The Silver Cage

by Mathilde Madden

  ‘Are you OK?’ she said to Pearl. It really was strange how much she looked like her dead cousin – one of Iris’s werewolf hunters who had died facing down the Silver Crown with her. Iris was hoping she could be relied upon to fight like him too.

  ‘Not really,’ Pearl said hollowly.

  ‘Me neither.’

  There were two doors in front of Iris. One led to the main interrogation room, the other to the viewing room. Iris took the second one. She skirted the fat red sofa and stopped and peered through the two-way mirror.

  Some of the lights were off in the room where she had last seen Erin go to work on Leon. The lightbulbs were mostly smashed in the room now. Several cords hung down from the ceiling with just dead jagged glass at their ends. The lack of light made it harder to see what was in the room, and at first she thought it was empty.

  ‘There’s no one in there,’ she said, a note of panicked relief obvious in her voice.

  ‘Yes there is,’ hissed Pearl. ‘The back wall.’ She sounded terrified.

  ‘What?’ Iris felt herself jolt with adrenaline as she looked to where Pearl was pointing. Then she exhaled with relief. ‘No, no, that’s just a mark on the wall, from where they threw nitric acid at Darius Cole.’

  ‘It’s moving,’ Pearl said, close to tears.

  Iris stared at the shape on the back wall. It was hard to make out. But then, like an optical illusion, it suddenly snapped into place. It wasn’t the shadowy shape of Cole burnt into the wall. It was Erin, chained into the manacles, barely conscious.

  ‘Oh, God,’ Iris said in a soft dull whisper.

  Sometimes, when Iris used her body it was all very rational, planned and neatly executed. Fighting and hunting werewolves, training, taking Blake down in the hallway and dragging him, still dazed into the bedroom to push his face down into her cunt.

  But, sometimes, Iris wondered who was in control, who was making the decisions. Times like these when she was running, exploding with acceleration, leading with her shoulder hunched to protect her head as she leapt, leaving the ground, smashing through the two-way mirror, flipping in the air and landing in the interrogation room on both feet, in a hail of shards.

  Erin twitched, barely a movement.

  Iris rushed over. Close up, Erin didn’t seem too badly injured, but her eyes had that same vacant stare that every other Cobalt employee now seemed to have.

  ‘Erin? Dr Cobalt? I need the Sacred Silvers you took from Blake. The collar and the crowns. Where are they?’

  ‘Huh?’ said Erin. Her head rolled on her neck like it was made of jelly.

  Behind Iris, Pearl suddenly said, ‘Where’s Leon?’

  Iris sort of batted her away. ‘Not now, Pearl.’

  Then Erin said, in a high faraway voice, ‘She took him.’

  ‘Who?’ said Iris. ‘Who took him?’

  ‘The witch. The witch that was here.’

  ‘What witch?’

  Erin’s voice was still ethereal and deranged. ‘She came for the Silvers. I had them here. Down here. She knew. But when she came in and saw Leon – he was unconscious – she went crazy. “Hers,” she said. Said that he was hers. That’s when she cast the spell. She said she’d make us all sleep for a hundred years. But just the brain . . . just the brain.’

  Iris had both hands on Erin’s face. ‘Did she take them? The Silvers?’

  ‘And did she take Leon?’ said Pearl, behind Iris.

  ‘Yes. She took them. And him too.’

  ‘What . . .?’ Iris gulped, barely daring to ask. ‘What did this witch look like?’

  ‘Dark hair. Very beautiful. A silver tooth. She kissed the werewolf and the sting of it seemed to revive him.’

  ‘Fuck! Sabrina! I knew those witches had messed up.’ Iris hit the wall right next to Erin’s face with her fist. It hurt a lot but the pain was good, clarifying. ‘You lost them. The Silvers. Sabrina took them. Fuck!’

  Iris turned and stalked across the room, the shards of mirrored glass crunching under her combat boots. ‘That’s it,’ she said. She turned around as she reached the wall and started to pace back. ‘That was my last chance. Now I have no way to find Alfie. It’s – what? – an hour until moon rise. She’ll draw the wolves to her, do her magic, raise her army. And I don’t get to stop her. It’s lost. It’s all lost.’ She shook her head like she couldn’t believe it. ‘I lost. It can’t be right. I am meant to be there. I’m the heir. I’m meant to stop her!’

  Suddenly Erin said, ‘Well, aren’t you going to go after her?’

  ‘After her?’

  Erin sounded suddenly more lucid. ‘Yes. Chase her. Make her reverse the magic she’s cast on us. She might still be here. There’s a security terminal in the wall.’ Then Erin’s head slumped down on to her chest as if the effort of that had been too much for her.

  Pearl darted forwards. ‘Are you OK. Did you say her name was Erin? Erin, are you OK?’

  ‘Forget it,’ Iris said. ‘She’s just so hardass, she’s fighting the magic that’s shutting down her brain. That little lucid moment has completely drained her.’

  ‘More than that,’ said Pearl, touching Erin’s neck. ‘She’s dead.’

  Iris flipped open the cover in the wall-mounted computer terminal. She shook her head but didn’t say anything. Erin Cobalt had had it coming. Hadn’t she? Maybe. How different was she really from Blake? Did Blake have it coming?

  She cleared her head and entered her password into the terminal. She had no idea how the system worked but that got her through security. She began sifting through images: various parts of the Cobalt building, horrific sights, people who had injured themselves in various ways. Then, when the image of reception flashed up, Iris went cold.

  ‘Oh, God, Pearl.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Reception’s on fire.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Pearl, almost as if she didn’t register.

  Iris flipped down her coms mic. ‘Blake! Are you there, Blake?’

  ‘Still nothing?’ said Pearl, leaving Erin to come over to look at the screen. ‘Maybe there’s no signal down here?’

  ‘No signal? This is Cobalt. I’m sure they’re fully connected. No, it must be a problem their end. Oh damn. We need to go out through the car park. It’s the floor above this one.’

  Iris flipped open the panel on the coms and got an outside line; she dialled the emergency services quickly and barked Cobalt’s address.

  As she hung up, Iris glanced at Erin. ‘You sure she’s dead?’

  Pearl nodded. ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘OK. Then we head for the car park. Let me just check it’s clear . . . Oh! Oh my God! She’s right there!’ Iris jabbed the screen. An image of the underground car park had just flashed up: Sabrina and Leon in the underground garage. ‘Come on,’ Iris said, making to leave.

  As she began to pound through the corridor, she felt Pearl at her heels.

  Up one flight of stairs and they were in the car park. Sabrina and Leon were making their way towards the big hydraulic doors that led up to street level. Leon was leaning heavily on Sabrina, damaged.

  ‘Stop,’ shouted Iris, ‘stop or I’ll shoot him.’ She had Leon right in the sights of her crossbow.

  Sabrina turned. God, but she was beautiful. Leon, conversely, looked awful. Close to death. His face and torso were a mass of burns and bruises, his ruined face contorted into a grin that was half grimace. ‘Hey, sweetheart,’ he said weakly. And Iris thought he was talking to her for a second.

  Then Pearl said, ‘Hey.’

  Leon’s voice was scratchy, weak and sardonic. ‘So, is it fun for you? Seeing your sire’s sire fucked up like this?’

  ‘No,’ said Pearl. ‘I thought it might be, but it isn’t. Where are you taking him?’ The last sentence was to Sabrina.

  ‘Somewhere safe,’ said Sabrina. ‘And you better get out of my way, Fox, if you want to stay alive.’

  ‘Why’re you walking?’ said Iris. ‘That spell drain you a bit? Were you so angry you didn�
�t hold a reserve of power to get out of here?’

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Pearl, ‘magic would accelerate the damage done to him. She must really care about him. Maybe she cares enough to . . .’ Pearl raised her voice. ‘Hey, listen, I can help him. I saved Zac, Leon. Tell her. Tell her how Zac should have died. I saved him. I know how to heal fatal silver wounds.’

  ‘Zac’s alive?’ Leon said gruffly. ‘Yeah guess he must be or you’d be my cub now, sweetheart.’

  Iris watched as Leon turned and said something too quiet to hear to Sabrina.

  ‘OK,’ said Sabrina, ‘you can help him. Come with us.’

  ‘Give Iris what she wants first,’ said Pearl.

  ‘What does she want?’

  ‘I want the Silvers,’ said Iris. ‘The collar and the crowns.’

  ‘I can’t give you those. Leon, you need to make the wolf girl come with us.’

  ‘I can’t make her. She’s part of my pack but I’m not her sire. I can’t send it down the line without Zac here.’

  Sabrina looked back at Iris. No one moved.

  Blake and Vikram were still fighting in the back of the SUV. Vikram was cowering in the driver’s seat as Blake, once again, brandished his sword. ‘You dirty dead . . .’ he growled and made an extravagant swooping movement with the sword, but, at the end of the last metal-pirouette, it flew out of his hand and across the back of the car. ‘Oh damn,’ Blake said, scrambling after it before Vikram could stop him.

  But then he saw what he’d done. ‘Oh.’

  ‘What is it?’ Vikram sneered, leaning over the driver’s seat.

  ‘Zac. The lyc. The sword hit him. God, it looks like his body couldn’t take it.’

  ‘You can’t kill a lyc with a . . .’ Vikram was saying, but Blake was looking at Zac’s body, prone on the back seat, his face the colour of ash.

  ‘You can if the blade is silver.’

  Pearl felt it. It was like her heart being ripped out of her body. Zac was gone and she knew – right in the centre of that utter pain and sudden loneliness as she was orphaned – that the gap had closed and that Leon was her sire now. She had no idea how this stuff worked. Did Leon know what had happened?

  She wasn’t sure. And maybe it would have been OK if she had kept quiet. But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. ‘Zac,’ she said. ‘Oh, God, Zac.’ Her achingly trembling face erupted. Tears were streaming so hard she could only just see the grin spread across Leon’s bruised and bloody face. He knew. ‘Come with us, baby,’ he drawled.

  Pearl had no choice but to obey him.

  As she slunk across the car park and followed Leon and Sabrina towards the hydraulic doors that Sabrina was opening with a subtle bit of magic, she half noticed Iris sinking to her knees and starting to cry too.

  Blake was watching the fire engines gather outside Cobalt. ‘Oh shit, look, one of us has to go in.’

  ‘No,’ said Vikram, ‘wait. I’ll find her MCD first. No point in either of us running blindly into a building that’s on fire – that’s bad for me – or full of people that want you dead – that’s bad for you.’

  ‘Iris is in there!’

  ‘Let’s just be sure.’ Vikram pecked at the keys some more. Just as Blake was about to increase his threat level, Vikram said, ‘Ah, got her. She’s in the car park.’

  ‘Great,’ said Blake, his hand on the car-door handle.

  ‘No, stay there,’ Vikram said, revving the engine. ‘We can drive right in.’

  As soon as the SUV bumped down the ramp into the underground car park, Blake saw Iris, on her knees on the concrete, her palms flat on the ground in front of her like she was vomiting.

  Vikram swooped the car around in an arc so Blake could fling open the side door as they passed her, grab her around the waist and pull her inside.

  The SUV wheeled around and slid back out of the door, past the building site and around the corner back into the little side-street hideout.

  Blake had Iris on the back seat curled on his lap. He was tapping her cheek. ‘Come on, baby. Stuff to do.’

  ‘What’s to do?’ Iris moaned. ‘There’s nothing left.’ She sat up. Frowning like something was confusing her. ‘Where’s Zac? What happened to Zac?’

  ‘He died. There was a fight.’

  ‘You fought Zac? He was barely alive. And where’s his body.’

  ‘I powdered it. Remember? Sent it to another dimension with that powder we used to use?’

  ‘Of course I remember. So that’s what happened to Pearl. Zac died and the hole closed up and she was thralled to Leon. Oh fuck. Oh, Blake, I nearly had them. Sabrina took them. And she walked away.’

  Iris was garbling, but Blake could sort of make out what must have happened.

  ‘And now,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing left. Nothing we can do. Where’s Vikram?’

  ‘What?’ Blake looked up, surprised.

  ‘Did he go somewhere? Wasn’t he driving?’

  ‘Yes.’ Blake creased his brow. ‘It’s still daylight. If he’d got out he’d be toast.’

  ‘He can change into a bat,’ said Iris. ‘I think he can move a bit more freely when he’s in that form. He got back from Cornwall in daylight.’

  ‘He did? I didn’t think vampires could . . . Iris, Iris are you OK.’

  Iris could tell Blake was raising his voice, but it was sounding fainter and fainter. Iris glanced down at her body to see it fading away.

  53

  IRIS SAT UP. She looked around at a smallish patch of rubbly wasteground. Piles of breeze blocks and bricks littered the place and the ground was pitted and muddy. The puddles had the greyish tinge of cement powder. The sun was low in the sky.

  She was alone. Well, not exactly alone, there were people everywhere. Sitting on the ground or wandering around. All equally bewildered. She couldn’t see any sign of Blake.

  What happened?

  Looking over to her left, she saw a huge crane stretching into the dusk-streaked sky. Beyond that was the road, a busy familiar-looking road. There were dazed-looking people everywhere.

  ‘This is the building site next to Cobalt, the new wing. I could see the place from my bedroom window.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said a voice beside her, ‘weird, isn’t it? We’re just on the other side of the road.’

  Iris turned, not really surprised to see that Vikram was sitting a few feet away on a wooden palette. ‘Vikram. Where are we?’

  ‘We’re here, where we were trying to get. The summoning’s happened. It pulled you through.’

  ‘Me? Why me? I’m not a lyc.’

  ‘No. But the magic is clumsy. You’re the warrior wolf, wolf’s woman. You’re close enough to Alfie that it worked on you too.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ Iris shook her head. ‘After all that? I just got summoned here anyway. And I always would have been . . .? This destiny thing is weird. How long do you think the witches have known that I would . . .’ Iris trailed off, thinking about how much witches annoyed her, then she said, ‘And how did you get here? You vanished just before me. How come the magic worked on you? You’re a vampire, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Vikram sighed. ‘But it’s complicated. I’m here to help you.’ He looked back at the road. ‘How come no one’s looking over here. Hundreds of people on a building site. Can’t they see us?’

  Iris shrugged. ‘Must be a cloaking spell. Witches use them a lot. Sabrina could have done this easily. We can see out to the street, but from outside the cloak it must just look like the empty site.’

  ‘Is Sabrina another lyc? Damn,’ said Vikram. ‘Weird. But how come they can do magic. Lycs can do magic? I know she’s the Divine Wolf and everything but the idea of lycs doing magic scares the shit out of me.’

  ‘Sabrina’s a witch.’ Iris squinted at Vikram. ‘What are you?’

  ‘Like I say, it’s complicated.’

  ‘So where are they?’ said Iris. ‘Where’s Alfie? The Divine? Where’s my bloody destiny?’

  ‘Alfie said he was undergrou
nd, right? How about we look down there?’

  Vikram was pointing at a small raised platform of concrete breeze blocks that seemed to be a natural point of focus in building-site debris. In the middle of it was what seemed to be a trap door.

  Vikram and Iris made their way through the crowds of dissolute-looking human-form werewolves to the platform and pulled the door open. No one took any notice.

  ‘Why are they so dopey?’ Vikram hissed, looking around as Iris peered down into the dark at the long flight of steps.

  ‘Thrall, I think. The Divine must be close and her thrall is amped up. They don’t know what to do. They want to obey her but she hasn’t told them to do anything yet. Come on.’ Iris started down the steps.

  After the long flight of steps came a long corridor. ‘It can’t be . . .’ said Iris, after a moment. ‘Alfie was so near Cobalt all along?’

  Still slightly freaked out from being so near the building full of fire and quasi-zombies, they kept walking, until they came to another small flight of steps that led down through a stone alcove into a small room with a dead cold fireplace and a rocking chair. At the back of the room was a wooden door, slightly ajar. Iris approached the door using every bit of stealth she had, Vikram, undetectably silent, right behind her.

  And then, suddenly, all she could see was a brightly sparkling Silver Cage. Iris exhaled when she saw the figure inside it. ‘Oh, God. Alfie.’

  Vikram turned; under his breath he said, ‘Wow. He certainly is kind of beasty looking. Who are the women? I guess one is the Divine.’

  ‘Yeah. The tall woman with short hair is the Divine.’

  ‘Really, she looks so normal.’

  ‘The other one, the one that looks like one of Charlie’s Angels, is Sabrina. A nasty piece of witchy-work who likes to help werewolves. Or at least hinder humans. Or something. She’s bad news either way. The messed-up guy in the jeans with all the hair sat with Pearl is Leon – he’s Alfie’s cub.’ Iris pointed to the pair of them, slumped against the wall, dumb with thrall. Right next to them was a cauldron, its contents warm enough to steam.