Free Wicked Prayer by Norman Partridge Page B

got to make sure you do this right.”
    “I’ll do it right,” Johnny said, bristling. “I don’t need no pint- sized watchdog on my back.”
    “Actually, I’ll be around your neck . . . and you damn well better do this right. We wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for Johnny Church and his itchy trigger finger. You’re the one who wasted those two sacks of excrement in Scorpion Flats. And now you’re the one who’ll bury them.”
    With supreme effort, Johnny kept his mouth shut. But his right hand tightened into a fist, spiderweb-tattooed knuckles bulging, fingers alive with heavy silver rings. Man, just once he’d like to bust Raymondo’s tiny black jawbone, tear through his mummified flesh, mash his brains like a bowl of monkey pulp.
    Kyra Damon’s hand dropped over Johnny’s trembling fist like a cool white sheet.
    “Do what Raymondo says, Johnny. And then we can get the hell out of here.”
    “Not soon enough for me,” Johnny said, relaxing a little under Kyra’s touch. Standing this close, he could feel her warmth. Her long dark hair smelled like night-blooming jasmine and something subtler, darker.
    Infinitely darker.
    Johnny sucked a deep breath. Man, when this shit was over . . . when his own personal mojo was thoroughly stoked—
    When he and Kyra were immortal —
    “Soon,” Kyra whispered, her eyes burning like green embers. “Soon. But first—why don’t you make like a good husband and take out the trash?”
    Johnny Church had, since the age of fourteen, worn the obligatory punk fashion accessory—the dog collar—around his thick neck. Black leather, chrome studs and buckle, and a leash ring that slapped against his gullet when he walked.
    Johnny untied Raymondo’s wiry black hair from the rearview mirror, threaded it through the chrome ring on his collar, and tied it in place. He wasn’t particularly enthused about doubling up with the rancid little fuck. The whole deal reminded him of some old horror movie or something.
    Johnny was heavily into the retro-horror scene. It wasn’t exactly an interest he’d stumbled on all by his lonesome. Erik Hearse, the lead singer and guitarist for The Blasphemers, was big into horror, too. Hearse was a major collector He owned a mansion stuffed with lobby cards, posters, models, videos and laserdiscs, plus props that had been used in classic fright films. To say Hearse had it all and then some was an understatement. Hell, the singer had even married a horror movie actress, some chick who did Italian vampire flicks.
    So Erik’d know just how Johnny felt—if the singer had happened to be hanging around the dump, that is. He’d understand Johnny’s cinematic frame of reference when it came to excursions of the two-headed variety.
    In this case it was simple, your basic Creature Features double bill: The Thing with Two Heads and The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant. Johnny was sure that Hearse would agree—both guy- with-two-heads movies made for extreme psychotronic kicks. But of the two, it was The Thing with Two Heads that Johnny enjoyed most.
    What he didn’t enjoy was playing Rosey Grier to Raymondo’s Ray Milland.
    Raymondo seemed to know it, too. “C’mon, Johnnyboy. Time to tote that barge and lift that bail.”
    Shit, sometimes Johnny thought that the little fuck was psychic. The shrunken head even sounded   like Ray Milland . . . with his voice channeled through a theremin, of course.
    Raymondo Milland.
    Church snatched his keys from the ignition and stepped out of the car, the heavy soles of his motorcycle boots squelching a soggy flap of cardboard into a puddle of decomposing muck. Man, the smell out here was enough to put the curl in anyone’s pubes.
    Johnny walked to the back of the Merc and unlocked the trunk. He raised the lid and stared down at the corpses that lay on the plastic drop cloth he’d used to protect his precious vintage baby from leaking bodily fluids.
    The Indian chick’s back faced Johnny.
    “Nice