... a Crow.
Dan stood in the rain, staring through the Mercury’s windshield.
A scorpion rested on the dashboard, its armored hide encased in plastic resin. Maybe it was a scorpion Dan had caught, maybe one he’d given Leti on their very first date.
Dan stood there—a sawed-off shotgun in one hand and a rope in the other, Bowie knife and Colt .45 tucked beneath his belt— staring at Johnny Church’s murderous souvenir. Overhead, the Crow circled, wings scything wind-tossed currents, steely beak spread in an impatient caw.
Dan turned away from the car, ready to answer the Crow’s cry.
And then he heard another. The scream came from the opposite direction—from the old house with walls as black as the stormy sky—and the wind drove the sound through rain and sleet, and it was as if the storm had torn the scream into tiny shreds of agony that lashed Dan Cody’s face.
Light spilled from a lone window on the second story— Another scream, and this time the wind brought it to him whole, and Dan could identify it.
A woman’s scream.
Dan turned toward the house.
The Crow called from above, and Dan looked up at it. The bird had heard the woman’s scream, too. It dived toward Dan, landed on the Merc’s polished hood. It pecked at the thick windshield, impatiently, as if it needed something from Johnny Church’s automobile.
Dan knew what the bird wanted. Something encased in plastic resin. Something with a barbed, stinging tail.
Dan wanted it, too.
Kyra stared into the columbarium niche. “Hearse must have given Lilith Spain a key to this place,” she said. “Maybe they came up here together, amused themselves among the dead.”
“How romantic,” Raymondo said.
Kyra didn’t even hear the joke. “Anyway, Lilith must have come up here . . . and she must have stared through the glass . . . and what she saw was a Crow made of porcelain.”
“And that was all the little burnout saw. She didn’t even know what she was looking at.”
“But she saw it, all the same. That’s all that counts. Seeing the porcelain Crow was enough to make Lilith part of my vision.”
The shrunken head laughed. “Imagine us thinking that the little fool actually had some power of her own. Even if she did possess psychic gifts, her drug use would have dulled them a long time ago.”
Kyra stared at the porcelain Crow. “So what does your radar tell you about this?”
“I’m not sure. I only know that it’s the thing you’ve been looking for.”
Kyra nodded. She was quiet for a long moment. Above, rain hammered down on the columbarium roof But even the most violent storm could not penetrate this place. Kyra knew that. It would take more than weather, more than the simple forces of nature to wreak havoc on a stronghold guarded by the Crow.
Much more.
Kyra stared at the thin sheet of glass that sealed the columbarium niche which held the old tobacco jars. The porcelain Crow seemed to stare at her, not blinking, the same way its all-too-real counterpart had. She almost expected the porcelain bird’s beak to split in a violent, cawing slash at any moment.
“I suppose this is what the poets call the moment of truth,” Kyra said.
“Yes,” Raymondo whispered. “I guess it is.”
Kyra walked across the room, to a place where a set of iron sconces knifed from the wall. She tied Raymondo to one of the sconces and lit the candles above his head.
The wicks were damp, and the candles sputtered, and flickering flames danced on glass-covered niches.
Kyra crossed the chamber, eyeing the porcelain Crow as she approached. Standing before it, she inhaled deeply. Then she lashed out with an elbow, and glass shattered, and brittle shards hit the floor and crackled at her feet.
At long last, she reached into the niche that held so many secrets.
Kyra Damon snatched the Crow in a black embrace.
Johnny Church dropped his studded belt on the carpet.
Yeah, Kyra’s betrayal didn’t sting quite so badly now. Johnny felt a little better.
Like he’d set the wrong things right... or something.
Lilith Spain lay on the bed, naked, her flesh alive with welts that writhed like red snakes. Johnny knew the welts would fade, the same way her screams had.
Now the woman only whimpered. Pretty soon she wouldn’t even do that. Pretty soon she’d be quiet as a corpse. That’s when Johnny’d go at her again, break her in like a good little kidnapping victim.
Yeah. After all, this was Hearse Castle. And now Lilith was his own little “Patti Hearse.”
Johnny chuckled. Until it was time for round two, well, there was always Erik Hearse’s entertainment center. Johnny’d get started on one of those splatter videos he wanted to watch. He walked over to the big console, grabbed Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things and—
The bedroom window exploded.
A shower of glass with a rainwater chaser.
A blast of wind tore into the room, slapping Johnny’s battered face like a cold hand.
Man, the storm was getting bad. The wind was blowing hard enough to break a fucking window, and that was rough. Johnny’d never even seen weather like this. It was something new, something different—
Then Johnny noticed something on the floor.
He stared down at the thing that lay at his feet.
The thing that had broken the window.
Yeah. This was something different, all right.
A puddle of broken glass and, in it, a resin-encased scorpion, barbed tail raised as if ready to strike.
“Shit!” Johnny said, because instantly he knew what the scorpion meant.
His shoulder holster lay on the crushed velvet chair, draped over his canvas equipment bag and Dan Cody’s leather coat. Johnny grabbed the gun, headed for the window.
Dark outside ... he couldn’t see anything—
A flash of lightning.
A shadow among the tombstones.
Just like Johnny suspected. The goddamned cowboy was down there, heading for the house.
Another flash of lightning, but this time it came from the ground, and with it came a black hailstorm.
Buckshot ripped into Johnny Church’s chest, peppered his face, knocked him across the room.
Johnny lay flat on his back, the wind knocked out of him, his chest a solar flare, his torn face on fire.
Dan Cody. The son of a bitch.
The dead man had a shotgun—
Thirty more feet and Dan would be at the front door.
Ready to send Johnny Church through hell’s back door.
Dan hurried forward, through a knot of tombstones. He’d cut a path through them, and then—
Explosions. One after another, a succession of strobe-light flashes, and a quick trip into nightmare time.
The first grenade exploded about ten feet in front of Dan, on the other side of a granite tombstone. The blast turned the stone into rubble that pelted him like gunfire, but he kept moving, kept going forward.
Into the path of the second grenade. It came closer, bounced off a marble slab and flew past Dan like a brush-back pitch, and he dodged out of the way just in time, jumping for cover, twisting in midair as the grenade hit the soft earth.
It exploded, and Dan’s head was filled with thunder as the grenade dug a hole halfway to a corpse that was far past noticing, and the concussion of the blast tumbled Cody through the storm.
He came down on the bronze slab, shrapnel-torn and dazed. A long patch of flesh was gone from his right shoulder and arm, and an angry red pit hollowed his belly. But the wounds didn’t hurt. No. Dan was past pain. And he needed the shotgun. He’d lost it somewhere. His nails raked bronze as he hunted for the weapon, and he tried to get up but his blasted shoulder wouldn’t do the job, and he realized with startling clarity that there were no more quick fixes, no more Crow-induced healing sessions, and here in this cemetery he’d dropped and here he might very well stay.
The Crow cawed above but Dan couldn’t answer. He wondered if there was enough of him left to answer anyone and—
The shotgun. He had to find it. He looked for it in the shadows . . . but it was gone.
So he made a grab for the Colt .45, but it wasn’t under his belt. He must have lost it, too, and—
“Head’s up, cowboy!"
Dan looked up at the window. Johnny Church stood there, his bruised face freckled with blood, a .357 pistol fisted in his hand.
Church aimed the pistol, and he emptied it. Bullets slammed through Cody’s flesh, sang off the bronze memorial slab behind him and then tore through him again, ricocheting into the rain.
One way in and one way out.
But no pain. No pain at all.
And Dan still couldn’t move. His brain wouldn’t fire his neurons, wouldn’t bring his dead muscles alive. Something was wrong, something inside him . . . and he was too weak to set it right, and if he didn’t move soon—
Johnny was all out of hand grenades.
But that was okay. When it came to saying adios to his old pal Dan Cody, he wanted to do the job up close and personal.
He grabbed Cody’s shot-up leather coat, slipped it over his naked upper torso. Hurt like hell because his hide was peppered with buckshot, each little sliver making his skin scream. But pain wasn’t stopping him.
Johnny grabbed the sheathed Crow ceremonial knife and shoved it in his back pocket. A handful of bullets waited in the left pocket of Cody’s jacket, and Johnny C jammed every one of them into the Magnum’s cylinder as he pounded down the stairs and jumped the corpses he’d left in the hallway.
He gave the cylinder a spin, stepped out the door, raised the pistol. And there was Dan Cody, waiting for him. Good ol’ Dan, you could always count on him to show up at the worst fucking time. Want to get laid? Want to watch a movie? Crave a little quality time with your latest victim? Uh-uh pal, better forget it, ’cause here comes Mr. I Can’t Take a Hint.
And wasn’t that the truth. Because here was good ol’ Dan, Leticia Hardin’s very own cowboyfriend, squirming around on a bronze cemetery slab (talk about your hints of the hideously transparent variety), still acting the Western hero even though he was shorn of his gun and his hat and his horse and even his black fuckin’ bird.
Man, Cody was all tore up. Johnny laughed. A locomotin’ corpse finally running out of steam, laying there looking like something out of a Blasphemers video.
You’re dead, Dannyboy. Get over it.. . and give it up.
Yeah, well. It appeared ol’ Dan needed some help on that score.
Johnny stood on the edge of the porch. Cold rain lashed his bleeding face, and then came a scream.
The scream of a bird . . .
And the Crow lashed Johnny’s face, too. The bird’s talons ripped a ragged line over Church’s close-cut scalp. A steely beak hammered his skull. Johnny whirled, trying to brain the bird with his big pistol, but it was gone in a ragged slap of wings.
It rose in the night, and Johnny watched it. Had to be that Dan Cody’s little pal had some strength left in him somewhere, despite what Kyra and Raymondo thought. Had to be. Because the bird flew low through the silver rain, wings spread wide now, almost fuckin’ gliding like it wanted to taunt Johnny and—
He raised his pistol. Fired once, twice . . . and the Crow evaded the bullets, dipping and diving and . . . three, four, five shots as the bird descended through a marble gauntlet and the bullets found nothing but stone.
Six shots . . . and that was all. Johnny’s last shot was no better than his first, and now the gun was empty.
Johnny swore at the heavens. He jammed a big hand into his pocket, but there weren’t any more bullets, and—
He glanced over at the big bronze slab where Dan Cody lay. The fucker was getting up. Trying to, anyway. His fucking skull was cracked like the liberty bell, and one eye bugged from his head like a hard-boiled egg, and you could damn near read the names on the tombstones behind him through the bullet holes in his carcass . . .
But he was getting up.
Again!
Jesus! How many times was Johnny going to have to kill this fucker! He’d killed Cody in Scorpion Flats. He’d buried his ass in a dump. Then he’d killed him again in Vegas, left his ass in a puddle of blood. And now—
Well, this time Johnny was going to get it right, and the black bird couldn’t do a damn thing to stop him. It was going to take a lot more than a sharp beak and a set of talons to stop Johnny Church tonight, because Erik Hearse’s security guards hadn’t done it, and neither had a double load of buckshot.
One thing Johnny was sure of: the dead man who’d pulled the shotgun trigger sure as hell wasn’t going to get another crack at it.
No. This was it. Last round, coming up. Final exit, just ahead.
Signal 13. Red asphalt.
Johnny screamed into the storm.
He jumped off the porch, big boots splashing through a gray puddle.
He slipped the Mountain Clan Crow ceremonial knife from its leather sheath.
This time there wouldn’t be enough left of Cody to come back. Johnny’d cut him into a hundred pieces, skin him right down to the bone and toss his flesh into the blue Pacific.
Feed his guts to the fucking fish, grind his bones to make some bread.
Yeah.
This time Johnny Church was going to get his pound of flesh.
And more.
Dan tottered on weak legs, barely able to stand.
“You messed with me for the last time, Cody!” Church yelled. “This time you’re gonna stay dead!”
The big man was coming on fast, like a runaway locomotive, the Crow knife clutched in his fist. Dan had to either stand his ground or get out of the way or—
Or what? he asked himself. What are you going to do? You’ve lost your guns. You can barely stand up—
And the Crow can’t help you now.
“My name’s Johnny Church,” the man announced, his face a mask of pumping blood streaked by rain. “I’m half crocodile and half shark, with a little rottweiler tossed in. And I’m here to put you six feet south of my boots, cowboy!"
Dan’s legs swayed under him like dead branches.
His right arm hung useless at his side.
“I was raised in hell and suckled the tit of Satan’s bride,” Church screamed, “and I eat hellfire and shit brimstone. I’ve kicked men to death with my cloven hooves, and I’ve got a barbed red tail and I don’t give a shit where I drag it!”
Closer now... and Dan hadn’t even moved. He couldn’t move. Not now. Not yet.
But he had to. Just one move. Just one. That wasn’t a lot to ask. And if he waited for just the right moment, and if he chose just the right time—
“I’ve swum seas of broken glass! I’ve climbed razor-blade mountains!”
Come on, Dan thought. Come closer, you bastard. Then we’ll see. Until then. I’m not going to move so much as an inch.
And Cody didn’t, and Church did. A lot more than an inch, he moved. In an instant they were face-to-face, and a second later the Crow ceremonial blade flashed out at the cowboy, starting low and coming up, severing a dozen raindrops and two fingers as it cut a path through the night.
Dan didn’t so much as flinch. Because a flinch was a move, and he had to save it—
“I’ve walked thirty-seven miles of barbed wire, Dannyboy. . . I’ve worn a cobra snake for a necktie!”
And the blade came back, reversing course, higher now, and Johnny Church cut Dan a new smile.
“Trick or treat!” Church screamed, grabbing Cody’s throat. “I’m gonna carve you like a Halloween pumpkin!”
Dan didn’t even blink.
“I’m gonna carve you up, Dannyboy! I’m gonna eat your brains for breakfast!”
Bloodstained teeth gleamed beneath Dan’s carved Halloween smile.
He laughed, and his laugh was as loud as the raging storm.
“Something funny?” Johnny spit the words. “S
omething you want to share with the rest of the class?"
Dan couldn’t speak. Not anymore. Not through his carved mouth.
But he didn’t need to.
All he needed to do was make that one move.
He shoved Church with his damaged shoulder, and the coat Johnny had taken from Dan flashed open as the big gearhead stumbled backward, revealing an albino rack of ribs at the same moment that the Bowie knife Dan had stolen in Boron appeared from behind Dan’s back.
Cody leaned in and the Bowie flashed out, carving meat.
Hashed back, lower, one more time, where the meat was softest.
Johnny Church dropped the ceremonial knife. He slumped against Cody, wrapped his arms around the dead man, and the Bowie knife sank in again, tearing a long rip in Johnny’s belly.
Warm intestines spilled over Dan’s hand.
The dead man pulled away, and Johnny sat down hard.
He tried to pick himself up, but he didn’t have the tools.
If he wanted to get up again, he’d need a bucket.
Gore poured from Johnny’s belly. Blood ran from his mouth. His lips moved, but he couldn’t say anything.
Not with words, he couldn’t.
But he wasn’t about to shut up. Not Johnny Church.
He raised his right hand, slowly . . . extending the middle finger.
Ultimately, it was a useless gesture.
Dan Cody was already gone.
A black marble altar stood in the center of the columbarium chamber.
That was where Kyra placed the porcelain Crow. Her black- nailed fingers drifted away from the jar with a crackle like static electricity.
But this was not electricity. Kyra knew this force was something darker and infinitely stronger, and its power burned through her like blazing crematorium flames.
Those flames scorched every inch of Kyra Damon, inside and out—flesh and bone, mind and soul. It reduced her entire being to one base element, immolating all extraneous desires, and fears, and weaknesses.
It left the young woman with one thing, and one thing only.
The final link to the Crow’s power.
Instantly, Kyra knew. Everything. All of it. She saw the power she would have, and the things that power would bring her. She understood, at last, why she had journeyed to this place, the one place on earth where she could steal the beating heart of her deepest desire.
Wicked Prayer Page 26