Wicked Prayer

by Norman Partridge

  You walked alone ... on paths seldom touched by human footprints . . . until, at last, your own ghost came for you.

  Dull footsteps sounded on the steps beneath Lilith’s bedroom window.

  Another sound from downstairs, somewhere else in the house . . . the sound of breaking glass.

  On the other side of the room. Melody’s eyes flashed open.

  The attendant dropped her book, sprang from the chair. “Did you hear that?” she asked Lilith.

  “Yes,” Lilith said. “But don’t worry. It’s only a ghost.”

  Melody shivered. Lilith knew the feeling, knew just as well that it wouldn’t last with a sensible woman like Melody.

  Another second and the therapist was back in control. “Stay here,” Melody said. “I’ll check with Randy and Doyle. Whatever’s going on. I’m sure they can deal with it.”

  Lilith nodded. Randy and Doyle were a couple of burly “attendants” who provided the recovery team’s security. Mostly, Lilith suspected that they were there to handle her if she got violent, but apparently they were ready to deal with other situations, as well.

  Melody hurried into the hallway. Impassively, Lilith watched her go. Let Melody and Randy and Doyle and their other little friends do whatever they wanted. It wouldn’t matter. Lilith doubted that they could do much to stop a ghost.

  Lilith looked down at her arm, at a dozen pale roses left by repeated injections. The scars had faded in the last week, and soon they’d be cold and lifeless.

  Just like her flesh.

  Lilith closed her eyes for a moment. A smile crossed her lips.

  Erik Hearse had always told her that the drugs would kill her.

  She imagined he was right.

  But she was still breathing. Lilith knew that. Her ghost hadn’t come for her . . . not yet.

  She had to be right when she met her own spirit. She had to be perfect, and peaceful, and still. So she hurried to the bathroom, pulled out the vanity drawers one by one, and soon her eager fingers found the Ziploc bag she had taped to the wall behind the bottom drawer.

  Downstairs, gunfire rang out.

  Lilith worked quickly, hoping there was time to add one more rose to the bouquet nestled in the hollow of her arm.

  A fresh one.

  A funeral rose.

  Right now, speed was the key.

  Johnny knew that. He’d taken down the phone lines, the alarm system too. Help wouldn’t be arriving from an outside source anytime soon. What mattered now was what waited in front of him— whatever security Hearse had in place right on the fucking property.

  To deal with that, Johnny had to move, and move fast.

  A large window stood in front of him, holding his black reflection like a trapped animal.

  He tossed a patio chair through it.

  Raymondo chuckled. “Johnny’s patented Church key.”

  Johnny barely heard him. He was already on the move, stepping across the threshold he’d manufactured, heavy boots crunching on broken glass as he entered the house.

  Almost immediately, a bullet whizzed by his head, cracked into the wall at his side, and the wall coughed plaster.

  Raymondo screeched, “Get down, idiot!”

  But Johnny didn’t even listen. He dodged away from the broken window. He didn’t want anyone seeing his silhouette, and this room was big. Lots of furniture, lots of shadows to hide in—

  Another shot smacked the wall, just above his head, and then another—

  Fuck the shadows. They weren’t doing him any good.

  Three more shots, all of them coming close. But this time Johnny spotted the muzzle flashes. There were two shooters, about twenty feet away, on the other side of the room.

  Johnny didn’t want them coming any closer.

  “What are you waiting for?” Raymondo cried. “Use your goddamn gun, Johnny! It’s time to do your goddamn job!”

  But Johnny didn’t reach for his gun, and he didn’t say a goddamn word. He kept moving, heading for cover. Another muzzle flash, and a hot slug scored his inner thigh, way too close to home. A fire blazed down below, and it was a fire that stirred instant memories, both pleasant and unpleasant.

  The fire burned deep.

  Johnny thought; heat, blood . . . Kyra.

  He dropped and rolled behind a large sofa, a black leather crab hunting for cover. He opened the canvas bag, reached inside—

  A deep male voice on the other side of the big room, belonging to one of the shooters: “I got him! The fucker’s hit!"

  Johnny yanked a little loop of metal, as light and delicate as a wedding ring.

  And then he threw the grenade.

  A fireburst from below, like an exploding meteor that shook the whole house.

  Melody froze on the staircase, her ears ringing. One blink of her eyes and darkness returned downstairs, save for two narrow bands of dull midnight that stretched from windows set on each side of the front door.

  Melody wanted to get to that door, but she couldn’t move. Something was downstairs. She could hear it, moving around in the large party room off the entrance foyer.

  Something toppled in that room, crashing to the floor. A dull cloud of smoke billowed through the open door, a fog ripe with the harsh scent of explosives.

  Melody swallowed hard. She’d have to get by that doorway to leave the house. Unless she wanted to jump through one of the upstairs windows. Unless—

  Footsteps sounded downstairs. Melody prayed it was Randy or Doyle, but she couldn’t be certain.

  And she couldn’t wait long enough to be certain, because if the person down there wasn’t Randy or Doyle . . .

  No. She wouldn’t think that way. Fear bred negativity. Melody knew that. For once, She had to take her own advice. Live in the moment and survive it. That’s what she always told her patients.

  Eyes on the front door. Melody took her first step down the stairway.

  Another . . . and another . . .

  Someone stumbled into the smoke-choked hallway below. He crossed one band of narrow midnight, then stumbled into the other and dropped to his knees.

  The man’s hair was blond and wavy, pulled back in a fashionable ponytail.

  Randy, Melody realized. It's Randy, and he's been hurt. . . .

  Down on his knees, Randy whined like a whipped dog. Dark rain fell from his face. Only Melody knew instantly that it wasn’t rain.

  It was blood.

  Randy looked up at her, his eyes two puddles of gore in the cold glow of night.

  His face was gone. All that remained was a skull sticky with slashed meat.

  Oh, God, Melody thought. Oh, God . . .

  A hand dropped on her shoulder, and she nearly screamed.

  It was Amber, one of the nurses. “Jesus!” she said. “What’s going on? Is that Randy down there? Is—?”

  Another voice: “Look at him! He doesn’t have a face!”

  The second voice belonged to Erin, the other nurse. She brushed by Melody and hurried down the staircase. An instant later, Amber followed her.

  Melody expected them to stop and help the wounded man. But they didn’t. Fear had stolen any compassion they might have. Without a moment’s pause or hesitation, both nurses rushed past Randy.

  They reached the front door at the same time.

  Amber’s hand closed on the knob.

  Two shots rang out in the darkness.

  Two dead nurses dropped to the ground.

  Erik Hearse’s mansion had become one long, dark scream.

  There was nothing disturbing about a scream, though. Not when you lived in Lilith Spain’s skin. Lilith knew how to make the screaming stop. She had learned that lesson a long time ago.

  She coiled a silk dressing-gown sash around her arm.

  She drew back the plunger, then clutched the syringe between two fingers, then pressed the needle to her skin.

  Luck was with hen

  She hit the vein on her very first try.

  The big man stepped over the
dead bodyguard, a smoking pistol clutched in one hand. There came the soft creak of leather as he climbed the stairs, each footfall punctuated by the groan of aged oaken steps unaccustomed to bearing such a heavy load.

  Melody couldn’t take her eyes off the man. His face was a mess. Not as bad as Randy’s, of course, but bad—a map of welts and bruises that made her stomach roll.

  And there was another face, too, a small one that hung from the man’s neck. It was withered, and a pair of tiny eyes burned beneath its heavy brow like rubies infused with hellfire. The thing reminded Melody of an old novelty shrunken head, the kind that had been featured in comic book advertisements when she was a child, and— The big man’s hand closed around Melody’s throat.

  Silence enveloped her. But the silence was no surprise. Not really. She’d been screaming all along and hadn’t realized it, but she couldn’t scream anymore. Not with the man’s hand around her throat. Not with him strangling hen

  The man pushed her backward, and she lost her balance, and she slammed down hard on the staircase, and then the man straddled her, and he didn’t give up his grip.

  Trapped air burned in Melody’s lungs.

  The intruder smiled down at her, but he didn’t speak a word. The shrunken head did that. “We’ll give you one chance,” the head said. “You’d better tell us what we want to know.”

  The man’s hand came away from her throat. Melody coughed, drew a precious breath. “I’ll tell you anything. . . .” she said. “Anything you want to know.”

  The man bent close to her, still silent, his body pressing against hers. He smelled like an animal, and his chest was a hard slab of meat that crushed her breasts.

  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.