Wicked Prayer (4 page)

“Then birds must be kinda sorta sacred to you, huh?”

Leticia didn’t answer, but that was all right with Kyra. “Let me tell you a thing or two, Pocahontas. Your mother was Julia Dreams the Truth—a full-blooded Crow of the Mountain Crow Nation. Born in Montana, just a burning eagle feather away from the Valley of the Little Bighorn.”

Leticia said, “If you
know
that, then why—?”

Kyra cut her short. “Your daddy, of course, was a white man. A white Irish-American with blue eyes that he passed on to you. And an Irish temper, too, if your smart mouth is any indication. And that’s as close to an answer as you’re going to get right now. The rest you’ll just have to wait for.” Kyra took a little breath, smiled nastily. "That is, if you think you can stand the suspense.”

“Look, if this thing is about race ... If you two don’t like the color of my skin, then take it out on me. Leave Dan out of it.”

Johnny laughed. “This ain’t about race, Pocahontas. Not unless you’ve got
bird
blood runnin’ through your veins.”

“You’re both
crazy,”
Leticia said. “Flat out
crazy.
You come in here with guns in your hands, but you say you don’t want my money. Then you demand to know what
tribe
I’m from, but you say this isn’t about
racism.
If you’re not on some kind of trans-American ethnic-cleansing road trip, then just what the hell
is
this about?”

The bitch was way past terrified, Kyra could tell, and that terror was giving her strength.

“Better watch it,” Kyra warned.

“Is it Dan? Is he the one you’re after?”

“I think you’ve asked enough questions for now.”

“You’re right. I
have
asked enough questions. Now I want answers.”

The blue-eyed Crow woman stared at Kyra, waiting for answers, defiance burning in her eyes.

Kyra shook her head.

Defiance.

Kyra wondered if she’d still see that when she cut those blue eyes right out of Leticia Dreams the Truth Hardin’s pretty little head.

Outside, the Crow cawed a warning, but it was a warning the man could not understand.

This came as no surprise to the dark messenger. The man was not dead—not in the literal sense, though the Crow knew the man had counted himself among the walking reanimated for many years—and only the dead could truly understand the rasping music of the Crow.

Still, the bird had to try to warn the man. Its beak parted, and its brittle cry tore at the silence, but the man only smiled.

“All right,” Dan Cody said. “I give up. Which one are you— Hekyll or Jekyll?”

This isn’t about me,
the Crow called
.
Don’t look at me. Look at the car. Look closely. . . .

The man did just that, sauntering toward the Mercury. But though the man was looking at the car, he wasn’t really
seeing
it at all. What he saw was all surface—a classic lead sled alive with gleaming purple paint, slick and shiny as the gutted flesh of a newly slaughtered lamb. Hellfire flames painted on the hood. Whitewall tires, and vintage fender skirts, and blue-dot taillamps. Tinted windows that reflected the world like a deep black memory. What the man missed was the car’s dark soul—the stink of brimstone that clung to the dual-exhaust lake pipes. The scorching heat of those painted hellfire flames even as the engine, encased in a coffin hood, cooled cold as a grave.

There were splashes of blood on the whitewall tires, and the blue-dot taillamps glowed eerily under the white light of the moon.
And inside, hiding behind tinted glass, was a shriveled thing suspended from the rearview mirror by a knotted hank of its own hair, a thing that rotated on that long black strand like a shish kebab on Satan’s own rotisserie, a thing that watched Dan Cody with stitched-open eyes that never blinked.

A shrunken head, bewitched and undying, a servant of a woman with a tarnished soul.

A woman who now waited in the Spirit Song Trading Post.

A woman with a Walther PPK pistol trained on the back of Dan Cody’s head.

The Crow wished that the man could see all this and understand, but Dan Cody knew nothing of the supernatural world. He knew nothing of reanimated shrunken heads. What he knew was what he could see. What he could feel. And what he felt right now was
envy,
pure and simple.

“Man,” Dan said aloud, admiring the Merc. “What a beaut.”

He stepped back, staring at the black bird perched on the hood. He brushed his long brown hair back from his face. “You nearly took my head off,” he said. “You tryin’ to tell me I need a haircut?”

Someone is,
the bird replied grimly, feeling Johnny Church’s presence in the trading post.
And worse.

Dan smiled, because he couldn’t hear—let alone understand— the bird’s words. “It’d serve you right if I got my shotgun and separated you from your fine feathers, my friend.”

Yes,
the Crow cawed
.
Get your shotgun. You’ll need it. But not for me. For those two inside, the two who have your woman. They want her eyes. They want my secrets
—

Still, the man didn’t hear the bird’s warnings. What he heard was a whole lot of cawing, and it wasn’t a pleasant sound.

“Lucky for you I don’t have much time tonight.” Dan patted the bag of scorpions. “I’ve got to keep a date. But if I were you. I’d find another place to hang out. The owner of that Merc won’t be happy when he sees what you’ve done to the paint job.”

Dan turned away, headed for the trading post. The Crow
screamed, talons raking the Merc’s hood, steely beak chipping paint as purple as the meat of a gutted animal. If only the man would look inside the Mercury, just open his damn human eyes and
look.
If he would only see the shrunken head, its lips parted in a hellish grin—

If he would only
look.

He’d see that grin parted over teeth filed to points like razor- sharp bamboo poles. He’d see the shrunken head’s eyes, shining with eldritch hatred. . . .

The Crow turned a black eye to the black glass. The bird saw clearly. The shrunken head swung on a length of black hair, back and forth, back and forth.

The Crow screamed at Dan Cody’s back.

Dan Cody kept walking.

Walking toward his death.

“This time we have you. Crow,” said the shrunken head, its voice a whisper driven by a bellows located in hell. “This time, the feathers are going to
fly.”

The Crow slammed its beak against the windshield, spearing nothing but its own frustrated reflection.

The shrunken head laughed.

“This time
you’re
the one who dies,” it said, twisting on its long black hair.
“You,
and no one else.”

The steel barrel of the .357 Magnum nudged Leticia’s spine like a solid lump of black ice, and she shuddered.

One final reminder—that’s what that nudge meant.

Johnny Church stepped away from the register, positioning himself behind a revolving rack that held southwestern greeting cards. “Remember what I told you,” Church whispered. “You keep your mouth shut and do what I say, and your boyfriend won’t get hurt. It’ll all be over soon.”

Leticia stared back at him, eyes hard.
Liar,
she wanted to say.
You’re a damned liar. A
person didn’t walk into a place with a pair of loaded guns and no expectations. These two maniacs had expectations, all right. What they might be, Leticia didn’t know. But she knew
one thing: those expectations were about to be met. One way or another.

If only Dan had arrived before the intruders. He would have known what to do as soon as the couple entered the trading post. He would have grabbed the sawed-off shotgun Leticia kept tucked away under the counter and—

The woman named Kyra turned from the front window. In the glow of glass-filtered moonlight, her hair spilled down her slim shoulders like crimson-black streams of blood. “Looks like luck is with us tonight," she said. “The cowboy’s not interested in the car. He’s heading this way.”

“All right,” Church said. “Now we’ll get down to business.”

Leticia glanced through the window. It was just as the darkhaired woman had said. Dan had turned away from the vintage Mercury and was coming toward the trading post.

A few more ticks of the clock and his hand would be on the door. He would push it open without bothering to knock, and the wind chimes tied to the handrail would clink musically as Dan entered the trading post. He wouldn’t even notice Johnny Church standing there behind the greeting cards, wouldn’t pay any attention to the woman standing in the shadows. He wouldn’t notice either of them, not with a dozen roses in his hand.

Roses, Leticia knew, that were for her.

Roses, Leticia knew, that could only mean one thing to a man like Dan Cody.

Leticia felt sick. She knew exactly what the roses meant. The same way she knew what the bag of scorpions meant. But it wouldn’t make a difference. Not tonight. None of it would matter at all. By the time Dan noticed the terror shining in Leticia’s eyes it would be too late—

“C’mon,” Kyra coaxed. “Hurry up, cowboy.”

Leticia swallowed hard. Maybe she should try for the shotgun. She could try to take out both intruders. But they were on opposite sides of the store. If she missed Johnny Church, which she probably would— given her sweaty hands and raw nerves—Kyra would splatter her brains all over the woven Navajo tapestry that hung behind her head.

Wait.

The scorpions
—

Leticia let her glance fall on the display box that stood behind the cash register. Twenty scorpions lurked there, each one with its stinging barb raised and ready to strike, each one encased in plastic resin.

The scorpion paperweights were Leticia’s most popular item. Tourists loved them. Leticia’s dad, despite his arthritic fingers, kept himself busy casting the critters, but he was too old to collect them anymore.

Dan Cody played scorpion wrangler when he had the chance, scouring the salt wash plains and yawning canyons on cool, dark nights with little more than a black light, a pair of long-tipped stainless steel forceps, a canvas bag, and a whole lot of persistence. Dan had presented Leticia with a thousand of the wriggling creatures the first time he’d asked her out—two hundred and twenty-five dollars’ worth in a glass jar, all wrapped up with a fat red ribbon. Without the scorpions to back him up, he probably never would have summoned the courage to ask her out at all.

Sure, roses would have been a lot more romantic than a thousand venomous arthropods—red ribbon or no red ribbon. But as Leticia Hardin had learned, roses meant something special to Dan Cody—

But Leticia didn’t have time for memories. Not now. If she spent too much time in the past, her future would turn to dust. What she had to do was warn Dan. Before he came any closer, before his strong, tanned hands touched the handrail and he pushed the door open, before those wind chimes rang out like tiny screams in the night.

There was only one way to do that.

Leticia’s right hand moved toward the display cabinet by the cash register.

This time, her hand didn’t shake.

This time, her hand was steady.

Leticia’s fingers closed over a large, heavy paperweight. She held the paperweight tight, tighter, until the scorpion trapped
within it would—had it not been frozen between five hand-cast layers of rock-hard crystalline resin—surely have been crushed to death in a woman’s fist.

Dan couldn’t wait to see the glimmer in Leti’s eyes when he handed her the roses.

He wouldn’t have to say a word. She’d know what they meant.

Maybe she’d say something, maybe she wouldn’t. It wouldn’t matter.

Because she’d slip her hand into his, and he’d put his arm around her shoulders, and together they’d go to the work room. Dan would dump the scorpions into the terrarium. Then Leti, arms full of the moist, fragrant red flowers, would look down into the writhing mass of arachnids and spot a little something extra gleaming there.

A wedding ring.

By the time she turned to him, forgotten roses falling from her arms in a perfumed red rain, he’d have his answer. He wouldn’t need to hear it from her lips. He’d see it there, shining in her blue eyes.

And then . . .

Then he didn’t know what. He hadn’t been able to finish the dream.

Alone all his life, he’d never been one for words. But he imagined that he should think of something to say. Think of it now, while he
could
think.

He’d tell Leti what she meant to him. Tell her how much he loved her.

Love.
The word made Dan’s mouth as dry as a dead riverbed. He parted his lips, tried to add a few words to that most dangerous of words. Two more words. Just three words, all together, but they were all the words anyone ever needed.