The Silver Cage Page 8

  Cate was crouched over her, her palm still flat against Iris’s forehead. She smiled. ‘Sorry, Iris,’ she said. ‘It just seemed like the cleanest way to get you out of there for a while.’

  Iris sat up, realising the building she was in was more a cathedral than a church, huge and ancient. ‘Where am I?’

  ‘Don’t you recognise it? Maybe from that angle it looks different to when it’s on TV. This is Westminster Abbey. I didn’t want to pull you too far. And the coven who use it are very amenable.’

  Iris looked around, the silvery-grey architecture suddenly snapping into familiarity. ‘Westminster Abbey! A coven meet in Westminster Abbey?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cate, ‘nice, isn’t it? Are you OK here for a moment? I need to join the ritual.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Iris looked around again at the silver-dust-shot surroundings. There were a few other people in the Abbey, all witches, all moving in a precise regimented way and chanting in low breaths, making magic. There must have been some kind of elaborate cloaking or even a dimensional shift in place for this trick to work. She knew the only way to really cope with being enmeshed in witchcraft was to try to ignore it.

  And then she saw who was sitting on the far end of the front pew. A shock of dark hair and a white coat.

  And her insides just flipped over. Oh! Oh!

  She got up jerkily and, even though her legs felt kind of watery, she ran.

  As she got close to Blake, she went to hug him and he held out both his arms straight in front of himself, blocking her and keeping her from making contact with him. She took a step back, oddly humiliated, just managing to half recover herself and say, ‘Hey.’ She sat down shiftily on the pew next to him.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, still looking out towards the altar.

  Iris felt a weird sort of homesickness, a nostalgia. Normally, Blake was quite blatantly pleased to see her, often to the point of it being an irritation. But suddenly he was blank and cold. Iris was surprised how much that upset her. ‘Um, look, you saved my life. Thanks. You never stayed to let me tell you.’

  ‘That’s OK, Iris. We save each other’s life. You know that’s what we do.’

  ‘Yeah. Also, you left me there. At Cobalt. Why didn’t you stay with me?’

  Blake turned his head but just looked at her blankly. ‘Complicated.’

  ‘Well, yeah. Sure. God, it’s so good to see you. Are you OK?’

  Blake still seemed to be acting oddly, twitchily. ‘I’m on the run, Iris. Cobalt want me.’

  Iris narrowed her eyes. ‘Are you trying to say . . .? You mean they want to kill you? Why would Cobalt want to kill you? We’re on the same side.’

  Blake raised his eyebrows. ‘Sure, Iris, sure. Well, perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps I misinterpreted a few things, but it’s either that or Erin Cobalt wants to keep me as her permanent fuck-slave. I don’t know which is worse.’

  ‘What?’ Iris said, her voice suddenly whooping and swooping off the vaulted ceiling. Several witches stopped their marching and chanting and looked round. Iris flushed slightly and dropped her voice. ‘What about me?’

  ‘I don’t think Cobalt wants you as her fuck-slave, Iris. I don’t think her tastes are that irregular.’

  ‘Yes, but, do they want me dead?’

  ‘No. Or you’d be dead already. They want you ’cause they want to start working on lycs. And you’re the Institute’s killer-bitch, the doc’s protégé, the warrior wolf. You’ve got to remember though, Iris, Cobalt aren’t a charity. They aren’t about keeping people safe, or about reuniting you with your boyfriend. They’re about what’s best for Cobalt. Financially. Nothing more. They want Alfie.’

  Iris nodded. ‘I know. They already said that that was my priority.’

  ‘Yeah, well, ask yourself why. It’s not ’cause you’re missing his spectacular wolf dick.’

  Iris was about to ask Blake what he meant when Cate and Lilith came up. Lilith twirled around girlishly in front of them and sat right on Blake’s lap.

  Iris frowned. She wondered for a second if this was something magical. There was a couple of seconds where she half expected Cate to sit on her lap.

  But then Blake smiled sheepishly in a way that made Iris decide not to say anything. Lilith was a hugely powerful witch, after all. She was probably used to sitting on any lap she felt like.

  ‘Hi, again,’ said Lilith, turning her body slightly towards Iris, blocking Blake almost completely from view. ‘Nice to see you. You OK?’

  ‘Fine thanks,’ said Iris a little stiffly.

  Cate, still standing in front of Iris and looking slightly awkward, said, ‘Iris, we brought you here because we need to find Alfie. Well, what we really need to do is find the Divine . . .’

  Iris frowned. ‘Well, can’t you? You’re witches.’

  ‘We need you to do it, Iris. We can’t interfere directly. We can assist you, but there are limits to be observed. Balances to maintain.’

  Iris frowned. Witch logic hurt her brain. ‘What?’ She looked at Lilith. ‘But you said the Divine would end the world?’

  Lilith just shrugged.

  ‘Oh, God, whatever. OK. So I need to find him. That’s my job anyway. So how?’

  ‘He has a tracking chip inside him, right?’ said Cate.

  ‘The signal’s dead though,’ said Blake, looking a bit shifty as Lilith twisted sideways on his lap and leant close to his chest to twiddle his hair. ‘Either the chip’s out of order or . . .’

  ‘It’s cloaked,’ said Lilith. ‘The Divine’ll have the whole place locked up tight. She knows we’ll be trying to find her before moon rise tomorrow night. Well, tonight, actually. It’s gone midnight.’

  ‘Why? What happens at moon rise?’ said Iris.

  ‘Boom-shack-a-la,’ said Lilith, clapping her hands together and grinning. She clapped quite close to Blake’s ear. He flinched. Lilith laughed and cooed, ‘Sorry, baby.’

  Iris frowned at them. ‘What? Could you say that in Eng –’

  Lilith looked confused.

  ‘Oh, forget it.’

  ‘OK, so here’s the plan,’ said Cate. ‘We take the cloaking off the chip and then you can trace him. There’s just one tiny matter. The spell I want to use is tricky. I need to spot clean the magic off the chip without destroying it.’

  ‘I thought witches could do anything.’

  ‘We can, by human standards, but this is interfering with magic already in place. That can be awkward. This spell is kind of strong. It can be a little volatile. But I can use it because Alfie is a magical creature. If the chip is inside him, his magical body will absorb any fall-out from the spell.’

  ‘It’s inside him,’ said Blake. ‘I put it there myself.’

  ‘We need to be sure. The Divine could have removed it somehow. Alfie knew about it. He might have told her. Thrall might have made him.’

  ‘Well, don’t you know?’ said Blake. ‘You’re witches.’

  ‘It’s complicated. The cloaking is very dense. The Divine has a lot of power. She was made by a god.’

  Iris was shaking her head. ‘Well, we can’t know it’s inside him, can we? I mean, we can’t know for sure.’

  ‘No, but we have another plan. A back-up in case the decloaking of the chip doesn’t work. You can ask him where he is.’

  ‘I can?’ Iris frowned hard. ‘Well, forgive me but if I can ask him then maybe we don’t need to go through this charade to find him because, if I can go and ask him, then surely . . .’

  Cate laughed. ‘Your mind is so logical, Iris. It’s funny. You can ask him because you’re connected to him. You just have to open your mind to it.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Iris, taking a step back. ‘What, so I have psychic powers now? Am I a vamp or something?’

  ‘It’s very simple,’ said Lilith, sounding irritable. ‘You are connected to Alfie. We can smooth that connection. Open it up so you can communicate with him. Either we decloak the chip and trace it, or you get Alfie to tell you where he is. Two chances to
find him. Then we all live happily ever after.’

  Blake said, ‘Yeah, now, when you say, “we all live happily ever after”, what does that mean exactly? We find the Divine, then what? You said you were going to stop her. Does that mean destroy her? How can you?’

  Lilith sniffed. ‘It might not come to that. It depends what she’s actually planning. Destroying the Divine is tricky but not impossible. And it is actually foretold. I thought destroying the Divine would destroy all werewolves. Eradicating a species is a difficult trick to pull off without Armageddon-like repercussions. But there is this prophecy – it’s not so well known – but I think it might be relevant to us. It’s quite clear about the fact she will be destroyed. Hang on . . .’

  Lilith twisted on Blake’s lap and pulled some papers out of a neat shoulder bag. Iris craned to see but the text was indecipherable.

  Lilith wrinkled her nose as she read aloud. ‘So, it says, basically, “The lines of the wolves will stay true so long as the true heir of the first Beast pays the Divine.”’

  ‘Great,’ said Blake, ’er, what does that actually mean?’

  Cate said, ‘It means that, when the Divine dies, if we have to kill her, the werewolf lines won’t dissolve like we thought. But it does mean that whoever does kill her needs to be this “heir of the first Beast”.’

  ‘And,’ said Lilith, ‘they’ll die. Whoever is the heir needs to kill her. And ensure they absorb her power somehow, which will probably be what kills them. That’ll be the price. You can bet on it. Prophecies don’t muck about with terms like that.’

  ‘Great plan, then. Someone, this “heir”, kills the Divine and they take her power, but the power will kill them,’ said Blake.

  Iris tutted. She was more interested in something else. ‘So who is this true heir? Is it me? The last prophecies were about me.’

  ‘Well,’ said Lilith, ‘“the first beast” probably means your Beast, Dr Tobias, who you killed. And he did consider you his heir in some ways. His werewolf-killing protégé. But it could also easily mean Alfie, as his oldest living cub. So I expect one of you will kill the Divine. And pay the price.’

  ‘But how do we know which one of us it is?’ said Iris.

  ‘I’m sure all will become clear. My money’s on you, Iris, you have “chosen one” written all over you. You pretty much don’t stand a chance, but that’s the good thing about a nice doomsday scenario – the stakes are so high you can try anything. It’s really quite liberating.’

  ‘Why is this a doomsday scenario?’ said Iris. ‘We don’t know what the Divine’s doing yet.’

  ‘Yeah, course. It might not come to that.’ Lilith did that nose wrinkle again.

  ‘But if she doesn’t die . . . If I don’t kill her, she’ll keep Alfie, won’t she? He’s thralled to her.’

  Lilith shook her head. ‘We’re racing ahead here. Stage one is to find them. Then we’ll see what has to be done.’

  A few minutes later, the witches were assembled ready to carry out the plan. Iris still wasn’t sure why this was the plan. Witch logic was so cracked. Cate had told her once that the basic premise was to help humans to help themselves. Iris had no idea what that really meant.

  Iris was on the altar, lying on her back. It felt kind of weird. She looked up at the high dark ceiling, the swooping shapes. It was like being inside an animal, in the belly of a whale, or a dinosaur. She thought about the Oxford Natural History Museum. She missed Oxford.

  Tipping back her head, she could see Blake standing in the pulpit, smoking a roll-up cigarette. He flicked the ash into the air. Everything was hazy, dreamlike. There was a huge stained-glass window behind him. Candlelight was bouncing off it and twinkling back on to him, throwing choppy darkened colours on to his white coat and into the reflected highlights in his hair. Iris felt slightly deranged, lost. It was probably the magic, heavy in the air like thick sickly incense.

  The witches were circling her, moving and chanting. She tried to dissociate from it. Then Lilith stepped forwards and placed her hands on Iris’s forehead.

  Iris’s eyes snapped open. She hadn’t realised they were closed. She saw Alfie in front of her.

  ‘Oh.’

  Alfie smiled. It was her Alfie. The Alfie who loved her. Clean and neat. His white teeth sparkling and his eyes flashing joy. The last time she had seen Alfie in reality he had been naked. His body bruised and scarred from where the Silver Crown had been torturing him. He’d been thralled to the Divine. But now his body was unmarked and he looked at her with love.

  ‘Alfie,’ Iris said. ‘I didn’t think it would be this easy. Did the witches bring you to me?’

  Alfie smiled and leant closer. His mouth was a breath away from hers. She felt her lips tingling with the wanting of him. And Alfie, so close that she felt the words rather than heard them, said, I still love you, Iris.

  And then Iris heard a scream. Alfie was gone. Lilith was standing over her. She tipped back her head, opened her mouth and gasped out loud. Then there was an explosive bang, Lilith’s touch was gone and she was borne across the cathedral. There was a crash as she hit the ground and Iris heard Cate shouting, ‘Shit! Shit! Oh, God. Oh, God, no.’

  17

  SOMEWHERE AND NOWHERE, there was a place that wasn’t really a place at all, a small golden cage dangled in a well of darkness. Inside that cage sat a witch.

  Sabrina was a different kind of witch from Lilith and Cate. She knew those Glindas frowned on her. Every witch used a little magical enhancement to improve her looks. Even when the crone look was really in, most of that was done using magic. Hairy warts don’t just sprout by themselves.

  Everyone knew all witches dabbled a little. It was hard to look in the mirror with the kind of power witches had and not think that it might be nice to smooth out the odd wrinkle, or straighten the odd line. Every witch did it. Well, maybe every witch except bloody Lilith.

  Sabrina, on the other hand, was almost entirely constructed of artifice – only another witch would really see it, of course. Sabrina didn’t see what was wrong with looking the best you could look. A few little spells to make her dark hair glitter like it was shot with stars, to make her face a balance of delights, to make her body the shape men dreamt of, well, it just saved her spelling herself a smooth path through the rest of the world.

  Pretty people got away with more, got an easier ride. That was how it had always been and how it always would be.

  Sabrina had been in the golden cage for no time and for forever. There were other cages here, swinging in the dark – Sabrina wasn’t sure who or what they contained, but she was aware of them sometimes. A soft cry. A shadow in her periphery. Someone new had arrived recently, insofar as time meant anything in the endless dark. Someone who had cried out more than usual, someone human.

  But Sabrina had other things to worry about than who else was here. Sabrina knew that Lilith simply didn’t know what to do with her. But one thing was for sure, she couldn’t keep her locked up like this.

  Every supremely powerful witch needed an evil nemesis. You can’t rewrite rules like that.

  So, when the golden cage suddenly shattered/melted/dissolved around Sabrina, she wasn’t at all surprised. And, as she tumbled through the veils between her prison world and the one she knew, she only thought for a single moment about what might have happened to Lilith to make her magic fall apart this way.

  18

  IRIS WAS BACK in her bed at Cobalt. She wasn’t sure how she had got back here, but she was almost used to it. This was the third time she’d woken up confused in this room, and it was starting to feel familiar. According to the clock on the wall, it was only half-past midnight. Even so, that meant less than 24 hours until the full moon.

  Cate was standing over her. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I thought it might be best to get you here as quickly as I could. We need Cobalt to trust you.’

  Iris nodded against the pillows. ‘What happened to Lilith?’

  ‘Um, well, she seems to be in a sort of
coma. Some of her body’s usual functions seem to have shut down to power the spell opening the connection between you and Alfie. It’s not unheard of. She’ll be fine. I think.’

  ‘It’s OK?’

  ‘We don’t know for sure. A witch like Lilith going down is rather rare and the outcome is unpredictable.’ Iris went to say something and Cate held up her hands. ‘Yes, even for witches.’

  ‘And, um, am I connected to Alfie. Right now?’

  ‘Yes, but the connection will be strongest on your morphial plane.’ Cate paused. Iris made a face. ‘Just accept it, Iris. It’ll be easier. The morphial thing means that you will probably dream about him and be able to communicate with him in your dreams, but that might not be the most useful thing. Dreams can be slippery. Try to speak to him as you are falling asleep. In that state. That’s probably best. Meanwhile, I’ll work on the decloaking spell’

  ‘OK.’ Iris shivered, thinking of the last time she had seen Alfie; he had been totally thralled to the Divine, chaining her up in the cavern under her directions. She swallowed. ‘He might not want to talk to me.’

  ‘He might not. But his feelings for you are still there, even if the thrall has control of him. He still loves you or this connection wouldn’t work. Use your power. Use your love for him. The more you open your heart to him the stronger your connection will be.’

  Iris felt suddenly frightened. The reality of having to communicate with that Alfie, not her Alfie. The Alfie that could cheerfully leave her to die. ‘But I can’t. He hurt me. I can’t let him hurt me again.’

  Cate smiled, nodded seriously and walked away. At the door she turned and said, ‘You don’t have a choice, Iris.’

  19

  SABRINA STEPPED THROUGH the alcove into the little underground room. The Divine was startled. ‘Sabrina! I thought the witches had taken you.’

  ‘Well, yes, they did,’ said Sabrina, clopping into the small dark low-ceilinged space in her wedge-heeled sandals. She was only wearing a thin white dress. She never seemed to feel cold.