The Ancient

The Ancient
Muriel Gray

Alien, on a container ship.

‘Scary and unputdownable’, Stephen King

Amongst towering mountains of trash in the backstreets of Lima, three young boys are trying to raise an ancient demon. They don't think their incantation has worked; but that night a teenage drugrunner is gunned down across their makeshift altar. As his killers walk away, his body stirs. Not because it still contains a spark of life. But because something is stirring beneath it…

Port Callao. The MV Lysicrates, a three-quarter-mile long supertanker, is being loaded with hundreds of tonnes of trash. Watching from the bridge, in a bleary state of hungover gloom, is second-in-command Matthew Cotton; more interesting is the arrival of a young American student who has missed the boat she should have been on.

They should have paid more attention to the trash.

MURIEL GRAY

The Ancient

HarperVoyager an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk (http://www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2015

Copyright © Muriel Gray 2002, 2015

Cover photograph © Stewart Sutton/Getty Images; Shutterstock.com (sky, sea, mist)

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Muriel Gray asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008158262

Ebook Edition © December 2015 ISBN: 9780007404438

Version: 2015-10-29

For

Hamish, Hector, Rowan and

Angus James Barbour, with love

Contents

Cover (#u22c7ece8-8a04-58d5-b758-1faf363b05b2)

Title Page (#udf0ad4fd-199f-56b6-9f0f-10bf9131309f)

Copyright (#u050d2480-04fe-5f20-b56e-df92e843e86c)

Dedication (#u051123df-8061-5b4d-8544-cd597f128b0c)

Chapter 1 (#u5af73880-1284-5490-8960-b80337763538)

Chapter 2 (#u80b76ef9-d266-5437-a349-f9e3719fc660)

Chapter 3 (#u97322576-0625-5ca4-b5a0-8b938181a73c)

Chapter 4 (#u1a355049-dbca-51b0-8177-bb588c23e061)

Chapter 5 (#ufc379e36-ba0f-5f10-afc3-ab0b9bd0c3f0)

Chapter 6 (#u02cbd88d-ec88-5bb7-abdb-b0324714c992)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)