Wicked Prayer (19 page)

And when she closes the book at last, she knows what she must do. She must take the greatest chance she has ever taken. Trust in the greatest mystery of all.

Trust in her own death, and the restorative power of the Crow.

Kyra’s way waits in the stairwell, in the rope, in the tipping chair that clatters to the floor, in the noose that tightens around her neck. And as her body becomes heavier, her soul reaches above the shitty little Mission District stairwell like a small black bird, and she finds the one she has sought.

The Messenger. The Avenger.

The Crow.

The one who can set a wrong life right.

For Kyra’s life has been wrong for a long, long time, lost in the shrieks of a dying violin.

And she sees the bird through eyes filming with death, sees it circling far, far above in the night sky, sees it looking down on her through the apartment building roof which has become the lid on a glass casket.

As the bird swoops down through the walls of the apartment build
ing she feels the rush of its wings, hears the brittle smash of glass as it breaks through the barrier. She sees its expression as it swoops above the rope, the chair, her body
—

And it caws:
No . . . no . . . not for you . . . not for you . . .

The bird turns from Kyra, shunning her. She struggles. The noose tightens. She wants an answer, needs to know why she has been refused.

You wronged yourself, Kyra. You wronged yourself, and I am not for you . . . not for you . . . not for you . . .

She sees the Crow’s world, a place of fog and forests. She wants to visit that world, longs to bond with the black bird, and she reaches out for the bird but she cannot catch it, cannot trap so much as a single feather in her clawing hand.

And the Crow flies away, and the black bird’s world is gone, and she is alone again. Alone with her pain, which seems deep and eternal.

And dark. And transformative. For the darkness reaches out, and there is something else in it besides pain, something that has lived in the stolen book. And it takes hold of Kyra’s tattered soul and gives her something she can hold.

A vision.

A vision that throbs in Kyra’s skull, a vision that delivers a messenger very different than the Crow.

His name is Johnny Church, and he is a stranger, and by that one random altruistic act his unimportant life is forever changed. For when Johnny Church cuts down Kyra Damon and breathes new life into her lungs, he sets into motion a series of events that no mortal can control. It is a spider’s snare spun from the pages of a book written by evil men long dead, and it has given birth to a woman and a vision made to fulfill dark needs that have grown and ripened between tattered covers with no help from mortal man, and from that moment on the vision becomes a part of Kyra, inseparable, the way that enchanted pages are bound in a skin-covered book, or feathers are bound to the flesh of a bird.

It is a vision that she sees, even now.

A vision that begins with the blue eyes of a Crow.

Kyra sees it clearly as dead oxygen bums in her lungs

And her black heart
thump-thumps
in her chest.

And a man—a man no more than a stranger she has come to know, really—gasps and moans . . . and spills his life seed inside her.

Johnny Church grinned as he slipped the leather dog collar around his neck and buckled it tight.

Goddamn, but he felt
good.
He never came in
anyone
the way he came in Kyra Damon.

He knew he’d done her right, too. Ky wasn’t giving him any shit now. She lay there on the vault—black leather bustier pushed up around her breasts, dark hair pooled on sandstone, pale body shimmering with a sheen of sweat—and with a pair of sparkling blue eyes that had once belonged to another woman she stared into the Madonna’s stained glass eyes as if they contained all the mysteries of the universe.

Johnny Church, he didn’t care too much about the mysteries of the universe. What he cared about was his stomach. After expending all that energy, it was kind of empty again. But that was all right, because piled on the altar—which he’d nearly knocked over during his wild session with Kyra—were
Todos Santos
offerings left by the dead woman’s relatives.

Brightly painted wooden bowls containing lemons and limes, chocolates and maize dough cakes baked in the shape of little people. An unopened bottle of tequila. And the icing on the cake:
las calaveras
.
Candy skulls. They were everywhere. Piled on the altar, lolling on the floor. Grinning madly, their sugared eyes’ sockets peering in all directions.

Kinda like Blasphemers skulls,
Johnny thought, remembering the signature bonehead on his T-shirt. He wondered what Erik Hearse would have made of the skulls. They’d have been perfect as scary/comic props in a Blasphemers video.

Johnny shook his head. Too bad he hadn’t remembered to press
PLAY
on the Merc’s CD deck before trotting over to the mausoleum like a dog on a leash, but his dick had been the part of his anatomy calling the shots at that particular moment.

It wasn’t calling the shots now. Johnny snatched a sticky hand
ful of Mexican chocolates from a lacquered red and yellow bowl. “Not a bad spread,” he said, popping a chocolate into his mouth. “We could have had dinner here. They got dessert and everything.”

Reclining on the dead grandmother’s tomb, Kyra held the stem of a withered red rose between her fingers. “Still thinking about your stomach, Johnny?”

“Uh-uh. Now I’m thinkin’ about the Merc.”

Kyra raised an eyebrow. “The
Merc?"

“As in, when are we gonna get in it and hit the fucking road?”

Kyra laughed. “Why don’t you let me put some clothes on first?”

“If you insist. But I kinda like you like this.”

“Oh, you do?” Kyra stretched like a cat, then slipped off the vault in one graceful movement. “Which do you think moves better—me or the Merc?”

“Which do you
think?”
Johnny groaned as Ky pressed against him like warm, liquid night. “I might not be able to drive for a
week
after the little workout you just gave me.”

“You’d
better
be able to drive.”

“Oh, yeah? Where is it we’re going, sugar?”

A sparkle flashed in Kyra’s blue eyes.

“Why, we’re gonna hitch our wagon to a star,” she said.

Kyra coiled the chrome necklace around her throat as she walked over to the barrel cactus where the shrunken head waited, still twisting on that red-hot spike.

Raymondo raised a withered eyebrow. “Did you scratch your itch, my dear?”

Kyra nodded, rubbing the scar on her neck, a dull purple band which now bore distinctly fiery highlights. “Scratched it and then some.”

“You sure?” Raymondo asked. “I mean, if Johnnyboy didn’t measure up tonight, I could always give you a little
head.”

Kyra laughed out loud. She plucked the shrunken head off the cactus, raised it to her lips and gave it a little kiss. “You know, Raymondo, you’re kinda cute ... for an unrepentant hellspawn.”

“Yeah. I’m cute . . . but only from the neck up.”

Kyra stared up at the black curtain of sky, pinned to the heavens by a scattering of stars. She did that every night. . . every night that was clear, anyway. Of course, on all those other nights, she hadn’t had expected to see anything special.

Tonight was different.

Tonight, she had the blue eyes of a Crow.

“You’re already drawing on the vision’s power,” Raymondo said.

“Yes . . . but I’m not sure what it is. Or where it will lead me.”

Kyra inhaled deeply. Her skin was like polished alabaster now. The scorpion welts had vanished along with the pain that had transformed her. So had the anxiety she’d felt earlier. The sex had done that, providing her with much-needed release. She didn’t know exactly what had stirred that particular hunger—the book, or perhaps just her own twisted libido. She only knew the hunger had been satisfied.

And she
was
satisfied. Her expression was as placid as a statue’s. Her eyebrows were dark wings, but the eyes beneath them were inviting blue pools that welcomed the night’s reflection, the moon, the stars, everything . . .

She blinked several times, holding Raymondo in her hands, staring down at him as if he were a Magic Eight Ball with secrets to tell.

He looked up into her stolen eyes and smiled a withered smile.

“Do you think I’ll see anything?” she asked. “I mean, will it be different now?”

“It’s your vision, Kyra. You know better than I do what you’ll see or what you won’t.”

“Sometimes I wonder if I know anything at all.”

“You know plenty. You knew you had to find those eyes, didn’t you?”

“Yes. But you told me where to look.”

“True . . . but this time you don’t need me. This time, you know
exactly
where to look. This time, if your vision is pure, you won’t even need an astronomy chart.”

Kyra didn’t look at Raymondo.

She looked at the stars, at the patterns within the stars. .
 
.

“My vision is pure," she said, completely calm now. And it was so. For the stars glimmered in the sky . . . and they took wing . . . and they came to Kyra Damon from a place ninety million light- years distant, deep within the heart of the ancient constellation Corvus.

The second part of Kyra’s vision—a Crow made of light, flying through a river of midnight.

“It’s time to follow the night,” Kyra said solemnly.

“Where will we go?” Raymondo asked.

Johnny Church had asked the same question, back in the sandstone mausoleum.

Kyra said, “Wherever we must go.”

“Then let’s get gone.”

Kyra nodded, turned toward the Merc. “Johnny,” she called. “It’s time.”

“I got you, babe.” Johnny chugged the dregs of a Budweiser, crumpled the can in his big hand and tossed it at a tombstone. Then he slipped behind the wheel and started the engine.

Kyra cradled Raymondo in her hands as she hurried to the car, and when they were both inside she didn’t let go of him. She held the shrunken head as if he were something precious and delicate, her hands trembling, her breaths coming short and fast.

Raymondo closed his eyes, rocking in Kyra’s embrace. Her hands were warm and soft, and they smelled of withered roses and broken promises. . .

And dreams that were meant to be realized.

Santa Catalina Mountains

The Tucson Valley, Arizona

Dr. Emily Carlisle’s home lay at the foot of the Santa
Catalina mountains, its adobe walls blending perfectly with juniper and pine-clad slopes that rose in ragged ridges just north of Tucson. The rambling property was a solid ninety-five-mile drive from Cuervo Canyon in the Chihuahuan Desert . . . ninety-five miles from the spot where Dan Cody had buried Leticia Dreams the Truth Hardin in a shallow sandstone grave.

Not just ninety-five miles. Ninety-five miles filled with bitter highways and empty black skies . . . and a dead hollow where Dan’s heart used to be. Ninety-five miles of canyons that opened into caverns of remorse that ran deep as the bottom of Dan’s soul.

He floored the Chevy Apache’s accelerator and made the trip in just under ninety minutes, give or take a speed limit or two. By the time he passed through the gate of unfinished latillas and made the half-mile unpaved drive to Emily’s house, the stolen junker was ready to cough its last right there in the driveway.

Dan cut the engine beside a stone fountain that dominated the courtyard. He sat in silence while the engine cooled, staring at the house, at the glazed windows with their Aztec-print curtains . . . the ancient wisteria vines that wrapped around the beams that
supported the tiled roof. . . the pueblo-style
portales
where Dan and Leticia and Emily had sat in old wicker chairs and sipped ginger iced tea on hot desert afternoons . . . sitting there, together, in the cool shadow cast by the Santa Catalina Mountains’ wooded slopes . . .