Wicked Prayer (42 page)

“I found it,” she said, and then she was suddenly embarrassed. “Well, I didn’t really
find
it, I guess. I took it from someone who doesn’t need it anymore.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that, Lilith. Not really.”

“I guess not.”

The little head stared at the book, smiling a miniature smile. “I take it you like to read, then?”

“Oh, yes,” Lilith said. “I like to read.”

Lilith was quiet for a long moment. She stared through the window, at the bright sun. She was glad she had her sunglasses. “Are you ever lonely, Raymondo?” Lilith asked.

She waited a long moment for her answer.

“Yes,” Raymondo said at last. “I’ve been lonely.”

“It’s not good to be lonely, is it?”

The little head swayed back and forth.

“No,” it said. “It’s very bad to be lonely ... or alone.”

Cuervo Canyon, Arizona

It’s quiet here.

No storm, no screams, no shattering stained-glass rain or gunshots.

But there is blood here. Sandstone towers painted red. And now that Dan Cody has walked beneath the Crow’s wing, he wonders for the first time when that blood was spilled, and why the stains have remained on these rock walls for so long.

Dan stands in red shadows, in a place he knows too well. A place where night-shrouded spires once speared the silver eye of the moon . . . where that very same moon once wept silver teardrops that splashed down the rocks to the dry canyon floor.

But there are no tears now, not for Dan.

Not when he stands alone in the wild fire of the setting sun.

He is only a spirit now, a breath on the wind.

He has nothing. . . .

He cannot touch anything. Not anymore. Not if he wanted to. He couldn’t hold a gun, and he couldn’t knot a rope . . . and he couldn’t carry the woman he loved to a grave he’d dug in the shallow earth.

He has nothing. . . .

And yet, he has everything. For there are things even a spirit
can carry. Scraps of memories. A medicine bundle’s worth of hopes and dreams. A vision shared in the flickering firelight of a night long gone.

Two sparks on the wind. There, and then gone.

And now darkness spills like an inky waterfall, splashes down rocks and crevices to the desert floor. Shadows scrabble like indigo scorpions across the sand. Soon the moon rises full and pale on a horizon flayed by rocky spires.

Overhead, black wings whisper across the Sea of Tranquility, but Dan does not look up.

The time for looking up is gone now.

For now the time has come.

The time Dan has waited for.

Time, at last, to set the wrong things right.

Dan closes his eyes, and he thinks of a day long-imagined. A day when he would carry a ring in his pocket, and a woman would wait for him in this very canyon, a smile on her beautiful face, a smile glowing like the first sunrise that kills winter and brings spring . . .

Dan opens his eyes.

Stands still in the moonlight.

He recalls the words that had—once, a lifetime ago—so desperately wished to escape the trap of his lips.

He remembers all three of them.

“I love you,” he says, but there is no voice in him to find the wind.

So he walks where bloody cliffs meet the blackened sky and the air smells of sun-warmed sandstone and desert weeds, where trails are more often traveled by lizards than men and silence stretches past forever, like a lost echo.

And just ahead there is a sound . . . there is an echo.

The echo of a drum, like a heartbeat.

Dan hurries toward the sound.

He is nothing more than a ripple on the wind, but he hurries just the same.

The drumbeat grows louder.

This time he won’t lose it.

A voice—small but sure—in tempo with the drumbeat.
With this ring. . .

Just ahead, she waits. Dan is sure of it. Around the next turn of the canyon . . . beyond the next clutch of red rock and cactus . . .

The same voice, rising in the wind:
With this ring, which is made of summer's heat and winter's snow, which is made of tears and laughter and dreams and sorrows and happiness . . .

Dan hurries on, and if his heart were more than wind it would beat wildly, and if his eyes were more than moonlight he might weep.

Just ahead, a soft wind calls his name.

Just ahead …

Stephen King says that Norman Partridge is “a major new
talent.”

Joe R. Lansdale calls Partridge “the hottest new writer going.”

Peter Straub says that Partridge “consistently writes as though his life depends on the words he sets down on the page.”

High praise, indeed. Here’s what earned it: Partridge’s first novel,
Slippin’ into Darkness,
was heralded as “nitro-laced, in- your-face fiction”
(Locus).
His short fiction has made regular appearances in the “year’s best” anthologies for suspense, mystery, and horror. A collection of short stories,
Mr Fox and Other Feral Tales,
won the Bram Stoker award. Another collection of short fiction.
Bad Intentions,
was a World Fantasy nominee. A pair of supercharged suspense novels,
Saguaro Riptide
and
The Ten-Ounce Siesta,
followed from Berkley Prime Crime in 1997 and 1998.

Partridge has worked in libraries and steel mills. He loves rock ’n’ roll, drive-in movies, and old paperbacks where the bad guys get away with murder.