Wicked Prayer (32 page)

“Say a prayer for me.”

A couple seconds later, the Dodge pulled onto Las Vegas Boulevard. Brian, stunned speechless now, pointed at the Durango as police cars squealed into the parking lot. But Ella got to the cops before they even saw the minister. She had been watching the street. She hadn’t seen the dead man rise from a puddle of blood, hadn’t seen
anything
—

The man had been
dead.
Brian was sure of it.
Dead.

And Brian had touched him . . . and then he’d said a prayer, and—

He’d
touched
the man . . . he’d said a
prayer . .
.

Brian stared at his hands.

Oh, dear Lord,
he thought
.
It’s a miracle ... a miracle . . .

Man, Johnny was
stoked.

It felt good to cut the tiger loose. What a damn fine wedding. A little mayhem, a little blood . . . dove-killing and preacher-baiting . . . and hey, even Raymondo had done a great job. Johnny had been truly touched by the shrunken head’s oratory skills. The ceremony was a damn fine wedding present. Even Johnny had to admit that.

Yep, the Church wedding had it all. Johnny’s had been the perfect wedding, in every respect. He figured there weren’t many people who could say they’d had one of those. But he’d had one, and he knew it, the same way he knew he had the perfect bride.

Kyra Damon. Wow. To see Ky coming down the aisle ... to slip a ring on her finger and know he’d tamed a real wildcat ... to see what she’d done to Dan Cody there in the parking lot . . . to have her sitting next to him, right now—hot Mojave wind blasting through the open window, whipping her hair across her white face; Dan Cody’s blood on her boots; that wedding ring on her finger forever-fucking-more—

Man, Kyra Damon was one bad hunk of womanflesh.

Fuck that,
Johnny thought
.
She’s Kyra Church now.

And Johnny loved her even more because of that. He guessed people were right when they said that stuff about marriage changing everything. It did. Absolutely.

Yeah. Johnny figured that marriage was the ultimate ritual. And Kyra Damon was big on rituals.
Very
big. But Kyra’s rituals had always been private things. Johnny had never really been more than an observer. He certainly hadn’t been a part of them.

Until now.

Now it was different. Now
he
was different. Now
every-fucking-thing
was different. Even Kyra.

Kyra had changed. She was stronger. Anyone could see that, the way she took after Cody in the parking lot. And Johnny felt stronger, too. Man, was he
stoked.
It had to be the Crow’s power. Had to be, because he felt like he could do damn near anything—

And—you know what?—he
could.

Johnny laughed to himself
Anything.
It was a hell of a concept, and he wanted to run with it, test its parameters ... if there were any parameters to test.

He’d start. Right now.

Johnny pulled off the highway. He’d already made one stop, of course. Had to change out of that suit. No way could he handle being cinched up in one of those very long. Leather pants. Blasphemers T-shirt. . . that was his style.

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
s
eemed 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 lay 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.