The man screamed . . . and so did the bird.
Dan Cody sucked a ragged breath, filling the clammy bellows of his lungs with an acrid mixture of odors: hot exhaust and stagnant air; his own sweat and the stink of death; the sweet black perfume of Leti’s hair and the iron-filing smell of clotted blood that slicked her scalp.
Dan lay there, shaking, locked in his lover’s dead embrace atop a plastic drop cloth. It was pitch-black inside the trunk, and Dan couldn’t see a thing.
Not with his own eyes. But he seemed to have another pair of eyes now. These were black as polished obsidian, and they saw everything—Dan’s own reflection, and the reflection of a bird painting the trunk of the car with its shadow . . . and black wings soaring through a desert night, and a canopy of stars . . .
A spark flared in Dan Cody’s heart, fought to tinder his soul, fought to burn brightly . . .
Bird and man joined as one. Dan’s hands twisted into claws. The wild desert wind whispered beneath his beating wings. Black feathers sprouted from his wounded shoulder, his exploded knee. His talons were strong and sharp and long, and they strained toward the Mercury’s trunk one more time, ready to ignite a wildfire of vengeance—
Gunfire exploded in the night.
A bullet tore feathers and broke ribs, ripping through the Crow’s body.
Pain eclipsed Dan Cody’s senses.
His first breath died in his throat, along with the scream of rebirth.
The bird was gone.
The spark was gone.
For the second time that night, Dan Cody died.
The wind tore at Kyra’s crimson-black hair, whipping it against her face like a lash, but she didn’t care. She leaned through the Merc’s open passenger-side window, staring at the receding ribbon of highway with a smoking gun clutched in her hand.
In the distance, a wounded bird writhed in pain. Kyra saw it there on the blacktop—just for a second—black and bloody in the glow of a grapefruit moon . . . and then the bird was taken by darkness.
Kyra grinned, cold wind ripping through her tangled hair as she leaned backward out the window, eyes turned to the hungry black sky overhead.
A lot of stars up there. A lot of sky. The heavens, that was what some people called it, and that made Kyra Damon laugh. Because, at the moment, she felt as if every inch of that marvelous star- spattered eternity was her own black domain.
Moonlight glinted on the chrome link necklace looped thirteen times around Kyra’s neck. Satisfied, she pulled her head inside the Merc and dropped the .357. The gun made a solid, satisfying thunk as it hit the floorboards.
Johnny Church snatched up the resin-encased scorpion he’d taken from the trading post, used it to beat a voodoo rhythm on the dashboard. “Man,” he said. “Did you see those feathers fly?”
“Kyra’s quite the sharpshooter,” said Raymondo. “I’ll admit that. But the hexed bullets didn’t hurt.”
“Dead man’s tears,” Kyra said. “I only needed a few.” She smiled at the shrunken head, and one last teardrop rolled down its cheek. “Thanks, Raymondo. I’m glad you decided to join the team.”
“Anything for you. Besides, it’s your way or the highway, as our feathered friend just learned.”
“Do you think the Crow’s really dead?” Kyra asked. “Think we finished him this time?”
“Better believe it, sweet thing,” Johnny said. “That bird’s road pate.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Raymondo cautioned. “It might look like pate to you, but I say all we did was buy a little time between appetizers. Believe me—Crow isn’t off the menu yet. ”
“Are you serious, Raymondo? Kyra blew a hole right through that little fucker. Separated his wing-bone from his reanimation-bone.”
“Trust me on this one, Johnnyboy.”
“Man, if I'd known that, I would have stopped the damn car and backed over the bird a few times. Made damn sure it was dead.”
Kyra sucked a sharp clean breath between her teeth, held it a moment, then released it. “There’s more to it than that, Johnny. A lot more.”
“Then what are we gonna do? How are we gonna get rid of the bodies? How are we gonna keep the Crow from peckin’ the fucking life back into them?”
“I’ve got a few ideas,” Raymondo said.
The shrunken head sketched it out for them. Kyra listened to Raymondo’s dry little voice, found music there, and elsewhere. In the purr of the Mercury’s well-tuned engine, in the hushed whisper of whitewall tires on a lonely desert highway.
The wind rushed through the open window, and Kyra closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, the rich smell of sage and pinon filling her lungs like a dusty perfume. She knew Raymondo was right. The Crow wouldn’t surrender so easily. Kyra could almost see the bird back there on the road, knitting itself together, sinew by sinew, muscle by muscle, feather by feather.
The wing-bone connecting to the reanimation-bone.
Kyra wasn’t sure where it would all lead. Anxiety gripped her— perhaps a systemic effect of the scorpion attack, perhaps not.
Perhaps it was only fear she felt.
And perhaps that fear was well-placed.
Kyra’s fingers drifted to her cheeks, drifted over the welts left by the arachnids’ lashing telsons. Their barbed tails had done her damage, spell of protection or not. That damage was not as severe as it might have been, and the lingering reminders that she bore on her flesh would fade soon enough, but it was the venom that burned beneath her wounds that concerned her now.
For the venom, she understood quite suddenly, was of her own making.
She could no more escape it than she could escape the Crow.
Even if she managed to destroy the black messenger, another might travel the dark highways in its wake, and another . . . the birds might trail her until white daylight was black with wings, relentless as a pack of hellhounds on her tail.
The birds had no choice.
They had to follow.
They were creatures like no others. . . .
Driven by unnamed instincts that pumped through their beating wings like black fire . . . driven by the primitive concept of tribal retribution buried deep in the base of their avian brains . . . driven by the ancient thirst for vengeance.
This drive was inherent to the ancient code, part of the Crow’s lore that had been passed on through the ages as a species-specific memory. Kyra Damon was well-versed in the details. She had to be, if she were to succeed in her mission.
To succeed, she’d have to destroy the entire Corvid clan. She knew how to do that. Knew the avenues to travel, the precautions to take.
For once, near death, Kyra Damon had glimpsed the realm of the Crow.
And, like no one else who had ever walked this earth, she had lived to tell the tale.
Kyra winced, strangling on the memory, her breath trapped in her chest. The Crow had caused her great pain, pain she could never forget. But remembering that pain was just as dangerous, for memory made the pain much too real, and suddenly Kyra’s chrome necklace seemed much too tight, its thirteen loops encircling her throat like a hangman’s noose—
Kyra exhaled sharply, drew a deep breath of clean desert air.
Her hand went to her throat, and the pulse beat she found there was wild and alive.
Johnny, ever attentive, turned his eyes from the road and said: “What’re you thinkin’ about, Ky?”
“Revenge,” Kyra said, staring down the white line that split the midnight highway. And then she reached in the backseat, rifling through the tangle of guns and potions and powders and talismans, and her fingers closed around a black book, its tattered cover ridged and cracked with tiny fissures like scars ... or the almost imperceptible gaps between a Crow’s feathers.
Kyra closed her eyes. Touching the book was almost like touching the Crow itself.
She was so close now. Closer than she’d ever been.
Kyra didn’t say another word.
Neither did Johnny.
But
he laughed, and there was a nasty tone to his laughter that Kyra liked.
She liked it a lot.
Arizona Highway 90
46 miles southeast of Tucson
At the shrunken head’s direction, Johnny Church drove north toward the bright lights of Tucson. More specifically he headed for Interstate 10, which would take them through Tucson to Phoenix. While the Interstate was definitely more risky than the deserted secondary roads they usually traveled, it was a hell of a lot more direct. And Johnny Church liked direct.
Church was riding high on blood and adrenaline and the thrill of the kill. Sure, the main roads were way more cop-intensive, but Johnny wasn’t afraid of the law tonight. Not any man-made law, that is. Besides, the plan was to dump the corpses long before they reached the Interstate.
Get rid of the Crowbait ASAP. Yeah. That was all right with Johnny Church.
Where and when that would happen, Johnny didn’t have a clue. Kyra had said that her instincts were driving her north and west, and Johnny trusted Kyra’s instincts. They were strong, and she knew when to listen to them. The signs would come. They always did. And until they did, Johnny was content to put the pedal to the metal.
There wasn’t much to see out here—dark plains and scrub-covered hills and dry, sandy washes. They passed silently through the sleepy desert communities of Mescalero and El Vado. The residents—mostly Mexican Americans—were nowhere in sight. For all Johnny knew, these might have been ghost towns—the bones of adobes and a few scattered pottery fragments all that remained to mark their place in the sands of time.
Just north of Yucca Valley, Raymondo told Johnny to take the next right. The next right turned out to be an unmarked dirt road. It wasn’t much more than a rutted trail, really. Judging by the potholes, Johnny figured it hadn’t been traveled since the days of Wild West stagecoaches and goddamned stinking mule trains.
The Merc bounced over a wooden bridge spanning a dry arroyo choked with stones. Crumpled beer cans glittered in the starlight. The road wasn’t any better on the other side of the bridge—the whitewalls kicked up clouds of dust that hung behind them like dirty shrouds. Johnny clicked on the high-beams, saw nothing ahead but dirt road and a whole lot of wide, wide lonesome.
He wondered if they were headed for a cemetery or something, maybe even a boot hill from the old days. That would be cool in Johnny's book. They could deep-six the Injun chick and her cow- boyfriend in a patch of unhallowed ground, cover them over with the bones of some serious outlaw badasses who would keep them in line. Imprisoned beneath jailhouse ribcages that had once contained the hearts of the Clantons and McLowrys and their badass brethren, Johnny figured that Hardin and Cody wouldn’t be escaping their earthly bonds anytime soon.
Not even the Crow could do anything about that. If the black bird so much as tried to mess with the grave, those same outlaw badasses would dig their way out of the ground, cut down the fine- feathered fuck with their six-shooters, then eat themselves a little Crow . . .
Oh, yeah. Johnny pictured the scene as the car bucked over the dirt road. He didn’t have a hard time doing that, because there were only two things in the world at which Johnny Church excelled.
Killing . . . and dreaming. Mrs. Church’s only child had always dreamed to hit the sky, but most of the time reality had an ugly way of shooting those dreams down . . . just like those imaginary gunslingers slaughtering the Crow.
Just like now. Because even though Johnny couldn’t see his destination through the Merc’s dusty windshield—he could smell it.
And no boot hill cemetery smelled this bad. Johnny wrinkled his nose. “Jesus, Raymondo, where the hell are we going?”
“We’re going to get rid of some trash.”
Johnny grimaced. Man, the dead head’s creepy-crawly voice always got to him. Part cheesy sci-fi theremin, part all-too-real seance . . .
“You know about trash . . . don’t you, Johnny?”
“Yeah, I know about trash, ya dumb little—”
“And you know where you take trash, don’t you, Johnny?”
What a stupid question, Johnny thought. Shit, everyone knows where you take trash.
Johnny was about to tell Raymondo where to get off when he caught the smug look on the shrunken head’s face. Instantly, he knew that the head was going to make him look like a moron again. It wasn’t exactly a rare event, and the most perplexing thing about it was that Johnny could never seem to do anything that would stop it from happening. He could never fucking win: no matter what he said, Raymondo would figure a way to make him look like a moron.
So, really, there was only one thing Johnny could do.
He raised the middle finger of his right hand, and thrust it in Raymondo’s face.
“Johnny Church’s patented postmodern peace sign,” Raymondo said. “I’ve seen it before and I’ll see it again . . . but it doesn’t answer my question.”
Johnny kept his mouth shut. This time he wouldn’t say a word. He wouldn’t get mad, he wouldn’t—
“Maybe you don't know where you take trash, Johnnyboy,” Raymondo said. “Maybe your kinfolk never learned you. Maybe Ma and Pa Church liked their trash.”
Johnny wanted to slap the little bastard, knock his head against the windshield like an egg, see his brains running down the glass like yolk—
Raymondo charged on: “Maybe around the Church hacienda, trash was something that wore a see-through nightie and high- heeled slippers and answered to the name of Ma. That the way of it, amigo?”
“Raymondo, that’s enough,” Kyra said sharply . . . but she didn’t mean it. Johnny could see that. Ky was choking back laughter, and that infuriated Johnny, made him all the more determined that somehow, someday, he’d crack Raymondo’s shrunken skull. He hated this low-man-on-the-totem-pole shit, hated Kyra and Raymondo treating him like some distant number three who was just along for chauffeur duty. Once they got through this, once things really changed and he got himself some power of his own that didn’t come from the barrel of a gun—
“Sorry, Kyra,” Raymondo said, derailing Johnny’s train of thought. “I was just trying to teach young Mr. Church a thing or two about modern hygienic practices—”
“You take the trash to the goddamned dump,” Johnny said, because now he couldn’t help himself. “That’s what my mom did. And she didn’t wear no see-through nightie or no high-heeled slippers while she did it, you fuckin’ perv—”
“Thirteen points!” Raymondo interrupted, his voice low and sonorous, as if he were channeling the spirit of some netherworld game show host. “Give that boy a personalized tombstone!”
“I’d rather have a fuckin’ gas mask.” Johnny cranked up the window. “This place stinks.”
Johnny followed a ripe midnight trail, through piles of plastic garbage bags that gleamed like fat black beetles.
Mountains of waste towered here. Wooden chairs bristled with broken spines that scratched at the sides of Johnny’s ’49 Merc. A Barbie doll lay facedown in a dogshit sandwich. The windows of a battered Victorian dollhouse framed a rat orgy writhing within. Bloated, toadlike footstools swam in fungus seas. A stained, reeking mattress from a Mexican bordello lay like a raft in a sluice of liquefied garbage and putrefaction. And the flies . . . they were everywhere, their fat, blue-black bodies eagerly spreading filth and disease.
Man, Johnny wanted to do a job on this place. Take some of the black market grenades he'd bought from that white supremacist up in Idaho and light up the whole dump.
Of course, Johnny wouldn’t do that. To say the grenades had cost him an arm and a leg was an understatement. Hey, he wasn’t going to waste them on entertainment. He’d save his precious little pineapples until he ran into a situation where he really needed ’em . . . some situation where he wanted to cost some other motherfucker an arm and a leg, literally.
Still, the dump freaked him good. The place was like the flipside of last year—the corrupt result of a million magazine ads and hardsell sales pitches that sucker
ed people into the malls and onto the Internet with promises of the American Dream. Money leveraged out of credit card accounts, heavily mortgaged dream homes crammed with junk . . . and all of it ended up here while Bob and Betty Suburbs continued to pay interest on a decent—or not so decent—burial for the fruits of disposable income.
The All-American dumping ground. Christ, the Dead Kennedys said it best: Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables.
Naturally, the dump was starting to give Johnny the creeps.
“Looks like my kind of place,” Raymondo said.
“Yeah, this is sweet,” Kyra agreed, hardcore to the end. “Real sweet.”
Sweet was not a word Johnny Church would have used to describe this place. But hey, he was the hired hand on this little side trip, not the head honcho. Guns, ammo, and action were one thing; a mondo juju roadshow in the town dump was quite another.
That kind of deal called for Kyra Damon’s peculiar talents.
And—Johnny grudgingly admitted—Raymondo’s.
“Park it here,” Raymondo said.
Johnny did. “Man,” he said, “this sure ain’t no Garden of Everlastin’ Fuckin’ Peace. This place is pretty putrid.”
Raymondo chuckled. “Maybe so, but it’s the perfect location for our needs. Now, untie me. I’ve got to make sure you do this right.”
“I’ll do it right,” Johnny said, bristling. “I don’t need no pint- sized watchdog on my back.”
“Actually, I’ll be around your neck . . . and you damn well better do this right. We wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for Johnny Church and his itchy trigger finger. You’re the one who wasted those two sacks of excrement in Scorpion Flats. And now you’re the one who’ll bury them.”
With supreme effort, Johnny kept his mouth shut. But his right hand tightened into a fist, spiderweb-tattooed knuckles bulging, fingers alive with heavy silver rings. Man, just once he’d like to bust Raymondo’s tiny black jawbone, tear through his mummified flesh, mash his brains like a bowl of monkey pulp.
Kyra Damon’s hand dropped over Johnny’s trembling fist like a cool white sheet.
Wicked Prayer Page 6