Wicked Prayer (23 page)

“The song, Johnny,” Kyra said. “It’s almost over.”

He nodded, still holding on to her hand. It felt different, somehow. Stronger. Johnny didn’t feel stronger, though. Sure, he saw the stars in the sky the same way Kyra did, but he didn’t feel different at all. Hell, his sacro-fuckin’-iliac had launched another murderous attack. Hauling those damn corpses up a mountain of garbage had just about done him in, and then there was all that driving, and even the fucking had taken its toll—

He didn’t have time for complaints, though. He knew that. Kyra was right. The song
was
almost over.

Johnny opened his mouth. There were a hundred things he wanted to tell Kyra Damon—what she meant to him, and all the dark mysteries he wanted to explore with her after they’d stolen the Crow’s power. He wanted to talk about how it had been for them before, and how it was now, and how it would be when they were really equals—

He opened his mouth, ready to say those things. But he found, quite suddenly, that there was only one thing that needed to be said.

“I want this to last forever,” Johnny said. “I want
us
to last forever.”

Kyra didn’t say a word.

“That’s what I want.” Johnny held her hand so tight. “That’s what you want, too . . . isn’t it, Ky?”

Kyra smiled.

A single tear spilled from one blue eye, rolled down her cheek, fell to the ground and left a stain on the sand.

But Kyra barely noticed.

Because the tear belonged to another.

Kyra looked up at the constellation, just a few tiny pinpricks fading in the morning light. She thought about Johnny’s question, knowing instantly that she couldn’t give him an answer he could understand.

She felt different somehow. She’d seen new stars in the sky . . . but somehow she could hardly see Johnny at all. She didn’t know what the full force of the Crow’s dark powers would do to her. She didn’t know what she’d want when that power pulsed within her like her own sinful heart.

Kyra was seeing through the eyes of another now. She knew that. And sure, her new eyes might spill another woman’s tears. But they belonged to Kyra now. Her blood fed them, and they joined to her nerve endings, and her brain, and her soul.

Her vision had, quite literally, brought her a new way of seeing things. Her vision would guide her to the black bird’s power, too. And if that meant she had to do some things she thought she’d never do—like wear a man’s wedding ring—well, then she’d do those things, as well.

She’d get what she wanted. No matter the price.

Johnny’s hand shook while he waited for his answer. Kneeling before Kyra, he wore the expression of a man hanging on a meat hook.

That’s what he looked like—a piece of meat, a big slab of muscle and gristle.

But under that meat Johnny still had a pulse, and somewhere buried deep, a heart.

“Till death do us part, right?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper. “And once we finish with the Crow, we’re never gonna die . . . so that means forever, right?”

“Forever,” Kyra said, “is the longest time.”

It wasn’t an answer at all. Not really.

Johnny Church couldn’t understand that, though. He’d hear what he wanted to hear. Kyra’s cryptic words would be answer enough for him. Those words were all he’d get. Because Johnny wanted one thing, and the vision wanted something else. Something that might seem the same on first glance, but something that was really very different. . .

Kyra released Johnny’s hand.

It fell away, like something dead, and Kyra wiped her cheek, smearing that misplaced tear with the back of her hand.

She looked at Johnny.

He looked small, down there on his knees.

He’d never looked small before.

Now he was almost shrunken, somehow . . . almost like Raymondo.

Almost hollow . . . like a mortal man.

A car horn blared behind the Durango, and Dan’s eyes flashed open.

A battered pickup screamed around him, and a beer car thrown from the passenger window smacked the Durango’s front bumper.

Stalled in the middle of the road was no place for Dan to be. He started the engine, then pulled the Dodge onto the shoulder.

He sucked a few deep breaths. The dream of Cuervo Canyon was seared in his memory like a brand. His wedding, stolen by Johnny Church and Kyra Damon. His bride’s eyes gleaming in the dark-haired woman’s head . . . Leti’s wedding ring destined for that same woman’s finger.

Maybe
dream
wasn’t the right word for the things he’d seen. Maybe the right word was
vision .
. .

Dan didn’t know.
Vision
was Leti’s word, not his. He wanted to
think it through before he traveled another mile. He turned the wheel and left the road. He headed west, into the desert, away from the road, away from other men.

But he couldn’t leave the Crow behind. The black bird soared above him, cawing its distress.

Where are you going?
it called.
We have to hurry if we're going to stop Kyra Damon. We don't have much time.

Dan swallowed hard. His throat was dry . . . dry as a dead man’s gullet. Still, he kept driving, rocks banging hard in the truck’s wheel-wells, fat tires hissing over sand.

Finally, he pulled to a stop. The Crow circled above him.

Dream or vision?
Dan wondered.
Reality or imagination?

A hundred other questions churned in Dan’s skull. He couldn’t answer one of them. Not by himself. To find an answer, he’d have to trust another. He didn’t know if he could do that, either.

He opened his mouth. There was only one thing to say, and he’d say it to the Crow.

“Kyra Damon said you lied to me.”

She'll say anything to stop us.

The Crow swooped over the hood of the Dodge. The first glimmer of morning sun cast a shadow there, and the bird rose in the burnt scarlet sky.

That was when Dan saw the stars. The Crow constellation, gleaming the way it had in his dream ... or his vision.

It didn’t belong in this sky at all, but there it was.

Gleaming even as the sun rose in the east.

And moving.

“Tell me about the stars,” Dan said. “Tell me how Kyra Damon stole them from you.”

We have to hurry
—

“Tell me what she’s after.”

We don’t have time for this
—

“Tell me the truth, or I’m not going anywhere.”

The Crow cawed, nothing but a rusty bark. No answer at all.

“Have it your way,” Dan said. He took Eldon Carlisle’s pistol from its holster, and he stepped out of the Dodge Durango. His
boots hit desert sand, his stance set wide. He raised the pistol, aiming at the sky—past the scarlet horizon, through the purple haze, beyond the bright blue face of morning, to a small cluster of stars.

No,
the Crow cried.
You don't understand
—

“Then make me understand, dammit.”

No-

Dan opened fire. The big Colt bucked in his hand, and the bullets flew far but they could never reach the stars.

That was Dan Cody’s truth, and he believed it. He had always lived in the real world, or at least a world he imagined was real. A world where bullets could never reach the stars, and black-feathered crows could not blur the borders of Life and death, and dead men could never, ever, under any circumstances, rise like Lazarus and walk.

It was a world where the eyes you were born with were the same ones socketed in your skull when you died. A world where vision—like perception and its stubborn twin, reality—never changed.

That had been Dan Cody’s world for nearly twenty-five years. It hadn’t changed until he met Leticia Dreams the Truth Hardin. Leti understood dreams and visions and perceptions. She understood that reality did not come with set parameters, or an owner’s manual, or a money-back guarantee. And, most of all, she understood Dan Cody.

Now Leti was gone. And Dan didn’t know what kind of world he had entered in the wake of her death, and his own.

But someone knew. . . .

The Crow circled high above Dan’s head.

High enough for a bird . . . but lower than any star.

Dan redirected the barrel of the Colt .45.

The metal sight fell in line with the Crow’s wings . . . and it was just as dark.

Dan’s finger trembled on the trigger.

“Tell me the truth,” he said. “Now.”

Las Vegas, Nevada

The Crow constellation loomed above Las Vegas, and Johnny Church's '49 Mercury raced toward the city as if it were some dark Bethlehem.

There was no outrunning daylight, though. Not for Church, who hunched behind the wheel like a black leather gargoyle . . . not for a jabbering exhibit of the cannibal's lost art that went by the name of Raymondo . . . not even for a woman like Kyra Damon. Inevitably, the stars faded from view, and soon Kyra blinked a single sandpaper blink and when she opened her stolen eyes the constellation Corvus was quite suddenly gone.

As if someone shot it right out of the sky,
Kyra thought. But that was impossible. The constellation would return when darkness fell, and when that happened she would find the exact destination that her vision demanded.

It would be difficult, but Kyra knew she could wait one more day for that to happen. Until then . . . well, it wasn’t like it was hard to find a place to stay in Vegas, or a thousand twisted ways to occupy her time.

Kyra could certainly use some rest, if she was up to such a mortal pursuit. Not that she’d really have time for sleep. There was a lot to do in the space often or twelve hours, before darkness blanketed
the desert and her clear blue Crow eyes turned once more to the stars.

Kyra smiled. There was time for everything, really. Time to get things done, and time to enjoy the moment. She’d earned that time, the same way she’d earned the things she was determined to take from the Crow, the same way she’d earned every precious, desperate moment of life that she’d ever enjoyed or endured.

Kyra Damon had bought every ticking second of it with anger and rage, with bullets and blood and a big piece of her soul. It was hers. All of it. She knew that now. She saw it clearly with eyes she’d stolen from another woman, a woman who probably hadn’t even understood the depth of her own power.

Everything Kyra had ever wanted was finally within her reach.

She’d have it all, and soon.

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to take the time to enjoy the moment.

After all, it wasn’t every night that a girl got herself married . . . and Kyra wasn’t thinking of anything quite so mundane as her impending nuptials with Johnny Church. That kind of union didn’t matter to her. Men and women stood in front of ministers and slipped rings on their fingers all the time, then they slipped them off and called a lawyer. That was nothing new.

No, mortal marriage didn’t interest Kyra Damon, any more than Johnny Church did. That wasn’t what this was about, not at all, though poor Johnny couldn’t understand that.

Johnny was interested in making Kyra Damon his own. First, last, and always.

But Kyra was interested in another kind of union.

A union with a black bird.

A union with its power.

Daylight broke over the hills to the east, swept down jagged crags and filled the gullies with a purple glow that blazed red and simmered orange as the sun rose higher and higher, until at last the burning sphere was free of the hills and its rays broke across the flat,
barren expanse of the desert, sparking a scalding glint off the barrel of the Colt .45 Dan Cody gripped in his hand.

The dead man aimed at the black bird circling in the sky above him.

Don’t pull the trigger,
the Crow warned
.
If you do, you’ll finish both of us.