A Victorian doll in a black lace dress stared from the window of the last niche on the second floor. Stuffed like sawdust inside the doll’s hollow porcelain head were the cremains of an elderly spinster. The doll’s eyes, dusty and unblinking now, had first been glimpsed by the dead woman on a faraway birthday morning, when death was still a lifetime of emptiness away.
Raymondo smiled.
Passing fancies, all,
he thought
.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and on we go into the ashtray of eternity.
At last Kyra came to the third floor. The ceiling, baroque in style, was much higher in this chamber, and the stained-glass windows were larger here. Raindrops spilled down the glass, washing Kyra’s face in streaming shadows of ever-changing color—the dark majesty of dying violets . . . the rich gleam of severed aortas . . . and the dull flat color of drowned children’s skin.
“Here,” Kyra said anxiously, scanning the room with Raymondo’s head held high. “The answer must be
here.”
And Raymondo saw that it was, locked behind glass in a niche that held a collection of antique porcelain tobacco jars.
Instantly, Raymondo understood that these jars did not hold passing fancies.
These jars held eternity. Raymondo could see that. For they were shaped like human heads—a harlequin, white-faced and black-lipped; a stoic bronze-skinned Cherokee in a feathered headdress; a pirate wearing an eye-patch and a scowl. A soldier, and a ballerina . . . and other jars, too. Jars shaped like the heads of animals—a panther, a grizzly bear, a timber wolf. . .
... 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.