Wicked Prayer (29 page)

“That would be wonderful.”

Kyra turned her back, brushed black organza from her shoulder.

“Unzip me?” she asked.

Connie touched Kyra’s shoulder, traced the delicate ridge of her spine.

The designer smelled of sandalwood and jasmine.

The zipper whispered down.

Kyra stripped off the dress.

It was just as well.

She didn’t want to get any blood on it. At least, not so soon.

And working with a knife was always messy.

The Crow’s warning chased Dan Cody through the desert.

Dan could barely hear it. Not when he saw Johnny Church lurking in his memory. He had a score to settle with that pin-faced lowlife, and as far as Dan was concerned he couldn’t meet up with the tattooed SOB fast enough.

But the big gearhead was just the appetizer. Dan pressed the gas pedal to the floor, trading his mental portrait of Church for a snap of Kyra Damon. The little noose-maker herself When Dan
caught up to her . . . man, what he’d do would make that little tango she’d danced at the end of that rope seem like a slice of heaven—

Wait!
the Crow cried as it struggled to keep pace with the truck.
You don't know where you're headed! If we're going to find Church and Damon, we have to wait for the stars
—

Yeah
, Dan thought sarcastically
, and the alignment of the planets, too.
There was no sense waiting. There was only one place a couple of slags like Kyra Damon and Johnny Church would go to get married, stars or no stars, vision or no vision—

Wait!

“No more waiting,” Dan said. “I know what I’m doing. I trusted you, and now it’s your turn to trust me.”

He felt it in his bones. He knew he was right. Where else would a pair like Church and Damon go with a stolen wedding ring?

A smile twisted across Dan’s scarred face.

Sure things
didn’t exist in Las Vegas. Never had. Never would.

Except this time.

Kyra and Johnny left the
boo-teek,
locking the door behind them.

Dusk had fallen. It was cooler now.

Probably not in the Merc, though. Even though the windows were tinted, Johnny’s ride had been sitting in the sun for at least a couple of hours.

“I bet Raymondo’s broiling,” Johnny laughed.

“Probably,” Kyra said. "Serves him right.”

Yes,
she thought
,
serves him right. Him, and everyone else who gives me a whisper of trouble.

On the way to the parking lot, Kyra passed a trash can.

She tossed Connie’s tongue into it.

Too bad. It was a sweet little tongue . . . but sharp, too.

Too sharp to stay in Connie’s mouth.

Kyra would have loved to kill the woman, but she couldn’t do that. She didn’t want any more Crowbait around. Not when she was so close.

Johnny eyed Kyra, a lustful sneer on his lips.

“Man. You look good in that dress, babe.”

“Thanks.”

“Erik fucking Hearse.” Johnny laughed, shaking his head. “The son of a bitch ain’t got no taste whatsoever.”

“Go figure.”

They started across the parking lot.

“Where we headin’ now?” Johnny asked.

Kyra eyed the darkening heavens.

“Third star to the right,” she said. “And straight on till morning.”

The Crow did not follow Dan Cody for long.

Just as Cody was his own man, the black bird was no man’s pet. With a brittle caw it soared above the black strip of highway, hurtling through the cool evening air, searching for a sign.

Fifty miles southeast of Vegas, at the spot where Johnny Church had proposed to Kyra Damon, the bird found one.

No other creature would have noticed it, but to the Crow the sign was unmistakable. A tearstain there on the ground, a dead lover’s tear that had spilled from a living woman’s face.

The Crow pecked at the spot where Leticia’s tear had forever stained the earth, then looked to the heavens.

There were no stars in the sky. No constellation, beckoning in the distance.

But the Crow knew that Dan Cody was on the right path.

And the bird flew on, leading the way now.

Blazing a black trail in the waiting night.

Las Vegas, Nevada

Johnny Church pulled across three parking spaces, shot his heel against the emergency brake, and cut the Merc’s engine.

“Man,” he said. “I don’t know why we needed the fucking stars to find this place. A telephone book would have done the trick.” Kyra nodded. She almost wanted to laugh. It
was
kind of funny, after all they’d been through. You start off cracking a vision like some exotic code . . . then you commit a couple murders and steal another woman’s eyeballs . . . and finally you end up chasing a moving constellation through the desert, knowing the bewitched stars will lead you to the spot where destiny awaits.

And when you’ve done all that, and you arrive at the spot where the stars shine down, you find that a neon sign marks the spot as clearly as a big fat X that even a blind man could recognize:

THE LITTLE CHAPEL OF THE STARS

A no-brainer,
Kyra thought
.
And the sign was here all the time . . . complete with a sprinkling of neon stars.

“Think Satan called ahead and made a reservation for us?” Johnny asked. “Church, party of two . . . and one-quarter?”

“Most amusing,” Raymondo said. “But let’s cut the witty repartee, shall we? I’ve got a feeling we shouldn’t waste any time.”

“Bad vibes?” Kyra asked.

“Let’s just say my stress-load will be greatly reduced once Mr. Church slips that ring on your finger, Ms. Damon.”

“Yeah,” Johnny agreed. “I’m kind of stressed myself I’ll feel better when we get this done and put Vegas in the rearview.”

Kyra shivered. She was stressed, too, though she wasn’t about to admit it. Her trepidation had nothing to do with Johnny Church, or any other mortal. She was worried about her bridegroom, her
real
bridegroom, a force she had only dreamed of. That force was waiting, just ahead, and it wasn’t something that stood on two feet like I man. It waited, instead, in the shadows, in scant inches measured by the hands on a clock.

And she would meet with it very soon.

“You okay, Ky?” Johnny asked. “Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet.”

“No way,” Kyra said, grabbing Johnny’s .357 and handing it to him. “Itchy trigger finger.”

Ella Valentine—and that
was
 
her real name—was one happy woman.

She stood behind the counter in the Little Chapel of the Stars reception area, counting the money in the till.

Over fifteen hundred bucks, and that didn’t count the credit card receipts. Ella figured she’d be over five grand easy once she totaled those. Not bad for a day’s work.

She’d earned it, though. Ten years in the bustling Las Vegas wedding industry, pulling in one small deal after another . . . and almost every one of them trouble. Couples who ended up in fist- fights before they got as far as “I do,” pregnant brides who gave birth on the way down the aisle, and about-to-be-pregnant brides who banged the best man in the John as soon as the ceremony was over—Ella had seen it all and then some.

She glanced at the
People
magazine cover in the big gilt frame that hung behind the reception desk. Erik Hearse and Lilith Spain. Ella owed them a lot. They could have been married in any chapel
on Las Vegas Boulevard, but for some strange reason they’d picked Ella’s place, and now her business was reaping the reward.

Celebrity weddings were nothing new in Vegas, of course. Elvis had married Priscilla here. Bruce Willis married Demi Moore. Even Dennis Rodman and Carmen Electra were wed in the city of neon.

Of course, none of those unions lasted. But that didn’t matter to folks in Ella Valentine’s line of work. What mattered was word of mouth. Because if your chapel was lucky enough to be the locale for the latest celebrity nuptials, you were definitely going to get some free publicity. Couples heading to Vegas with rings in their pockets—and there were plenty of those every day—were going to seek you out, hoping a little of that celebrity magic would rub off on them.

That’s what the deal was with the first couple who’d booked Ella’s quaint Victorian chapel tonight. A couple of kids from L.A., a chubby little blonde and her skinny, pizza-faced boyfriend who had popped for the Double Deluxe Happiness Package—a one- hour extravaganza including limo; ceremony; videography (Ella had just installed an automatic four-camera system that was a lot more reliable than the shaky-handed alcoholics who were Vegas wedding chapel fixtures); silk flowers (silk
lasts . . .
take your bouquet home with you!); a ten-pack of professional photos; unity candle ceremony; peace dove ceremony (an Ella Valentine original); deluxe cake . . . and, of course, a complimentary bottle of champagne.

Imported
champagne. Hey, it was good stuff, even if Ella did get it at a deep discount.

Add it up, and it came to just over a thousand bucks on the new bride’s father’s MasterCard, and wasn’t that a sweet way to start the night shift? Why, if Ella got lucky, she’d do the honors for eight or ten more couples before she closed up shop and went home.

Sure, some of her clients were a little weird. Especially the crowd who were attracted by those Erik Hearse/Lilith Spain vibes, the ones who seemed to wear nothing but black, with faces that looked like pincushions. And if Ella had trouble remembering their names she could usually find them tattooed on their arms.

Still, they were mostly good kids, just like the busy little blonde doughball and the acne-enhanced beanpole who were getting hitched at the moment. Leather or spandex or Dockers or a tux and tails, it didn’t make a difference to Ella Valentine. The way she saw it, every person who entered The Little Chapel of the Stars deserved to get their money’s worth. And if they wanted a little extra starshine sprinkled over it all while they walked the same aisle that Lilith Spain and Erik Hearse had trod, well, there was nothing wrong with that—

The door swung open. Ella smiled up at another couple ready to do the deed in their best duds—electric midnight sharkskin for him, black satin and organza for her.

Thank you Erik and Lilith,
she thought.

The young woman stepped toward the counter, staring at the framed magazine cover featuring the famous couple.

“Was Lilith Spain married here?” she asked.

“Yes, she was,” Ella said, surprised that the woman seemed . . . well, genuinely
surprised
to see the photo. “Ms. Spain and Mr. Hearse were married in our chapel just a few months ago.”

“Man, that’s
soooo
weird,” said the woman’s fiance. “First the dress . . . now this. That just about maxes out the crazy coincidence meter, huh, Ky?”

Ella stared at the couple, hoping to unravel the thread of their conversation, but the woman in the black wedding dress didn’t say a word. She just stared at the framed magazine cover, and she didn’t even blink.

“There are no coincidences,” the young woman said finally.

Ella was certainly ready to agree with that one. Fate, destiny . . . they were always good selling points. If these two didn’t know that Lilith Spain had been married here—and if that knowledge gave them a little starstruck frisson—well, Ella Valentine certainly wasn’t going to pass up an opening like that.

Ella leaned forward, whispering seriously, “You know, you two remind me of Erik and Lilith. You’ve got a special energy about you ... a special
glow.”

“Really?” the man said.

Ella nodded. “Erik and Lilith had the same energy. They said that something drew them to The Little Chapel of the Stars. They were cruising in their limo, looking for a chapel, and . . .
bang!
 
When they saw my neon sign out front with its little neon stars, they knew that fate had delivered them to my doorstep.”