Wicked Prayer

by Norman Partridge

  Kyra stared at the porcelain Crow, knowing now that the strange funerary urn held the mortal remains of a man who had walked in the dark bird’s shadow, as did the other antique tobacco containers that filled the columbarium niche. The occupant of each container had taken a journey of vengeance with the black bird, and each one of them had found peace through that journey. And when their journeys were over, their succored souls were born again in the land of the dead. This was the immortality provided the disciples of the Crow—an immortality of the spirit, not the flesh.

  But the flesh that those disciples left behind could not be ignored. The corpses of those who had walked beneath the Crow’s wings bore dark secrets and a wild seed of power that could never be extinguished. And so the bird zealously guarded these sacred remains, protecting their final resting places wherever their bodies lay—whether buried in the ground, or entombed in a crypt ... or cremated and lodged in a niche in a black stone tower.

  Kyra already had strength everlasting, and her vengeance was nearly a foregone conclusion. And now, at last, she knew what she must do to seize the final element of the Crow’s dark triumvirate.

  Immortality. That was the prize. Not of the spirit, but of the flesh. For now Kyra would craft the Crow’s sacred strength to suit her own needs, to twist the secrets of life and death into a new and startling power all her own.

  Kyra knew how to do it.

  The knowledge pulsed through her like a genetic code.

  It was part of her, a driving force, an instinct that couldn’t be denied.

  Gently, she removed the lid from the porcelain jar.

  Saw the sandy gray cremains inside, flecked with bright bits of bone.

  She stripped off the necklace of opal and ebony and slivered chrome.

  She opened the FVC coat, exposing naked flesh beneath.

  She wet a finger on her tongue, dipped it in the ashes.

  Then she began the secret task, painting her body and face with strange symbols—the same symbols she had glimpsed on twisted tombstones in the land of the Crow. Her finger moved as if by instinct. She didn’t need the book to guide her anymore—it was in the backseat of Johnny’s car, forgotten and abandoned, stripped of secrets.

  Kyra didn’t even need a mirror.

  She knew what she must do.

  The same way a baby bird knows to peck its way out of an egg.

  The Crow circled high above the columbarium. The tower was a sanctuary, one of many guarded by the black bird and its brethren, a place where the mortal remains of those who had been horribly wronged in life could rest and find protection.

  The bird knew that Kyra Damon waited within. It sensed the woman’s presence beneath the columbarium dome. She had taken much of the Crow’s power, and now she would have more.

  If the bird and his companion didn’t stop her soon, all would be lost. Not only for the Crow and the entire Corvid clan, but for all those who had walked under the dark bird’s wing.

  The Crow could not stop Kyra Damon alone, of course.

  The Crow did nothing alone.

  Its powers were plural. . . not singular.

  And so was its strength.

  The Crow circled lower, turning its dark eye to the cemetery. Dan Cody was coming on, a bloody rag-doll of a man, a thing that shouldn’t even be walking, let alone trying to run.

  Dan had been shorn of his strength, too. But he still had his will, the same strong will that had pulsed in his veins when he walked the earth as one of the living.

  The Crow had a strong will, too.

  It dived through the storm, and brushed the limping man with wings as dark as the grave.

  The Crow’s touch could not heal Dan. That power was gone. But the bird could guide him. It wings beat the air with sandpaper slaps, and it swooped into the forest.

  Dan followed, no weapons to protect him but the Bowie knife beneath his belt and Emily Carlisle’s rope coiled over the tattered remains of his right shoulder. To those who had known him as a man he was almost unrecognizable now, and he clung to the shadows as if made for them.

  Rain lashed down. Dan loped through a maze of tombstones and leaning monuments, at last entering the grove, his boots thudding over turf that was never meant to be marked by the tread of man.

  Dan kept moving. The rain did not fall heavily here. The dank ground was protected by thick branches above. There was no path to follow, and Dan couldn’t have spotted one through the low- hanging fog even if it had been there for him to see. He darted between thick tree trunks, knocking off scabs of bark as he hurried onward through deeper tangles where arthritic branches clawed at him like the gnarled fingers of fairy tale witches and—

  Yes. He had been here before. He stopped, leaned against a tree, his battered body shaking as if fevered, his wounded mind telling him that this indeed was the same place he’d visited in his vision, and he tried to muster the strength to continue.

  Here, in the land where he had heard Leticia’s voice.

  Here, in the land where he had been so close to her.

  Here, in the land of the Crow.

  He had to go on. He had to, if he ever wanted to find the only woman he had ever loved. And he did go on. The rising wind shifted course, coming at him now. Brittle leaves twisted through the air like huge bats. Twigs and branches broke free of the trees and tore at his ruined face and hands. But still he kept moving, still he tried to find the path—

  Dan heard the sound. A brittle caw somewhere ahead in the twisted branches, lost in fog as thick as woven ghosts.

  It was the call of the Crow.

  Dan followed it to a place where a bronze door lay in a lake of rainwater.

  Into the tower . . . across the marble floor ... up the winding staircase. Past funerary urns set in glass-walled niches. Past stained-glass windows that glowed, even in a storm. Past a whiskey bottle packed with the last dregs of a terminal drunkard . . . and a tarnished sportsman’s trophy that held a dead man’s ashes as its final prize . . . past a child’s toy bank . . . and a lacquered Japanese box in the shape of a fan . . . and a Victorian doll with dusty unblinking eyes . . .

  Cody’s right hand was as useless as his right arm. Minus two fingers, it dangled at his side like a big, wounded spider.

  But he still had one good hand, and one good arm, and he prayed that they would be enough.

  He pulled the rope off his shoulder and climbed the last few stairs.

  “I’ve heard they hang witches,” Emily Carlisle had said.

  Dan had heard that, too.

  He came nearer the open doorway, the rope coiled in his good hand.

  Saw the shrunken head, across the room, hanging from an iron sconce.

  “Surprise, surprise,” said the head. “Look who’s here. . . .”

  The dead man stood in the doorway, his clothes in tatters.

  That was an understatement: his body was in tatters, too.

  An evil chuckle rose in Kyra’s throat, and she bit it back. From the tip of his split skull, down to his bulging goggle eye and his bullet-riddled body, straight past his scarecrow legs to his bloodstained boots, Dan Cody was a mess.

  Kyra stood behind the altar, her fingers wet with the ashes of the dead. “Looks like you took the hard road, cowboy,” she said. “As you can see—I didn’t.”

  She stepped away from the altar. The ankle-length PVC coat hung open, and Kyra didn’t show any false modesty. She wanted Cody to see it all. Everything. She wanted to show him exactly what she had done with his feathered master’s power, just as she wanted him to realize what she was going to do with a couple more strokes of her finger and a little eldritch bodypaint. She wanted Cody to stare at the gray-black blasphemies she’d painted on her flesh with the ashes of the dead, wanted to hear his righteous scream, wanted him to drop to his fucking knees and acknowledge her strength . . . and his own weakness.

  But the dead man didn’t say a word. Maybe he couldn’t. Not by the looks of his mouth, anyway. Cody wore a incongruous gri
n from ear to ear. His lips had been carved like a Halloween pumpkin.

  “You must have run into Johnny Church,” Kyra said. “Did you kill him or just hurt him real bad?”

  Still no answer from the dead man.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Kyra said. “The way I see it, you did me a favor. I was about to dissolve my partnership with Johnny, anyway.”

  Cody limped into the room, his left leg nearly buckling under his weight. And then he took another step . . . and another . . .

  Kyra watched him come. “What’s that you’ve got in your hand?” she asked.

  “Looks like a rope,” Raymondo said. “You know, Ky—every cowboy needs a lasso.”

  “I guess so,” Kyra said, and she rubbed her scarred neck. “You know, I used to have a rope once upon a time myself In fact, I played a little game with it. Thought I was going to catch the brass ring doing that, and all I got myself was a good old-fashioned Indian rope burn. I didn’t like that much at the time, of course, but I think things have worked out for the best.”

  Cody’s left hand came up, and Kyra saw the looped end of the rope, saw it spin round and round as Cody raised it in the air.

  “Uh-uh, Dan. Forget about it.”

  The rope sailed through the air.

  Kyra didn’t even bother to move.

  She caught the loop with her left hand.

  Tugged it hard.

  Dan Cody grunted, and his bad knee buckled under him, and he did a full-tilt Humpty Dumpty onto the columbarium floor.

  Dan stared up at Kyra Damon, and it was as if he were looking through a long tunnel, as if he were seeing a flickering light at the end.

  Kyra leaned over him, close enough to lash his bulging eyeball with her crimson-black tresses. He recognized the symbols of the Crow painted on her marble skin. But on Kyra Damon these symbols were blasphemous, a map of pain and misery on living flesh.

  The woman had painted them herself, and Dan realized that there was nothing she wouldn’t do, no desecration that was past her endurance as long as she got what she wanted in the end.

  Dan couldn’t even move now. The woman knew it. She smiled, and she kissed his cheek and she kissed his tattered mouth, and the breath that washed Dan Cody smelled like rotten plums.

  “You know, you used to look pretty hot,” Kyra said. “I wish I’d gotten a piece of you before you started to rot.”

  The rope went around Dan’s neck.

  “No way that’s going to happen now,” Kyra said.

  The Bowie knife was under Dan’s belt, but he couldn’t even grab it. The woman did that for him, tossing the blade across the room.

  The noose pulled tight. It didn’t matter. Dan was past breathing now. The last breath he’d drawn was in a Las Vegas parking lot, just before Johnny Church shot him. He’d never suck wind again, and he knew it.

  “I know this doesn’t hurt,” Kyra said. “I know you’re past pain. But I want you to stick around, Cody. I want you to watch what’s going to happen. I want you to see what the Crow’s power can do when it’s in the right hands.”

  She tugged the rope, dragging Dan across the floor. “I think I’ll find a place to hoist you up. Make sure you have a real good view.”

  But Dan had a good view already. He saw the columbarium niche that held the tobacco jars. Saw the motionless porcelain faces staring down at him. The pirate . . . the Cherokee chief . . . the harlequin. They were faces he recognized. Faces he’d seen in the dump, when the Crow revived him. Faces of those who had walked with the black bird, just as he had.

  They were people, just like Dan. And they were much, much more.

  And now they were in danger. Their very souls were in harm’s way. Dan knew that, but there was nothing he could do about it. . . nothing at all.

  He stared up at the ceiling as Kyra pulled him across the floor. Her fingers slipped beneath his armpits, and she hoisted him to his feet like a broken mannequin. He rocked from side to side and she spun him around, smiling at him from a face masked with arcane symbols.

  “There you go,” Kyra said, pointing to an iron sconce mounted high on the wall. “Looks like I’ve found just the place to hang you up nice and neat.”

  Dan hardly heard her. He was staring at the blue eyes set in her face.

  Leticia’s eyes.

  He saw his reflection in Leticia’s dark pupils, and the darkness pulled him in, and he saw something more, something he should have seen from the start—

  Kyra tugged on the rope like a dog’s leash, pulling Dan toward the wall.

  Now or never, Dan thought.

  He reached out with his good arm, grabbed Kyra Damon, and pulled her close.

  Kyra actually laughed as Dan embraced her.

  “Like I said: it’s a little late for romance, Cody. Maybe if you would have gotten yourself embalmed I’d go for it, but under the circumstances—”

  Dan shoved her away.

  Hard, his left hand firing against her chest like a piston.

  Surprised, Kyra stumbled backward, slamming into the marble altar.

  Dan Cody started toward her.

  Instantly, Kyra saw what the dead man had done.

  The son of a bitch. He was a smart one, after all.

  It was simple, really. Cody had pulled her close, and their bodies had touched, and the symbols she had so carefully painted on her flesh with the ashes of the dead had been imprinted on Dan Cody’s bloodstained hide.

  And so had their power.

  “You want to play with me, Cody?” Kyra asked. “Is that what you want to do?”

  The corpse shook his ruined head, the noose still dangling around his neck. His jaw dropped open. His lips were a slashed mess, and it didn’t look like he could talk at all, but Kyra had the feeling that he was going to try.

  “I . . . never . . . play,” Cody said.

  “Good,” Kyra said. “Neither do I.”

  She wasn’t lying. She didn’t play, she never played, and she wasn’t going to start now. She’d rip Dan Cody apart with her bare hands if that’s what it took to get what she wanted. This time she was going to come out on top. This time no one would stop her. Not Dan Cody. Not the Crow—

  But she had to make her move now. Before the bird’s power kindled once more in Dan Cody’s heart, before his muscles knitted together and covered themselves with new flesh.

  Before he got too strong for her to handle.

  Fumbling with one hand, Cody reached for the noose around his neck.

  He started to loosen it.

  With great difficulty, he began to speak. “You . . . took something . . . from me . . . and from Leticia,” he said. “You took . . . everything—”

  Without warning, Kyra launched herself in the dead man’s direction. Cody stopped in his tracks for a second, just a second . . . but a second was all Kyra needed. She slammed into him, drove him into the stone wall. His skull smacked rock with a sharp crack, and she drove her shoulder into his chest, not caring if she planted more Crow symbols on his torn flesh, only wanting to hear his fucking ribs crack, wanting to split him in half and tear the heart from his chest if she could do it, wanting his own blood to wash the symbols off his dead hide.

  His back to the wall, Cody grabbed at Kyra with his good hand. All he got was a handful of hair. Kyra didn’t care. She twisted away and tore herself loose.

  Cody stood there, nothing remaining in his hand but a hank of hair.

  Not even a bit of bone. Kyra smiled at the dead man’s goggle eye. Blood gushed from her scalp, but the wound healed in an instant, and she charged him again, slamming him against the wall with her shoulder, this time bringing her head up sharply so her skull shattered Dan Cody’s jaw.

  He didn’t grab for her now. Symbols or no symbols, it looked like he was out of it. Kyra grabbed the noose and tightened it around his neck. The she yanked the end of the rope, and Cody stumbled across the room, toward one of the stained-glass windows.

  He crashed to his knees in front of it.

>   This time he didn’t move.

  Weeping tears of stained-glass color waited on windows. Tears the color of dying violets . . . and severed aortas . . . and the skin of drowned children—

  Kyra’s footfalls echoed in the chamber as she approached Dan Cody.

  He didn’t turn to face her.

  His head came up, but he only stared at the stained glass.

  It was almost as if he were praying.

  Kyra took hold of the rope, ready to put Cody out of his misery.

  Because praying didn’t cut it. Kyra knew that. It didn’t work. It never worked. It hadn’t worked for her when she’d said her little prayer to the Crow, and it wasn’t going to work for Dan Cody now.

  Didn’t matter who he was praying to. As far as Kyra was concerned, putting your hands together, interlacing your fingers, doing all that here's the church and here’s the steeple crap was a waste of time.

  She stared at the broken man. A servant of the Crow, down on his knees. She wondered if a guy like Cody could even manage much of a prayer. One of his hands didn’t even work. It lay on the floor, short a couple of fingers, and it looked like something that should have been buried about a month ago.

  His other hand, his good hand, rested there on the window’s stone ledge.

  The knuckles were scarred. The fingers callused.

  Kyra shook her head. No, Cody’s didn’t look like a hand that belonged to a man who’d done a whole lot of praying.

  It looked more like a battered paw.

  And it was curled into a fist.

  Cody drove it through the window.

  And stained-glass tears rained down.

  Shards of broken glass pelted Kyra, driven by a cold wind that tore into the tower.

  The glass shredded her PVC raincoat, tore her flesh. She screamed, but her wounds had already healed by the time the sound broke over her lips.

  Such was the power of the Crow, but Kyra knew that it was a power she might lose very soon. Cody was on his feet again, and he grabbed her and pulled her toward the open window. Cold raindrops pelted both of them, washing the ancient symbols from their flesh, erasing a portion of the black bird’s dark strength.