Lord Loss (The Demonata #1)(28)

Forty-five minutes. Fifty. Coming up to an hour when... they reappear.

But not through the doors in the ground - instead, from the kitchen!

They walk out of the house, over to the wooden doors. Dervish takes the length of chain, runs it through the two large handles, then locks it. Both of them carefully slide the sheet of corrugated iron back over the doors, hiding them. They drag their feet over the marks in the dirt left by the corrugated iron, masking the tracks. Wipe their hands clean. Dervish spares the surrounding area one final glance, then they return to the house.

As soon as they enter, I close the window and race for my room - I don't want them to find me here.

Under the covers, fully dressed, shaking.

Footsteps on the stairs.

I shut my eyes and feign sleep, expecting Dervish to look in on me. But the footsteps continue up to the top floor - his study.

I wait several minutes. When there are no further sounds, I slip out of bed, undress and put on my pyjamas, then sneak back to the rear bedroom. (I can pretend I'm sleep-walking if they discover me now.)

Studying the sheet of corrugated iron. Picking at the puzzle. Dervish and Meera went down the steps in the rear yard, but came up through the house. There must be a secret passage to somewhere inside the mansion.

Quick calculating. Flash upon the obvious answer - the cellar. The wine just a ruse. Dervish doesn't want to keep me away from the cellar to protect his prize vintages, but to safeguard whatever lies beneath.

Bed. Impossible to sleep. Knees drawn up to my chest. Trembling. Clutching a silver axe which I took from one of the walls. Praying I don't have to use it.

Shortly after dawn. Eyes drooping. Fingers loose on the axe handle.

The door bursts open. Meera barges in. I try to scream but my throat constricts and all I manage is a thin squeak.

Meera's holding a bag. She jabs a hand into it. My imagination fills the bag with all sorts of horrors. I struggle to bring the axe up but it catches on the sheets. Meera pulls a cluster of objects out of the bag and lobs them at me. I cringe away from her, wishing I could sink through the wall behind me.

Some of the objects strike me dead in the face. I gasp, desperately swat them away, then blink with surprise as I realise what she's throwing -

Crisps!

Dervish and Meera are still laughing in the morning. "Your face!" Dervish chortles at breakfast. "Like every demon in hell was coming for you!"

As I've noted before, my uncle has a twisted sense of humour.

I say nothing while Dervish and Meera enjoy their little joke, only keep my head down and focus on my food. Dervish doesn't understand why I was so scared. He doesn't know that I saw him with the deer, that I suspect he's a werewolf, that I'm wondering if I can buy silver bullets on eBay. I doubt he'd be laughing if he did.

The house to myself. Dervish's early morning runs usually last forty-five minutes to an hour. Enough time for a quick scouting mission.

I hurry down the stairs to the wine cellar. Pause with my hand on the door. In horror movies, monsters always lurk in the basement. But this isn't a movie. I mustn't succumb to fictional fears -  not when I have very real fears to contend with.

Creeping down the steps. Leave the door open. Checking my watch - seven minutes since Dervish left. I'll allow myself half an hour, not a second more.

Pause at the bottom of the steps. Dark and cool. I shuffle forward and an overhead light winks on. Studying the rows of wine racks. I turn full circle. My heart beats erratically. My legs feel like they belong to an elephant - heavyyyyy. The axe in my left hand looks tiny and ineffective in the glaring light of the cellar.

I stalk the nearest aisle, studying the floor - stone slabs, different shapes, tightly cemented together. I pause occasionally, crouch and rap a slab with the base of my axe, listening for echoes.

None. Solid.

Left at the end. Exploring a second aisle, then a third, a fourth.

No strange-looking slabs. No echoes anywhere I rap. The joining cement between the slabs unbroken. No trace of a hidden door.

Back where I started. Twenty of the thirty minutes have elapsed. Sweating like a pig who can smell burning charcoal. I'm beginning to think I could be wrong about the cellar. Perhaps the hidden entrance is in one of the ground floor rooms. But I won't give up yet.

I scout the rim of the room, concentrating on the walls, running my fingers over the rough, dry stone, searching for cracks.

A wine rack - ceiling-high, maybe three metres long - covers one section of the wall. My hopes rise - this could be blocking a secret passage!  -  but when I lift out a couple of bottles, all I see behind is more stone wall. I remove a few more bottles from various places but nothing out of the ordinary is revealed.

Two minutes left. This is a waste. I'll focus on the rooms above. Perhaps the passageway is hidden behind one of Dervish's many bookcases. I'll start in the main hall and work my way...

The thought dies unfinished. As I'm rising to leave, I spot a dark smudge on the floor. Stooping closer, I move my head out of the way of the light and squint for a better view.

It's a semi-circular stain, pale, easily missed. Unmistakably a footprint.

Although there aren't many footprints in the cellar - Dervish keeps it really clean - this isn't the first I've discovered. What sets this one apart from the others is that it faces away from the wine rack, and the mark of the heel is hidden beneath the bottles.