Wicked Prayer (33 page)

It was a new pain, different from the others she’d endured. Kyra’s nails scraped cold metal as she fought to escape it. She rose on her elbows, and her dark hair brushed the trunk lid and her reflection drifted away. Her hot breath fogged blood-colored paint, and then she couldn’t see her reflection at all.

“You’d better give me an answer,” Johnny said. “If you know what’s good for you, Mrs.
Church.’’

But Kyra wouldn’t answer. She wouldn’t give Johnny Church what he wanted. Not this time.

Before it had been different. She’d needed Johnny just as she’d needed physical pain, needed to feel it because she couldn’t feel anything else. Only the pain had taken the edge off the misery that pulsed in her soul, providing an alternative that was frighteningly tangible. Only the pain released her demons, and only in its shadow could she find the blessed oblivion she sought.

Only the pain could transform her.

But now it was different. Now Kyra
was
transformed . . . truly, at long last, and her new strength was still growing inside her, snaking its way through her flesh like some untamable vine, an unholy ganglion that sank tendrils into muscle and sinew . . . snaring bone, feeding on her warm red blood . . .

The Crow’s power filled Kyra in a way Johnny Church couldn’t. No mortal could fill her the way the black bird did. It felt good to be strong, like music inside her, like an exultant chorus of violins soaring above a fading backbeat of pain.

And all at once Kyra knew that she was through with hurting.

Through with pain.

Behind her, Kyra heard Johnny Church moving. He released her, unbuckled his belt, snaked it around his fingers like a steel- tipped whip. “You made a big mistake, Mrs. Church,” he said. “I’m as strong as you are now, and tonight I feel like using that strength. When it comes to hurting, this time you’re in for the main event.”

Kyra sucked a deep breath.

“You’re mistaken, Johnny.”

The words came out, a whisper that Johnny barely heard and instantly ignored.

But Kyra’s actions couldn’t be ignored as easily as her words. She whirled, catching the belt buckle in one hand just as Johnny lashed out with it. She tugged the belt—which was wrapped around Johnny’s hand—and he lost his balance and stumbled toward her. But she was too fast, sidestepping, and he came down hard against the trunk, the impact of his own weight knocking the wind from his lungs, his chin cracking against polished steel.

A thin line of blood trickled from his mouth. Johnny Church sucked wind like a beached fish. Kyra laid into him then, forgetting about the belt, instead grabbing his head with both hands, smashing it against the trunk the same way she’d bashed Dan Cody’s head against the pavement in a Las Vegas parking lot.

“Had enough, Johnny?” she asked. “Had enough,
Mr. Damon!"

 
Johnny spit blood, leaning hard against the trunk.

“You can’t do this to me, Ky.”

“Yes, I
can”
Kyra laughed. “And I just
did”

“No, you
can't!
I’m your husband now! I put that fuckin’ dead man’s ring on your finger, and now we’re equals, and-”

Kyra laughed. The poor fool. He didn’t have a clue.

“You’re my driver, Johnny,” Kyra said. “That’s all you are. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

“Listen, Ky—”

“No.
You
listen, idiot. I took you for a ride, but it turns out that you didn’t even make the trip. Sorry about that.”

“But you said we’d both have the Crow’s power—”

“I
postulated.
You understand that word, don’t you, Johnnyboy? I made some educated guesses based on the information at hand, but things didn’t work out the way I expected. Life and Death— they’re so full of little surprises.”

“What?"

“You don’t have the power, Johnny. You don’t have anything.”

“That’s bullshit, Ky. I’ve changed ... I know I have. I can feel it—” Johnny tried to rise, but Kyra smashed his head against the trunk one more time, showing him what real power was. “Guess again, stud. You haven’t changed. Take it from one who has. You’re just the same. Only a man. And there isn’t much something so simple as a man can do for someone who’s become what I’ve become. All you’ve got is a double-shot of testosterone, and plenty of anger, and a king-size male ego. That used to be fun, but it just doesn’t do much for me anymore.”

“Godammit, Ky. Wait a minute—”

“No waiting anymore. Don’t have time. I’m going to teach you a lesson about power, about the food chain and your place in it. School’s in session. Today’s subject: ‘Why Johnny Can’t Be Immortal.’ It’s a simple lesson, one even your little male mind can understand.”

Kyra wrapped Johnny’s belt around her hand.

Lashed out with the buckle, and it came down hard.

Not on Johnny Church’s flesh.

On the Merc’s dark paint job.

“No! Kyra!” Johnny screamed, his voice like a little boy’s. “Not the car!
Don’t!"

But Kyra didn’t listen.

The blows rang in the desert night.

Paint chips exploded off Detroit steel.

The belt scored metal the same way Johnny’s hand had once scored Kyra’s flesh.

But the wounds Kyra Damon inflicted would never heal. And Johnny Church screamed like the damned.

Dan Cody walked over to the chain-link fence and knelt before the Crow.

The bird was weak. It couldn’t fly any farther tonight, but Dan had a feeling that the creature’s intelligence had not faded with its strength. The Crow still knew things Dan could never know. But it couldn’t speak to him—couldn’t tell him what to do, or where to go.

“I hope you can still understand me,” Dan said.

It was his only hope, really.

He opened the old AAA map and spread it on the ground.

“Where is Kyra headed?” Dan asked. “Just show me, and I’ll get us there.”

The bird cawed and cocked its head.

Dan waited, hoping the Crow could understand.

Hoping it wasn’t too late.

Hoping it wasn’t time to lie down and die.

“Don’t give up on me,” Dan said. “And I won’t give up on you.”

Another caw, desperate and pained. Then the bird hopped off the fence, landing roughly on the map. Its talons scrabbled across southern California, made one hop north, landed in the blue Pacific.

The Crow’s beak lashed out, spearing a hole in the paper. Dan stared at the map. The place the Crow had marked was on Highway One, between San Simeon and Big Sur.

Dan folded the map. The Crow flapped its wings, but it was nearly exhausted. The bird would not fly again tonight.

Dan gathered the bird in his skinned palms.

“This time you ride,” he said.

Johnny drove.

He didn’t say a word. Didn’t want to. His lips were swollen, and he couldn’t see too well out of his left eye. It was swollen, too. If it closed much more he’d lose his depth perception. That happened, and driving would be a real bitch.

Johnny kept his eye—the good one, anyway—on the road. He didn’t look at Kyra, and she didn’t look at him.

But he knew that Kyra was just fine. Not a mark on
her.
Even if he would have managed to put up a fight, the Crow powers that pulsed in Kyra’s veins would have healed any injury she suffered.

That’s the way it was. Kyra was juiced with that damn bird’s power, nearly all of it. And Johnny . . . well, he didn’t have spit. He couldn’t so much as heal a hangnail, let alone “fix” the punishment that Kyra had dished out.

Man, he didn’t like the way this was working out. After all he’d gone through—all the stuff since he’d cut that hangman’s noose and saved Kyra’s fucking life back in San Francisco—and he didn’t have
anything.

He wasn’t stronger. He wasn’t smarter. He wasn’t even halfway to immortal.

Instead, he was busted up and busted up good. His beautiful Merc all scratched to hell.

And his wedding night had gone to shit.

He’d been
used.
Kyra, the only person he ever really cared about, had
used
him. That was the way it was, and things didn’t look good for the future. No fuckin’ wonder one out of every two marriages ended in divorce. The whole world had gone to shit. Fuck rituals!

So Johnny thought about it. What to do. When to do it.

And he kept his mouth shut, and he drove.

Raymondo hung from the rearview mirror, swaying above the resin-encased scorpion that sat on the dashboard. It was the one Leticia Hardin had tossed through the window of the Spirit Song Trading Post what seemed like a hundred years ago. Johnny had meant to keep the scorpion as a souvenir—but the way things were working out, this wasn’t a trip he’d want to remember.

The shrunken head seemed to be enjoying it, though. Raymondo grinned his little stitched grin, flickering eyes staring at Johnny like he was some freak on one of those tabloid talk shows or something.

A dry little cackle from the head.

“Don’t say a single word, Raymondo.”

“I wouldn’t do that, Johnnyboy. No
single
word would be quite
delicious
enough for
this.”

“I’m warning you—”

“No threats, Johnny. In fact, you’d better treat me right ... or I’ll sic your wife on you.”

“You’d better shut up, slag. You’d better do it now.”

Raymondo tittered. “Sure. Anything you say,
Mr. Damon
—” Johnny slammed on the brakes.

Kyra glared at him.

“I’ll take it from you,” Johnny said, his silver-ringed fingers strangling the steering wheel. “I have to take it from
you.
But I won’t take it from that shrunken little turd.”

“That’s fine by me,” Kyra said. “You have my permission to work this out on your own. Because I see it like this, Johnny: you can drive, and Raymondo can’t. And I want to be at Erik Hearse’s mansion ASAP. By tomorrow afternoon, I want to be eyeball-to- eyeball with Lilith Spain.”

“What the fuck’s
that
supposed to mean, Kyra? I need to ask your
permission
now? I can’t do anything on my
own?”

“Just get me there, Johnny. That’s all I ask.”

“What about Raymondo? Do I have to listen to his shit, too?”

“You can always turn on the radio.”

“You know the antenna’s busted.”

“Now you’re thinking.”

“Huh? What are you talking about, Ky?”

Kyra smiled, glanced at the head. “Even a broken antenna’s good for something ... if you use your imagination.”

Johnny caught on, grinning through swollen lips, realizing that his mistress had just tossed him a particularly juicy bone.

Yeah.

A busted antenna.

Yeah.

Dry desert wind lashed Raymondo’s leathery face.

The shrunken head was impaled on the Merc's radio aerial, courtesy of Johnny Church.

The Merc whipped across the Mojave Desert, doing eighty miles per. Eighty was bad, but Raymondo knew that Johnny’s car could go a lot faster. If the humiliated gearhead decided to kick the hellfire/nitro afterburners into gear, the shrunken head figured his gristly skin would peel right off his noggin.

Wind tore at Raymondo’s lips, and they flared into a startled black pocket.

A very tiny pocket, hardly large enough to hold—

A moth. Coming right at him. Head on collision.

Hell's bells,
Raymondo thought, really frightened now.

He fought to close his mouth.

Didn’t quite make it.

Inside the Merc, Johnny Church whooped and hollered.

Gray wings fluttered against the roof of Raymondo’s mouth.

A road sign shot by on the right.

Raymondo did the math, calculating the distance to Erik Hearse’s mansion.

It was going to be a long night.