Count to Ten

by Mark Ayre

  “You’re a smart guy,” said Amira as another car arrived. “What is this then, some sort of town-wide neighbourhood watch?”

  “Something like that.”

  An excitable man jumped from a rusted up, falling apart car, and rushed towards Quincy. You weren’t supposed to judge a book by its cover, but Amira couldn’t help thinking the guy looked more drug dealer than librarian. More bar fighter than town protector.

  “I heard about Yassin,” he said. “How’d it happen?”

  “One thing at a time,” said Quincy with a little more steel than he had used with Amira. “We believe Heidi’s inside. Luckily this kind young lady was able to warn me of the threat.”

  Gesturing to Amira, Quincy gave the man a warning look. The guy, who didn’t understand, looked blank. It didn’t matter.

  “I did,” said Amira and, unable to stop herself, went on, “I mean, I never said the name Heidi, but I did mention a powerful threat.”

  For a second, Quincy was surprised. Then his face reddened. He wasn’t angry at Amira but himself. It was a childish mistake.

  “Maybe you should get back in the car, missy,” Quincy said. Around the corner, another car appeared. Amira stepped away, and Quincy grabbed her arm. For a man in his sixties, carrying too much around the middle, he was surprisingly quick and strong. Amira felt the bones of her arms strain.

  “This,” Amira said, “is why I don’t trust people.”

  “Too late now.”

  Quincy yanked her towards him, as though he planned to absorb her into his fat stomach. Or maybe waltz with her.

  As she reached him, the door to one of the central units on the industrial estate burst open and someone flew out.

  A gasp of shock ran like a Mexican wave around Quincy’s men. The man himself loosened his grip and Amira turned to see the woman from the unit face their way.

  “Liz,” she said, then gasped herself.

  Because Liz Norton was covered in blood.

  Thirty-Nine

  It came down to this. They could all die at Richard’s hands, with Heidi at the wheel. They might free Mercury and kill Richard after Heidi entered him. Best case scenario, maybe: Liz killed the demon, and died in that final heroic act. Before she could become the villain she so feared.

  Amira prided herself on considering everything. To Liz, she reiterated the importance of not being caught unawares. If plan A failed, there must be a plan B, if plan B failed, a plan C, and on. In a fit of madness, she had mapped hundreds of scenarios.

  If Amira had envisioned that Richard might return with her, killing Harvey and gatecrashing the party, Liz hadn’t seen the index card. She wondered if Amira had devised scenarios in which she failed to make it to the warehouse. Because she realised she’d double-booked with the hairdresser or because a madman had murdered her.

  It wouldn’t be surprising. So comprehensive was Amira’s planning, she had made provisions even for unforeseeable scenarios. Unfortunate and unexpected events. Her demise probably fell into that category.

  Liz was unsure if Amira’s plans would be enough. If they emerged victorious, Liz might not die. She could not see everyone surviving.

  Trey and the living driver remained static. So did the dead driver, come to that. Olivia slipped from behind Mercury to the other wall, almost opposite her son. Mercury and Richard stepped from their respective ends of the room to face each other, five metres apart.

  Liz stepped up to the plate. Richard had prepared the texts. Holding them, Liz formed the point of a triangle, equidistant from each involved party.

  She had flicked through the notebook, expecting the documents to be in Latin or ancient Mayan or some such. They were in English. She noted several spelling mistakes and one strange diagram, apparently drawn when the ritual’s transcriber had allowed his mind to wander from the task at hand.

  There was no prep. No candles to light. Black clothes with shadowy hoods were optional. She didn’t even have to cut her palm or sacrifice a pig.

  The ritual comprised eighteen lines. More or less, every other rhymed. Liz ran her eyes over them a thousand times and realised this was a sick joke. Richard had no idea how to draw a demon from a human. He had fabricated the diary and murdered four people as a jape. When she had finished speaking the words, and nothing happened, he would slap his knees and expect them all to join in.

  Five people, if Amira was dead.

  Because she didn’t want to pull at that thread, she began to recite the words.

  Immediately, she felt their power. A wind whipped through the previously still air, seeming to emanate from the page from which Liz read. It rushed across the room and began to circle Mercury, gaining power with each line passed.

  After ten of eighteen lines, Mercury screamed. She threw back her head, and her entire body began to glow. Her legs began to shake and tense. It looked as though she wanted to collapse, but something held her upright. Any moment, all her bones would shatter.

  At fifteen of eighteen lines, an invisible force ripped Mercury from the floor. She spun head over heels as though on a string in an acrobat’s show. The glow moved through her body and departed through her mouth.

  Mercury returned to the ground as though someone had nudged Gravity, notifying it of its mistake. The yellow glow, presumably Heidi, pulled towards Mercury, returning to its warm home. Stretching, it looked more like batter which had acquired life and the power of flight. Through the air, it began to wiggle and squirm.

  Batter, of course, tended not to glow.

  Liz spoke the final line.

  And the batter vanished.

  For a second, Liz dared to dream the demon had gone, ripped from this universe or shredded into non-existence.

  The wind resumed. Now focused in that central spot, whipping around and around where the glowing batter had been.

  When all remained silent, it began to race for Mercury. Once more, trying to return home.

  Panicked, Liz shouted, “You must call it.”

  She hadn’t meant out loud, but Richard said, “Okay, demon. Come. Join me. We will be the ultimate power on Earth.”

  The racing air reached Mercury, circled her, fired back into the middle of the room and—

  Like a sonic boom, a wave of invisible force seemed to fire in all directions. Liz opened her mouth to express surprise, and it hit her, firing her against the racking.

  With a tumble and a cry, she smashed the ground.

  For five or six seconds, everything was silent.

  First to move, pulling herself to feet, Liz was disoriented. She fell in her attempt to rise. She grabbed the lowest shelf of the racking and forced herself up. Felt for injuries. No doubt her back and head would be covered in bruises, but there were no broken bones, no cuts.

  The wave had also hit Trey, the driver and Olivia, but already being pressed against it, the racking had absorbed most the force. Consequently, they were less damaged than Liz.

  Mercury and Richard had the furthest to go. Having crashed into the wall beside the fire escape, Mercury was still. Liz would have gone for her, but instead returned her attention to the man of the hour.

  Richard had hit the shutters, then the stone. As heads swivelled his way, he rose and spreads his arms. Liz wondered if Heidi was about to give her first monologue. Presumably, she would choose a new name.

  Richard opened his mouth.

  Before he could speak, Trey roared like an animal and charged.

  After Harvey’s murder, Richard searched Trey first. He found the blade and threw it in the back of the hospital on wheels with Amira’s. When searching Liz, the driver and Olivia, he found nothing. Inside the warehouse, they lined up against the racking and Olivia went to fetch Mercury.

  Trey might have forgotten he was unarmed. Liz thought, instead, a combination of guilt and frustration had overcome logic. He had attacked not because he felt he could win, but because he couldn’t bear to die without having tried to stop the monster he had helped raise.

&nbs
p; The driver fled. At the end of the room, beside the still Mercury, he slammed the fire escape bar and disappeared.

  Olivia appeared frozen.

  The driver’s hasty exit seemed to have woken Mercury. Shaking and in pain, she got to her knees, met Liz’s eye, and nodded.

  Trey had been on Richard’s back, making a nuisance of himself rather than causing any damage. At last, Richard dipped forward. Trey flew over his shoulders and crumpled to the stone. As he tried to rise, Richard grabbed and swung him in an arc, into the shutters.

  Before Trey hit the ground, Liz was charging. As Richard turned, she sent a knee into his stomach and swung a fist at his head.

  Vicious had been easy. Too easy.

  On Richard, Liz landed two punches before he blocked her wrist, grabbed her by the throat, and hoisted her from the ground. Turning, he smashed her into the shutters but didn’t release.

  Squeezing her windpipe, he growled. “I’ve waited so long.”

  She pulled her feet up and together and kicked Richard in the chest. He stumbled and released her. She hit the ground but remained standing.

  As he came again, she said, “You were right about Amira.”

  He paused, cocked his head, his hand outstretched. “You what?”

  “You were right about Amira,” repeated Liz. “She’s brilliant. Utterly brilliant. She foresaw and planned for more scenarios than I could have imagined.”

  “I killed her,” he said.

  “Admittedly, an oversight, but in this warehouse, she missed nothing.”

  “You think she saw me here, throttling her friend to death, do you?”

  He grabbed her throat again. Shoving her against the shutters, he kept his grip loose enough to facilitate conversation.

  “I wouldn’t call us friends,” said Liz

  “You’re funny. Now you’re dead.”

  “She built that room for Mercury,” Liz said.

  “Yes, to hold a demon, and a nice job it did too.” Richard considered, then smiled. “Do you think you can get me in there?”

  “No, no,” said Liz. “You misunderstand. It had a double purpose. Sure it would hold a demon, at least for the short term. But you’re right; you’d first have to get a demon in there. I think, primarily, Amira built it for Mercury. In case Mercury should become locked within by someone like you. She knew her friend well enough to know she would explore the room, especially those four decorative metal steps in the corners. Amira knew Mercury would learn one of them was hollow.”

  Richard released Liz and span in time for Mercury to plunge the knife into his chest.

  “And had something stored within,” Liz finished.

  He stared at her, twisted to his side, placed two hands on Liz’s shoulders, but there was no strength in his grip. Sympathetically, she smiled.

  “If it helps, I’m annoyed too. I was hoping for a heroic death. Also, you’ve drenched me in your blood.”

  When she shoved Richard, he collapsed to the floor, and died.

  Forty

  In the sterile room in which a cavalcade of machines had kept Trey’s father alive. In the spot Vicious had occupied a few hours before, when Liz had dangled hope before Harvey once again, Trey kept his back straight, and confessed to a crime for which he was not responsible.

  When he finished explaining how he dunked Vicious’ head in the boiling water, he said, “Someone will need to dispose of the body.”

  For a long time, Harvey had appeared to consider the problem. Or perhaps that was how long it took to build the strength to make what had once been the simplest of moves.

  He nodded. Trey nodded back. They would never communicate again.

  Having lost his fight with both demon and shutter, it took some time for Trey to drag his battered, bruised frame from the ground. With his hand on the metal Richard had recently cast him against, he looked at the latest body, spread out on the stone floor, staring at the ceiling.

  Leaving his father’s room, Trey had leaned against the wall and imagined putting a knife through his father’s heart. Harvey had been nothing but awful to Trey for the entirety of the younger’s life. He was a monster, even before you combined him with a vile demon. If not for the ritual, within hours, he would be dead anyway. If not for Liz, his death would have been and gone.

  In his imagination, Trey plunged the knife into his demon-infested father repeatedly and guiltlessly. He knew the reality would present more psychological problems than he was allowing himself to envision. When it came time to act, Trey might have a split second before the demon in his father ripped him apart. He could not afford to hesitate.

  Difficult as it would be, outside that room, Trey had sworn one thing. No matter whose face she wore, he would murder the demon by the name of Heidi. If he could not succeed, he would die trying.

  In killing her, he could not right the wrongs she had already committed, and for which he was partly responsible, but he could stop the guilt from mounting. In destroying her, he could find some peace either entering the afterlife or continuing with real life.

  No matter what, he would try.

  Even without a blade, he had fulfilled his promise. When the ritual ended, he had gone for Richard, diving on the beast’s back.

  Inevitably, it was a battle he had lost. He hadn’t died, but he was content in having attempted to right the evil action performed by him and his siblings.

  Standing over the dead body, he could not smile, but he at least felt a grim satisfaction. The weight of the deaths to which his name could be partly attributed still rested upon his shoulders. The crushing weight which came from the anticipation of deaths still to come seemed to break up, evaporate. More easily than before, he could take a deep breath and release.

  When had he last felt so calm?

  A hand clutched Trey’s elbow. “What should we buy first, son of mine. I’m thinking jet ski.”

  At his shoulder, Olivia looked as tall, elegant and beautiful as ever. You would never know her husband had died; a monster had threatened her life. That was Trey’s mother. She treated the warehouse as though it was a ballroom.

  “We’d have to find an instructor of course,” she continued. “Preferably a handsome one. It’s been ever so long since I’ve been a free woman. I tell you, I’m going to miss the clandestine affairs.”

  Not wanting to think about his mother’s love affairs, clandestine or otherwise, Trey turned his focus to Liz, who stumbled through the shutter door into the open air. Trey watched her lift an arm and wave at someone out of sight.

  “It’s okay. The blood isn’t mine. Hey, Amira?”

  Pounding feet preceeded Mercury barging Trey’s shoulder and diving through the door after Liz. As she looked to where Liz had been waving, she burst into tears.

  “Can’t stand that mushy stuff myself,” said Olivia, and stepped out to join the two women.

  Trey followed. Across the tarmac at the industrial estate’s gates stood Amira, her wrist encased in the beefy hand of a beefy man. His face was kind, smiling. Even from a distance, Trey could see the building madness in his eyes.

  “I thought Richard killed you,” Mercury called, as though accusing Amira of lying.

  “He got all sentimental,” said Amira. “Wanted to make me the first of his harem of infected lunatics once he was a demon. A concubine. Like these fine people.”

  Trey couldn’t believe it. Around Amira stood fourteen men and five women. How could they all have submitted to Heidi?

  He knew the answer. The world was full of temptable men and women. The lonely and the greedy were prime candidates for seduction by a being as evil as Heidi. Besides, the demon had an allure. A tug like gravitational pull that made you want to submit, even if you knew it was a bad idea. Combine loneliness or greed with this power, and she became almost impossible to reject.

  How would they react when they learned their master was dead? As a group, the survivors had to handle this carefully.

  “I’m free,” said Mercury, her vo
ice carrying across the tarmac. “Last night, we killed Yassin. Now, Heidi’s gone. Your Gods are gone. You’ve nothing left to fight for.”

  That hadn’t been what Trey had in mind. Smiling, Olivia stepped between him and Liz. While they faced another deadly situation, she beamed as though it were a game or TV show. Having spent most her adult life living freely under Harvey’s money, she could not appreciate risk or understand danger.

  The man who held Amira continued smiling. “Through black hearted tricks, you destroyed our God in Yassin. If you think you are smart enough to defeat our master Heidi, you are foolish. You make us laugh.”

  As one, the crowd burst into horrible, fake laughter. All but one of the men looked unabashed. The women seemed less at ease. This Yassin must have infected the spare man and the women. Those who had lost their personal God struggled more than did Heidi’s recruits. To her, they would transfer their allegiance, but it would not be easy. Jamie and Ian had followed Hera in the clearing. Still, their lack of devotion, when compared to their reverence of Heidi, was evident.

  Heidi’s followers, unable to accept the loss of their leader, were unworried. When the ball finally dropped, Trey supposed they would charge. Blood would be spilt, many would die. Trey would likely be one.

  Mercury said, “Shall we bring out the body?”

  Liz had gone pale. From across the tarmac, Amira must have noticed.

  “Norton, what’s wrong?”

  With sudden certainty, Liz said, “We didn’t kill her.” She was turning towards Trey and Olivia. As she spoke, Olivia grabbed her arm and said, “Catch.”

  Her other arm coming around she took Liz in two hands and threw her through the sky, towards Heidi’s followers. Several of them forced a circle and caught Liz, holding her steady.

  Putting her arm around Trey, Olivia said, “Mummy’s gone, sweet pop.”

  She smiled at Mercury. “Heidi’s back, and I’m so looking forward to what happens next.”

  Forty-One