by Mark Ayre
Ready or Not
Mark Ayre
Contents
By Mark Ayre
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Epilogue
Thank you for reading
About the Author
By Mark Ayre
The Hide and Seek Trilogy
Hide and Seek
Count to Ten
Ready or Not
The Adam and Eve Thrillers
Fire and Smoke
Lost and Found
Cat and Mouse
Lock and Key
Cloak and Shield
Hope in Hell
The James Perry Mysteries
The Black Sheep’s Shadow
All Your Secrets
Standalone
Poor Choices
One
She came home though Amira advised against it. Returned solo though Amira wanted the three to remain together. She told Amira she had to go; she would be fine alone. Neither statement was true.
“Why do you have to go?” Amira had asked.
“There’s something I need.”
But was there?
Beyond her front door, across the central area of her bungalow, against the wall which separated living room from bedroom, stood an ornate wooden bookshelf. Upon these shelves were countless gothic classics: Dracula, Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Rebecca, and many more besides. Many were early or even first editions. Some had cost a fortune, only a few had been cheap. All of them she had thumbed through time and again. Many she could recite almost by heart.
“Tonight is the last time we’ll be home,” Mercury had told Amira. “I can’t leave them behind.”
Something to read before the end of the world.
Mercury would soon be dead. She had not told Amira this, though Amira was her best friend, and knew almost everything about her. Mercury could not bring herself to reveal to her friend the depth of her despair, nor her determination to do what needed to be done. To spare herself the fate to which she was destined, should she survive.
Her home, which she had so loved, so cherished, sat at the end of a quarter-mile gravel path. Set this far from the road, the street lamps did little more than cast an eerie glow across the building’s front. Only when Mercury’s headlamps swept across the bungalow did she get a good look at her pride and joy.
It looked as it had when last she had arrived home. On that occasion, she had put a knife through her boyfriend’s heart, killing the monster that had possessed his body, before her own possessor had taken control. During the struggle with the beast in her boyfriend, her door had been bent from its hinges.
Since that day, Liz and Amira had replaced the door and removed the body. Amira had never said to where they had taken the corpse and Mercury could not bring herself to ask. Presumably, Dom lay at rest with Mercury’s mother, who had been possessed and had died the same night as had Dom.
The car was still, the engine ticking over. Mercury stared at the front door. Her hands fixed to the wheel as though glued. She found she could not remove them.
Before long Mercury would again come face to face with Heidi; the monster who had once possessed her and now possessed Olivia Michael’s, the mother of Mercury and Amira’s third amigo, Trey. The confrontation would result in either the thwarting of Heidi’s plan or the end of the world. Mercury would survive neither outcome.
Before this end, they would continue to run, continue to fight. There would be no downtime. Certainly, no reading time.
Mercury did not need, nor did she have any use for, the books she had come to reclaim. Especially considering her favourite classic, and the one which had cost the most, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, was already in her possession.
Foolish. That Mercury could not release the wheel and approach her home was a sign. The engine was on, she needed only to reverse up the drive, return to the street, and drive away.
As though shoved by the wheel, her hands came free. From the ignition she took the key, sliding it under the mat at her feet. Stepping into the cold night air, she approached her home.
The old door had creaked. On well oiled, unabused hinges, the new glided towards the open-plan living-kitchen-dining room without a sound. Her car off, the headlights dampened, darkness greeted Mercury as she opened the door. As though a black hole had appeared within her bungalow, devouring the interior but leaving standing the structure.
Knowing when they went toe to toe with Heidi, they would be outmanned and outmatched, they were always going to need something to tip the scales their way; even if only a little. Amira had such a something. They had delayed returning home to collect for fear that scouts, left by Heidi, would report the trio’s presence to their master, or spring a trap to snare them.
A couple of months after going on the run, this fear had diminished but not dissipated. Amira was reticent for Mercury to come to her bungalow alone because she feared an enemy might lie in wait in the home in which Mercury had once felt safe.
The darkness which greeted Mercury might have concealed any number of demons, monsters and murderers. Yet, it was not fear of these potential threats which, after muscle memory carried her finger to the light switch beside her door, beneath her coats, made Mercury hesitate to banish the black.
Memories, not monsters, inspired terror in Mercury. Upon drenching the bungalow in light, she feared not that she would see an axe-wielding maniac; rather the body of her boyfriend, of the only man she had loved.
Amira promised the body was gone. Mercury believed her friend. Didn’t matter. She was sure the light would reveal Dom’s corpse, nestled between the sofa, the TV, her favourite reading chair.
The sight of him would push Mercury to tears and to her knees. As she fell, he would rise, sitting, standing, shambling towards her. His eyes would show not anger but sorrow.
Why couldn’t you save me?
No.
Slicked with sweat, Mercury’s finger slipped from the switch. The minor jolt was enough to snap her back to her senses.
Even in the dark, she could look straight to her bookshelf. After flicking the switch, she would cross the room and look nowhere but at the spine of those precious volumes. Across her shoulder was slung a bag, already unzipped. Within the canvas pouch, she could not fit her whole collection of go
thic novels. She would grab her favourites, pack them, and go.
Enough fear.
Exhaling, as though the switch was a car she was attempting to lift from her leg, she compressed her finger; the lights flashed on. All was revealed.
On the night Mercury had shoved a blade through her mother’s heart, before she had killed her boyfriend, she had returned home. The bungalow looked now as it had then. Calm, quiet, perfect. Everything her life was not.
When a ritual invited an otherworldly monstrosity into Mercury’s mother and boyfriend, they had died. Though she had pierced their hearts with her blade, it was not them she had killed. Instead, she had liberated their bodies. She knew this. Still, she could not think of herself as anything but their murderer.
First swinging closed the door, as though afraid a neighbour might wander by and point and laugh at her show of human weakness, Mercury burst into tears.
Clutching the door handle, she slipped to the floor. For weeks she had been lost in a void as Heidi controlled her body. Since Amira’s ritual had ripped the demon from within and put it into another host, Mercury had been on the run. There had been no time to think about what might have been: about loss and the past.
Stepping into her quiet bungalow, for a moment not running, was like a hammer blow resulting in a torrent of memories. Countless happy seconds spent between these walls with Dom, a couple of difficult hours with her mother. It tore at her heart like the blade with which she had killed the monsters that had taken from her those she most loved.
Despite her promise to seek out and focus on the bookshelf, when Mercury opened and dried her eyes, they went straight for the framed photograph above the mantlepiece. Pride of place. It had been Dom’s favourite, so naturally, Mercury had claimed to hate it. Following a difficult childhood, she had spent many years putting up walls. She wasn’t one for personal photographs. With an emotional chisel and ridiculous amounts of perseverance, Dom had been breaking through those walls. Had been succeeding. Then—
She should not have returned. The pull was too strong. Resisting would have been pointless.
Focus. From the mantlepiece, she glanced at the empty floor, where once had lain her boyfriend’s dead body, and to the bookshelf beside her bedroom door. She was here for a reason. Flimsy, empty as that reason had been, a reason existed—time to get on with it.
Angry at her weakness in coming here, she crossed the living room. Before leaving for good, Amira and Liz had fixed the buckled door, disposed of the body. They had not repaired the carpet, which remained spotted with the burn marks left by Laars’ infected blood. That blood had scarred Dom. That night he had been possessed, been lost to Mercury forever.
Reaching the back of the flat, she glanced into her once beautifully kept, now overgrown, garden. For hours, Dom had slaved over his DIY shed—which he called a summerhouse. Mercury hadn’t wanted the eyesore blemishing her otherwise perfect garden. Had let him build it because it got him out the house a few weekends on the spin. Gave her space to sit back, relax, read, drink.
She’d do anything to reclaim those weeks. For more time with Dom, she would help build the stupid summerhouse.
She wouldn’t. Mercury knew grief drove such empty promises. She was who she was. Given a chance to do it all again, she would still take Dom for granted. But she wouldn’t take a walk in the woods on the night that changed everything. Dom would still be alive. Her mother would still have cancer, but at least they would have time to continue their reconciliation before the end.
Mercury would still be human.
Liz and Amira had also cleared away the summerhouse remains, which the infected blood of the slaughtered Laars had destroyed. Even in the dark, Mercury could tell the grass beneath was dead, the ground blackened. Nothing would grow there again.
From the back door, she turned at last to the bookshelf. To reach it, she had to cross her closed bedroom door, which she did. Once at the bookshelf she should have begun immediately shoving books into her bag. Instead, she found her eye redrawn to her room.
The door was closed. Had it been open, a glance inside might have been enough.
Even a glance was too much. Inside Mercury would find her bed, her clothes, a few personal effects, and little else. Focus on the job in hand.
At random, she plucked a book from her shelf and dropped it into the bag. Her hand rose to take another. When it was halfway to its goal, Mercury twisted, took two steps to her bedroom door and, with her other hand, grabbed the handle.
The first hand remained in midair, positioned as though to take a book. For a second, Mercury watched it, as though expecting it to do something unexpected. When she saw how her fingers trembled, she dropped it to her side.
Beyond this door, the bed she had shared with her boyfriend, the man she loved. One night, Heidi had woken in Mercury’s body, dragged Dom into the woods, and killed him with possession as the murder weapon. By dying during, but not because of her possession, days earlier, Mercury had conversely survived the ritual. Neither Dom nor Mercury’s mother had been so lucky.
Mercury could not release the door handle. Tears stung her eyes. She knew in her bedroom lay more bad memories and no kind of peace. Despite this, she could not return to the bookshelf. Surrendering to impulse, she turned the handle and pushed the door.
The light was on. The room looked as it always had, but for the young woman perched on Mercury’s side of the bed—the side closest to the door.
Mercury had arrived at her bungalow wound up, afraid, agitated. These feelings had bloated as she moved through her home, gaining more power with every step she took.
Despite her anxiety, Mercury did not jump when she opened the door and saw the stranger on her bed. Nothing but the corpse of Dom, or perhaps her mother, could have elicited such a response. Her recent past had inoculated her to run of the mill scares and shocks.
In fact, the woman offered the focal point and distraction the bookshelf had failed to become. She was an enemy, here to kill Mercury.
Regular service had been resumed.
Without backing away or approaching to attack, Mercury simply nodded a hello. “You must be the maid.”
The young woman beamed. She was plain, for the most part, but the smile transformed her expression into something that could be considered either adorable or insane.
“Not the maid,” she said, “but the assassin.”
To this, Mercury had no follow-up questions. If she had, the assassin’s next move would have answered one.
Raising a fist, the non-maid revealed a hand-grenade clasped between her fingers, the pin already pulled.
“By the way,” she said. “It’s lovely to meet you.”
Two
Amira took the gun and her knives; dumping the latter into her canvas bag and concealing the former within her jacket. Kitted out, she turned to Trey.
“Stay in the car and keep watch. Do not fall asleep.”
Amira zipped up her jacket and opened the car door. The carpark was still, the block of flats silent.
Fidgeting, checking for his knives, Trey said, “I thought you wanted us to stay together?”
“No.” As usual, she felt no need to elaborate. “Got your phone?”
He showed her. “Got my knives too.”
“You won’t need them.” Amira pointed to the block of flats, moving her finger from the lit lobby to the darkened metal stairwell. “Entrance and fire escape. You see anyone approach, you call. Describe them as best you can. Not that you would, but don’t leave this car and don’t confront anyone. See someone: call. Got it?”
Distracted by four of Amira’s words (Not that you would) Trey failed to respond.
“Got it?” Amira repeated.
“Got it.”
“Without going through a window into a ground floor flat, which is possible but we can’t cover everything, the only other way into the building is the fire door. Can’t see that from here but to get through they would have to break it down. It’s met
al and heavy-duty: you hear anything that sounds like someone trying to break down a heavy metal door, what do you do?”
Trey clenched his fists and planned his response. After meeting Amira’s eye, he would tell her in no uncertain terms that she was not his mother, he was not five, and she was not impressing upon him the danger of talking to strangers.
He could not meet her eye. He said, “Phone you.”
“Right away.”
“Yeah, right away.”
“It probably won’t be an issue. Chances are slim they’re still watching the town. Even if they are, it’ll be a lone scout who’ll wait for backup before he attacks. He might come at us when he realises we’re leaving, but we’ll outrun him.”
This time Trey did look at Amira. Her expression confirmed what he had heard in her tone. She was trying to comfort him. She thought he was afraid.
Trey had no right to expect any kindness or compassion from Amira and Mercury and should have been grateful for anything he could get. Amira’s tone and expression made him inexplicably angry. He hated himself for that. He looked away.
“Just get on with it.”
“Sure thing,” she said, then ruffled his hair. “Be good.”
Then she was gone.
Leaving him alone with his thoughts.