Wicked Prayer

by Norman Partridge

  But this time, Johnny wasn’t concerned with fashion. This was much more serious.

  Headlights glowed on desert sand—there wasn’t so much as a dirt trail out here—but Johnny didn’t slow down. There was nothing in the way. He’d make his own road.

  “Where are you going?” Kyra asked, surprised.

  Johnny didn’t say a word as the Merc bounced over desert soil.

  “Johnny! We’ve got a long way to go! Erik Hearse’s mansion is in California ... on the coast at Big Sur, on that twisty fucking Highway One. There’s lot of bad road to cover between here and there. I don’t want to waste any time—”

  Johnny figured she had to be kidding. “Don’t give me that, Kyra. We’ve got plenty of time. Dan Cody’s finished. The Crow’s next. . .”

  “Turn around, Johnny. I mean now.”

  Johnny’s anger flared, and it seemed twice as hot as it had ever seemed before. Man, he couldn’t understand why Kyra was giving him grief After all, this was their wedding night. She had to understand that. Man, she was wearing his fucking ring.

  There wasn’t room for argument on a wedding night.

  Not between a man and his wife—

  “I’m not kidding, Johnny.”

  But she had to be. Church knew it. Or maybe she was pushing him, like she did when she needed it bad. Maybe this was some new game—

  “Johnny—”

  “Don’t try to push me around, Kyra. I’m your husband now. You gotta learn that.” He smiled, getting into it. “Or maybe you need someone to teach you.”

  “Listen to me, Johnny. We don’t have time to screw around!”

  “You arguing with your husband, Mrs. Church? On your fucking wedding night?”

  “This isn’t a game, Johnny. We’re not playing anymore. Now turn the car around, and I mean right this fucking minute.”

  Johnny ignored her. Man, his heart was pounding, felt like a rocket in his rib cage.

  Because Kyra was wrong. This was a game. Maybe the best game of all.

  And Johnny was more than ready to play.

  He mashed on the brakes, cutting a wild brodie through the desert sand. Then he slammed through his door, and he snatched Kyra’s door open. He felt like he could pull it off by its hinges, and that felt good.

  A new strength surged in him. It had to be the Crow’s power. No adrenaline rush had ever felt like this.

  Johnny grabbed Kyra by the hair, pulled her out of the car and spun her around so that she faced him. She looked totally shocked, totally surprised . . . like she couldn’t even understand what was happening, like her brain was in a totally different space and it was impossible for her to catch up with current events.

  But Johnny’d catch her up, and soon.

  Man, was he mad.

  Kyra got her mouth open. “You fucking prick. Didn’t you hear what I just said? We don’t have time for this.”

  “I heard.”

  Johnny eyed his new bride dead-on, suddenly knowing just what this was about, knowing just what had to be done. Uh-huh. It was way past time to get a few things straight. Because this was Kyra Church’s wedding night, and that meant she belonged to you- know-who forever-fucking-more.

  Mr. Johnny Church, that’s who.

  Man of the house, king of the fucking castle, fill-in-the-fucking- blank—that was him.

  Kyra was his.

  He owned her.

  And it was about time for the little woman to figure that out.

  Highway 58, heading west through the Mojave Desert.

  A little nowhere called Boron. A deserted trading post, like the ghost of a place Dan Cody remembered all too well.

  Dan grabbed the sawed-off shotgun, stepped out of the Durango, circled around back of the place. There was a window set in the cinder-block wall, and by the looks of it Dan figured he could just squeeze through.

  The dead man came even with the glass, his grisly reflection waiting on the moonwashed pane. No wonder the preacher had thought he’d channeled a divine power when Dan sat up in the wedding chapel parking lot. Of course, the man had been wrong about the source of the miracle. A compassionate God would never allow anything that looked like Dan Cody to walk the earth. But the Crow, well . . . the dark messenger had other ideas.

  Dan stared at the remains of his face. A cracked skull pasted with blood and bone and slashed flesh, plus a bulging eyeball that made him look like the Teenage Frankenstein grown old and tired.

  Get used to it, Dan told himself. No more quick fixes. No more healing powers. Kyra Damon owns those powers now, and she didn’t leave much for you, Dannyboy. The heart in your chest is a bloody mess. It doesn’t beat at all anymore. But hey, look on the bright side— at least you’re way past hurting.

  Physically, anyway. The emotional parts, the spiritual parts . . . well, they hurt plenty. And those were the parts of Dan that wanted answers but couldn’t find any. Dan never had those answers to begin with, and now even the Crow couldn’t help him—

  Not with words, anyway.

  A sound from behind. A shuffling of Tarot cards ... or Crow wings. Dan turned, saw the black bird lighting on a rusted chain- link fence.

  The bird had led the way from Vegas to Boron, but it hadn’t done it fast. The Crow was weaker now, too. Not as weak as Dan. But then, the dark messenger hadn’t been kicked half to death by Kyra Damon, or shot in the back by Johnny Church, either . . . for the second time in as many nights.

  The bird cawed. No words, but Dan didn’t need words to decipher the Crow’s meaning. “Yeah,” he said through tom lips. “I know. We’ve got to get moving. I just need to grab a couple of things first.”

  Dan turned toward the trading post. The window still waited for him, and so did his reflection.

  One shotgun butt later, Dan was rid of both.

  No alarm, except for a barking dog down the street. Soon enough, the mutt quieted down, and Dan slipped into the store.

  It was dark inside, but he didn’t want to turn on a light. He inched down a cramped aisle, heard a familiar shiver of a sound that raised the hairs on his neck.

  A rattlesnake, just a few inches away ... in a glass terrarium. Dan chuckled, put his face close to the glass. The snake hissed and sprang at his bulging eyeball, smacking its reptilian muzzle against a glass wall it couldn’t see.

  “I know just how you feel,” Dan said, “and I don’t blame you at all.”

  Dan eased past the terrarium. He found a little bathroom tucked at the end of a narrow hallway, and he did his best to clean his wounds. He washed his face first, and then the bad and bloody rest of him.

  His broken ribs didn’t hurt much, but the hole in his chest was a problem. He found a roll of duct tape in a toolbox under the sink, did himself up like a thrift-store movie mummy, and then he looked for something to wear.

  The trading post didn’t carry many clothes. There were a few sun-faded Boron souvenir T-shirts hanging in the window. Dan took a black one. It didn’t look bad, really.

  But he needed more than a clean shirt. He had to cover his face somehow, just in case he needed to stop somewhere along the road for gas or something. A carousel of sunglasses parked by the cash register squealed as Dan gave it a turn, and pretty soon he found a pair of shades big enough to cover his bulging eyeball. Then he grabbed a stocking cap from behind the counter and pulled it low over his exposed skull. That should do the trick, as long as no one looked at him too closely.

  Dan figured that he was about ready to go. There was only one more thing he needed. He searched the drawers beneath the register, finally found what he was looking for. A tattered AAA road map—WESTERN STATES AND PROVINCES—probably twenty years out of date, but better than nothing.

  He closed the drawer, setting the map on the glass countertop. Moonlight spilled through the broken window, washing the counter- top. He glanced down at his reflection, relieved to find the sunglasses and cap worked all right. He looked pretty good ... for a dead man.

  But the thing that l
ay beneath his reflection looked even better.

  A Bowie knife—gleaming steel in a puddle of moonlight. Not a Mountain Clan Crow knife, but just as sharp.

  Dan stared at the blade for a long moment.

  He thought of the ring on Kyra Damon’s finger.

  Leticia’s ring.

  Dan meant to have that ring back.

  He took the knife.

  Kyra refused to believe what was happening.

  Johnny grabbed her, spun her around, shoved her against the trunk of the car. Her black-nailed fingers scratched polished steel, but she was off-balance, and there was nothing for her to hold on to, and Johnny yanked the wedding dress to the side and up, and the slit that ran the length of Kyra’s thigh was tom another six or seven inches, exposing Kyra’s ass.

  It happened so fast—the way it had happened so many times before—so fast that Kyra couldn’t even think. Then Johnny grabbed her hips, fingers digging in at the edges of her scalloped pelvic bone as if he were going to rip her apart, and the pain scorched Kyra straight to the soul.

  “You with me now, Ky?” Johnny asked. “You ready to learn your lesson?”

  Kyra didn’t say a word. The words weren’t even important anymore. She concentrated on the pain from Johnny’s clawing fingers, on something there with it. Something that stung her deeply, as if her body had been sown with salt.

  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.

&
nbsp; 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.