Three miles north of Scorpion Flats, Arizona
The ’49 Mercury didn’t look like a hearse. Not at all. But with two corpses locked in a trunk painted the color of spilled lamb’s blood, that’s exactly what it was.
Kyra Damon knew that. After all, she’d helped Johnny Church put the corpses in the trunk. Now the cowboy and his little Crow maiden rested beneath a gleaming shroud of Detroit steel, two corpses curled atop a plastic drop cloth that prevented their all-too- human blood from leaking onto the spare whitewall tire.
Lovers locked in death’s own embrace. A man and a woman, baptized in each other’s blood, their cooling lips separated by an impossibly long inch.
Those lips would never touch again. Not if Kyra Damon had anything to say about it. But the Crow was another story. Kyra knew all too well that the bloody tableau locked within the Mercury’s trunk was the Crow’s favorite meal. The bird fed on carrion. It drew sustenance from the death of the innocent, the fucking scavenger. Kyra and Johnny had played right into the black bird’s twisted little claws when they’d killed the cowboy and the Indian at the Spirit Song Trading Post.
Johnny had pulled the trigger, but that didn’t matter. Kyra was
the brains of the outfit. She knew that, even if Johnny was a little unclear on the concept.
She was the one who had messed up, and messed up good.
I
might as well have set the two lovers on a checkered tablecloth for the Crow’s midnight picnic,
she told herself sarcastically.
Tossed in some candles and a bottle of sacramental wine, while I was at it.
And then there was dessert; the wedding ring the cowboy had bought for his lady. A
real
unfulfilled promise. The perfect motivation for vengeance . . . and resurrection.
Kyra sighed. Yeah, it was a full-course meal, all right, but there was no use crying over spilt blood. There was no way to turn back the hands of time and play the game again. What was
was.
Fate had forced Kyra’s hand, and the same eternal commodity had forced the death of both Leticia Dreams the Truth Hardin and Dan Cody. The way Kyra saw it, in hard black and white, she’d had no real choice in the matter.
If she were to fulfill her vision and steal the Crow’s power, then she had to have Leticia Dreams the Truth Hardin’s eyes.
The eyes of a blue-eyed Crow . . .
And whatever fate demanded as bounty for those eyes, that was the price Kyra had to pay.
Damn the consequences.
The Native woman’s eyes were the first step toward gaining powers that would bring Kyra everything she’d ever dreamed of She had hoped to pluck those eyes from their owner’s skull sockets without killing the woman—or anyone else—in the process.
Not that Kyra Damon was a skilled surgeon or anything, but going in she’d figured that all she had to do was pop a couple eyeballs, do a little cutting . . .
And Kyra was an expert at cutting.
She’d designed a few of Johnny’s scars, done all that bloody work herself
Hey, anything for art.
So cutting wasn’t a problem. She and Johnny had prepared for the task. Late one night they broke into a Tucson pharmacy, where they stocked up on behind-the-counter pain medications—plenty
of Tylenol 3 with codeine. Surgical steel scissors, forceps, gauze, bandages, antiseptic. They filled a little black leather bag, planning to deliver Leticia Hardin into anesthetic oblivion before they performed the back-room operation.
That was the plan. Snip out Hardin’s pretty blue orbs quick as a wink, dial the paramedics, and hit the road before their victim’s first scream slashed through the desert sky like sheet lightning on a hot summer night. Had everything gone as Kyra intended, the deal would have ended up like one of those urban legends you hear about—the one with the guy waking up in a bathtub filled with melting ice, a ragged red X stitched on his backside, minus one kidney snatched for transplant.
That was the way it was supposed to go. No one was supposed to die at the Spirit Song Trading Post. Kyra was smarter than that. She hadn’t intended leaving any Crowbait behind like so much roadkill on the highway of eternity.
Of course, things hadn’t gone down that way. The whole deal had been fucked up right from the start: they’d pressed the Hardin woman hard, found out the only person Likely to show up after closing time was her boyfriend. And just like that the boyfriend had appeared out of black midnight as if he’d been carried on the wings of the Crow. And then things had really gone bad, and Kyra had ended up with her flesh lashed by scorpion stingers, arachnid venom pulsing through her veins.
Well, like the Boy Scouts said: you had to
be prepared.
And Kyra was big on preparation. That little word had blazed a trail down the dark path she’d been traveling for many moons.
Kyra smiled. You didn’t have to be a witch to cast a spell, especially something as elementary as a spell of protection. Kyra knew that. You didn’t need to believe in God or Satan or Mother Earth or Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy or anything at all. In most cases, all that mystical mojo was as simple as baking a cake—requiring nothing more than the right ingredients and the right cookbook.
Hey, if you had some patience, a library card and a little money for materials, you were all set.
No, a little scorpion venom wasn’t going to kill Kyra Damon. It was sustenance to her dark soul, and it flowed through twined veins
hidden just beneath her skin, traveling a dark river that ran to one throbbing source—a cold heart with a steady driving beat.
Still, killing the couple could cost Kyra plenty. It wouldn’t be the first time in her life she’d paid a steep price to get what she wanted. She’d paid a price for her dark powers, and the secrets that came with them. She’d paid a price for Johnny, and for Raymondo, too. She’d even paid a price for her own cold heart, and with every steady heartbeat she paid just a little bit more.
In this game, she knew she’d have to pay. Ante up, big time. Because this was about life and death . . . and all the secret things that lay beyond the veil.
This was about the Crow.
Kyra shivered, a taunting wing-brush of dusky feathers across her soul.
She was prone to premonitions. And she didn’t have to look in the rearview mirror to know that something was trailing the Merc like a ragged, wind-tangled black kite tied to the bumper.
Besides, the shrunken head that hung from the rearview mirror was already doing that bit of surveillance work for Kyra. Menacingly lit from below by the glow of dashboard lights, the head hung between Johnny and Kyra by its knotted hair, swinging back and forth like some diabolical pendulum, its tiny eyes trained on the dark slab of night framed by the Merc’s rear window.
“We’ve got company,” the head said through stitched lips.
And it was right.
Desert wind cooled the Crow’s wings as it swooped down on the Mercury.
Driven by unnamed instincts that pumped through its beating wings like black fire . . . driven by the primitive concept of
tribal retribution
buried deep in the base of its avian brain . . . driven by the ancient thirst for
vengeance.
Driven to catch the car, and the dead man inside.
A corpse who would become the black bird’s designated avenger.
For in the world of the Crow, vengeance was
plural. . .
not
singular.
It took two, working together . . . man and bird.
But to revive its human counterpart, the Crow required strength, concentration, and
contact.
The Crow’s scream tore the night as the bird closed on the Mercury. The Crow beat its wings, reached out with its talons, strained every muscle as it neared the car. It saw its own reflection in the gleaming paint, felt the pain of the dead couple locked within, knew exactly what actions were required to take that pain away.
Black talons raked the trunk. Claws on steel: just for a second. Then the Mercury accelerated, lake pipes billowing a sickly yellow exhaust that stank of brimstone.
The car pulled away, and the bird was momentarily blinded by a dervish of hell fumes. But the Crow fought through the smoke, its wings a blur of motion, still moving forward, closing on the trunk once more.
Once again, the bird’s reflection gleamed on the chrome bumper, dark body painting the chrome letters on the trunk as the Crow screamed, spreading its wings, ready to light on the speeding vehicle.
The Merc’s engine roared. Instantly, five feet separated the bird from the automobile.
But the bird closed again, with desperate speed and agility.
A moment too late.
Red flames flared from the lake pipes, singeing the Crow’s feathers to black tar The Merc was gone in a hellfire burst, leaving the bird behind—two pounds of muscle and blood and feathers and hollow bones, tumbling through the air.
An ordinary bird would have been doomed. But the Crow was no ordinary bird. Though its talons scraped pavement and sparked like knives, the bird’s dark wings never touched ground.
The Crow climbed through the night air. Moonlight washed its singed wings, wings that sprouted new feathers in less time than it took a slug from a .357 Magnum to rip through a man’s heart.
A mile ahead, demon tailights flared.
Black wings that glowed as brightly as gunmetal beat furiously as the Crow fought to close the distance.
“I guess the Crow didn’t know that this ride is supercharged by Satan,”
Johnny Church laughed. “That’ll teach ol’ Tweety Bird to fuck with a gearhead who’s got a devil woman ridin’ shotgun and a shrunken head for a pit crew!”
Kyra Damon nodded. “All you have to do is rig your engine with a little nitro and a hellfire chaser. . . . Why, that’s enough to put a hitch in anyone’s getalong.”
Her own laughter joined with the blond killer’s, and the sound was a dark symphony to Kyra’s ears. Impulsively, she leaned over and kissed Johnny C. on the throat. He smelled good: hot and sweaty and male, and she liked the way his carotid artery pumped beneath the tanned skin almost as much as she liked the smooth, muscular bulge of his biceps.
Johnny’s full lips curved into a smile as Kyra’s hand traveled the slick length of his leather-clad thigh, coming to a rest close to his crotch.
Teasing now, moving closer, petting a tight, hot leather bulge.
“You know just the spot, baby,” Johnny said, thigh muscles tightening.
And she did.
The Merc headed northwest, a blood clot pumping down a dark vein of highway. The sultry smells of the desert—windswept canyons, gnarled mesquite, sun-baked earth—rushed through the open windows and wrapped around Kyra like cool-scented sheets on a summer’s night.
Life is good,
she told herself, digging her dark polished fingernails into Johnny’s hard thigh.
The black bird’s fucked, and life is good.
And
life—eternal life
—was what all this was about. Living for- fucking-ever, and then some. That was the concept, soon to become a reality, and for the first time the absolute inevitability of the whole idea slammed Kyra in an unadulterated rush that was more
intoxicating than any chemical high ever experienced by mere mortals.
“This is sweet.” Kyra grinned deliciously, ran both hands through her long scarlet-black tresses. “Fucking
sweet!"
Johnny grinned back, let out a whoop of pure exhilaration. “Hold on!” he screamed as he floored the accelerator.
Kyra thought:
It doesn't take much to get Johnny Church’s testosterone pumping. Guns, girls, and ammo . . . and a little thing called immortality.
No, it doesn’t take much at all.
Kyra’s thoughts turned to the black bird . . . perhaps just so much roadkill back there on the highway. Even if the Crow still lived, it couldn’t harm her now. She wouldn’t let it. She was too close to her dream. And she was too smart for the bird, and—
Screw the Crow,
Kyra thought. She wasn’t going to waste another second thinking about it. Because on a night like this, anything was within Kyra Damon’s reach. On a night like this, she
knew
she would live forever. . . .
But there was another passenger on Kyra and Johnny’s road trip to immortality—a cursed counselor Kyra had found long ago, one who was fated to be her guide—and he was determined to have his say, as well.
“It’ll take more than a little hellfire to stop the Crow,” said the shrunken head. “Mark my words—it’ll be back, and soon.”
Kyra glared at the desiccated thing suspended from the rearview mirror. “You’re getting a really smart mouth, Raymondo.”
“Maybe I am. But maybe you’re head’s swelling a little bit, Kyra.”
“Shut your dead mouth, Raymondo.” Johnny’s voice was a barbed-wire rasp. “Ky knows what she’s doing.”
“Please, Johnny,” Raymondo said. “This is an adult conversation. You’d do better to keep your eyes on the road . . . and slow down a little bit. All the speed in the world won’t stop the Crow, and this highway isn’t a racetrack, nor is it the set of
Speedway, Hot Rods to Hell, Death Race 2000,
or—”