Wicked Prayer (39 page)

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 n
ow...
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. “Something 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.

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.