Wicked Prayer (36 page)

As the man’s face came closer to Melody’s, so did the face of the shrunken head.

A dry husk of flesh brushed her cheek, scraped a path to her ear.

“Please don’t hurt me,” Melody said.

Tiny lips gave Melody’s earlobe a mummy’s kiss. “Oh, we won’t hurt you,” the head said. “You’re much too pretty for that.”

The big man laughed. He licked Melody’s cheek with a studded tongue. “No,” he said. “We won’t hurt you . . . but if you’re a bad little girl, we just might eat you up.”

Melody shivered, but she didn’t say a word.

“What are you doing here, my dear?” asked the head.

“I’m here to help Lilith Spain. I’m an anger-management therapist, and—”

The big man started laughing. So did the head.

A sharp, razor slash of a sound, mixed with a heavy, empty rumble.

“Really,” Melody said, because she was sure they didn’t believe her. “That’s what I do. I’m licensed. Mr. Hearse hired my team to facilitate his wife’s recovery.”

“I’m sure he did,” said the head. “And where is Mr. Hearse?”

“He’s not here. He’s in L.A.”

“What about Lilith?”

“She’s upstairs, in the north wing. I can show you. I can—”

Benignly, the head grinned at her. “That won’t be necessary, my dear. I’m sure we can find her. You’ve been a great help. You can go now.”

The big man climbed off her.

He started up the staircase.

Again, the soft creak of leather . . . and the groan of aged oaken steps.

The sounds disappeared down the long hallway above.

Below, Randy whimpered in the hallway.

Melody hurried down the staircase. She passed by Randy without a second glance, then pulled Amber’s corpse out of the way so she could open the front door.

Fingers trembling, she fumbled with the lock.

A sharp click and she smiled, twisting the knob.

Cold air washed her as she opened the door.

Melody didn’t see the woman standing there on the steps. Not at first.

At first, she only saw the woman’s gun.

But as it turned out, the gun was the only thing worth seeing.

It did all the work.

The woman went down hard, leaking red.

Smoking Walther fisted in her hand, Kyra stepped into the house.

All was quiet on the first floor Cautiously, Kyra climbed the staircase to the second . . . past the ornate, gilt-framed paintings of romantic poets that hung on the wall; John Keats, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley ... a brilliant but thoroughly decadent lot; just the sort of house guests who would have reveled in all the gothic glory of this neoclassical palace.

Or
a Ken Russell flick,
Kyra decided, amused. She glanced at Lord Byron’s brooding, sensual countenance as she climbed the stairs. The dead poet’s eyes held the same fevered, unearthly gleam as did Lilith Spain’s . . . the present Mistress of the Manor.

Kyra could sense the woman, and her senses led her down a long hallway that adjoined another wing of Hearse Castle.

Just ahead, a door stood ajar. Through it, Kyra saw Lilith Spain, seated in front of a window. Her back was to Kyra, but Johnny Church’s wasn’t.

Their eyes met, and Johnny’s expression wasn’t a happy one.

“Don’t know what good this chick’s gonna do you,” he said.

Raymondo, dangling beneath Johnny’s chin, didn't say a word.

Kyra knew that it wasn't a good sign. She crossed the room, staring at the woman’s back as she approached. Amanda Irons's daughter was wearing a sleeveless crimson silk sheath, and her arms were two thin, white bones that protruded from her shoulder sockets like those of a cheap doll. Her dark hair was piled on top of her head, and Kyra could have counted the woman’s vertebrae as easily as pearls strung on a necklace.

Lilith Spain turned, her face a slash of white against the black windowpane.

Kyra couldn’t believe that a person could go to hell quite as fast as Lilith had. Only a couple months since that
People
magazine cover, but Spain looked like another woman. Drawn, gaunt. . .

Dead.

“I saw you outside,” Lilith said. She smiled at Kyra with bloodless lips. “I knew you would come for me.”

Kyra hardly heard her. The woman’s eyes were black, all right. As black as the Crow’s. But Lilith Spain’s eyes were all dilated pupils, and Kyra Damon saw no secrets there.

Still, Kyra knew what she had seen in her vision: a woman with the eyes of a Crow. And she remembered the prescient shiver that had washed over her when she slipped into Lilith Spain's wedding dress in that Vegas boutique, just as she remembered Spain's blackeyed gaze staring out from a magazine cover in the Little Chapel of the Stars, and the chill of recognition that gaze had given her—

And Lilith Spain was here, so Kyra's answers had to be here, too. But where? Lilith Spain looked as empty as any corpse Kyra had ever seen. She just sat there, staring at the needle tracks on her arm, staring at Kyra.

Like an angel who lost her wings to hellfire,
Kyra thought.

“I've never seen a ghost,” Lilith said, staring up at the woman who wore her wedding dress. “Until now.”

Kyra bit her lip, tried to swallow her frustration. She was tired. She was wet. Soaked through to the skin by the wild storm, her
once beautiful dress now nothing more than a rag. Right now she’d do anything, as long as she could feel that she hadn’t hit a rock solid dead end, as long as she could feel that she hadn’t come all this way for nothing. She’d even go back to the sweltering desert, back to the Spirit Song Trading Post . . . She’d visit any point on the dark road she’d traveled. Even San Francisco. She’d return to that shitty little Mission District stairwell and the hangman’s noose and—

Kyra bit her lip. No. She wouldn’t go back. Not even in her mind. She’d go forward.

Even if that meant dredging up the past.

Kyra’s thigh slid free of the slit skirt with a whisper of silk stockings and satin, and she grabbed the weapon she’d duct-taped to her leg: a Mountain Clan Crow knife in a leather sheath tanned to a dull sheen with willow bark and birch oil.

Kyra freed the blade, and in a silver flash it was next to Lilith Spain’s alabaster cheek. “I’ve already taken one pair of eyes on this trip. I won’t hesitate to take another. Do you understand me?”

Lilith smiled at Kyra for a long moment. Finally, she nodded.

“Good,” Kyra said. “Now I want you to understand—you only get one chance at this. One chance to give me the answers I’m looking for”

“One chance,” the woman repeated. “I only have one chance.”

“That’s right,” Kyra said, holding the knife. “You have one chance to tell me what you know about the Crow. . . .”

“Don’t do it, Kyra,” Raymondo said. “This woman can’t help us."
 

Kyra turned, blue eyes flaring like icy diamonds. The interrogation had lasted fifteen or twenty minutes, and Lilith Spain hadn’t uttered a single word that could aid Kyra in her quest for the Crow’s power.

“She’s got to know
something,”
Kyra said. “I saw her in my vision, Raymondo. I saw the power in her eyes—”

“She’s useless, Kyra. Forget the last-stab rehab. This little girl’s ready for the rubber room. About the only thing she’s up for is making some paper dollies ... if you could trust her with the scissors, that is.”

“What do you mean?”

“That witch doctor who resurrected me knew his business. He fixed it so I could sniff out someone’s mojo faster than you can pop an eyeball, and there’s one thing I can tell you: this woman doesn’t have any. She’s as empty as empty can be.”

“There’s got to be something,” Kyra said, and the knife shook in her hand, and she looked like she wanted to slash Lilith Spain with it, carve her down to bone and sinew, search through her bloody remains until she found what she was looking for.

“Don’t do it, Kyra. It’s a waste of your time.”

Angrily, Kyra pivoted and tossed the knife into the wall, blade spearing wallpaper the color of blood. Maybe Raymondo was right. Maybe there was nothing she could do. Maybe Lilith Spain had nothing to give her.

Maybe this was the end of the road.

Without a word, Johnny Church walked over and freed the knife from the wall. Church held the blade up, even with his chest, examining the wicked killing edge.

Raymondo, hanging from Johnny’s dog collar, stared at the blade, too.

But the shrunken head didn’t care about the blade.

He cared about his reflection, trapped on the steely surface.

“There has to be
something
special about this woman,” Kyra whispered, trying to convince herself “I
know
it.”

And Raymondo thought
:
Maybe Kyra is right. Maybe I'm the one who’s wrong.

Maybe there
were
secrets in Lilith Spain’s eyes. Or more correctly, maybe there
had been
secrets there. Secrets the actress knew nothing about, secrets Lilith Spain had seen, but hadn’t
noticed.

Like a reflection, trapped on the blade of a ceremonial knife.

Like a reflection, glimpsed on the black, dilated pupil of a drug-addled eye.

Johnny Church twisted free of Dan Cody’s blood-spattered jacket and tossed the rain-soaked garment on the floor.

He sure as hell wasn’t going to be needing a coat. It didn’t seem like he was going
anywhere.

Johnny stood at the window, watching Kyra walk through the cemetery. Raymondo was knotted around Kyra’s chrome-slivered necklace, the rising storm lashing both of them with silver shards of rain.

But Kyra wasn’t bothered by the weather. She’d stripped off the wet wedding dress. She had a raincoat now. Black PVC. She’d swiped it off the Spain bitch.

That was no surprise. The two women were the same size. Had been, anyway, before Spain got herself wasted. Hey, Ky’d even swiped the chick’s wedding dress. And she’d almost swiped the little no-hope’s
eyes.

That hadn’t happened, though. Mostly because of Raymondo, Johnny figured.

Not that the little fuck had bothered to explain things to Johnny. His words had been for Kyra’s ears only. A lot of spooky double-talk, with a heapin’ helpin’ of the same old new-agey babble that always drove Johnny crazy.

Not that Johnny was completely clueless. He’d picked up a few important points. Like: Spain was definitely connected to the black bird’s power, because Ky had seen Spain in her vision. Like: that didn’t necessarily mean the Spain chick knew squat about the Crow. Like: it might only mean that the Crow’s secrets were contained in something the Spain chick had
seen,
something that had cast its
reflection
on her black, drugged-out pupils once upon a time.

Go figure. Raymondo, the little brown-noser, could sniff out any juju that fell in range of his withered nostrils. And according to the head, the Crow’s power was definitely in the
neighborhood.

Out there somewhere, in the city of the dead.

And close enough to smell.

So one more time, they’d taken off on the Crow’s dark trail— Raymondo the dowsing rod, Kyra the dowser. As far as Johnny was concerned, it was all a bunch of treasure-hunt bullshit, anyway. Kyra hadn’t even included him in the hunt. She’d just told him to watch Spain. Like Lilith was going anywhere, except maybe to the
bathroom for another little menage a trois with Mr. Needle and Mr. Spoon.

As good-byes went, Kyra’s farewell wasn’t much.

But Johnny knew that’s exactly what it was.

So long, pal. Nice knowin’ ya.

Don’t let the screen door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Parting, and sweet sorrow, and all that other bullshit.

Wind rattled the window, louder now. The storm was rising, and Kyra was heading for that big fuckin’ tower by the cliffs. A columbarium, she’d called it. Whatever the hell
that
was. To Johnny, it just looked like some weird lighthouse without a light, a thing that didn’t move, trapped in a swaying ocean of Monterey pine and cypress that soon enough gave way to the real thing—the cold, black Pacific.

Johnny didn’t care. Let Kyra go ahead and grab her immortality. Let her get hold of it with her greedy black claws and swallow the fucker whole. He didn’t figure he was riding
that
particular gravy train anymore. Kyra had got what she’d wanted out of him, used him until he slipped that wedding ring on her finger. He’d delivered her to the Crow’s honeymoon suite, and now she was ready to leave the both of them behind.

D-i-v-o-r-c-e,
metaphysical-style.

First man, then bird . . . and guess who was next.

A grin crossed Johnny’s bruised face. If Raymondo thought he was
even
going to get lucky . . . well, he’d be wrong. Sooner or later, the head would find out that Kyra Damon didn’t need him, either.