"But I'm hungry!" With that, the wheel jerked right out from under Gia's hands, the tires ran off into the hissing, popping gravel shoulder, and finally the engine thunked silent like an angry kid slamming a door.

Gia gripped the wheel hard enough for her knuckles to turn white, fighting to control her temper. "How can a thousand-year-old spook like you," she scolded, "suddenly start acting like a six year old?"

"Gia, that hurts," the voice complained, and Gia eased her stranglehold of the steering wheel. She took a deep breath. They'd cleared the badlands proper and were skirting the borders on their way to their destination. But the convalescing Christine had scared away all the predators, and had complained non-stop about being ravenously hungry, culminating in this temper tantrum.

Alright, I'm the sane one, remember? Start acting like it. "Christine," Gia said sweetly to her talking car. Given the surgery she'd been subjected to, "sweetly" was her voice's default mode, but this time she just went with it. "If we're going to work together, you hafta promise me never to yank the wheel away like that when I'm driving. It's not safe."

"...point taken," the car conceded.

"Now, am I right in assuming you're not gonna start up?"

The hood popped open, hiding the moonlit road ahead with a wall of red paint.

"Great. Big sister," Gia fought to hide her impatience. "You're acting like a bratty little sister right now. You know we have a rescue to get to. Clock's ticking."

"And we're likely going into a fight," Christine countered. "So I need to be in fighting trim. Does my engine sound right to you?"

No, Gia admitted to herself, no it doesn't.

"You know what I need to heal up faster. And I can smell it coming up behind us."

"I see." There was no point in arguing any further, not with Christine throwing fits. "Alright, what's the plan?"

"The truck. Hitch a ride with the truck."

She could hear the rumble-hiss of a truck in the distance, closing fast. "Live bait again?"

"Gia, by now I've earned a little trust, huh?"

Bobo

Gia nodded her acquiescence and hurried out of the car into the night, just in time to wave a hitchhiker's thumb at a passing pickup. It slowed to a halt a few car-lengths ahead of Christine. Gia eyed the tall, narrow steel and brushed aluminum trailer, the kind that carried horses or other livestock. What am I getting myself into this time? She caught a whiff of the animal-stink emanating from it and gagged.

So she rushed forward to the dusty pickup and found the passenger's side door hanging open for her. "Car trouble?" A voice rasped from inside the cab. Gia opened it to see an equally dusty, wrinkled old man in western gear at the wheel.

"Yup," she answered. "Old car. Never know when it's gonna blow a cog. Can you gimme a lift?"

The man's wizened face crinkled into a smile. "Hop in." And Gia did. She could smell the whiskey oozing out of his pores. Old lushes like him too often defied the laws against drinking and driving.

Huh! Killed someone 'cause of it, maybe?

The man peered at the inert red Plymouth in his mirror and whistled. "Shame! You fix that car up, girl. She's a beaut'. Don't make 'em like that anymore." He started the engine and they pulled away.

"That is the plan, but getting parts takes time. Looks like I'm stuck for a while. Thanks for the lift."

"Heh! No problem. Can't leave a pretty girl like you alone on the edge'a nowhere. Dangerous world."

He seems nice enough, Gia thought. But he's a murderer. Christine can smell it from miles away. Watch yourself, Gia.

"Howso?" Leading question.

"Kidding, right? I lost family to a bad element. Damn hippies!"

"Oh! I'm sorry."

"Not much younger'n you. See?" Here he pulled his sunflap down, revealing the posed, smiling face of a blonde. Wife? Gia thought. No, hair's too modern. "Daughter," she concluded aloud.

"Uh huh," the man adjusted his stetson. "Adopted. Never did get married. Anyway, dangerous world. Young lady like you needs to be more careful."

"She was lucky to have you, sir. I'm adopted too, after I lost my folks."

"Aw, you're a sweetie, aren't ya? And 'sir' too? Somebody raised you up right."

"I was just gonna say I'd forgotten my manners. Gia Elliott." She gave him a little wave. Despite herself, she found herself warming to this old country gentleman, drunk on no.

"Blake Ryder, and pleased to meet'cha. She was a good kid too, my Melissa."

Gia noted that he didn't react to the Elliott name, so the man wasn't an occultist or otherwise supernatural. One more variable out of the equation. Of course, that also means the family name won't protect me.

"What happened?"

"You sure you wanna hear about this? It don't make for nice conversation."

Gia shrugged. "Morbid curiosity. And we've got a long way to the next town." Just pull threads. Watch the whole rotten tapestry come undone.

"Well, see I made my living as an animal trainer for the movies. Stuntman too. I was off on a safari, something of a business trip, and these damned hippies on their drugs - I figured out they met Melissa through some friends at that pricy private school I sent her to - anyway, this guy name Dude and his pals came in, all coked up. Fed her a Mickey."

Gia didn't have to pretend to look sympathetic.

"Sure I don't hafta tell you what went on after, or what I found when I got back."

"Drugs," Gia commented. "They make people do strange things."

"Hell yeah, pump enough of 'em into a body, you don't got a whole lot left. Hey, you're not hopped up on something, are you?"

"No sir, I am not!" Gia said spiritedly. "I get that all the time 'cause my face's so weird. But that's nerve damage from an operation."

"Didn't go well, huh?

"Not for me, it didn't." Gia had all this planned out by now. She could lie quite ably by omission and misdirection. The operation had worked exactly as designed, but there was no need to tell him that.

"Now you don't look all that bad," the man gallantly offered.

"And you have no room to talk, Mr. Ryder. I can smell your drinking. Not that I blame you for it after that story."

Ryder grunted. "Yeah, I see what you mean. But me, I got a fair excuse. What was theirs?"

"None. Some people are just plain bad." Gia stared out at the waxing moon.

"I'll drink to that, now you bring it up." He produced a silver hip-flask from his back pocket and took a swig, other hand never leaving the wheel. "Y'know, I met a trucker once, rigged up his windshield-washer reservoir with a little tube and filled it up with corn likker. Ain't that something? Cops never did catch on." He pocketed the flask again.

"I can't say I approve, Mr. Ryder. But it is inventive." Time for the million-dollar question. "What happened to Dude?"

"Oh, I roughed 'em up some, ended up in jail for assault an' battery. But the judge only gave me two years with good behavior. Dude and his friends got the book thrown at 'em, and that's as much as I know."

"You still an animal trainer?"

"Nope. Got out of that business a while ago. Young man's game."

"So what're you hauling? I figured you had horses or something back there."

"Oh no, that just Bobo."

"Bobo?"

"Gorilla."

"Seriously?"

"Now would I lie to you?" Ryder said with a grin at Gia's surprise. "I used to show Bobo off at carnivals and so on. But all those shows got shut down a while back."

"Aren't they endangered?"

"Yup. Bobo only has me, though. Can't release him, he's too damn old, like me. So I take care of him. I'll show him to you when we get to town, if you like."

Seeing some broken-down, smelly old ape was pretty low on Gia's list, but... keep pulling. "I'd like that. Shouldn't you give him to a zoo?"

"Don't think it'd be right by him."

She answered some of his questions about her for a while, nimbly dodging anything that might reveal her disability, her intentions or her slavering pet demon, until finally she asked, "what were you doing in safari?"

"Research. See, the old witch doctors there, they know all kinds of tricks with drugs. Come in handy for some of the meaner animals. Y'know, makes 'em more docile."

"Uh huh... Gia nodded. She saw bright fog lights in the truck's mirror and checked her seatbelt. She felt a little surge of smug satisfaction even as she braced for impact.

"Damn hippies racing around with their brights turned on—!"

WHAM! The trailer imploded, crushed like a soda can from behind. The wheels shimmied and sent shockwaves through the attached pickup, forcing Ryder to hit the brakes.

Ryder cursed up a streak as he yanked up the parking brake, tore off his seatbelt and shoved his door open, Gia padding right behind him. Ryder's charge faltered when he saw beyond the glare the familiar lines of the red Plymouth Fury. "The hell...?" he bellowed back at Gia. Then he rushed to the driver's side door—

...only to recoil with a little squeak as the tinted window rolled down to reveal a decaying mask of flesh and bone. The cabin light flicked on. The uneasy spectres Christine carried sat inside in various states of injury and decay, grinning at him.

Gia put a hand over her mouth, not to stifle a scream but a giggling fit. This was, Gia knew, one of Christine's favorite stunts whenever somebody actually dared to get close enough. "Men hide their fear with anger," the Fury had told her. "When they act their maddest, they're really only a hair away from pissing themselves." Gia had long ago stopped being afraid of the ghoulish apparitions and these days was even on a friendly basis with former drivers Roland and Arnold. Perhaps one day, Gia thought dolefully, she too would live on inside the car.

She took the moment to peek inside the reeking can of the cattle-carrier, only to recoil with a matching squeal of her own. The blood leaking from it she'd expected. The hairy mess in its own waste she'd expected.

She'd not expected the fur to have torn, revealing pale pink skin.

Both Ryder and Gia stood for a moment, shivering in perfectly mirrored horror and confusion, until Gia broke the tableau and snarled. She turned away from the abominable, stinking ruin of crumpled aluminum and glared at Ryder with that one look, all arched eyebrows, gritted teeth and glassy eyes, that revealed her as adopted kin to the Erinyes.

The car's front bumper had torn, and the jagged hood looked like the gaping maw of a shark. It backed away so abruptly the tires shrieked, emitting a cloud of burnt rubber. It pivoted just enough to lock its blazing lights onto Ryder. The behemoth lunged forward.

"Stop," Gia commanded calmly.

The car braked and the engine actually skipped a beat. Vapor-locked in front of Ryder, the mighty V-8 fought to shake off a stall. "You're kidding!" The voice inside shouted.

"...what...?" Ryder ventured.

"Shut up," Gia said calmly over the roar of the engine revving in neutral. She knew Christine was foaming-at-the-chops furious. Gia noticed the rear license plate had torn away from the cattle-car. She picked it up.

"Mr. Ryder, unhitch your trailer. Just do it!" She automatically stomped out any protest.

Confusion, mortal terror and fury of his own warring inside him, the old man mechanically obeyed. As he did so, Gia walked forward to the pickup's cab, and returned with the photograph of Melissa.

She showed it to him, then crumpled it into a pocket. "Christine, off the road with it."

With a growl, Christine obeyed, smashing into the cattle-car from the side. It actually hung aloft for half a second on its way off the road and the embankment into the darkness. Gia waited calmly until the tinny noises and clatters ceased.

"Mr. Ryder," she said solemnly, "you're free. I've set you free of it. No more Melissa, no more Dude. Nothing left. You go do something else with what's left of your life. Go start a new one, or crawl up a bottle and die, or whatever. But you get out of here."

He hesitated, literally struck dumb.

"Go on, git!" Gia commanded, as if shooing away a stray dog. So the man walked to his pickup, climbed in, started his engine and drove away.

Gia and Christine watched until his tail-lights vanished. "Good girl," Gia said to her partner, stroking her fender. Partner... yeah.

"He's a murderer," Christine husked. Gia watched as the damage repaired itself, metal knitting and dents inflating with groans and pops. Her engine sounded much better.

"He was a nice man who adopted a little girl and raised her well." Gia sat back down in the wonderful oxblood-leather seats and dumped Ryder's crumpled plate and Melissa's photo in back for later disposal. The car's interior was showroom-perfect again. "It'd be incredibly hypocritical for you to destroy him for avenging the murder of his daughter."

"Don't compare what we do to what he did," Christine protested. "I just kill people."

Gia cocked an eyebrow, shifted gears and started them forward again.

"I don't bake people's brains on drugs, hobble them and sew 'em into fancy showbiz gorilla suits."

Two yellowed, bloodshot monkey eyes pleaded miserably from the rear-view mirror. Gia resolved to ignore them. Dude was no longer of any importance. "Settle down, partner. You got your snack, and we're in a hurry." She flicked on the AV and started looking for some nice song to calm Tisiphone down.

"You were once a warm companion..." tremoloed from the speakers. Gia smiled.

"You and your show tunes," Christine groused, though Gia knew better.

"You were once a friend and father," Gia sang along. "Then the world was shattered."

"I'm nothing like him!" the voice nagged over the music as they drove off together into the country-dark night. "And I don't mind telling you my 'snack' tasted fuuuhn-key!"

For Aubigne Spratling.

.