Friday Guest Post: Teel Glenn

Queen Morgana & the Renfairies

by Teel James Glenn from WhiskeyCreekPress.com

buy at:

http://www.amazon.com/Queen-Morgana-And-Renfairies-ebook/dp/B0079UVRXI/ref=sr_1_43?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340418361&sr=1-43&keywords=Teel+James+Glenn

http://www.whiskeycreekpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=972

Queen Morgana will not allow free passage between the realms of the Fae and of humans. Because of this, both realms are dying. The only bridge between the worlds is the place where dreams live in the daylight: Renaissance Faires!
A group of humans stumbles through the portal: a cocky movie make-up man who hits on the wrong woman, a Vietnam vet whose nightmares make living a chore, a private detective on the strangest case of his career, a crippled cop and a burger store manager who loves to go LARPing. One of them has to show the Queen of the Fae what true love is or they will perish in the greater darkness that is growing day by day. Oh, and in the process, they have to try and figure out who the strange guy in the Viking helmet is and why he is giggling all the time...

This Excerpt is from Part 3: Farwell My Fairy

In which Galan Riske, P.I. is hired to protect the inheritance called “the Source’ that is being fought over between two sisters. His partner is kidnapped and he is forced to trade the Source (which looked like a golden egg) and then things go wrong:

When I got within arm’s length of Vulnavia she snatched the box from me and took to tearing at the shopping bag. I thought Hattie was going to jump her sister as she lunged across the room to grab for the package. One of the goons grabbed her and stopped her.

I pulled a pocketknife and slit the ropes behind my partner; if the balloon went up I wanted him to be free range.

“No!” Vulnavia screamed. She turned to look at me with wild eyes, “You opened it!”

I felt all eyes in the room turn toward me including Mike who was pulling the gag from him mouth.

“What the hell is going on?” He asked.

“You jackass, you opened it?” Hattie yelled, sounding very much like her sister.

“I-uh- I didn’t intend to,” I said. It was silly; there hadn’t been anything in it. But maybe they didn’t know that.

“There was nothing in it,” I said, “I swear.”

Now the two sisters were standing side by side and the two goons were behind them looking at me like I’d peed in the punchbowl.

“What?” I said, “I swear there was zero in there.”

“You saw the incantation,” Vulnavia said. ”You have no idea what you’ve done!”

“You have the secret of the gateway,” Hattie said, “I must have it!” She started to step toward me but her sister stepped in front of her and mumbled something in a language I didn’t recognize.

I felt dizzy all of sudden.

‘Back up!” I said trying to raise my pistol to wave them off. My arm was suddenly nerveless.

Mike tried to speak but the wild-eyed Vulnavia lunged at me and, brushing him aside shoved me straight into the mirror.

 I expected to slam into the glass and send it tumbling over in a shower of shards but when I hit it, it wasn’t hard.

Instead it was like being tossed into warm Jell-O and I didn’t knock it over but rather moved into it. It was like diving into a viscous pool and I found myself falling in slow motion through a kaleidoscope of color.

There was a rushing sound, a whistling like an old cartoon bomb falling and I realized I was rolling end over end through the air. And I was no longer in the curio booth in a Northern Manhattan park but somehow falling from a great height over a green grassy field in a bright sunlit day!

“Ahhhhh!” I said eloquently as I watched the ground rush up at me and I was certain I was going to die. I had absolutely no clue on how the hell I had gotten there but I did know one thing.

“I hate family feuds!” I thought just as I slammed into the ground and the world went black.

****

The first thing I heard when I came out of la-la land was Gene Kruppa. Well, it sounded like Gene Kruppa playing Drum Boogie in my head. I’d have preferred Duke Ellington cause it wouldn’t have hurt as much. I was afraid to move because I had the memory of bizarre fall through the mirror but somewhere in the back of my mind I thought;

“No, you had to have been shot or clubbed and that was a hallucination.”

“Oh, that’s great,” I replied to myself, “only shot or clubbed, not squashed after falling from the height of the Empire State Building; that’s so much better!”

I finally got tired of the argument since even if I won it I lost, so I rolled over on my back. There was no pain, no sound of cracking bones or a gush of blood so I opened my eyes a crack. There was a bright sunny sky above me with fluffy clouds and birds flying around.

I watched the birds for a while trying to think about what to do next.

“They must have clubbed me and dragged me outside.”

I didn’t hear the sound of the festival and wondered if they somehow smuggled my unconscious form out into the depths of the park.

I thought about moving and watched the birds for a while but as I watched them I started to notice they seemed unusually big and had strange silhouettes.

They started to circle down toward me and as they did I could see they were not birds; they were women with wings and three-toed bird-like feet!!

The bird women landed about yard from me and I got a clear look at them; they had faces with homely features that looked like they had been in a tie for losers in a shovel fight. They had high cheekbones and oddly swirling golden eyes, feathers where the hair on a normal dame would be and full fledged feathered wings instead of arms. They were completely naked and as far as I could see looked like two Vegas Chorus girls in every other detail save the wings, hair and hideously homely faces. (Not that I’ve spent that much time with naked chorus girls, mind you—just a little research I did on this case once.)

I pushed myself to sit up.

“Look, sister,” the brown feathered one said, “It’s alive.”

“Just barely, toots,’ I said, “I seem to have taken a bit of a fall.”

“I’ll say,” the other bird babe said, “We saw you come through the cloud portal. We thought you’d be pudding by the time we got to you.”

Pudding?

“I love pudding,” the golden-feathered one said, “but I like raw meat just as well.” The way she said that sent a chill up my spine. They both licked their chops and eyed me like Sunday dinner.

I shook myself to try and make the hallucination go away—I mean, I was talking to two refugees from a Brian Froud book as if it were normal. I decided that I wanted to not be there at that point so I pushed down with my feet to get purchase to run and suddenly things got even stranger.

Then I looked down at my feet and yelled. “Aww!” Because where my legs wrapped in conventional pants should have been that should have ended in feet in comfortable shoes were naked legs and hooves!!

Hooves! Like on horses.

I knew I was hallucinating now but it felt so damn real I wanted to scream.

So I did.

“AWWWWW!”

“Shhh!” the Golden One said, “You’ll attract the others and then there’ll be nothing for me and Celaeno!”  As she spoke the two bird women started to lean in toward me and when they smiled I could see pointed, sharp teeth. Suddenly I knew what these two usually had for dinner.

“Aello’s right,” the brown feathered one said with an evil laugh, “The other girls are such pigs!” She reached for me and I went for my shoulder holstered gun but felt nothing but flesh. I was completely naked and that meant unarmed.

But not un-footed—or rather un-hooved!

I swung up my right hoof and connected with Goldie’s midsection so that she tumbled back. They were as ungainly on the ground as they were svelte in the air; she went down on her gorgeous rump.

I tried to get to my –uh- feet to run but the second one grabbed my hair and yanked me back so I did a Buster Keaton on my tush as well.

Then the other bird broad was on me and it was all teeth and nails like a rabid cat. I was having hell of a time trying to swat her off me. I was able to keep her away from my neck but the second Charlie’s Angel was going to be back on me in a moment and I knew I couldn’t fight them both off.

I had never felt so guilty about eating Kentucky Fried Chicken in my life; Karma stinks!

**** 

About the Author:

Teel James Glenn has traveled the world for thirty years as a stuntman, fight choreographer, swordmaster, jouster, illustrator, storyteller, bodyguard, and actor. One of the things he’s proudest of is having studied under Errol Flynn’s last stunt double.  Mr. Glenn continues to teach swordwork in New York.

His stories have been printed in scores of magazines from Mad to Black Belt, Weird Tales, Fantasy World Geographic, Blazing Adventures, and Tales of Old and. He has over two dozen books and anthologies in print in many genres including Steampunk, westerns, mysteries and the best selling SF thriller series “The Exceptionals.’ One was a finalist in the EPIC book awards in 2009.

He is also the winner of the 2012 Pulp Ark Award for Best Author.

Mr. Glenn worked regularly as an actor on Guiding Light and New York soaps alternately doing stunts or acting in over 300 episodes. He worked as an actor and stuntman (in a fight scene with Hawk) on the “Spenser for Hire TV. Series and in episodes of the Equalizer.

His most famous ‘small screen’ appearance was as Vega (and fight choreographer) in the worldwide web series “Street Fighter: The Later Years.”

He went on to serve as a principal performer in front of the camera in over 70 low budget fantasy/horror genre films, often serving in a stunt capacity as well.

His latest books are the urban fantasy “Queen Morgana & the Renfairies” and “Byline Ghouls: the further adventures of Maxi and Moxie.”