Devil Take The Hindmost

Chapter Thirty-One

I stood on the threshold to the interior of the Wyntham Estate and paused.

I didn't think I was the kind of guy who rushed into a burning building, and, as I looked over my shoulder to see whether I could see either Ty or Priya, that sentiment proved to be literally true.

I was the kind of guy who rushed up to the flaming doorway, then checked to see if there might be anyone in the vicinity more suited to the undertaking of a heroic rescue.

There was not.

I couldn't see Priya at all, and a pair of legs I thought might belong to Edge were irretrievably buried under a pile of threshing homeless and Satanist belligerents.

There really was nothing to be done about it. Either I went back in there, or lived forever in the knowledge that I allowed another to die in a fire started in order that I might escape.

The fact I needed to escape at all, and from close associates of the person now in mortal danger, gave me an ethical and philosophical head-fuck of cause and blame I would have to untangle at a later date.

I entered the house and headed for the oak staircase, holding my breath, and making an effort to shield my eyes from the fumes and fierce heat. The bottom treads of the stairs closest to the source of the fire in the library were starting to char and blacken, and I feared they wouldn't take my weight as I bounded up them.

My breath holding strategy proved almost immediately to be poorly thought out. Near the top, a combination of the physical exertion required, and the flickering tongue of flame eating its way up the wallpaper reminded me that heat, and smoke, rise.

The landing at the top of the staircase lay thick with an impenetrable fug that scoured my lungs as I panted for air. I collapsed to all fours in a fit of coughing and wriggled towards the room in which I judged the window to be.

I could see no more than a hand span in front of my face as I crawled, resulting in me headbutting the heavy panelling of the door that loomed unseen at the end of the landing. Ignoring the sharp pain on the crown of my head, I reached up and gingerly tested the ornate iron door handle to see if it was hot.

The metal remained cool, and I grasped it with relief. The fire had not yet spread inside and there was still time.

I heaved open the door, toppled inside, then stood and shut it behind me as fast as I could to prevent more smoke from entering. When I turned around to survey the interior of the room I stopped instantly in my tracks.

This, it seemed, was the master bedroom of the Wyntham Estate.

The walls were decorated with waist-high wooden panelling similar to that burning in the corridor below, only here they were covered in intricate patterns. Symbols and designs were carved into the wood then painted in silver or gold.

I recognised the eight-pointed star of Inanna as a recurring motif, but the origin and meaning of the rest were entirely lost on me. Above the panels, the walls bore artwork depicting various mediaeval and renaissance scenes of womanhood, and tapestries and banners draped the panelling between gilded picture frames.

The floor of the room comprised exposed boards which in very many places were showing a distinct blackening as a result of the fire raging directly below them. The intense heat caused the pitch, long ago smeared between the boards, to melt. Now it hissed, bubbled and ran in the heat, leaving gaps through which the glow of the fire and wisps of smoke streamed.

None of this, other-worldly as it appeared, is what pulled me up short. Rather, it was the scene in the middle of the room that shocked me.

The centre of the bedroom was dominated by the imposing structure of a four-poster bed the approximate size and shape of a footballer's wallet, with drapes of black and silver strung between towering posts and as a canopy far above the mattress.