Roadkill by Rob Thurman

“we will talk about it.”
    Sooner would be my bet, and those, unfortunately, were always the bets I won.
    I drove on while Niko meditated. I didn’t see Bigfoot, not until we arrived at the RV park, and then I saw them everywhere. Campers with their shirts off and backs hairier than any Sasquatch, Yeti, or woolly mammoth combined. My trigger finger twitched because, honestly, was someone with a carpet on his back, plaid shorts, socks and sandals, any less of a threat to the world—at least visually? But I drove past them and didn’t shoot a single one. I wished for a Weedwacker or a little temporary blindness, but I didn’t shoot, and that got chalked in the success column.
    I followed Abelia- Roo’s directions via Nik, who’d gotten them from her when he’d spoken with her on the phone. He’d written them down for me in his neat, precise handwriting. “Hey, we’re here. Nap’s over.”
    “Meditation isn’t a nap and if you think it is, maybe once an hour isn’t enough for you.” Niko nodded toward a gravel road to the right.
    Hourly was doable. Five, ten minutes and I zipped right through the mantras counted on my mala, but zipping through them probably wasn’t the point. But flying through them or not, it was obviously working, or the meditation combined with the death of the Auphe was working. I’d made those three gates in the past six months without any of the Auphe side effects of the past. It was simple. I didn’t lose myself to it or to something buried in me. I owned it now. It didn’t own me. Only getting Niko to see that was going to be a trick, because he had seen the times it had owned me. And the memory of an Auphe-hissing brother, teeth stained with blood, and sanity on a temporary vacation, stuck with a person. It had stuck with Nik; that was for sure.
    I just had to get him to see the light, and with his being equally as stubborn as I was, that was going to be a problem. When he was smarter than I was and capable of picking me up off the ground by my neck à la Darth Vader without the asthma—not that he would, but he could—that meant I rarely won an argument. At least I had the upper hand in knowing he wouldn’t actually kill me—no matter how much I deserved it.
    I stopped the car before a half circle of about thirty RVs. There wasn’t a single person outside. That was different from the last time. They’d been wary, but I’d seen women, kids, and the not-so-shy-and-retiring muscle Branje who’d almost lost his nose to my temper. “How much do you think they have? The Sarzo Clan? Like down to the penny?”
    “Fair-sized clan.” He took in the condition of the RVs. “Their homes aren’t too old, definitely not decrepit. Important enough to have several antiques lying about for sale.” Like the Calabassa crown that had nearly been the cause of his death. “Liquid assets, probably a hundred thousand. Abelia- Roo is sharp in all ways. I doubt her money-making skills are any less effective.”
    “Okay then.” I pulled the key from the ignition and tossed it to him. “In case you want to listen to the radio,” I said, smirking.
    His eyebrows went up. “You think I’m going to let you do the negotiating without me? You wanted to pistol-whip her last night. Both of us would provide a more balanced approach.”
    “Is that your tactful way of saying we play Good Ninja, Bad Monster?” I asked. I opened the door and climbed out of the oven. Draping over the top of the immovable window, I leaned down. “I need this, Nik. Because of her, you almost died. All she had to do was say a few words to warn us. Just a couple and she didn’t. If it had been me instead of you, wouldn’t you want to make her pay a little?”
    That brought the brows down, the expression disappearing from his face. “I would want her to pay more than a little. I would want her to pay a great deal, which is why I don’t think your being alone with her is a good idea.”
    “I won’t lay a finger on