She felt a new strength.
The same way she felt the power of the Indian bitch’s severed eyes.
Kyra had taken the eyes from Johnny’s ice chest. Now they waited cool and pretty in her pocket. Her fingers found them both, and she knew that there was no more time to waste. She had to follow the forces that had guided her to this place, the same ones that had led her to Leticia Dreams the Truth Hardin. She had to trust those forces, and the sacrifices they demanded.
Kyra’s tongue snaked across her full lips.
The taste of sugar lingered like a sticky-sweet memory.
Kyra raised a severed blue eyeball, stared at it long and hard.
A little taste of the land of the dead . . .
Raymondo watched Johnny turn the ribs, then slather them with more barbecue sauce. The meat hadn’t been cooking that long, but it was just about done.
Blood rare was how Johnny liked his butchered bovine.
Just cripple it and drag it across the fire,
he liked to say.
Soon enough, Johnny knifed the first rack of beef off the grill,
dumped it on a paper plate, and tore into it. Raymondo eyed the meat, licking his tiny lips. “Times like this make me wish I still had a stomach.”
“All the more for me,” Johnny said indifferently, hucking the first clean bone at Raymondo’s head. He dug into a second, and pretty soon his chin was painted with rusty sauce. He chugged half a can of Bud, and what didn’t make his mouth washed his chin clean.
“Man,” Johnny said. “I
love
my meat.”
In the mausoleum, Kyra waited.
Guidance would come to her She knew it would. A message. A secret. A command . . . The dark forces she had chosen to follow always provided her with direction when she did as they demanded.
But this time it was different.
This time the only thing that came was pain.
It bloomed behind Kyra’s green eyes, like black roses heavy with blood. The imaginary petals spread, touching nerves never meant to be touched, and the soft velvet brush of each petal was a new agony. Kyra bit back a whimper as blood seemed to well in her sockets, pooling there, filling every recess with red tears that could never be shed. And then the flowers were fully open and they filled her skull, and the smell of them was like sweet rot, and the pain was nearly unbearable, as if their perfume drew scorpions not born of this world, scorpions that had traveled with Leticia Hardin from the land of the dead, scorpions that crawled over Kyra’s eyes, stinging angrily, hunting for the black perfume locked inside her skull, perfume that was forever prisoner in the secret chambers of Kyra’s imagination.
But Kyra was not afraid of the pain.
For pain, she knew, was transformative.
Kyra closed her eyes and joined with it. She bit her lip, but she did not cry out. The taste of sugar was long gone from her tongue, and Leticia Hardin’s scorpions were loose in her brain, and the pain was like no other she had ever endured—
Kyra dropped to her knees.
Her eyes flashed open.
One moment her irises were green . . . and then they were quite suddenly blue. . . .
And then the flowers in Kyra’s head seemed to wither, and the blood tears dried to nothing, and the scorpions crawled away . . . When she rose, she was stronger than she’d been before.
And she was
hungry.
Kyra walked toward the funereal barbecue pit, not saying a word.
Still, Raymondo couldn’t help but notice the way she stared at Church’s muscular shoulders, his bulging biceps.
Modem women,
the head thought
.
They've grown as dull as men. All they care about is a man’s body.
Of course, Raymondo didn’t
have
a body. Right now, he would have given every scrap of his intellect for one of those ninety-eight- pound-weakling “before” physiques pictured in the old Charles Atlas ads, if only Kyra would turn her gaze upon him.
Only ninety-eight pounds,
he’d tell her
.
“But every ounce is pure lovin’.”
But that was only a dream. At the moment, and forevermore, Raymondo weighed more like 9.8 ounces, soaking wet. He cursed every piranha that ever swam the black waters of the Amazon. He cursed every heathen savage who had ever dined upon human flesh. He even cursed the missionaries, whose reckless disregard for native culture had earned Raymondo a place in a cannibal’s stew pot. And most of all he cursed the aged witch doctor who had raised him from death’s quiet slumber with feathered fetishes and dead man’s dust and a rattling necklace of demon bones. The doctor hadn’t been much more than a dwarf himself, but that hadn’t stopped him from shrinking Raymondo down from six-foot-two with a slice of the knife and some particularly bad juju. Raymondo’s days of being a big man were over The only part of him that grew anymore was his hair, and that was a curse as well. If Kyra wasn’t combing it or braiding it like the hair of some outre Ken doll, then Johnny Church was yanking it out by the roots.
Johnny went after another rib, and then another, oblivious to all other concerns, including Raymondo’s. When the first rack was nothing but a pile of pinkish bones charred black in the fire, he started in on the second. When he was halfway through the second, he took a third rack from the ice chest and tossed it over the coals.
And all the while Kyra watched, her pale cheeks flushed to the color of roses, black-nailed fingers toying with that tight chain choker that circled her neck.
She looked as hungry as Johnny Church.
Something about her eyes, Raymondo thought. And then he saw what that something was, clearly, in the flickering light cast by the barbecue’s flames.
Kyra’s eyes were
blue.
“You want some ribs, Ky?” Johnny asked, still oblivious.
“I’m not in a food mood, Johnny. I’ve already eaten.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“Neither do you,” Kyra said slyly, toying with her necklace. “And you’re missing a lot.”
“Huh?”
Kyra’s new blue eyes sparked. “Just because I said I’ve eaten, Johnny, that doesn’t mean I’m not hungry.”
“I don’t get you.”
“You will, if you’re a good boy.”
Kyra turned and walked toward the mausoleum.
She walked slowly, one hand still on the chrome necklace’s delicate links, uncoiling the thin chain from around her neck.
As she reached the threshold, she dropped the necklace on the ground.
And quite suddenly, the strangest thought sprang into Raymondo’s mind.
Bait for the trap,
he thought
.
Bait for the trap . . .
Johnny stood at the mausoleum’s entrance, staring through the ornate, wrought iron gate at the woman within.
Kyra Damon, supine and still as death on a sandstone vault strewn with spent rose petals, could have passed for an erotic work of funerary art—a seductive statue with bare thighs spread invitingly wide, her skin as smooth as translucent pearl.
Her nakedness—except for a black leather bustier and lace-up dominatrix boots—didn’t surprise Johnny any more than it had at the dump, when Kyra had chowed down on that stray cat.
Not that Johnny minded. A cat entree or a naked woman ... it was all cool with him.
Johnny’s eyes lingered approvingly over his companion’s lithe lines. Hey, if Kyra Damon wanted to fuck him in a mausoleum, who was Johnny Church to rain on her funeral parade?
Moonlight illuminated the arched, stained glass window on the opposite wall. A portrait of the Madonna and Child stared serenely down on Kyra. The Christ Child’s hands were outstretched, an amber halo glowing above its gleaming glass curls. Moonbeams shone through the Virgin’s eyes and poured luminous pools of blue light onto Kyra’s bare white breasts.
Beneath the window stood an elaborate altar draped with Spanish lace. White tapers in silver sconces flickered there. Golden light glowed softly against sandstone walls, painting the framed portrait of the dead woman whose sharp eyes seemed to stare disapprovingly at the unredeemed sinner who stood in the doorway of her final resting place.
Yeah, well, dead's dead.
That was Johnny’s take on the situation, and all the Santeria shit in Mexico—or whatever this crap was— didn’t mean squat to a man who had only three gears.
Johnny unbuckled his chrome-studded leather belt, let it drop to the ground with a heavy clink. “Time to shift into second,” he said.
His right foot lashed out. There was a harsh metallic clang as the wrought iron door squealed open and smashed against the inner wall, and a smattering of ancient sandstone showered to the floor
Kyra sat up suddenly, crimson-black hair slashing her throat like thin lines of blood. She raised a beckoning finger, and her nails were long and black and shiny as beetles.
“There’s a good boy," she whispered. “Come to Mistress.”
Johnny, ever obedient, did exactly as ordered. That was the way this game was played. Right now it was the way things were—Ky the top, Johnny the bottom—but pretty soon . . . Well, pretty soon it would be another way.
The way it would be when they were equals.
The way it would be when they shared the power of the Crow.
Kyra hooked a long finger in the chrome ring on his dog collar Johnny started to pant. He couldn’t help himself Kyra looked like a bitch in heat.
“You’re such an obedient boy, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“You’d do anything I asked, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Because I’m stronger than you, aren’t I, Johnny? Right now I’m stronger than you can imagine, and I could make you do anything . . .
anything
—”
“Yes.”
She laughed. “But I won’t. Not tonight. Because you’ve pleased me tonight. You’ve done everything I asked. Tonight all I want is for you to be strong, Johnny.”
The big gearhead didn’t need to hear another word. He slapped Kyra’s fingers off the dog collar, grabbed a good handful of that long dark hair and roughly thrust Kyra’s head backward.
Blue eyes sparkled up at him like shards of smashed stained glass.
“Man,” he said, because he couldn’t believe it. “What happened, Ky? How’d that Hardin woman’s eyes end up in your head? How’d—?”
“We’ll talk later,” Kyra said. “Right now, there’s something else we need to do.”
Crimson-black hair swung down over the edge of the vault, cutting the air like a gleaming pendulum blade. Johnny leaned over Kyra. His lips were close to her throat, the one part of Kyra that was rarely naked.
“You really do want it bad. Don’t ya, little girl?”
“What do
you
think, you son of a bitch?”
Johnny bit her. Hard. Kyra gasped sharply as his teeth closed on her warm flesh, but Johnny couldn’t slow down. He was way past ready to explode. He ripped Kyra off the vault by her hair, twisting her around so her delicious little backside was facing him.
Johnny didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. He wrapped a muscular arm around Kyra’s exposed throat. Tight, but not too tight. Just the way she liked it. And then he growled—deep and guttural, as if some primeval darkness had been unleashed within him— and he was rewarded with a sexy little shudder
Oh, yeah. Johnny Church was pure male. Guaran-fuckin’-teed.
He slapped Kyra’s ass, hard enough to leave red fingerprints.
“Nasty dog,” she said with mock severity, and Johnny grinned, secure in the knowledge that he was one lucky man. Insatiability, versatility, and a sinner’s eye for twisted venues. Kyra Damon had it all, and she was reaching out for more every second.
More strength. More power Kyra had taken everything she wanted, the same way she took the Crow woman’s eyes. Now she’d made those eyes her own. Johnny didn’t know why she’d done that, or how. He didn’t care.
It didn’t make any difference, really. Because he was
in
on this deal. He and Kyra were partners, the very best kind. Everything she latched onto was going to come his way, too. Johnny’d make damn sure of that.
Pretty soon, he’d have some power of his own.
He stared down at Kyra, imagined her wearing his brand for
life.
Yeah. It wasn’t hard to imagine.
Johnny grinned. When he had his own black mojo,
this
was the way it would be. Exactly.
This
way.
His
way.
He pulled her toward him with one hand, but she twisted out of his sweaty grasp and slipped onto the vault. A second later there was a boot heel against Johnny’s solar plexus.
“Uh-uh, stud,” Kyra said, shoving him hard, because she wasn’t one to give up so easily, and that made Johnny all the hotter He
stumbled backward, slamming into the dead woman’s altar. Oranges bounced across the sandstone floor. A plaster statue of Jesus exploded at Johnny’s feet. Maria Elena Ramirez’s photograph landed facedown in a crackle of shattering glass.