The Silver Cage Read online

  Alfie the werewolf hadn’t been raised by a single pack, with a single set of werewolf beliefs. He’d been all over the world. He knew how werewolves worked from an outsider’s point of view. That was not the same as being brought up in a pack. For a start, he knew that what individual packs believed was often different.

  Like anything, like anywhere, werewolves believed a lot of different stuff with varying degrees of faith. Alfie had seen packs where the rules of alpha worked differently, where the line was seen as an archaic nonsense, where the ritual of a cub summoning his sire by going to the place where he was bitten and shedding more blood was completely taboo.

  Alfie was a scientist before he was a wolf. He knew that, whatever lay at the heart of what he was, he wouldn’t uncover it by picking and choosing what to believe from a bunch of contradictory myths.

  For example, some werewolves believed in life mates, a lot didn’t. Alfie didn’t. Some werewolves believed it as their ultimate totem of truth – that if a lycan found his mate then he would never rest, would never be happy unless he took her. And took her by any means necessary. A lot of terrible behaviour was tolerated, even encouraged, under the excuse of taking a so-called life mate.

  Alfie knew packs had hunted women down on the word of one of their number who had seen her and just known. Some packs complained that women were stalked and kidnapped by lascivious werewolves who thought destiny and lust were interchangeable. Others claimed that it just looked that way, that, once the chosen life mates understood their calling, they were happier than they had ever been once they were living in the pack, either taking the bite or remaining human and keeping the honorary status of wolf’s woman. (It was common enough for women to remain human and it made a lot of sense. The life of a werewolf was notoriously brutish and short – they were, in reality, often no more than warring animals even in their smooth human skins. Women often chose to stay human, stay with the pack for their wolf mate’s lifetime and then return to the world they knew.) A wolf’s woman was practically a werewolf. Everyone knew that. Iris, as Alfie’s girlfriend, had apparently achieved enough status through being a ‘wolf’s woman’ that she could fulfil her prophesied role as warrior wolf.

  And, despite Alfie’s scepticism on the matter, those who believed in life mates would look at Alfie, bitten when he was in love with Iris, never able to make any kind of bond with another woman, pining, then reunited with her after eleven years, and say that surely there was evidence of life mating.

  Alfie knew this – too well. But he had decided that he had felt the same way about Iris before he was a werewolf. And Alfie had betrayed her before. He was not a faithful man. And werewolves – for all their touting of life mates – were not faithful creatures.

  Alfie had been unfaithful to Iris when he was human, but only in body, never in mind. When Alfie had kissed his ex-girlfriend Lara at that student party it had been a moment of the body. A body that was full of alcohol. He didn’t make excuses for it and never asked Iris for forgiveness. It had happened. And after Iris stormed out he had taken Lara to bed, but he had never stopped loving Iris, even when he had his big hard dick buried deep inside another woman. Even as she rolled and reached for his hair, tugging him down to kiss her. Even as she gasped and begged for it harder. Screamed about how big and hard he was. Moaned as he rolled the root of his dick to tug at her clit somehow. Even as she pressed her tits together and urgently whispered to him to withdraw, to come over her there and on her face, to mark her body like the animal he wasn’t. Yet.

  He did as she asked, pulled his hot heaving cock from the slickest place between her legs, supported himself on the wall behind her with one big arm and looked down at her and roared as he came. Covering her. Looking into her eyes. Knowing she wasn’t Iris – a fact that turned him on with its wrongness and broke his heart too.

  Even then, he still loved Iris like his heart would burst from it.

  And after he and Iris split up, when he prowled the planet a lonely wolf, every women he took couldn’t help him. He thrust his dick into a thousand more woman, feeling it burn, feeling like he could fuck his memories of her away. But he never could. Iris’s face, Iris’s body, Iris’s cunt and dark eyes and orgasmic cries were the only thing he could think of when he came.

  Even when his body became unstable, and he had to lock himself in a cage or chain himself down to protect his lovers and those around him from the wolf that was taking control of his body, he still thought only of her.

  Yes. Iris – life mate or not – had been the only thing in his life that Alfie had ever stuck with.

  Until the Divine.

  When she came to him, just after his body had been battered into submission by the torture methods of the Silver Crown, just after Iris had appeared, come to save him, Alfie had been unable to resist. Every part of him had been entirely hers the moment he saw her.

  When Alfie followed the Divine, when he felt her power, when he turned away from Iris, left her, he knew what he was doing. He was giving his body, his mind, his soul to someone else for the very first time.

  He didn’t really have any choice, but, at the same time, it felt good.

  Where had it led him? Following someone else? Leaving Iris?

  Right now he was in a cellar, dark and gloomy, lit by two bare swinging bulbs. And he was in a cage. The cage was against one wall of the dank black room, furthest from the wooden door.

  He had no real idea how he’d got here.

  His cub Leon was here too. Alfie had brought him, unconscious, as the Divine had ordered. Leon was nestled in one corner, his big body curled up in the dirty straw on the floor. Alfie was naked; Leon in just his jeans. The top two buttons of Leon’s fly were broken now and, the way he slept, Alfie could see the top of his pubic hair as it shaded into the contours of his hard bite-scarred belly. The belly was where Alfie had sunk his fangs into Leon and ripped out his intestines into the steaming night, four years ago.

  The cage they were both housed in was big. Not like the one he used to lock down in, which barely held his crouching body. But it was smaller than the ones they had in the Vix basement. Alfie could stand up in it and walk around, but not more than a couple of paces. The bars were made of silver. (But just coated with it, Leon had said. Leon was good with metal.) But it was spelled like the collar and the crown had been so that when he leant against them they didn’t burn him – just hummed and tingled against his bare skin.

  He wasn’t wearing the Silver Collar any more. His precious collar had been taken off him by the Divine and cast on the floor of the cavern, right in front of Iris. A demonstration of the Divine’s power over Alfie. Only the person Alfie loved most in the world could take his collar on and off. He couldn’t even control it himself.

  He didn’t have the Silver Crown he had been wearing either.

  The collar and the crown had been all he was wearing when he’d first seen her. And, without them now, he was totally naked. Naked before her.

  Naked felt right. More real. More true to the animal in his soul. The animal that she brought him closer to.

  Without the collar on, Alfie was dangerous. He was a wolf who was close to the skin. He didn’t just change at full moon – he changed in response to other stimulation too. Fear, anger, anything that overwhelmed his senses seemed to let the wolf take charge. And orgasm – or even just strong arousal – was the biggest trigger after the full-moon light itself.

  So, when the Divine had first slung Leon into the cage after him, he baulked. Thralled as he was with his mind full of little but his need to please her, he found a corner of himself that had to protect his cub. ‘No,’ he said weakly. ‘It’s not safe for him in here with me.’

  Leon puffed himself up at that. ‘I’m fine, sire,’ he muttered, clear fear leaking into his voice and betraying him.

  The Divine closed up the door of the cage and drew the bolts. ‘This is just by means of a demonstration of your new environment,’ she said. Her voice was like music throbbing
through Alfie’s soul. He gazed at her, almost tearful with joy and awe.

  ‘Fuck him,’ the Divine said with a bare nod at Leon.

  ‘No,’ Alfie said quickly, feeling the thrall inside him stretch painfully as he defied her. ‘Sorry,’ he said almost straight away. ‘Sorry.’ But he didn’t move.

  ‘Do it, wolf,’ the Divine said coldly. ‘Cub. Tell him to take off his jeans.’

  Alfie swallowed. God, no. But that one word of defiance had been all the fight he had. He turned to Leon.

  Leon was standing gazing at him, his weight on one hip, his eyebrows high on his forehead. His expression said, ‘Are you really as weak as I thought you were?’

  Alfie heard his own voice, strange and real and throbbing with the low burr of his alpha voice. His sire voice that Leon couldn’t disobey. ‘Take your jeans off, Leon.’

  Leon cocked his head and began to unbutton his fly – all defiant swagger. ‘Sure, sire.’

  He let them slide down and kicked his feet free. Now naked in front of Alfie, Leon grinned again. ‘Come on then, what are you waiting for?’ he said, spreading his arms wide.

  Alfie shook his head. The inside of his mouth tasted like bile. ‘I – I’ll kill you. I’ll change when I come and . . .’

  Leon shrugged. ‘You’ve bitten me twice. I’m still here.’

  Leon was right. As well as the night he had turned him, there was another time Alfie had bitten Leon. He had flipped in Brazil and Leon had used himself as a decoy, saved the day by making Alfie’s wolf chase him, taking a bite to his arm as reward.

  Alfie shook his head. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Yes you can,’ said the Divine. ‘Do it now.’

  Alfie couldn’t disobey. He crossed the cage to Leon in two strides and grabbed him by the shoulders. He forced him up against the barred wall at his back with a loud clang and then slammed his mouth into Leon’s.

  Leon returned the kiss like he was starving for it.

  Outside the cage, the Divine shouted and applauded. ‘Oh yes. Oh yes. My animal boys. Be savages for me.’

  Leon found Alfie’s ear. ‘Just fuck me,’ he said. ‘Who cares about that perverted bitch. Let’s ignore her and make this good. I want your dick, sire. I want you to fuck me.’

  ‘But I’ll change,’ said Alfie. ‘I’ll change and kill you.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it isn’t like being alive is working out so great for me right now.’

  Leon’s cock was hard against Alfie’s thigh. Hot, hard and wet. Alfie fisted it roughly and made Leon moan with sudden neediness.

  ‘I don’t really have a choice,’ Alfie muttered.

  ‘Then stop angsting about it and do it. Fuck me.’

  It wasn’t the first time for Leon and Alfie. As he turned Leon around and pushed him to the ground, Alfie remembered the first – and last – time they had done this. In a bedroom that was part of the Silver Crown’s lair in the tunnels under Oxford. Leon had been so clearly in love with him and he had been certain Iris was dead. It turned out she wasn’t – not then. Of course, she was dead now – he’d killed her himself.

  It had been just like this time then too, with Leon slicked with nothing but sweat and spit and precome. He tried to be gentle, but Leon roared and snapped his hips back, forcing himself fast on to Alfie, working at his sire’s cock.

  Alfie lowered his head to lick and bite Leon’s neck. Leon turned so they could kiss sloppily and messily with their bodies connected. Alfie found Leon’s cock and worked it fast and firm.

  He was rising fast, remembering suddenly that the last time he had come had been inside Leon too. But that had been different. He had been collared. Safe. Neutered. Leon had never liked him wearing that collar. Was this why?

  He looked out of the cage at the Divine. She was so beautiful. She said gently, ‘Come for me, wolf cub.’

  And he did, screaming. Without the Silver Collar the pleasure was so much more intense. He felt the wolf. All around him. Rising . . . Rising . . .

  But he didn’t change.

  He looked around, blinking his confusion. ‘I . . .’ He looked at the Divine. ‘Did you cure me?’

  The Divine laughed. ‘No. Oh no. Cure you of your most precious gift? It’s just the Silver Cage. It holds your form like the Silver Collar. It’s another of the Sacred Silvers.’

  ‘Another of the what?’ said Alfie.

  Beneath him, Leon was laughing.

  They had fucked a lot in the days that had followed since that first time. Him and Leon. Fucked and sucked and wanked each other.

  There was nothing much else to do.

  4

  OUTSIDE THE INSTITUTE on Cowley Road, a black Mercedes with tinted windows was purring by the kerb. Handcuffed, Blake walked in front of Erin Cobalt, watching his step on the blasted pavement.

  The driver held the door open for him and he slipped inside. The car smelt new, like leather and rubber. As well as the blacked-out windows there was an opaque screen between where he sat and a driver’s and passenger seat in front. The back seat was its own little private world.

  Erin Cobalt slid into the back seat next to him and he shucked along the seat a little to make room for her, but not so far that she didn’t look at him a little oddly when she realised how close together they were sitting.

  Blake sighed. Erin Cobalt. Everything about her was intimidating. He knew what she was doing. Her immaculate hair, her soft, refined make up, her clothes – tight and proud. It made Blake think the filthiest things about her.

  And now he was her prisoner. A pointless stupid mess of a situation that could have been avoided so easily if Blake had been smarter, had been thinking smarter. But she caught him at one of his dumber moments.

  Four days ago when Erin had first turned up from the funders, to conduct an audit of the Institute of Paraphysiology, he had been psyched up and mixed up. Iris had just left him, gone to her doom. He’d been up all night in a dirty cellar of death in that bloody pack house, he’d saved the day – in his own way. He’d shot Aurelia. That was meant to make Iris understand but it had made her hate him. Really, it had closed the door between them forever, just when he thought he’d started to get it open a little.

  So Blake had shown Erin around the Institute acting hyper and bouncy. In emotional turmoil. His mind on nothing more than whether or not he might be able to fuck her. She was taller than him by several inches; he liked that – it made him hard. Tall women had always done that to him. Blake was a small man, tight and compact. He was strong and he knew it. But he liked the illusion of power that height gave a woman. He wanted her to slap his face and then suck his dick. He wanted her to tell him that Iris still loved him.

  But she was – quite unsurprisingly – concerned with different things.

  ‘Are you Dr Malcolm Tobias?’ she said.

  ‘Uh, no. I’m Blake Tabernacle. Doc’s dead. He turned out to be a lyc.’

  Erin’s eyebrow’s flashed. ‘A lyc? A lycan. You mean a werewolf?’

  ‘Yep.’ They were in the basement where Blake was showing her the cages and cells. He leant against the rough wooden door of one of the cells and stuck out his crotch, displaying himself, half conscious of it. ‘Killed him myself.’ That was a lie. Iris had killed Dr Tobias. But she wasn’t here right now. Maybe she was coming back alive, maybe she wasn’t – either way, Blake decided, it was time to stop caring about Iris. She’d shown she didn’t care about him.

  He didn’t know who he was trying to fool.

  ‘Because he was a werewolf?’ said Erin coolly.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You are aware that under Cobalt and Home Office regulations werewolves are still classified as mythical creatures.’

  ‘Well, yeah, but I mean, that’s just a formality, surely. You’re Cobalt. You know the score. You hunt vampires.’

  ‘We regulate vampires, Mr Tabernacle.’

  ‘Sure, sure.’

  Blake knew all about Erin and her husband’s semiprivate, semi-government, unaccountable vam
pire regulation organisation. He didn’t trust them one bit. The one thing he hadn’t known until today was that they were the mysterious funders his late boss Dr Tobias had secured for the Institute.

  Erin flipped open the lid of a palmtop computer she had fished out of the inside pocket of her jacket. ‘So, you’re Blake Tabernacle . . . and you’re the new director.’ She jabbed the keys as if inputting these new details. ‘Iris Instasi-Fox? Is she here?’

  ‘Iris is on an important mission right now, recovering an extremely dangerous lycan. Actually, you know, now I come to think of it, she actually killed the Beast not me.’

  Erin looked at Blake and said nothing.

  ‘So, er, yes, they should be back at any moment. He, er, Alfie, that is, Alfie Friday, the unstable lyc, he had some trouble with a werewolf governance organisation.’

  Erin sniffed. ‘The Silver Crown, by any chance?’

  ‘You know of them?’

  ‘Tch, lycan rabble.’

  ‘Mythical lycan rabble.’

  ‘Well, quite.’ Erin drew her bottom lip into her mouth. ‘So when will she be back?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Tricky business. She’s after Alfie, a very unusual specimen. A wolf who is close to his skin. He changes outside the full moon.’

  Erin’s face betrayed a different expression for just a moment. She jabbed at the keys of her palmtop again. ‘I see, I see. Well, perhaps the rest of the tour, Mr Tabernacle.’

  Blake nodded and led the way back up the stairs.

  The building the Institute was housed in was an old bingo hall. The auditorium was a strange space, sweeping and baroque and full of fixed-down plastic tables and chairs. Blake offered to show the space to Erin as they were on their way upstairs, and then, suddenly, somehow, Blake was pressed up against an old fruit machine that, even though it had never worked properly, was still plugged in. As he leant against it, pressing into the large flat buttons, flashing coloured lights lit Erin’s face. As Erin moved a little closer, towering over him, Blake thought, just for a second, how much energy they wasted maintaining a building like this.