IN THE BEDROOM Iris pushed the spike of nostalgia out of her head and started to search. She emptied out box and after box. Most contained paperwork. There were only a few artefacts. Dusty junk. Nothing that looked anything like the twisted metal wire of the Silver Crowns.
A piece of paper with the Cobalt letterhead caught Iris’s eye. She picked it up. It was a letter about the suggestion that Cobalt should fund the Institute’s running costs. One short paragraph explained that, now one of the werewolf-hunting team was dead, Cobalt would be far more likely to consider the application favourably.
Iris swallowed. Jude had died just before they had secured the funding that had moved them to the new building, died in the wolf-jaws of Dr Tobias’s wolf-self. She knew Beasts were fully aware of themselves when they changed. She knew Dr Tobias had deliberately killed Iris’s brother in order to seduce Iris into becoming one of his team of werewolf hunters. But it had never occurred to her that Tobias would have killed Jude – one of his own – in order to get the funding deal from Cobalt.
‘Fuck,’ she whispered. ‘Jude.’ She tried to find some more information about the dealings with Cobalt. She had tipped out box after box of paperwork, and they were strewn over the bed and the floor. Tears were pricking her eyes. Tears that were for Alfie as much as they were for Jude. And tears that were for herself as much as either of them. ‘The crown’s not here, is it?’ she said to herself, still not crying, but kind of close.
‘No,’ said a voice behind her.
She turned, knowing already. ‘Blake!’
‘Hi, Iris,’ Blake said, his voice soft and low, ‘you seem to have broken into my house.’
‘Yeah, well, I was looking for . . .’
‘I know what you were looking for. And you’re right, it isn’t here. I think the Silver Crown – the Council of Ancient Beasts themselves – took it. Or he made arrangements. It isn’t here. It probably is the one they put on Alfie’s head.’
‘Oh.’
‘But that’s not the point really, Iris. The point is what on earth you are doing here searching for a Silver Crown that was pretty unlikely to be here, when you had all the sacred silver you needed to fix the trace signal back at Cobalt.’
Iris’s eyes went wide. ‘What?’
When Blake had carried Iris out of the tunnels under Oxford, tipping the landlord of The Bishop to use the entrance at the back of his pub, no questions asked, she had been close to death.
His first thought had been the John Radcliffe Hospital. The place the Institute always used for injuries that were beyond their basic skills. But Iris was grey, her breath rasping; her shoulders weren’t lying right and the abrasions on her wrists were horribly infected, as was the incision on her bicep where she had put the chip into her own arm.
Blake knew Iris. Knew her body, her mind, what she was capable of. And he knew she might not make it through this.
That was why he decided to take her to Cobalt. He knew how much money they had. The facilities – the cutting edge of medical science. Things that were untested and unlicensed. Plus magic. They’d have magic.
When he walked into Cobalt’s reception with Iris like a baby in his arms, he’d known he was walking into the lion’s den. Pepper, at reception, said, ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ as she pulled a gun on him.
‘It’s OK, Pepper,’ he said. ‘I know you’ve had your instructions.’
And then Blake found that being handcuffed to a chair in a dirty basement room that reeked of one purpose and one purpose alone was made so much worse if the woman approaching with the familiar gleam of torture-lust in her eyes had a bandage across her face from an earlier head butt.
Blake nodded at it. ‘I’m sorry about that.’
‘What? This?’ Erin Cobalt touched the fabric swathing the nose that Blake had felt crunch under his cranium. ‘I quite understand, Mr Tabernacle. You had to go and find Iris. You brought her back to us. All very procedure.’
‘Procedure? This place? Really? What’s with the Midnight Express chic then?’
‘Well,’ said Erin, squeezing herself into the gap between the small metal table in front of Blake and his knees to perch there, ‘I just thought I ought to check what information you have that we might need.’
‘Before you kill me?’
‘Well, we could hardly do it afterwards.’ She reached behind her back and grabbed the item Blake had already seen on the table before she came in. A bunch of wires attached to sticky pads. Blake knew there was also a large box on the table covered with dials. Erin leant forwards and ripped open Blake’s shirt.
Blake fought to keep his breathing even. As she began to stick the pads on to his chest, she said, ‘Does electricity work on werewolves?’
‘It hurts them,’ Blake said evenly. ‘But it won’t kill them. And nothing hurts them like silver anyway.’
‘Hmm, yes, vamps are similar. You can hurt them with things that would hurt a human, but nothing makes them squirm like holy water, crosses, light boxes.’ She reached behind her and flipped a switch without even looking at what she was doing and Blake’s entire body turned to pain.
When she flipped the switch back and the pain stopped, everything was different. Blake could feel the sweat covering his body, running down his brow and into his eyes. He was scared. Erin had more power over him than he could stand. He inhaled hard through his nose. ‘So you decided against torturing me with sexual arousal then?’ he managed.
Erin lifted one foot from the floor and planted the toe of her pointed shoe right in Blake’s crotch. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’
She slipped the shoe further and lifted his balls. Her hand crept back behind her to the machine and Blake felt his breath getting heavy. A second later he couldn’t feel her foot jammed into his crotch any more.
‘Jesus. Fuck! Damn!’ Blake shouted as the pain subsided enough for him to speak.
Erin smiled. ‘And I thought you were a fan of torture.’
‘This isn’t torture,’ Blake said, grimacing.
‘Oh really? You want me to turn it up?’
‘That’s not what I meant. It isn’t torture because you haven’t fucking asked me anything.’
‘Oh, right, sorry. I thought you knew. I want the unstable lyc. Where is he?’
‘I don’t know where he is. I thought he’d be with Iris. In fact, if you want him I’ve already brought you your best chance of finding him. Iris. Fix her up and I reckon she’ll be pretty motivated by that insane puppy love of hers.’
‘Huh,’ Erin said and Blake flinched, assuming his unsatisfactory answer would earn him another blast of electricity. But it didn’t. Erin just said, ‘She doesn’t know where he is any more than you do.’
‘No. I didn’t say that. I said she’d be pretty motivated to find him.’
‘And you’re not? You’re not finding this situation in any way motivating.’
Blake inhaled again. ‘It’s not the same.’
Erin shrugged. She reached behind her again and Blake didn’t bother to hide his flinch. But she didn’t touch the electro-box; she brought out another item Blake had forgotten lay on the table – a wooden stake. Erin placed the blunt wooden point against Blake’s chest.
‘I’m not a vampire, Dr Cobalt,’ Blake said softly.
‘You’d be surprised what a stake through the heart will kill,’ Erin deadpanned. ‘It’s an incredibly painful death for a human. It’s happened by mistake too many times. I haven’t done field work for a long time. But back in the day I had easily enough strength to drive this right into your chest and fix you to that chair. It’s the bluntness that makes it hurt so much.’
‘That isn’t torture either,’ said Blake. ‘That’d kill me. There’s a skill to real torture. And it’s mostly about not killing your victim.’
‘Very true, but you’re boring me now, Tabernacle. Tell me how to find Friday. You know full well sleeping beauty upstairs doesn’t cut it. Give me something concrete or I decide there’s no further use for you here.’
Erin moved her foot out from under Blake’s balls and ran the sole of her shoe over his cock. It stirred a little. He didn’t exactly get hard but he felt a rush of blood there. God, this was a frightening woman. He had no doubt at all she would kill him. And in exactly the horrible brutal manner she had just described. He knew when he brought Iris back here that he was risking something like this, knew almost exactly how it might play out. But Blake, being Blake, had always thought he’d find a chink. A way out. He said, ‘The Silver Crown, the Council of Ancient Beasts that Iris killed – you know about them, right?’
‘I’ve read your report.’
‘It seems likely that Alfie is an Ancient Beast himself now. That he ascended somehow. Iris was muttering something in the truck about it. The Silver Crown all wear Sacred Silvers. I don’t know if they are magical or just totems, but they are part of the cache of Sacred Silver objects that werewolves revere. Iris killed ten Beasts – eleven if you count Tobias. I collected ten of their Silver Crowns from the caves along with Alfie’s Silver Collar. That’s a sacred silver too. If I’m right about where Alfie is – who’s taken him – the Sacred Silvers could help. They’re your best chance.’
‘You have ten crowns, the unstable has another. Where’s the twelfth?’
Blake shrugged. ‘Good question. But a better question would be where are my ten?’
‘Where are your ten?’
‘I walk away,’ said Blake. ‘You won’t see me again. You have Iris. I walk away. In return for the crowns.’
Erin’s throat moved as she swallowed. ‘Fine. Tell me where they are.’
‘Oh, I don’t trust you.’
‘Well, you’re not leaving until I’m holding the crowns.’
‘I told you, I don’t trust you. But I do trust my ex-soldier, Pepper. I’ll take Pepper to them. Do we have a deal? The Silver Collar’s with them too. That’s your bonus prize.’
‘Fine,’ said Erin tightly.