Tormanixon chuckled with delight. He had not only been dead set with his targeting, but the boys had fallen for it. They'd taken the girl into the car and were using her to get them to where they needed to be. The only slightly negative aspect of the current plan was that he had no choice but to use a subservient prey animal to do his bidding and there was a good chance the animal instinct would take over. With the inner turmoil of the alpha-male Tormanixon was fairly confident that it wouldn't prove too much of a problem, at least not until they drew closer to his own sphere of influence. And if it did? Well, there was no shortage of other subjects in the cages beneath Chicago. He'd simply send them another guide.




After what must have been hours but felt more like days, Xander pulled the car over to the side of the road and got out of the car. Over the past couple of days he'd started smoking, a horrible habit he knew but it served to keep his mind off other things. Sitting on the bonnet of the car he took a deep drag from the Camel and noted with regret that there weren't very many left in the pack. They'd have to stop at a convenience store before too much longer.

The sun was just setting and they were nearing their destination but still the argument raged on inside his own head. One side of him wanted nothing more than to get to the shadowy caves he'd seen in his mind's eye; the other side of him was standing back and asking why. To his chagrin, the rational side of him sounded an awful lot like Giles. As the time had gone on it had been getting easier to ignore the rational side which worried him. That was the part of him which had convinced Kyle that it was easier to stop at diners for food rather than hunt. If the feral side of him won the internal battle there was no telling what would happen to them both. A quick glance backwards at the passengers only underscored that. The girl they'd found on the road was perched on the edge of the back seat staring straight ahead with a terrified expression on her face. The very fact that when he'd originally seen her he'd automatically branded her prey meant that he'd been especially careful to keep Kyle and himself fed; it would be too easy to give in to the predator/prey instincts that were screaming at him.

They had been driving for days now and the cynical part of him noted that at least he was getting the road trip thing done in record time. From one coast to the other they had travelled but not one tourist attraction had even tempted them to stop. All those missed opportunities - he knew that if he ever truly woke up to himself he'd regret them, but right now he didn't care. The one thing his schizophrenic brain agreed on was the need to get this over with as quickly as possible.

Movement from the passenger seat drew his attention away from his inner turmoil and back to the matter at hand. He looked at Kyle disdainfully, unable to keep the sneer from his face. It was clear that the boy was facing no dilemma over his actions at all. Xander wished that for once he could see things as plainly as Kyle obviously could; but then where they be? Probably in Chicago a darned sight sooner that this, his inner voice replied. He shook his head roughly, trying to clear the renegade thoughts from his brain, and throwing the cigarette butt into the ditch beside him he climbed back behind the wheel.
"It's 106 miles from Chicago. We've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses." He turned the key in the ignition again, sparing a glance at the girl in the back seat. To his surprise she leaned forward and whispered in his ear, "Hit it."

He grinned at her through the rear-view mirror and floored it. The tyres squealed and left a long streak of rubber on the cracked blacktop.




Jen had never been so scared in all her life. First of all some creepy guy with half a face had done something to her and the next thing she knew she was falling from the sky and landing hard on the highway. A car had narrowly missed her and then the occupants had abducted her! She was seriously beginning to regret running away from home. It had seemed like such a cool idea and then she'd gone to the city and things hadn't worked out quite so well. Not only had she gotten lost but also she kept getting kicked out of squats - who knew there was a code amongst the homeless?

She'd finally found a bunch of warehouses that were completely empty and she'd moved in. And then she'd come back one day to find this freakazoid creep in her space! She'd dropped the bottle she'd scammed from the 7-11 and then he'd shouted something at her. She didn't remember very much after that, just a kind of fog across her mind that made it hard to concentrate. All she wanted to do was get away from the freakazoid. And then when these two men had picked her up she knew she was in real trouble. Her daddy had warned her about the kind of men who picked up girls at the side of the road, a nasty voice in her head Jen thought that maybe her daddy knew so much about the sleazes of the world because he was one.

The fuzziness in her head made it really hard for her to think though, so she'd sat quietly in the back of the car. She just wanted to get back to Chicago and she thought she could hear the voice of the freakazoid telling her that was exactly what she needed to do. Neither of the sleazy guys had tried anything though - the one in the passenger seat just seemed to sleep all the time and the driver, Xander his name was - she thought that was a really funny name but hadn't said anything about it, just looked really angry at something, himself probably.

He stopped the car every now and then for a smoke and Jen thought that was pretty gross. At least he wasn't smoking in the car or anything but hadn't he seen any of those health ed films they showed at school? If he knew what those things did to him then she was sure he wouldn't do it. And then she'd looked at him and realised he had a lot more to worry about than the Big C. He met her eyes for a brief second and it was almost like she could see two people in there. One of them looked really worried and confused - and she knew that feeling intimately! - and the other looked really scary, like he wouldn't think twice about breaking her neck like they did to those monsters on that TV show her friends had watched on Tuesday nights. Her daddy hadn't let her watch it though, said it was too adult for her, but she'd seen it a couple of times anyway - some girl killed monsters for a living. Jen had thought it was okay, but to hear her friends talk you'd think this was the best thing since sliced bread!

He finished his latest smoke and threw it away, so not only was he killing himself but he was littering as well! If she hadn't been so scared she'd have told him off for that! As he walked back round to the driver's side and climbed in it suddenly struck her that she didn't need to be scared of him. She didn't really get why, maybe it was because it looked as though the worried version of him was the one looking at her right now. Whatever the reason was, she made the decision to trust him. The other guy seemed about to wake up and Xander said something about being pretty close to Chicago, he'd looked at her then and on impulse she leaned forward and spoke just to him. "Hit it." And he did.