The Silver Cage

by Mathilde Madden

  ‘What?’ Iris pushed her way past Alfie and took a step round him towards Blake. ‘What did you say?’

  Alfie snaked his arms around Iris’s waist and held her as Blake said, ‘He bit you. Lilith freed him and sent him to you. It was part of her plan. Just get him to give you a little bite to make you slightly vampy so the conduit would work.’

  Iris tipped her head back to look up at Alfie. ‘Would that even work?’

  Alfie shrugged.

  ‘You could ask Lilith, but she’s gone with Cate to make some magic thing for Sabrina.’

  ‘Oh, she left you behind. Honeymoon over?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Shut up. Look, Vikram is nothing even to do with Cobalt. He’s a vamp. He bit you.’

  ‘So. It doesn’t work like that with vamps. It’d take more than a nip to make me . . .’

  Blake interrupted her. ‘Hey, Alfie, does Vixy smell different to you?’

  Alfie sniffed. ‘Maybe a little. Hard to really tell.’

  ‘Alfie,’ Iris squeaked, hitting his left arm.

  ‘Yeah, well, nothing we can really do about it one way or the other. I’m going to sleep with my windows shut for a while though.’

  ‘Blake, if I am “a bit vampy”, I’m not going to bite you.’

  Iris stopped talking, as Alfie suddenly went rigid behind her, then bellowed in pain.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Iris shouted. ‘The moon.’

  ‘Oh fuck,’ said Blake, ‘get him the cage.’

  ‘No, no, no!’ Iris turned on Blake, pushing him into the wall behind him as Alfie fell convulsing to the floor. ‘The cage holds his form. It’ll work like the collar. The two opposing magics will kill him.’

  Iris looked at Alfie on the floor, more animal than human. Blake had forgotten. She knew how easy it was to forget what Alfie was. She could barely believe it herself.

  As the animal – the wolf that was Alfie – got slowly to its feet, Iris whispered, ‘He’s an Ancient Beast now. It’s still Alfie in there.’

  Alfie snarled.

  ‘You sure about that?’ Blake whispered.

  Iris raised her crossbow as Blake drew into the gap between Iris and the wall.

  Iris looked into the creature’s eyes. Gold. She thought of that moment. That moment months ago that had started it all. When Alfie, wolfed and dangerous, had sprung back into her life.

  She was lying on her back on the damp grass. Night. The rough ground of that wild part of the university parks, twigs and stones in her back, wolf breath on her face. When she had finally opened her eyes, she had seen nothing but wolf – silent, slavering wolf.

  Her first thought had been teeth.

  My, my, what big teeth you have.

  Above those teeth, golden eyes. The air was cold, the damp grass even colder. Yes, much better, focus on the eyes. Not the teeth, the eyes.

  My, my, what big eyes you have.

  In her memory, and there, in the cellar of the Silver Crown, Iris looked deeper into the wolf’s eyes . . .

  It was like a flash of an image. Subliminal. She saw – or thought she saw – just for a fraction of a second, not a wolf, but a man. A man she knew, recognised.

  ‘Alfie?’

  The wolf just stared at her.

  ‘Alfie,’ she said again. ‘Is that you?’

  You really think he can hear you?

  Iris turned her head, slightly. In the corner of the cellar was Matthew.

  Iris smiled at Alfie. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I do.’

  57

  Friday, 14 March 2008

  LILITHE STRETCHED OUT on the bed in her fanciest underwear. ‘Oh nice,’ she said, when Blake, who was straddling her waist, held up the four sparkling cuffs, each with a neat length of chain attached.

  ‘You recognise them, then, baby?’

  ‘How could I not? One of the Sacred Silvers. How did you get hold of them?’

  Blake shrugged. ‘Well, the rest got taken to Cobalt, but people tend to forget about these. Everyone always thinks Collar, Crowns, Cage. They forget about the fourth corner: the Silver Chains. And I thought, you know, do I trust Cobalt? Who does? Better if all those powerful objects aren’t in the same place.’

  As he spoke, Blake leant down and let the tail ends of the chains from two of the cuffs snake their way around the bedposts. He slotted Lilith’s wrists into place as she said, ‘Well, they are pretty. But you do realise they won’t hold me any more than a bunch of stuff you bought in the hardware store.’

  Blake shrugged. The second manacle was fixed and he ducked down to kiss her nose. ‘I know. But the fact it, it’s all artifice, isn’t it? I mean, when I chained up Iris, I always knew that if she really asked me properly I’d let her free. It’s just about suspension of disbelief.’

  Lilith nodded.

  Blake moved down the bed to fix her ankles.

  ‘And how about you?’ said Lilith. ‘Are you going to believe I’m not going to kill you?’

  Blake was on all fours facing away from Lilith. He straightened his knees, still doubled over so he could look at her through his legs, her face framed by the split at the back of his white coat. ‘You know, I’m not sure if you can.’ He dropped back down again and went back to his work, fixing her second ankle into its cuff.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure, if you take a witch’s binding, that witch can’t kill you. I’m sure that’s part of the “even beyond death” clause.’

  ‘Which you did a bit of research on, I take it.’

  Blake spun around and came to rest with his face just above Lilith’s, his body caging hers on the bed. ‘A little. Just to be safe.’

  ‘Right, well, you know, these things aren’t always so clear-cut,’ Lilith said, a little breathless in her bondage. ‘I mean, it’s not like there has been any proper research. No case studies.’

  ‘Well,’ said Blake, dropping into a kiss before pushing back up as her lips chased his hopelessly, ‘I happen to like research.’

  ‘Hmm, and I don’t suppose your stealing these chains has got anything to do with the fact that these are the same ones that Alfie the werewolf used to chain up the ex-wife who you are still in love with.’

  Blake grinned at Lilith. He sat back and pulled off his tie, the only other item he was wearing with the white coat. He winked. ‘Oh, I really think it’s time for you to shut that witch mouth,’ he said.

  After Blake had gagged Lilith with his tie wrapped twice around her head, he shifted quickly and drove into her. She was so wet and ready. She loved this. He ploughed her hard, snapping his slim hips back and forth, rotating them to make her dance as she writhed and wailed into her gag underneath him.

  ‘You’re a bad witch,’ he whispered, when he slipped his fingers down and on to her clit. ‘I can feel how wet you are. Bad, bad witch.’

  Lilith moaned into the tie twisted into her mouth.

  ‘What would they think if they could see you now? Mistress of more than seventeen covens. If they could see how I chain you up like an animal, like a werewolf, and make you scream like this. Is that what witches are meant to do?’

  Lilith panted a response into her gag.

  ‘I can’t hear you, witch! Is it?’

  Lilith shook her head frantically, making a muffled sound like ‘No, no.’

  ‘Thought not. Now fucking come for me, bad witch. Bad, bad witch. Bitch. Killer bitch. Killer fucking bitch.’ And Blake came too, as Lilith did. Screaming up to meet her. His mind with Iris. With Iris forever.

  Alfie and Iris stood on the drawbridge of the medieval castle they had found, incongruously sitting squat in a side street just round the corner from Waterloo station.

  ‘Well,’ said Iris, looking up at the heavily baroque frontage, ‘that’s a lot of gargoyles. This has to be the place, right?’

  ‘Kind of says Witch Towers to me,’ Alfie said. He was trailing a hand on her waist. Ever since he’d woken up human after the full moon he hadn’t stopped touching Iris.

  ‘I
can’t believe this is really here. I mean, right here.’ Iris gestured around them. ‘It’s a bit of a giveaway, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Alfie, reaching for the bell pull, ‘I’m sure you can’t find it unless she wants you to.’

  The boom of the bell echoed somewhere inside the castle.

  ‘Unless they want you to,’ Iris said. ‘Blake lives here too now.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m just enjoying a last few moments pretending he actually died like he was meant to.’

  The whole castle was over the top. As she led them through the entrance hall, Lilith claimed that Blake had asked to have the castle back, insisting she didn’t always choose such opulent style.

  In the huge baronial dining room, Iris and Alfie were sitting opposite each other about halfway down a long table. It was all reds and golds and dark wood. Supergothic red candles dribbled wax all over the white linen tablecloth. Everything that ought to sparkle sparkled. Everything else was drab and dark.

  Lilith was at one end of the table, Blake at the other. The table wasn’t so large that Iris couldn’t make out the cuff marks on Lilith’s wrists. They were a very familiar shape. She glanced at Blake, who winked. Clearly, he had seen her looking.

  Damn but Blake looked sexy tonight. What had he done? He seemed to be fizzing with sexual energy. Iris looked back at Alfie and, as with every time she looked at Alfie, her heart turned over at how beautiful he was. She let her gaze drift from one man to the other, over and over. She remembered that night locked in the cellar of the pack house, all thinking they were going to die. Both their cocks and both their tongues inside her.

  Lilith said something and Iris shook herself. ‘Sorry. What?’

  ‘I just asked how it was going at Cobalt.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ said Iris. ‘Well, fine. I’m managing the lycan division, which is looking good, great resources. We’re still a bit light on the research side.’

  Iris paused and Blake coughed into his soup, muttering something like, ‘Not that place. No way.’

  ‘Oh, and they still haven’t fully reclassified lycans as non-mythical. That’ll have to wait until they appoint a new director for Cobalt. There’s talk of Merle Cobalt, you know, the daughter of Erin and Charles, but she’s still thinking about it.’

  ‘Merle Cobalt! She’s married to a vamp.’

  ‘She’s married,’ said Alfie darkly, ‘to Darius Cole.’

  ‘Well, exactly. She’s also about twelve years old.’

  ‘I think she’s twenty-six or something, twenty-seven, maybe,’ said Iris. ‘Anyway, I don’t know. That’s what they’re saying.’

  ‘Fucking nepotism,’ said Blake.

  Iris laughed out loud. ‘You’re talking nepotism! Son of wolf!’

  ‘Never mind that now,’ said Lilith, in a voice that calmly silenced everyone else’s. ‘How about you, Alfie? Are you at Cobalt too?’

  Alfie shook his head before answering, ‘God, no. I’ve pretty much decided that isn’t the answer. Besides, now I’m, well, whatever I am . . .’

  ‘King of the Dog-faced People has a nice ring to it,’ said Blake.

  ‘Well, whatever. Anyway, I’m trying to put that role to use. I’m going back out to visit the Carci Gate next month, find out what they’re doing there. I’m going to travel. Try and work with all the werewolves in the world to figure out what we are going to do about this thing. One possibility is to re-form the Silver Crown. Find the heirs to every Beast Iris killed and help them to ascend like I did.’

  ‘Alfie,’ Iris said.

  ‘But we haven’t agreed if that’s the best thing to do yet. It’s complex. There’s lots of grey.’

  ‘I’ll bet,’ murmured Blake, sounding almost sensitive.

  ‘I’m back living in the pack house in Oxford. Got the rest of my pack there too. I’m working with Leon on the mythological stuff. And I’m working with Pearl on the science. Iris told me about what she did to save Zac’s life. Well, almost. It’s pretty interesting. But the main idea is total lock down. To get every werewolf locking himself up at full moon. To prevent reinfection.’

  ‘You’ll never do that,’ said Blake.

  ‘Well, I just don’t know,’ said Alfie, ‘but that’s the only goal that makes sense.’

  ‘And, if you do do it, that’ll be the end of lycans forever, eventually. No more bites, no more beasts. You’ll die out. Well, except you, I guess you live forever.’

  ‘Well, said Alfie, slightly shyly, ‘that’s another thing we just don’t know.’

  ‘He’s working with me, anyway,’ said Iris, changing the subject. ‘On no, not for Cobalt, as he said. But he’s liaising with me. We’re out catching lycs and tranqing them. Then he comes and talks to them about lock down. Binds them to it with thrall.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Blake, ‘sounds like a kind of liberal lycan utopian vision. I give it six months before you’re back to killing them, Iris.’

  Iris sighed, realising the best move was to change the subject yet again. She turned to Lilith. ‘So how about Vikram? Is he contained?’

  ‘He’s back in the prison that had him contained for hundreds of years until I decided to let him out. Should be OK so long as I don’t fuck up again.’

  ‘Did, um –’ Iris paused, looking down at the dark wooden table top. ‘When he bit me, er . . . Do you know what that did?’

  Lilith pouted. ‘I’m not sure. I asked him to make sure you were psychically open. Some people are already, but vamps are good at suggestion and psychic manipulation. I don’t actually know what he did.’

  ‘Face it, Iris,’ said Blake, ‘he vampirised you, one way or another.’

  ‘Did he do anything to me that might have changed things with me and Matt. I mean with Matt’s ghost. I know he replaced Matt somehow in order to be free of his prison. But, well, something’s . . .’ Iris let her gaze slide over to where Matt was standing in the corner of the hall. He shrugged at Iris. ‘It’s just ever since he came back, he’s, well, he’s still here. He used to come and go, even in the beginning when it was bad. He’s never been around all the time.’

  ‘Oh that,’ said Lilith. ‘Well, you called him to you.’

  ‘So, do I, what . . .? Tell him to leave again?’

  ‘No. I doubt that’ll work. You need to free him. There’s something keeping him here on earth. You need to do what he left undone.’

  ‘But I’ve done that. I killed the Beast. And then when that wasn’t enough I killed all the rest of the Silver Crown. Oh, God, Vikram! Is it because I haven’t killed Vikram?’ Iris turned to Matt. ‘Is it because I haven’t killed Vikram?’

  Matt shrugged again. I don’t know.

  Lilith laughed, her now familiar loud bark echoey in the vast room. ‘How could killing the Silver Crown be something Matt left undone? What did he leave undone when he died?’

  ‘What?’ said Iris. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You’re too blinded by vengeance to see it, Iris,’ said Lilith. ‘What was Matt doing when he died?’

  And then Alfie said softly, ‘Oh, God. I don’t believe it.’

  ‘What?’ said Iris.

  ‘The photographs. The photos he was taking of me when the Beast attacked us. He left the photo shoot unfinished. You said he had plans. Certain pictures of me he wanted to take. He never finished it.’

  Iris shook her head, ‘There is no way . . .’

  ‘Well,’ said Lilith brightly, ‘I’m a witch. In fact, some might even say I’m a bad witch.’ Her gaze flickered over to Blake and back again. ‘I notoriously don’t like to give straight answers. But, look, after everything else you’ve done to lay your demons to rest, would it hurt to give it a try?’

  58

  Friday, 21 March 2008

  ‘ARE YOU SURE he wanted me like this?’ Alfie said as Iris tightened the ropes that held him to the tree.

  ‘Absolutely. He showed me a picture. Is this right, Matt?’ she said, turning.

  Behind her, Matt nodded his approval.
r />   The moon was full. Alfie was still in his human form. Something magical holding him there. Iris had taken the silver ring – the one she had worn on a leather thong around her neck since Alfie had come back into her life and returned it to her – and placed it on his little finger. It hadn’t burnt him. Lilith had taken care of it all.

  Alfie was topless, in his jeans, the same ones he had on that night. Iris couldn’t believe he still had them. Hadn’t the hospital removed them? The police taken them?

  But, Alfie insisted, these were the very same ones.

  He was tied to the tree with thick white rope. Iris had found it in a box at her flat. The same stuff the police had retrieved from the site. She couldn’t believe she still had that.

  And the picture was there too. The cute little bondage cartoon Matt had shown her that night of the half-naked guy tied to the tree. The image he wanted to capture in Alfie’s flesh.

  Alfie’s chest was forced out by the way his arms were drawn tight behind him. Blake had helped with the roping up, but he’d gone off into the trees to talk to Lilith. It was just the two of them. Matt’s ghost was still floating around somewhere – but Iris couldn’t see him just this minute.

  She crept closer to Alfie and kissed him.

  Alfie gasped. Iris increased the pressure, pressing her way hard into his helpless mouth. Alfie writhed a little, his moans wet and sharply aroused.

  Iris drew back, ignoring his blatant frustration, and whispered, ‘It’s been a long journey to get back here.’

  Alfie made a low laughing sound. ‘I’ve certainly been around the block a few times to do it.’

  ‘Is that some kind of, “I’ve been an enormous manslut” confession?’ Iris snaked her hand down Alfie’s body and stroked his hard cock through his jeans.

  ‘You know what I did. What I was like when you pushed me away. I tried a million women in my bed. But none of them could stop me thinking about you.’