Wicked Prayer (13 page)

One stark white. One jet-black.

The Crow tapped each container in turn, then nudged them toward Dan’s feet.

Dan looked down, between his scuffed Wolverine work boots.
The boots were now dappled with bloodstains, fine droplets gone nearly black on sand-colored suede.

As if waiting, the Crow cocked its head and stared at Dan with black eyes like bullets. Dan couldn’t look away from the eyes set in the bird’s tiny skull, for what he saw there was more than darkness.

He saw another man, face painted, a stranger whose expression was equal parts harlequin, demon, and angel.

Without thinking, Dan bent low and picked up one of the containers. The Crow’s voice filled his head.
I can help you,
the bird said.
But you must help me. We must work together. Do you understand?

Dan didn’t speak. The wind picked up. Brittle shards of garbage churned in the night. Dan saw the man with the painted face standing before him like a ghost delivered by the night, and he saw other men . . . and other women. Each of them had faced the moment Dan faced now, and each of them had chosen to walk beneath the shadow of the Crow’s wing.

Dan saw their faces, felt their stories pour over him like healing waters. He knew they were fellow travelers, for the bitter memory of loneliness pulsed in their veins . . . but they were no longer alone. They had joined with the Crow, and the bird had delivered them from the jaws of death, giving each of them a second chance.

A chance to set the wrong things right. A chance to escape their loneliness and reclaim their love. A chance to live again, in the righteous fire of vengeance. And to die again ... in peace everlasting.

A chance to sleep in a place where pain could never wake them.

I can guide you,
the Crow promised
.
Please believe me, Dan.

Dan stared at the make-up container nestled in his palm. Vampire—that’s what the manufacturer had named the dead- white color

Dan swallowed hard. Halloween was in the past, and he wasn’t a monster

He was a man.

Dan dropped the makeup container on the ground.

What are you doing, Dan?

“What I’ve always done.”

He turned his back on the bird, and he walked away . . . alone this time.

He walked to the one place in the world he had to be—Leticia Dreams the Truth Hardin’s unhallowed tomb. Dan’s love lay bent on the freezer’s floor, legs twisted beneath her at a tortured angle, long dark hair framing empty eye sockets that seemed to bleed tears.

“Oh, God,” Dan whispered. “Oh, God—Oh, God
...”

Nothing could have prepared him for the horror of this sight; the brutal ugliness, the abominable violation. This was the work of monsters. Vengeance forgotten, Dan fell to his knees, sobbing.

"Why didn’t you let me die?”
he cried.
“Oh, God, why didn’t you let me die?”

I can guide you,
the Crow promised, dark wings whispering over Dan’s shoulders as it landed on the sepulchre.
I can help you find the peace you seek.

The words hit Dan like a hard slap. He turned on the bird, his anger flaring as he pointed at the freezer “Can you really help me find peace after
this?"

The bird cocked its head and looked at him. Its beak seemed a welded point, like a nail, and the voice that had filled Dan’s head was suddenly nowhere to be found.

“The
truth.
Crow,” Dan demanded. “I want the
truth
from you. Can you help me find peace after
this?”

Still no answer.

"Talk to me, dammit!”

The bird cawed—raw, primal, an angry cry needing no translation.

Dan turned away. “I guess I have my answer.”

If that is the answer you want,
the bird said
.
I don’t pretend to know everything, Dan. I can’t predict the future. ... I can't chart the course of your immortal soul. But I do know this: Leticia's murderers are strong, and they're alive, and they're out there. Kyra Damon and Johnny Church are out
there,
when they
should
be in
here.
In this box.

Dan stared into the bird’s eyes for a long, hard moment.

Then he walked up to the freezer.

He lifted Leti’s cold body.

Her hair fell back, and moonlight lit her face.

Dan Cody started down the trash mountain, the dead woman cradled in his arms.

“Come on, if you’re coming,” he said over his shoulder

The bird hesitated only slightly before giving a loud, answering caw.

Dan didn’t say another word. He just kept walking.

The Crow followed.

Like a shadow.

Near the entrance of the dump stood a trailer of corrugated
steel. The door was locked. Dan Cody fixed that with one stout kick.

The office inside was plain and utilitarian: wood-paneled walls, a desk, a telephone, ashtrays. There was a door behind the desk. It opened onto a lounge area/shower room partitioned by a row of old metal lockers that looked like they’d done duty in a high school gym. There wasn’t much more to the lounge area than a coffee table, a battered portable TV, a sofa, and a couple of vending machines along the wall.

Gently, Dan lay Leticia’s body on the sofa. Then he turned on the hot water in the shower until it blasted steam, peeled off his filthy, bloodstained jeans and khaki T-shirt, and grimly scoured himself long and hard, until the water—at first tinted pink with his own blood—ran clear

When Dan was done he tore the padlocks off each of the lockers and scrounged through the contents, coming up with a change of clothes and twenty-three dollars, a scratched pair of sunglasses with very dark lenses (and that was good, for even the moonlight seemed too bright for him now), and a denim jacket.

Dan didn’t know how far he was from Scorpion Flats. He couldn’t chance picking up the Jeep, anyway ... or his guns. The
law was probably all over the Spirit Song Trading Post by now. The local sheriff was a real hardass who didn’t much like Leticia Hardin’s desert-rat boyfriend. For all Dan knew, the sheriff could be looking for him after discovering his Jeep at the scene of the crime. The Wyatt Earp wannabe was probably ready to shoot first and ask questions later.

Dan knew he had to start moving if he was going to catch the couple in the ’49 Merc. But there was something he had to do before he could begin his pursuit.

A woven Navajo blanket covered the back of the sofa. He wrapped Leti in it, lifted her once more, and carried her outside. A bulldozer was parked near the trailer, and a backhoe. Behind them was a battered Chevy Apache pickup truck. By the looks of it, Dan wasn’t even sure the truck would run.

But the Crow was sure. It perched on the hood, waiting for Dan.

Cody opened the passenger door and eased Leti inside. Then he gave the Apache a closer look.

Color? Primer, coated with a fine layer of dirt and rust, leaving the truck the color of a scab. Tires? About the best that could be said was that there were four of them, each one nearly bald. Bumper stickers? Requisite
GOD BLESS AMERICA and NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION
placards pasted on the tailgate. Tape deck, cell phone, A/C? Forget it. Those things weren’t important to an ambulating dead man, anyway.

Keys? In the ignition, which was definitely a plus.

Dan glanced in the truck bed. A bunch of rusty tools were piled there. Dan tossed most of them out, saving only a shovel and a pick.

Satisfied with his inspection and not seeing any other options even if he had not been satisfied—Dan got behind the wheel, cranked the ignition, and listened as the rattling engine warmed and the gas gauge needle climbed to a just over half of a tank.

Leti’s corpse leaned against him, her head on his cold, hard shoulder

It was almost as if she’d fallen asleep.

Dan closed his eyes. He wanted nothing more than to join Leti in a deep, anaesthetizing sleep. “Now she sleeps,” he whispered,
“and her sleep is sweet, and she sleeps in a place where pain can never wake her”

Dan opened his eyes. For a long moment, the Crow stared at him through the dirty windshield. Then it rose into the night, dark wings silhouetted against the bone-colored moon.

Cody slipped on the scratched sunglasses, saw jagged slashes over the Sea of Tranquillity.

He jammed in the clutch and put the truck in gear.

He pulled onto the packed dirt trail that exited the dump.

He followed the Crow.

It felt better to be moving, to feel the cold night air on his face as he raced down the highway. The Crow led Dan south, then east. Soon he passed a sign—
YUCCA VALLEY, POP. 14,300
—and he knew instantly where he was.

Northwest of Scorpion Flats, which meant he was not all that far from the middle of nowhere.

He hit the gas hard and raced ahead of the bird, the Apache’s engine complaining. The Crow fell in behind, content to let the man take the lead ... for the first part of this journey was the man’s business, not the Crow’s.

The Crow’s business was with a pair of killers named Kyra Damon and Johnny Church. For his part, Dan Cody did not know where the killers had gone. That didn’t matter to him.

Not now.

Not yet.

Cody had to finish his journey with Leti before he could begin his journey with the Crow.

He owed her at least that much.

The Crow trailed the Chevy truck southeast on Arizona Highway 80, past El Vado and Mescalero and through the Mule Mountains, east of Bisbee, east of Double Adobe, to a secluded canyon of sandstone and mesquite.

Cuervo Canyon. Crow Canyon, in Spanish. Leti had practically grown up in the place. Her mother had claimed the territory in the name of the entire Crow Nation. Named it, too. That was the story Leti told Dan, anyway, and he was willing to bet that it was true.

Now the canyon’s name seemed nothing more than a bitter joke. The time when he and Leticia had laughed about it was lost in the past.

He killed the engine near a twisted sandstone tower The black bird perched on rocks that had endured the ravages of time, a silent sentinel, and to Dan the bird seemed just as eternal as the stone tower He wondered what ravages the Crow had suffered, and what strengths it called on to endure. He wondered what powers governed it, what forces granted its ability to bestow the gift of resurrection.

He wondered what the price of that gift would be.

He got out of the truck, cradled Leticia’s body in his arms.

Later, he’d come back for the pick and shovel.

For now he’d walk.

Walk to the place where he first met Leticia Dreams the Truth Hardin in the amber glow of a summer afternoon.

At the time, Cody was working under contract to an arachnologist with the University of Arizona, a woman who was heading an ongoing research project concerning the medicinal applications of scorpion venom.

Different from a lot of the jobs Dan had had. Better, because it meant he could work outdoors, alone and undisturbed.

And that was how Dan Cody liked it best: alone and undisturbed. He’d been alone pretty much all his life, from the time his parents had died—first his dad, from chronic alcoholism, and then his mom, from more of the same. Foster care and group homes being what they were in the state of Arizona, Dan had found himself jerked from one foster home to another, depending on who wanted the DBS check that month.

Dan passed several years that way. The older he got, the harder
it got. A lot of homes didn’t want teenagers, and on the day he turned sixteen Dan decided he’d be better off on his own. He walked out of a Tucson rathole, and he never looked back. For all he knew, the bastards who owned that house might still be collecting a check for his keep.

He did whatever it took to get by. He clocked time as a ranch hand in several New Mexican outfits, worked for the U.S. Park Service, even busted heads at country and western bars as a bartender/bouncer/whatever-comes-through-the-damn-door-I’ll-deal- with-it troubleshooter