tales were being traded back and forth across the table, but rather than participate, I was quite content to sit back and relax, determined to enjoy my brief respite of good cheer while it lasted.

Which, as is almost always the case with me of late, didn't last nearly long enough.

Seven men, the largest larger even than Rio, entered into the bar, their expressions belligerent. I found myself stiffening in my seat and was pleased to see my companions do the same, except for Nia, who was too far gone to be able to resemble anything other than a limp rag doll at that stage.

"Trouble," Critter muttered to my left, stating the obvious.

"Maybe now'd be a good time to leave," I replied, sotto voce.

"You got that right." Turning, she tapped a bleary Pony on the shoulder, then jerked her head toward the door.

Pony nodded and reached out to shake Nia's arm. "Wake up, little Miss Sunshine. It's time to head back home."

Lifting her head slowly off the table, Nia peered owlishly at all of us. "Wha--?"

"We're leaving."

That woke her up fully. "What? No way! The party's just getting started!" As if to prove her point, she grabbed the second (or was it third?) bottle of Tequila, brought it to her lips, and upended it, guzzling down a quarter of the contents in a single gulp. "C'mon ya bunch of old ladies! Drink up!! What are you waitin for? Christmas???"

Laughing uproariously at her feeble joke, she slammed the bottle back on the table, which, unfortunately, attracted the attentions of the goon squad steamrolling their way toward the bar.

"This doesn't look like it's gonna be fun," Critter whispered to me as they made an abrupt detour toward our table.

"Anyone ever tell you you have an innate gift for understatement?"

Her grin flashed. "A time or three."

"Good. Wouldn't have wanted to be the first."

A second later, a hand the size of which would have put a Daisy Canned Ham to shame reached for Nia's bottle and snatched it up, returning it a brief instant later, totally empty. A loud belch blasted over our heads and I swore I saw several carefully tended plants wither and die away under the assault.

"Hey!" Nia shouted as the bottle collided with the table. "Get your own bottle, you..." Turning, she craned her neck back as her chin lifted high, then higher. "Wow. Look guys! A walking mountain of shit!"

Her drunken giggles were cut off when the man reached down and grabbed her by the back of her shirt. Hauling her up out of her chair, he belched once again, in her face this time, before tossing her to his buddies who stood behind him. Then he turned his attention to the rest of us.

A leer barely had its chance to curve his lips before Rio flattened them for him with a sweet right cross to the jaw. His stumble backward into the bodies of his cronies allowed Nia to slip nimbly away. When she was in range, Rio grabbed her roughly by the shirt and shoved her behind her large body. The rest of us closed ranks in a tight formation around her.

Wiping the trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, the walking mountain smiled at us; a smile very much like something I'd seen Ice use on occasion, white and dangerous, like the smile of a shark as it spots a floundering seal. Or, in our case, a group of seals.

"Ohhh shit," Critter breathed.

The group came at us en masse, each more than double our size (except, of course, for Rio, who towered over everyone save the largest of the group). As was usual in these type of fights, the littlest one came for me. While that fact should, perhaps, have threatened my ego slightly, I found myself once again thanking God for small favors (pun intended) and chopping the cocky little banty rooster down a peg or two as he tried to grab for parts of my anatomy which were reserved for someone a lot taller, a lot stronger, and a hell of a lot meaner than he could ever hope to be.

The look on his face as he toppled over from a foot to his chest should have pleased me less than it did, but I went with it, happy to be feeling anything positive at all at that point.

A chair flew past my head, and when I looked up, I saw that the entire bar had erupted into a massive brawl complete with flying bodies and flying furniture.

As my friends seemed to be holding their own quite well, I concentrated on keeping Nia in my sights and defending us both against the onslaught of testosterone-fueled flesh which came after us, fists clenched and teeth gritted. It was easier that I'd had a right to hope, and I felt my muscles respond eagerly to their call to action, slipping into time honored rhythms of advance, block, and retreat as if I'd been born to do that very thing.

The fight hadn't been going on very long when a young man blew in from the outside and shouted loudly into the din. The only words I heard were "prisa!", "amigos" and "policia!". And those words I understood only too well. The brawl stopped almost immediately as the men broke away from each other and dove for the windows and doors of the bar, leaving only a few of us still standing.

Unfortunately, one of the ones still standing chose to take advantage of the brief lapse of concentration the announcement had brought and landed a solid uppercut to Rio's chin. I looked up in time to see the whites of her eyes flash before she tumbled bonelessly to the ground in an unconscious heap.

Time seemed to slow down then. As I jumped to cover Rio's helpless body with my own, from the corner of my eye, I saw Nia pick up a miraculously unbroken bottle from our table and grasp it by the neck.

"You son of a bitch!!!!" she shouted, rushing past me before I could stop her and smashing the bottle against the man's head.

Everything went dark for me then, as my body hit Rio's, and his body fell on top of mine, making me the unfortunate meat in a rather unappetizing sandwich and chasing the breath from my lungs in an undignified whoosh.

It might have been a second, it might have been a century, but when the man's body was finally rolled off of mine, I thought I would weep for the simple joy of being able to breathe freely once again. I was hauled up to my feet by the scruff of my neck and stood watching as Pony's wild, frightened eyes bore down into mine. "Are you alright, Angel?" Her voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a very long tunnel, but as oxygen began to clear the cobwebs from my brain, I nodded.

"Are you sure? How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Um... seven?"

My feeble joke only caused her eyes to widen further and, taking pity on my distraught friend, I laid a hand on her arm and gave it a brief squeeze. "I'm alright. Really. Just a little winded."

Just then, the bartender, who'd spent the duration of the brawl tucked safely behind his bar, rushed up to us, jabbering so quickly, my head started to spin again. "What's he saying?"

"There's a back door that leads to an alley. He's begging us to leave now before the police come," Critter replied, holding on to a struggling Nia. "Goddamn it, Nia, stop struggling."

"Let me go then!" Nia hissed, redoubling her efforts to break free.

"Not a chance. We're getting out of here."

"Not without Rio!"

"She's coming with us," Pony stated, looking back at me. "Can you help me with her? She's too heavy for me to carry by myself."

"Just tell me what to do."

"Grab her feet. I'll grab her arms. We'll drag her until we get outside. Then we'll figure out something else."

"Too late," I heard Critter shout a split second before the doors blew open and what seemed to be an entire army of Mexican police entered, their guns drawn and pointing in our direction.

"Motherfucker," Pony grunted, dropping Rio's hands and raising her own.

In a word, that pretty much summed it up.

"I don't feel so good."

"There's the toilet. Go puke in it."

"I don't know why you've got such a pissy attitude. If it wasn't for me, tall, dark and gruesome would have finished your ass for sure!"

"If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't be in this fucking mess in the first place."

"Says who?"

"Says me."

"Yeah, well who died and made you God, huh?"

Closing my eyes, I rested my head back against the crumbling cement wall that made up my new, and hopefully temporary, home-a prison cell. Rio and Nia had been at it since Rio'd regained consciousness in the back of what passed for a police van in these parts and I was trying my level best to get their voices out of my head before I really did something to earn my stay here.

As if reading my mind, Critter leaned over to whisper in my ear. "Wonder how long a term murder gets around here?"

"I heard that," Rio growled at Critter, and received an abbreviated peace sign for her troubles. Her scowl deepened.

I felt something tickle my hand, and opened my eyes just in time to see a cockroach the size of a sparrow skitter across it in search of more hospitable surroundings. "I hate bugs," I said through gritted teeth.

"Welcome to Chez Roach Motel. Ya check in, but ya don't check out."

"That's not even close to being funny, Nia," Critter remarked.

"Sor-ry!"

I looked over at Critter. "You know the saying 'be careful what you wish for'?"

"Yeah."

"Remind me to have it tattooed across my forehead when we get out of here, ok?"

"Easy for you to say," Pony interjected from her place by the cell's barred door. "You're not on parole. If we don't find a way of getting out of here before something worse happens, me and Critter will wind up back in the Bog faster than shit through a goose."

"We'll get out of here," I replied with a confidence I didn't really feel.

She spun around to look at me. "Yeah? How? Gonna get Scotty to beam us out or something?"

"Pony, calm down, please," Critter said. "It's not Angel's fault we're here."

Pony sagged against the bars, sighing. "I know. It's just... damn. I just got outta prison. I really don't want to be back in here so damn soon." Straightening, she returned to wearing a hole in the ground with her incessant pacing.

As a brief silence descended, I looked around the room once again. Three walls of crumbling cement stared blindly back at me, painted in a color that might once have been just about anything, but which time and harsh conditions had reduced to that dirty beige no-color which characterized many a prison cell and cheap motel. Bars made up the fourth wall and brought with them memories which I was trying desperately to fight against receiving.

A splintered wooden bench ran the length of the back wall, and in the far corner, a hole in the ground which doubled as a toilet rounded out the decor. The wet, cement floor was a moving tide of roaches, beetles and insects I didn't even want to try and identify, even to take my mind off of less pleasant thoughts.

Like what was going to happen to us. Like how we were going to get out of here. Like if I was going to ever see Ice again.

The sound of Nia losing the contents of her stomach brought the distraction I needed.

"Montana knows where we are, right?" I asked Critter, who was staring at Nia with an expression of deep distaste.

"Wha--? Oh. Yeah. Pony told her we'd be picking up some meds down here and we'd be back by midnight at the latest." Sighing, she looked at her watch. "Which is an hour from now."

"So, once she realizes we're overdue, she'll put together a search, right?"

"We'd just damn well better be way the fuck gone from here by then," Pony replied, still looking out into the dim, empty hallway.

"Why's that?"

She turned to face us, her expression serious as a heart attack. "There are plenty of places to bury the bodies on that ranch of hers, Angel."

I gave a nervous sort of laugh. "C'mon, Pony. She's not that bad."

"No," she agreed, nodding. "She's worse."

"Worse than spending the rest of our lives in this hell hole?"

Her expression never changed as she turned back around to stare into the hallway once again.

I must have fallen asleep shortly after Pony's pronouncement of doom, because when I next opened my eyes, it was to find myself crushed between the wall and Critter, who was snoring lightly and drooling on my shirt.

Yawning-and cursing myself for the indrawn breath given the stench sharing the cell with us-I gently removed Critter's lolling head from my shoulder and eased my tired and stiff body off the bench.

Pony was still awake and still pressed, face first, against the bars, her head turned to face down the long hallway.

"Morning," I whispered, padding over to her and laying a gentle hand on her tense back.

Turning, she favored me with a slight smile before looking back down the hallway again. "Mornin. Sleep well?"

"Not... exactly. What time is it, anyway?"

"A little after four," she replied, not even bothering to check her watch.