Wicked Prayer (21 page)

Emily pressed his hands tightly, and Dan felt her heavy white gold and turquoise wedding rings dig into his flesh.

“Together,” she said. “I want to remember you
together.”

Dan brushed a tear from his eye, and Emily did the same . . . and when the moment passed, Dan picked up Eldon’s guns and the ammunition.

Emily glanced at the weapons. “Just a minute, Dan,” she said suddenly. “I have something else you’re going to need.”

She left the room. Dan heard her footsteps echoing on the hardwood floor.

A few minutes later, Emily returned with a coil of sturdy rope.

“What’s this for?” Dan asked.

Emily found Dan’s eyes.

“I’ve heard they hang witches,” she said.

Dan shouldered the rope, Kyra Damon’s smirking face branded in his memory.

“I’ve heard that, too,” he said.

Then he picked up Eldon Carlisle’s guns and headed through the front door.

Emily followed him across the threshold.

Emily held the young man tightly to her chest for one long, hard moment before releasing him to the cool mountain night.

Dan smiled at her, but the smile was tight across his dead features, and his eyes were edged with the hard truth of what lay behind him, and what lay before him.

Neither of them said anything.

There was nothing more to be said.

In another moment, Dan Cody had crossed the
portales,
crossed the courtyard to the Dodge Durango.

The door creaked open.

The door slammed shut.

Keys turned in the ignition. Headlights flared in the darkness. The truck backed up, crunching gravel. Turned. Headed down the driveway and out to the highway, carrying the shadowy figure behind the wheel out of Emily Carlisle’s life forever.

“Vaya con dios,”
she whispered. "Go with God . . . and don’t go
alone.”

A brittle caw sent a shiver over Emily’s spine.

The Crow soared high, higher in the dark sky . . . high above the racing vehicle ... a harsh black outline against the ragged evergreens that blanketed the mountains.

One caw.

Then it was gone.

They followed the constellation northwest
.

Three of them in a hellborne street-rod—Johnny Church and Kyra Damon and Raymondo the shrunken head—chasing stars through desert night.

Kind of like the three wise men
, Johnny thought. Three adventurers, seeking out their own special mystery hidden somewhere beyond the desert sands.

Yeah. That’s the way it was. Almost, anyway. Because Kyra didn’t have any frankincense or myrrh or any of that crap, and Raymondo wasn’t wearing a shrunken turban on his shrunken head, and Johnny sure as shit wasn’t driving any fucking camel.

No way. Johnny Church was driving a ’49 Mercury Sport Coupe Custom. And that meant he was
moving.

So were the stars. The constellation named for the Crow moved through the night like a beacon. Kyra said the stars were part of the vision, and Johnny didn’t doubt her. He’d seen falling stars, sure, but never anything like this constellation. These stars
moved.

At first Johnny tried to catch them, flooring the Merc until the lake pipes roared and the big engine screamed. But every time Johnny accelerated, the constellation did the same. So he slowed down. And when he did that, the constellation lingered as if waiting for him.

Him or Kyra ... or maybe even Raymondo, the little shit. Maybe the stars were waiting for all three of them, because all three of them saw the constellation. Kyra had seen it first, of course, with her stolen eyes. But once she pointed it out to Johnny and Raymondo, they saw it, too.

Their mojo was cookin’, trio-style. That’s the way Johnny saw it. As far as he was concerned, it was just another sign of the power that was waiting for him somewhere down the black highway.

And that was a relief. Because Johnny had already had a hard night. Ditto for Kyra and Raymondo. They’d all pulled their share of the weight during their run-in with the black bird, the cowboy, and the Indian. They were all tired. Wherever the stars were taking them, they’d get there . . . and soon enough.

Johnny always felt most comfortable when he was behind the wheel. And to tell the truth, he felt a little better after the stop at the graveyard, too. Hey, a couple brews, a few racks of ribs, and an hour spent screwing like a sex-starved coyote could do that for a boy.

Johnny rolled down the windows and popped a Blasphemers CD into the player as the Merc blasted through Wickenburg. No one in that tired town even noticed, but Johnny didn’t care. The way Johnny saw it, he could drive forever as long as he had Erik Hearse’s voice lashing him.

Yeah. Hearse was the man. Johnny was definitely ready to take a page from the master’s book. He had himself all that money, $20K in tattoos, a cool old house that rated real high on anyone’s spook-o-meter, and just lately he’d gotten his very own handpicked blood-spattered bride.

Talk about your ultimate collectable. Hearse’s wife was an actress named Lilith Spain. Her father had been an Italian splatter actor who turned producer, and her mother was an English rose who’d starred in a dozen of her husband’s features, some that ranked right up there—to connoisseurs of the genre, anyway—with the best work of Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci.

Lilith was an actress just like her mom, though she hadn’t had the success of the legendary Amanda Irons. That didn’t matter to
J
ohnny, though, because the chick sure looked good in leather. Johnny owned a couple bootleg tapes of her S & M vampire movies, both the regular and harder-to-find (and much prized) hardcore versions.

Yeah. Hearse’s wife was something, all right.

But so was Kyra Damon.

And Kyra was all his.

Johnny cranked up the volume and sang along, his own raspy voice clawing his idol’s like a hungry pretender’s. Man, if you asked Johnny, it was a duet that was something to hear.

But that didn’t mean his passengers were up for a nonstop horror show blitzkrieg. After fifteen miles of high-decibel madness, Kyra and Raymondo demanded an aural change of menu.

“Screamin’ Jay Hawkins,” Raymondo said. “That boxed set Kyra bought me in Albuquerque. Cue up ‘I Put a Spell on You’ ... or maybe ‘Frenzy.’”

“Uh-uh,” Johnny said. “Traded Screamin’ Jay at that record swap in Las Cruces.”

“What?” Raymondo shrieked. “What’d you trade him for?”

“The Forbidden Dimension.”

“Dammit, Johnny, those were
my
CDs! And you’ve already got
three
FD CDs!”

“Correction—I
had
three. I used ’em for skeet targets that night we camped at White Sands. Blasted every damn one of ’em right out of the sky, too. Even Jackson Phibes can’t sing around a .357 slug.”

“Well put on some Martin Denny, then,” Raymondo said, still upset. “Or that Voodoo Lounge comp—”

“You and that Tiki stuff. Let me ask you, Raymondo: Did you like Martin Denny
before
those cannibals shrunk your head?”

“You’re a little off base there, Johnny. As I’ve told you a thousand times, they shrunk my head in 1919. Martin Denny was still eating tutti-frutti babyfood.” The shrunken head sighed wistfully. “But truth be told, I liked Monsieur Denny as soon as I heard him. I was hanging in a Tiki bar in Hawaii in 1959. Strictly window dressing, you understand. I didn’t dare open my mouth in those days. The first
time I heard 'Quiet Village,’ the trade winds were blowing softly off the blue Pacific and the smell of mai tais was in the air—”

Johnny snorted laughter. “Man, wake up and smell the millennium one of these days, would you?”

But that was all he said because, hey, Johnny was in a pretty good mood. He could stand to be a little magnanimous. If his passengers wanted something different, he’d give it to ’em.

Johnny reached down, ejected The Blasphemers CD, and slipped it into a case featuring Erik Hearse in a particularly cadaverous pose. One-handing the wheel, he thumbed through the CD rack that sat between Kyra and him on the Mercury’s front seat.

He passed up The Cure. Nine Inch Nails. No Fluffy No and Feared Dead and Remorseless. Some classical shit of Kyra’s. Then he came across The Doors’
Strange Days.
Yeah, that one was even moldy enough for Raymondo’s taste.

Johnny liked the idea, too. Especially tonight. Check it out— Jim Morrison in the desert. The lizard king, slithering after a wandering star.

Johnny grabbed the CD case and pinched it open.

Kyra snatched the silver disc before the big gearhead could touch it.

With a sharp flick of her wrist, she tossed it out the window.

Johnny swore. “Why’d you do that?”

“I’m not listening to any crotch grabbers,” Kyra Damon said. “Not tonight.”

Raymondo laughed. A miniaturized, dry hiss of a cackle, actually . . . but it ripped at Johnny’s ears like a chain saw.

Johnny glanced in the rearview mirror. The CD was back there, glimmering in the reflected glow of the taillights, running down the road like the gingerbread boy in that kid’s story.

And then it was lost in the dark.

Kyra popped a CD into the player.

Peter Warlock’s
Capriol Suite for Guitar and String Orchestra.
One of her psycho daddy’s daughter-bashin’ theme songs. Kyra had already played it once tonight. At the dump, in the middle of that wild cat-eatin’, spell-castin’ nightmare.

But, as it usually was with Kyra Damon, once wasn’t nearly enough.

Johnny grabbed the steering wheel and held on tight.

It was going to be one of those nights, after all.

Marana. Pichacho. Phoenix coming up.

The Dodge Durango rode smooth, and Dan Cody drove fast.

He didn’t listen to music.

He listened to the Crow.

The bird was flying northwest, and Dan was following it.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

Wherever they lead us.

“What happens when we catch them?”

You'll get your revenge.

Dan drove, thinking about it. Pain burned through him like a wildfire. The terrible sensation urged him forward, but it took from him, too. He wondered if there would be anything left of him when that fire was gone—when he’d pulled the trigger time and time again and watched Kyra and her man fall to his bullets.

What would remain of Dan Cody in the wake of that hell? A man? An avenger delivered from his pain? Or would there only be a walking corpse . . . and a couple of guns . . . and a pile of spent cartridges that were as empty as a dead thing that wasn’t smart enough to stay dead?

And what was the purpose of vengeance? Dan Cody didn’t want revenge. In truth, that wasn’t what he wanted at all.

He wanted Leticia.

He wanted an end to his pain . . . and the pain his love had endured on this side of the veil.

Dan hoped Leticia didn’t feel that pain in death. The bird had promised that was the way of it.
Now she sleeps,
the Crow had said.
And her sleep is sweet, and she sleeps in a place where pain can never wake her.