Wicked Prayer

by Norman Partridge

  But there is power in silence, as well. Kyra knows this. And she is silent as she goes about the house with the gasoline, silent until she stands at the front door, silent until a single wooden match rasps against scarred wood.

  She waits in the street as the flames speak their own quiet language. Waits until old wood crackles, then roars. Waits until she hears the screams of the drunken and the drugged inside the burning walk, waits until thirteen men—and one unfortunate woman-—have been roasted alive.

  She waits in silence, a smile on her lips.

  For now the book belongs to Kyra.

  But she is disturbed to find that the book will not surrender its secrets so easily, for she is not yet ready for it. The book demands much of her. It demands her passion, and it extracts a quality she never knew she had—discipline.

  Latin does not come easily to Kyra, but it comes. First there are only words strung together, patterns and combinations she struggles to decipher. But Kyra is persistent, and one day meaning comes And on a day soon after, as Kyra turns the leaves of the dusty tome, the leaves flake away from her fingers like sheets of aged skin and shed their knowledge in lines penned in blood.

  She learns of the uses of the flesh, and the limits of flesh, and how the flesh is transformed through death.

  And she learns about the Crow.

  And when she closes the book at last, she knows what she must do. She must take the greatest chance she has ever taken. Trust in the greatest mystery of all.

  Trust in her own death, and the restorative power of the Crow.

  Kyra’s way waits in the stairwell, in the rope, in the tipping chair that clatters to the floor, in the noose that tightens around her neck. And as her body becomes heavier, her soul reaches above the shitty little Mission District stairwell like a small black bird, and she finds the one she has sought.

  The Messenger. The Avenger.

  The Crow.

  The one who can set a wrong life right.

  For Kyra’s life has been wrong for a long, long time, lost in the shrieks of a dying violin.

  And she sees the bird through eyes filming with death, sees it circling far, far above in the night sky, sees it looking down on her through the apartment building roof which has become the lid on a glass casket.

  As the bird swoops down through the walls of the apartment building she feels the rush of its wings, hears the brittle smash of glass as it breaks through the barrier. She sees its expression as it swoops above the rope, the chair, her body—

  And it caws: No . . . no . . . not for you . . . not for you . . .

  The bird turns from Kyra, shunning her. She struggles. The noose tightens. She wants an answer, needs to know why she has been refused.

  You wronged yourself, Kyra. You wronged yourself, and I am not for you . . . not for you . . . not for you . . .

  She sees the Crow’s world, a place of fog and forests. She wants to visit that world, longs to bond with the black bird, and she reaches out for the bird but she cannot catch it, cannot trap so much as a single feather in her clawing hand.

  And the Crow flies away, and the black bird’s world is gone, and she is alone again. Alone with her pain, which seems deep and eternal.

  And dark. And transformative. For the darkness reaches out, and there is something else in it besides pain, something that has lived in the stolen book. And it takes hold of Kyra’s tattered soul and gives her something she can hold.

  A vision.

  A vision that throbs in Kyra’s skull, a vision that delivers a messenger very different than the Crow.

  His name is Johnny Church, and he is a stranger, and by that one random altruistic act his unimportant life is forever changed. For when Johnny Church cuts down Kyra Damon and breathes new life into her lungs, he sets into motion a series of events that no mortal can control. It is a spider’s snare spun from the pages of a book written by evil men long dead, and it has given birth to a woman and a vision made to fulfill dark needs that have grown and ripened between tattered covers with no help from mortal man, and from that moment on the vision becomes a part of Kyra, inseparable, the way that enchanted pages are bound in a skin-covered book, or feathers are bound to the flesh of a bird.

  It is a vision that she sees, even now.

  A vision that begins with the blue eyes of a Crow.

  Kyra sees it clearly as dead oxygen bums in her lungs

  And her black heart thump-thumps in her chest.

  And a man—a man no more than a stranger she has come to know, really—gasps and moans . . . and spills his life seed inside her.

  Johnny Church grinned as he slipped the leather dog collar around his neck and buckled it tight.

  Goddamn, but he felt good. He never came in anyone the way he came in Kyra Damon.

  He knew he’d done her right, too. Ky wasn’t giving him any shit now. She lay there on the vault—black leather bustier pushed up around her breasts, dark hair pooled on sandstone, pale body shimmering with a sheen of sweat—and with a pair of sparkling blue eyes that had once belonged to another woman she stared into the Madonna’s stained glass eyes as if they contained all the mysteries of the universe.

  Johnny Church, he didn’t care too much about the mysteries of the universe. What he cared about was his stomach. After expending all that energy, it was kind of empty again. But that was all right, because piled on the altar—which he’d nearly knocked over during his wild session with Kyra—were Todos Santos offerings left by the dead woman’s relatives.

  Brightly painted wooden bowls containing lemons and limes, chocolates and maize dough cakes baked in the shape of little people. An unopened bottle of tequila. And the icing on the cake: las calaveras. Candy skulls. They were everywhere. Piled on the altar, lolling on the floor. Grinning madly, their sugared eyes’ sockets peering in all directions.

  Kinda like Blasphemers skulls, Johnny thought, remembering the signature bonehead on his T-shirt. He wondered what Erik Hearse would have made of the skulls. They’d have been perfect as scary/comic props in a Blasphemers video.

  Johnny shook his head. Too bad he hadn’t remembered to press PLAY on the Merc’s CD deck before trotting over to the mausoleum like a dog on a leash, but his dick had been the part of his anatomy calling the shots at that particular moment.

  It wasn’t calling the shots now. Johnny snatched a sticky handful of Mexican chocolates from a lacquered red and yellow bowl. “Not a bad spread,” he said, popping a chocolate into his mouth. “We could have had dinner here. They got dessert and everything.”

  Reclining on the dead grandmother’s tomb, Kyra held the stem of a withered red rose between her fingers. “Still thinking about your stomach, Johnny?”

  “Uh-uh. Now I’m thinkin’ about the Merc.”

  Kyra raised an eyebrow. “The Merc?"

  “As in, when are we gonna get in it and hit the fucking road?”

  Kyra laughed. “Why don’t you let me put some clothes on first?”

  “If you insist. But I kinda like you like this.”

  “Oh, you do?” Kyra stretched like a cat, then slipped off the vault in one graceful movement. “Which do you think moves better—me or the Merc?”

  “Which do you think?” Johnny groaned as Ky pressed against him like warm, liquid night. “I might not be able to drive for a week after the little workout you just gave me.”

  “You’d better be able to drive.”

  “Oh, yeah? Where is it we’re going, sugar?”

  A sparkle flashed in Kyra’s blue eyes.

  “Why, we’re gonna hitch our wagon to a star,” she said.

  Kyra coiled the chrome necklace around her throat as she walked over to the barrel cactus where the shrunken head waited, still twisting on that red-hot spike.

  Raymondo raised a withered eyebrow. “Did you scratch your itch, my dear?”

  Kyra nodded, rubbing the scar on her neck, a dull purple band which now bore distinctly fiery highlights. “Scratched it and then some.”
r />   “You sure?” Raymondo asked. “I mean, if Johnnyboy didn’t measure up tonight, I could always give you a little head.”

  Kyra laughed out loud. She plucked the shrunken head off the cactus, raised it to her lips and gave it a little kiss. “You know, Raymondo, you’re kinda cute ... for an unrepentant hellspawn.”

  “Yeah. I’m cute . . . but only from the neck up.”

  Kyra stared up at the black curtain of sky, pinned to the heavens by a scattering of stars. She did that every night. . . every night that was clear, anyway. Of course, on all those other nights, she hadn’t had expected to see anything special.

  Tonight was different.

  Tonight, she had the blue eyes of a Crow.

  “You’re already drawing on the vision’s power,” Raymondo said.

  “Yes . . . but I’m not sure what it is. Or where it will lead me.”

  Kyra inhaled deeply. Her skin was like polished alabaster now. The scorpion welts had vanished along with the pain that had transformed her. So had the anxiety she’d felt earlier. The sex had done that, providing her with much-needed release. She didn’t know exactly what had stirred that particular hunger—the book, or perhaps just her own twisted libido. She only knew the hunger had been satisfied.

  And she was satisfied. Her expression was as placid as a statue’s. Her eyebrows were dark wings, but the eyes beneath them were inviting blue pools that welcomed the night’s reflection, the moon, the stars, everything . . .

  She blinked several times, holding Raymondo in her hands, staring down at him as if he were a Magic Eight Ball with secrets to tell.

  He looked up into her stolen eyes and smiled a withered smile.

  “Do you think I’ll see anything?” she asked. “I mean, will it be different now?”

  “It’s your vision, Kyra. You know better than I do what you’ll see or what you won’t.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if I know anything at all.”

  “You know plenty. You knew you had to find those eyes, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. But you told me where to look.”

  “True . . . but this time you don’t need me. This time, you know exactly where to look. This time, if your vision is pure, you won’t even need an astronomy chart.”

  Kyra didn’t look at Raymondo.

  She looked at the stars, at the patterns within the stars. . .

  “My vision is pure," she said, completely calm now. And it was so. For the stars glimmered in the sky . . . and they took wing . . . and they came to Kyra Damon from a place ninety million light- years distant, deep within the heart of the ancient constellation Corvus.

  The second part of Kyra’s vision—a Crow made of light, flying through a river of midnight.

  “It’s time to follow the night,” Kyra said solemnly.

  “Where will we go?” Raymondo asked.

  Johnny Church had asked the same question, back in the sandstone mausoleum.

  Kyra said, “Wherever we must go.”

  “Then let’s get gone.”

  Kyra nodded, turned toward the Merc. “Johnny,” she called. “It’s time.”

  “I got you, babe.” Johnny chugged the dregs of a Budweiser, crumpled the can in his big hand and tossed it at a tombstone. Then he slipped behind the wheel and started the engine.

  Kyra cradled Raymondo in her hands as she hurried to the car, and when they were both inside she didn’t let go of him. She held the shrunken head as if he were something precious and delicate, her hands trembling, her breaths coming short and fast.

  Raymondo closed his eyes, rocking in Kyra’s embrace. Her hands were warm and soft, and they smelled of withered roses and broken promises. . .

  And dreams that were meant to be realized.

  Santa Catalina Mountains

  The Tucson Valley, Arizona

  Dr. Emily Carlisle’s home lay at the foot of the Santa Catalina mountains, its adobe walls blending perfectly with juniper and pine-clad slopes that rose in ragged ridges just north of Tucson. The rambling property was a solid ninety-five-mile drive from Cuervo Canyon in the Chihuahuan Desert . . . ninety-five miles from the spot where Dan Cody had buried Leticia Dreams the Truth Hardin in a shallow sandstone grave.

  Not just ninety-five miles. Ninety-five miles filled with bitter highways and empty black skies . . . and a dead hollow where Dan’s heart used to be. Ninety-five miles of canyons that opened into caverns of remorse that ran deep as the bottom of Dan’s soul.

  He floored the Chevy Apache’s accelerator and made the trip in just under ninety minutes, give or take a speed limit or two. By the time he passed through the gate of unfinished latillas and made the half-mile unpaved drive to Emily’s house, the stolen junker was ready to cough its last right there in the driveway.

  Dan cut the engine beside a stone fountain that dominated the courtyard. He sat in silence while the engine cooled, staring at the house, at the glazed windows with their Aztec-print curtains . . . the ancient wisteria vines that wrapped around the beams that supported the tiled roof. . . the pueblo-style portales where Dan and Leticia and Emily had sat in old wicker chairs and sipped ginger iced tea on hot desert afternoons . . . sitting there, together, in the cool shadow cast by the Santa Catalina Mountains’ wooded slopes . . .

  It was a beautiful house, and more.

  It was the home Emily had shared with her husband, Eldon.

  It was the kind of home Dan had once dared to dream of for himself. . . and Leticia.

  He had been here—alone, or with Leti—many times. Always at Dr. Carlisle’s invitation. Turned out the old desert rat was a damn fine cook: she specialized in southwestern fare, heavy on the chipotle chilies and mole.

  Dan remembered those dinners together. The nights when the three of them had sat around the pine table in Emily’s kitchen, a cast iron pot of pinto beans simmering on the potbelly stove as the old woman wove stories about her adventures on the scorpion trail. Tales of grace and humor, daring and determination. He remembered Leti’s bright eyes and eager expression as she listened to stories she had heard from Emily’s lips a dozen times or more . . . but would never hear again.

  Other memories waited here. Leti questioning Emily about the cottonwood New Mexican Santo in the kitchen window, always eager to explore another belief, always searching for another way to see the world . . . Leti quietly sharing her own Native American beliefs in her low, engaging voice.

  Dan remembered all of it as if had happened just yesterday . . . the gleam of the polished copper pots and pans that hung on the walls . . . and the fragrant odor of drying herbs by the sink . . . and the pinon wood fire that warmed adobe walls the color of palo verde . . . and the echo of Leti’s laughter.

  Always the echo of Leti’s laughter.

  But that laughter seemed hollow now. Unreal. To Dan it seemed as if the sound of Leti’s laughter, like the memories of those perfect nights, belonged not to him, but to some other person. Someone who could still believe in the existence of love and hope and life.

  Someone who was still alive.

  Because now Dan Cody was dead.

  He didn’t have the sense to lie down, maybe, but. . .

  Dead was the simple truth of it.

  Leti was dead, too. Buried in the cold hard ground of Cuervo Canyon, ninety-five miles south. Same place where Dan had buried those precious commodities—love and hope and life.

  Dan stepped out of the Apache, hesitant. He’d never dropped in on Dr. Carlisle before: four o’clock in the morning, dead and unannounced.

  Emily, how ya doin’? Sorry to get you out of bed, but, hey. I’m in kind of a jam here. Leticia and me got ourselves wasted tonight by a devil woman and her gun-totin’ action-hero sidekick and well, things got kinda messy there for a little while. The black leather bitch cut Leti’s eyes right out of her head, and then she and her boyfriend blasted a few holes in my hide, and to make a long story short your favorite young couple ended up locked in a freezer in the county dump. . . .

  No,
really, Em, I’m all right. I’m just dead. And well, see, I have to borrow a couple guns . . . and by the way, I’ll need your car, too, because the talking bird who resurrected me is gonna lead me to those self-styled Starkweather and Fugate bastards, and then I’m gonna blow their murderin’ asses south of kingdom come.

  Oh, yeah, Em ... I might be a little late for work tomorrow, too . . .

  Oh, yeah.

  Yeah.

  This was going to go over real well.

  Dan could picture Emily’s face. By the time he was done with his impromptu Tales From the Crypt script she’d probably be wishing she’d done a thorough background check before hiring him. Had him fill out some forms. Any history of mental illness, Dan? Heavy drug use? Paranoid delusions? Video game abuse? Watching-the- Gulf-War-on-TV Syndrome? Maybe some cheap, movie-of-the week revenge fantasies with yourself cast in the starring role as the Avenging Hero?

  Christ. Maybe he should just leave, hot-wire a truck somewhere. Get the hell out.

  Right, and have the highway patrol snatch him a hundred miles down the road.

  He didn’t have time for that. He rubbed his hand over the stubble on his chin, staring at Dr. Carlisle’s Dodge Durango. The shiny new black truck was parked in the driveway. Dan needed it. That, and a couple of her late husband’s guns.

  Dan sighed. There was no way around it, really. He’d just have to make the best of a seriously fucked situation. Keep Dr. Carlisle out of it as much as he could. For her own protection—not only from the local law enforcement, who would probably contact her as soon as they discovered she knew both Leticia Hardin and Dan Cody, but from those two psychopathic supernatural-born killers.

  No way would Dan ever let anything bad happen to Dr. Carlisle.

  No way was he going to live through this night a second time.

  Determined now, his footsteps echoed across the courtyard. He climbed the steps that rose beneath the corbel and came to the front door, a hand-hewn panel of stained ponderosa pine hung by simple wooden hinges.

  A bleached white ram’s skull hung there on a nail, staring at him with empty eyes.