The Silver Cage

by Mathilde Madden

  Iris swallowed. ‘But why is . . . Why would holy water be so corrosive?’

  Vikram laughed. ‘We’re beyond all that claptrap at Cobalt. Charles Cobalt, Erin’s husband – he’s dead now – came up with the idea that we could get a priest to bless any liquid. He needn’t even know what it was. Nitric acid worked best. It used to take about a week for Cole’s eyesight to recover. Then they’d do it again.’

  Iris shuddered. Cobalt weren’t like the Institute. Would Blake do something like that? She’d always thought that Blake was capable of anything – but this just seemed so barbaric.

  Iris looked back through the smoky glass at Leon in the black-walled room. Behind Erin on the table were several spools of silver wire and three large bottles made of brown glass, the standard way of storing the photosensitive silver-nitrate solution. Both were interrogation methods of Blake’s. Iris stood up. ‘I’m not going to watch this.’

  ‘Don’t you want to find out where your boyfriend is?’ Vikram sneered a little on the word ‘boyfriend’.

  Iris shook her head. She wanted to say that she didn’t – not like this. But she really wasn’t sure if that was the truth. She wanted to find Alfie so much it burnt inside her. But what Erin was going to do to Leon . . .

  Iris stood up. ‘Page me on my coms, uh, my MCD,’ she said as she walked away.

  36

  UPSTAIRS, IRIS LEANT against the front desk in the large echoey, honey-wooded reception area of Cobalt. Here, like everywhere else, no expense seemed to have been spared. It was good to talk to her ex-werewolf-hunter trainee Pepper. Even if it was strange to see her sitting behind a desk. A sedentary job hadn’t changed her though. She still had the same hard squat body, short-short hair and softly butch face.

  ‘I know you think I’m a coward now,’ Pepper was saying. ‘But I couldn’t hack it out there. Not after what happened. When you and Blake left me alone with that lyc, I nearly died. It left me scared of the dark, you know. Lost my nerve.’

  ‘I know, Pepper. I’m sorry. A lot of bad stuff went down that night.’ Iris didn’t know quite how to tell Pepper everything about that night. Especially how being in a hospital bed might well have saved her from a far worse fate.

  ‘Is Blake all right?’ Pepper said out of the blue.

  ‘I think so. I’m sure he’ll be back.’

  Pepper smiled when Iris said that. Pepper had always had a little soft spot for Blake. Even at her first interview she’d given him far too many coy little glances. And Blake, being Blake, had teased and ignored her for as long as he could before giving her one quick salacious wink that had almost made her fall off her chair.

  That same night, in bed, Blake had floated the idea of a threesome – him and Iris and Pepper. But it had never happened. Blake had always been a distinctly monogamous man – witches notwithstanding.

  And now, Iris could see, Pepper missed Blake almost as much as she did.

  ‘I saw him when he brought you back,’ Pepper said.

  ‘Really? What happened?’ Iris wondered, not for the first time, if Cobalt really were after Blake’s blood or if it was just a paranoid delusion.

  ‘Well . . .’ Pepper began, her face brightening, about to deliver something juicy.

  But, before she could say anything else, Iris’s coms set started bleeping. She flipped down the mouth piece. ‘Yeah.’

  It was Vikram. ‘Get down here.’

  Erin Cobalt was striding up and down the corridor outside the interrogation room. ‘You,’ she barked as soon as she saw Iris. ‘Why did you leave your post? You’re our werewolf expert.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I –’

  ‘Never mind. You’re here now. OK. What’s summoning?’

  Iris felt her heart flip. Summoning – the ability every werewolf had to call his sire to him. The ability Iris had once been desperate for Alfie to use to call his sire, the Ancient Beast that killed Iris’s brother. And now, if Leon had agreed to summon Alfie . . .

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It means he can call Alfie. If we take him to where he was bitten. Camden, I think. Is he co-operating? He tried a trick by offering to do a summoning once before.’

  Erin looked slightly confused. ‘Oh.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That doesn’t sound . . .? Hmm. Maybe he didn’t say summoning. I’ll go check.’

  ‘Why? What did he say.’

  ‘He said the Divine. This great mother wolf – that’s who’s with the unstable wolf, isn’t it?’

  Iris nodded.

  ‘Well, he seems to think that she is going to summon wolves to her. She can do that at full moon, apparently. That’s tonight, isn’t it?’

  Iris nodded again.

  ‘So she’s going to summon these wolves and imbibe them somehow. Give them a power. A potion?’ Erin flicked her head at the door of the interrogation room. ‘He’s gibbering a little. Maybe I misunderstood. I’ll go check.’

  Reluctantly, Iris followed Vikram back into the viewing room. She didn’t see how she had any choice. Through the glass she saw Leon, far limper in his chair. His chest was covered in the specific sooty chemical burns she remembered seeing on Alfie the time Blake had tortured him with silver-nitrate solution. She swallowed.

  Erin approached Leon briskly. She put her foot on the railing under his chair to steady it, lifted his head with one hand in his hair and then slapped his face with the other. ‘Summoning,’ she said tersely, her voice coming into the viewing room through a loud speaker, ‘is a way of a cub calling his sire.’

  ‘I know,’ Leon said in a harsh whisper.

  Erin slapped him again. ‘So what are you talking about, werewolf?’

  In the viewing room, Iris whispered to Vikram, ‘Leon knows a lot about werewolves. More than me. We need to listen to this.’

  Vikram just nodded.

  Leon said, ‘This is an older rite. Maybe the original source of summoning. It’s a legend. One of the great stories. The Divine will return and unite us. She will use the threads that connect us – the bonds that link through summoning – to reverse it and call the wolves to her.’

  ‘And then what?’ said Erin with an eyebrow flicker. ‘You take over the world?’

  Leon looked more relaxed suddenly, cockier. ‘Naturally.’

  Erin balled her hand into a tight bony fist and punched Leon so hard the chair he was sitting on went over backwards. There were a few seconds of near silence as Erin slipped off the table to examine Leon on the floor. ‘Iris,’ she said, turning, looking at the mirror, ‘can you get the doctor down here?’

  Iris flipped her mic down again and quickly told Pepper to send a doctor. Then she got up and paced behind the bright-red sofa. Lilith had said something about the Divine uniting all the wolves and destroying humanity. Leon would love that, wouldn’t he? Leon would never give away the location, never let them stop his dreams from coming true.

  Somehow, while she was pacing and thinking, she kicked a bag lying on the floor, Vikram’s black leather satchel. The papers inside it spilt on the floor. Cursing, she reached down to stuff them back.

  Vikram leant over the back of the sofa. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘actually, Iris . . .’

  But Iris had already seen the sheaf of papers. Divorce papers. For Blake Tabernacle and Iris Instasi-Fox. Iris swallowed.

  She had lost Alfie and now she was losing Blake.

  She didn’t look at Vikram. She started leafing through the papers. Right in the middle was a note: Blake’s tight sloping handwriting. ‘Vikram,’ Iris said, ‘I need to put this stuff in my room. I won’t be a second.’

  Iris dashed up the stairs and ran down the shinylinoed corridors to her room in the medical wing.

  She sat down on the bed and pulled out the note, hoping it might have some kind of explanation for Blake’s behaviour. Why he was on the run, why he wouldn’t – or was it couldn’t? – have sex with her.

  That he still loved her.

  Iris

  You already have the most import
ant information about how to find Alfie. You told me. I’m not writing it down here though, because I have to give this note to corpse-boy. Go to the library. They must have one. They took all my damn books. It’s all in there.

  Blake x

  And take care, baby. Remember you don’t have to fuck every monster you meet – OK.

  37

  ‘WHERE’S THE LIBRARY?’

  Pepper looked up from the magazine she was reading. Iris glanced at the pages showing pictures of soldiers and combat. ‘What? There isn’t a library.’

  ‘There must be. Blake said . . .’ Iris stopped talking as Pepper’s face brightened at the word ‘Blake’. ‘Uh, I mean, Blake’s books. Where would Blake’s books be?’

  Pepper shrugged. ‘I don’t know anything about Blake’s books.’

  Iris sucked her top teeth a second. Stupid Blake’s stupid instructions. Unless they did have a secret library and Pepper didn’t know about it. She said, ‘Where’s Erin Cobalt’s office.’

  ‘Uh, on the secure floor. Same as yours.’

  ‘Same as mine?’ ‘Um, Pepper, do you have a key for my office?’

  Pepper smiled. ‘’Course I do.’

  Following Pepper’s instructions, Iris took the lift to the secure floor. As she emerged, a sign on the wall listed her name and Erin’s among others she didn’t know. The corridor was quiet. Whoever the other Cobalt operatives were with offices on the secure floor, they didn’t seem to be at work today.

  There was no sign of Vikram’s name on the secure-floor sign. His office must be somewhere else. Perhaps that had something to do with him being a vampire.

  She found the door with her name on it and opened it. And there, inside, piled floor to ceiling, was everything they must have taken from the Institute.

  Iris almost sobbed when she saw it. Coms sets, uniforms, computers, weapons – all of it so familiar it made her ache.

  And books. So many books. Blake’s entire library. Carton after carton. She had no idea what she was looking for. She sat down on one carton, with another full of dusty volumes open in front of her. She really needed some help. She closed her eyes. Somehow she could feel him already. Like the connection was close. It was too easy.

  ‘Alfie? Are you there?’

  Hmm. Huh?

  ‘Alfie? Are you OK?’

  She broke my hand.

  ‘What?’

  She broke my hand. Because of Leon. Smashed it with a stone. She made me do it myself. Thralled me. Made me crush my own hand. Oh, oh, please, not again. Worse than the witches. Not again.

  Iris thought of Alfie’s hands. She adored his hands. So many times he’d knelt over her and pushed his hands into her mouth, finger by thick finger. Her insisting that she ought to suck off each of them in turn before she sucked his cock. Taking each one for longer than the one before, each one deeper and wetter, as Alfie panted over her, watching her mouth at work. Until he was screaming – desperate for that mouth on his cock.

  ‘Alfie,’ Iris said, trying to push away all the images that were swimming in her head of Alfie’s warm thick fingers, Alfie’s crushed hand, ‘where are you?’

  In the Silver Cage in a cellar. Oh, Iris, my hand hurts and she has the other one cuffed to the cage bars. She keeps making me . . . Don’t try to rescue me. I can’t imagine what she’d do to you.

  ‘Sure, baby, sure. Alfie. Is anything happening tonight? At full moon?’

  Iris. My hand. Did I tell you the other one is cuffed to the cage. Yes, full moon tonight, Iris. My blood is so hot. She keeps making me come. It hurts. My hand is broken.

  He was rambling. Alfie often seemed to get more incoherent, less rational, as the moon started moving towards him. Maybe being an Ancient Beast hadn’t changed that. A Silver Cage – why did that seem familiar?

  ‘Alfie. I have to go. Are you going to be OK.’

  But all Alfie’s voice in her head said was: The moon, the moon, over and over.

  Iris opened her eyes and picked up the first of Blake’s books. She flipped to the index – no mention of the Silver Cage. She tossed it aside and took the next book. Nothing. The next. And the next.

  She went through three crates of books before she found it. When she pulled out a decrepit old book called The Sacred Silvers, she didn’t need to check the index. On the cover was a Silver Cage. And a Silver Collar, some Silver Crowns and some Silver Chains. Iris’s mouth went dry. This must be what Blake had wanted her to find.

  38

  ACCORDING TO THE book, werewolf lore claimed that there were several sacred silver objects that could control werewolves. The most famous was the Silver Collar, which could stop a werewolf changing from man to beast or from beast to man. Iris paused a moment on that line. It had never occurred to her that the collar might be used to stop Alfie changing back.

  She dismissed that for the moment and read on. There were also twelve Silver Crowns that were used by the Ancient Beasts as part of their ceremonial rites. That was why they were called the Silver Crown. There were also some Silver Chains and a Silver Cage.

  Iris knew most of this already. She read on, hoping to find something that would help her establish where this Silver Cage was. Surely that was what Blake was getting at.

  She started skimming through some dull stuff about how the objects were meant to have been made by the Divine Wolf herself. How the collar was the most mysterious and no one really knew why it had been created.

  And then she found it. Not the simple solution she was looking for, but near enough. The silver objects were believed to have a unique trace, to give out a unique signal. Something like a magical radioactivity, something traceable.

  Iris reread the passage about the trace over and over. As far as she could see, all she needed to do was figure out what the trace signal was. And to do that she needed at least one of the other items.

  So where is the Silver Collar?

  It had been on the floor where the Divine had thrown it while Iris was chained up in the cavern. She remembered staring at it glittering in the last of the light as the final candle guttered and died. But what then?

  She remembered Blake picking up the collar and the crowns. She had been lying on the floor in the recovery position and Blake had gone round taking all the crowns off the Beasts and then powdering the bodies. Hadn’t he said something about there only being ten collars and Iris had murmured something about Alfie still wearing his. And Blake had said, even so, there ought to be twelve.

  But, if Blake had them, well, she had no idea where Blake was.

  Iris thought again about Blake saying one crown was missing. Iris had killed ten Beasts. Tobias was already dead. And the twelfth Beast turned out to be the Divine herself. So Blake had picked up ten crowns. Alfie had one on his head as he left. Maybe the missing crown was Dr Tobias’s, the Ancient Beast Iris had already killed. He hadn’t worn it for work as director of the Institute and he definitely wasn’t wearing it when he died. In fact, Iris had never seen him wearing such a thing. So where would it be? Still in his house in Oxford – the one that he had left to Blake?

  39

  VIKRAM MET IRIS in the underground garage. ‘Iris! I was just tracing your MCD. You weren’t picking up. You need to come back downstairs.’

  But Iris could barely comprehend. ‘I know,’ she gasped, pulling out of Vikram’s grip. ‘I know how to find him. I have to find him. But I need to go to Oxford.’

  Vikram nodded at one of the black SUVs. ‘I’ll drive.’

  Two hours later, they parked up outside a rambling old house in the Summertown district of Oxford. This leafy sprawl of wide pavements, tree-lined avenues and adventure-book houses was popular with Oxford’s academics and, it seemed, its ‘secretly actually a werewolf themselves’ werewolf hunters.

  ‘So the missing crown’s in there?’ said Vikram, who Iris had briefed on the drive down.

  ‘I really don’t know. All I know is Blake has ten crowns and Alfie has one. One is missing. That could be Tobias’s. But I
can’t be sure. The one Alfie’s wearing could be Tobias’s. That would make sense too. But this seems like our best bet.’

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

  Iris looked up at the house – the house where she had become a werewolf hunter. The house where Blake had first fucked her, pushing her down in a disused bedroom. She could smell the musty sheets on that bed, still feel the way Blake fucked. Fast and tight. She hadn’t been the woman she was now, hadn’t been able to hold her own physically against Blake then. Then he had overwhelmed her, pinned her down, smothered her mouth with his. He had fucked her demons away. If only briefly. And promised her that together they would destroy everything that scared her. And Blake had always been there for her, from that moment on. While Iris had quickly overtaken him in ability with reflexes and fighting skill, he had been the one at her back. The tracker. The scholar. The watcher. Always there. Blake. She felt half lost without him.

  And then she remembered that this was his house now. That Tobias had left it to him. Had he been back here? Maybe?

  She turned to Vikram. ‘Wait here,’ she said. ‘I’m going in alone.’

  Alfie opened his eyes. She was back already.

  As Divinia picked her way across the cage towards him, he pulled himself up into a sitting position. His left hand was still chained to the bars behind him, his right hand too injured to be of any use.

  ‘How are you feeling, Alfred?’ she said, crouching in front of him.

  Alfie moaned something. His mouth felt like it was full of dry sand.

  ‘Oh, I know, I know.’ She touched his face. ‘One more time and then we’ll see about getting you something to drink.’

  As her hands moved down his body, Alfie tried not to scream. Her fingers were soft and firm, forming a tight well around his cock. He sighed in spite of himself. Surely there was nothing more he could give her. How many times had it been so far? Too many. She had said something, hadn’t she, about him being able to do this as many times as she wanted with the combination of the moon so close, her thrall over him, the abstinence she’d enforced. Her touch was like a kind of music.