Wicked Prayer (12 page)

He didn’t know where he was. He smelled the coppery stench of coagulated blood, the dank stink of an airless tomb. And he smelled Leti’s perfume, light and sweet and warm as a desert flower after a spring rain.

Dan couldn’t see a thing. Not in the darkness.

And yet . . . somehow ... he saw everything. A rising flood of memory closed over him—the pain and the horror; the love and the hope; the dying pulse of a severed dream.

Dan reached out with stiff, bloody fingers and gathered Leti’s face to his chest, and his strong shoulders heaved with sobs, and he stared blindly into the blackness and searched for the dimmest glimmer of light.

But Dan could not find it. No matter how hard he tried. The cool glow of the moon, the brilliant power of the sun ... all the light in the universe wouldn’t have made a difference, because Dan Cody saw what waited for him in this new world that existed between life and death.

This world was black.

The Crow heard the despairing cries of the man within the sepulchre. Its heart was heavy even while it rejoiced, for this was always the way of those newly baptized in the Crow’s dark waters.

The bird settled on top of the white box and spread its glossy black wings, waiting. Newly regenerated, the wings shone sticky- bright in the moonlight. Dark feathers gleamed with gossamer threads of restorative fluids. The feathers dried under the caress of the night wind.

The man called Dan Cody wore skin, not feathers. But the Crow knew it would be the same for him, as well.

Inside the chained box, the choking sobs slowly abated.

A deep silence penetrated the still of the night.

This silence, the Crow knew, was the first sign of a dawning awareness. A new perception born of death, nurtured by life. The man, like the bird, would heal . . . though the Crow knew from long experience that the man would find this healing superficial. Dan Cody’s scars ran much deeper than flesh, for the ravaging effects of past pains were irreversible.

In time, however, the perceptions of bird and man would join as one.

In time.

Still, time was of the essence. Quietly, the bird concentrated its supernatural energies on the dead man’s core triumvirate—his body, his brain, and his soul. The Crow repaired not only the grievous damages sustained by the man’s flesh, but endowed that flesh with the superior skills and abilities necessary to the journey ahead.

The exertion required for this undertaking was essential.

It was also exhausting.

The task burned every resource the Crow possessed.

And when the black bird was exhausted, the carrion tribe’s attack came.

Suddenly, savagely, without warning.

And the Crow was trapped in the heart of a black-winged cyclone.

Within the suffocating prison, Dan Cody heard the Crow’s screams.

Screams. That was too simple a word. These were sounds of rage and pain and despair, sounds that echoed in Dan’s head like clawfuls of broken glass.

In truth, his blood ran cold. Because the screams were speaking to him.

No . . . not screams,
Dan realized suddenly
.
Not screams at all.

Caws.
Cries for help. That’s what the sounds were. The realization was part of a new consciousness that pulsed within Dan.

A moment before that consciousness had been very strong. Now it was growing weaker, like a dying breath.

Like a whisper.

I helped you. . . .
came the caw
.
I helped you . . . now you must help me.

A new pulse throbbed through Dan’s veins. The pulse of vengeance, hard and fierce, driven by the heartbeat of retribution for wrongs past and present.

That's right, Dan. ... I helped you . . . now you help me. . .

Dan was trapped in the darkness, but he was not alone anymore. There was another, as close as his own pulse. Another who had helped him, and who needed his help now.

The Crow’s cries were fading like the moonless shadow of midnight.

Dan Cody would not live in darkness a moment longer.

He would have light.

The Crow screeched, fighting for its freedom as the carrion birds attacked from every quarter, a black hailstorm of pecking beaks and raking talons. So vicious was their assault, so unrelenting, that the possibility of flight—and escape—became a distant dream.

Greasy black feathers swirled down on the dump, turning it into a sea of dark enchantment. Beneath a solid wall of fury, the Crow fought a losing battle as the killer birds battered its weakened body.

Still, the Crow fought. It tore, whirled, bit, gouged eyes. It spit chunks of birdflesh from its beak as if they were scalding red coals, and great numbers of the dark army fell beneath its slashing talons. But the carrion killers were too many, their collective weapons too strong. They were backed by the power of Kyra Damon’s wrath, and that wrath was unending.

The Crow was losing the battle.

Soon, it would lose its life . . . and with it, Dan Cody’s.

The bird cawed one final, frantic plea for salvation.

But the cry, like the Crow, was lost behind a blurred curtain of beating black wings.

The heavy chains that bound the Westinghouse burst as the freezer door exploded off its hinges. Dan Cody moved into the blackness, searching for the light. But there was no silver glow from the stars above to greet him, no constellations glimmering millions of miles away. Only an ebony storm raining from the sky, with slashing wings clapping like thunder.

Carrion crows.

Hundreds of them.

Once again, the Crow’s screams found Dan’s ears.

Crows all around him, but this voice was different.

This voice spoke only to Dan Cody.

I helped you, Dan. Now you help me. . . .

Dan picked up the length of chain that had secured the freezer door. He stepped into the hurricane of birds. They filled the sky, obliterated the stars. Their wings pulsed with the rhythm of hate. Surely a crippled bird and a reanimated dead man could never stand against them.

But so intent were the predators on their wounded prey that they didn’t even notice the man with the solid steel chain until it was too late. Dan Cody moved forward, swinging the chain like a death-scythe, carving a path through tangled thickets of wings and talons. Joints crunched. Backs broke. Wings snapped. And a hundred crows crashed into heaped piles of trash. Shrieks of agony filled the night, but the birds—driven by Kyra Damon’s power— did not flee from the battle.

They turned from the Crow and attacked Dan as one. Cody grunted, moving ever forward, his wounds healing as fast as the bird’s could inflict them, the chain whistling above his head. Its hard steel links battered skulls and snapped bones, but the birds did not turn from their murderous task and neither did the dead man. He moved forward still, crunching lifeless beaks beneath his heavy boots, and above him the chain flashed in the moonlight, slick with the boiling black blood of the carrion birds’ fallen brethren.

Bodies hailed down around the man until he was ankle-deep in feathered corpses.

Still he came on like something unleashed from the gates of hell. The birds pecked ferociously, eager for a taste of his flesh, but the man hardly noticed their attack. With his free hand he tore the crows from his body in impatient handfuls, tossing them aside like crumpled black paper.

The caws grew sparser. The man grew stronger, his heart thudding wildly. He was covered in the blood of his enemies, but he did not care. Fresh sweat stung his eyes, and his muscles burned with exertion, and heat pumped through his body with every breath he drew.

But he did not care.

It felt good to be alive again. Very, very good.

I helped you now you help me!

The chain whirled on. Dan looked to the sky.

I helped you now you help me!

The sky was black . . . but now stars waited there, shining brightly.

I helped you now you help me!

Now there was light, if only from the stars, if only from the bone-colored moon. Dan swung the chain and chopped the final remnants of winged darkness from the sky, and the last carrion crow fell at his feet, and he kicked its corpse aside.

Then there was no sound in the dump but Dan Cody’s ragged breathing . . . and the painful rasping of one lone black bird.

The Crow fluttered weakly on the ground, several feet from where Dan stood.

Dan’s arms ached from exertion, but he bent down and gently lifted the wounded bird. The Crow’s eyes were closed. Still, the bird’s steely beak found Dan’s lifeline, traced the shallow, callused gully there.

Dan said nothing. There was nothing that needed to be said. He only smoothed the bird’s feathers with a gentle hand. Soon the Crow’s body grew warm beneath his touch, and he could almost feel a dark pulse beating beneath its feathered flesh.

It was a strong pulse.

Dan knew.

He shared it now.

Yucca Valley, Arizona

The Crow circled in the night sky black wings gleaming like some unnatural constellation that couldn’t be charted by mortal eyes.

Dan watched it, wondering at the bird’s strength. Somehow, they were connected. Dan couldn’t understand how, but he sensed the Crow’s thoughts urging him onward.

But Dan wasn’t ready to move. Not yet.

The bird had brought him back from beyond the veil. He knew that. One
tap
of its beak upon his chained prison and the fatal gunshot wound to his chest had scarred over, and his heart had begun to beat again. Another
tap
and the tom ligaments and smashed cartilage in his knee healed. One final
tap
and his shredded shoulder muscles knit together, filling his flesh like cold, hard cemetery marble.

Dan was strong now, strong enough to pound a chained freezer door off its hinges. But his strength did not bring him joy, for the Crow had not resurrected Leticia. Her corpse still lay inside the white tomb.

Her skin was stained crimson, and Dan was reminded of the roses he’d brought for Leti just a few hours ago. Hours. Dan shook his head. It seemed that a hundred thousand years had passed since the moment he’d bought the flowers.

In that moment, the world had been new and full of promise, and death had been nothing . . . nothing at all. But now death was everything, and Dan was left with nothing. The burst of exhilaration that had coursed through his veins as he’d killed the carrion crows was gone, and he didn’t know if he could ever get it back without Leticia at his side.

“Why?” he asked, his voice bitter.

The Crow spread its wings, dropped from the sky, lighted on Dan’s shoulder.
You are asking why I resurrected you, and not Leticia.

“Yes.”

I can bring only one soul back from the grave. I had only two choices.

“Why choose me?”

Would you have Leticia stand here in your place?

“Yes,
goddamn it!”

Really, Dan Cody? Would you really want Leticia to feel what you're feeling now?

Dan fell silent, his heart pumping pain, regret, sorrow.

“No,” he whispered.

Now she sleeps. And her sleep is sweet, and she sleeps in a place where pain can never wake her.

The bird spread its wings and left Dan’s shoulder. A few flaps and it landed on the ground. It cawed again, calling Dan, and he walked to the place where the bird waited.

The Crow’s black beak worried the garbage. It pecked through a sack of trash from a suburban home—Halloween candy wrappers, a child’s drawings of vampires and werewolves, an empty tube of fake blood, a set of plastic vampire fangs . . .

The Crow discarded these things with busy twists of its beak. Deeper in the bag, under a torn piece of cardboard stamped with suitably gothic script, were two small plastic containers of foundation makeup, only partially used.