Rampant (20 page)

“Then come with me. We’ll carry weapons. There’s safety in numbers.”

There was also a greater attraction to the unicorns that were lying in wait. I scratched Bonegrinder behind the ears, bowing my face forward so my hair hid Phil from view. “I…don’t want to. Please, Phil, don’t think I’m a coward. I just can’t. Not yet.”

I felt the mattress lift as Phil stood. “Fine. I’ll pretend it’s because you don’t want to play third wheel to Seth and me.”

That, too, but it was far from the top of my list. And I still couldn’t look her in the eyes. I glanced instead at the bedside table, where the alicorn dagger sat, nice and clean. I picked it up, and Bonegrinder started in my lap.

“Take this,” I said, and held it out to her, eyes still downturned.

She grabbed the hilt. “I was thinking a crossbow, but it doesn’t hurt to have a backup weapon.”

I watched her examining the knife, turning it over and over in her hands. “It’s weird,” I said. “That first stab wound I gave the re’em? It didn’t heal.”

She shrugged. “Maybe it didn’t have time to before you cut its throat.”

“Maybe.” But the kirin had healed pretty quickly after it had torn Grace’s arrow from its shoulder. “And I suppose it bled out too quickly for the neck wound to heal, either?” But then, the kirin yearling’s wounds also seemed to knit, even after death. Were re’ems different somehow?

Phil made a few practice swipes with the knife. “I don’t know, Asterisk. You were always better at the science stuff than me.” She leaned over and gave me a quick kiss on the forehead. “I expect you’ll have it figured out by the time I get home tonight. I’m going to go call Seth.”

I grabbed her knife hand. “Please be safe, okay?”

“You got it.”

She headed for the door, and Bonegrinder leaped up off the bed to follow her, bleating pitifully.

“No, no, sweetie, you stay here and keep Astrid company, okay?” She ruffled the thicker fur on the zhi’s neck. “I’ll be home to play with you later.” She waved at me. “Sleep tight, Cuz.”

She closed the door, leaving Bonegrinder and me to stare after her in dismay.

By the evening, I was going stir-crazy myself. Much as I may have wanted to, I couldn’t spend the rest of my life hiding in my room with Bonegrinder. After all, if the zhi got any hungrier, I might begin to look tasty. I headed downstairs and found Cory in Neil’s office, reading.

“The others are in the chapter house,” she said when I knocked. “I get too much vertigo when I try to navigate the stairs, so I’m stuck on the ground floor for a few more days.”

“Are you sure you’re supposed to be straining your eyes to read those old documents?”

“On the contrary, I’m under physicians’ orders not to.” She smiled and turned a page.

“Are Melissende and Grace still at the hospital?”

“They came home a few hours ago. Grace said Melissende hasn’t slept at all. Looked it, too. She’s apparently been after the doctors nonstop to give Ursula our blood.”

“Even if we designate our donations for Ursula, they still have to go through the same screening process. It will take time.” I sat beside her. “Did they ever experiment with your blood at Gordian?”

“Hmmm?”

“Testing whether hunter blood has something to do with the Remedy. Transfusing our blood into a non-hunter and seeing if that gives them immunity to the alicorn venom.”

“Would be difficult to find a volunteer to test it on,” Cory said. “If it didn’t work, they’d be done for.”

“True.” And it wasn’t like they could transfuse our blood into
animals and carry out a trial like that. Could it be as simple as our blood, though? Maybe the Remedy made by hunters was not a product of the unicorns they killed, but a product of the hunters themselves?

But as soon as the thought occurred to me, I dismissed it. That was ridiculous. If it was hunters’ blood, there wouldn’t be such a secret surrounding the production of the Remedy. The hunters in the Cloisters wouldn’t have needed an entire laboratory to create it. And the histories would have been filled with stories of hunters kidnapped and drained dry, rather than breathless depictions of unicorn battles.

Besides, hunters weren’t invincible. Cory and Dorcas were proof enough of that. It was only when we were wounded by an alicorn itself that we saw the same regenerative powers evident in the unicorns and recipients of the Remedy. And Cory had already been the subject of an experiment where alicorn venom had been dripped into an incision made by a steel scalpel. Nothing happened. So it couldn’t be a mix of our blood and alicorn venom, either.

“Cory,” I said, “are there any instances in the histories that describe a hunter receiving a dose of the Remedy? Not as a cure to alicorn poisoning but for an illness or some other injury?”

“I can’t recall any offhand, but you’re welcome to look through our archives.”

Hint, hint. Well, it was about time to put my money where my mouth was. I’d been complaining for weeks that we didn’t have enough information about the unicorns. That we should look into this history or that theory. But shuffling through musty old papers—only half of which were written in English and an even smaller percentage of which were decipherable—was
the last thing I wanted to do after I spent the day shooting arrows until it felt like my arms would fall off. They reminded me too much of my mother’s strange, mildewed books, filled with their crazy theories and pseudoscience.

On the other side of that door, lying in the rotunda, was a monster. A giant, venomous, deadly monster. A shark, a snake, a panther, and a rampaging hippopotamus all rolled into one. And I’d killed it. Me, who’d never killed anything bigger than a cockroach. And all these ancient, ignorant old archives would tell me was that the reason I was able to do so was because I had some sort of magical genetic predisposition for killing unicorns.

I longed to know the truth, but it wouldn’t be found here. So I got chills every time a unicorn came near. That was called survival instinct. So I didn’t understand the distortion in time perception when we went into battle. I’m sure half a dozen papers had been written about a mind’s increased ability to process information in an emergency situation. How about the unusual aim, strength, and speed? Well, I had been doing nothing but training for weeks on end. And I shouldn’t discount the placebo effect. Tell a bunch of teenage girls that we have special powers hunting unicorns and see what we can make of it.

Every don, every hunter, bought into the magic, relied on it, believed that because you were a member of one family you were capable of tracking, and because you were a member of another family you were capable of hunting. They didn’t seek to understand why that was. They just believed it. Predestination. The will of God. Whatever. If it ain’t broke, don’t examine it.

Tell that to the girl lying in the hospital on top of the hill.

“Actually,” Cory said, “I think there might be something in
the account of the Jutland Campaign.” She pointed at a modern, bound set of photocopies on Neil’s desk. “We just got our hands on the records when I was researching into the alicorn throne from downstairs. A lot of hunters died in those battles. The Danes gave us that throne as a memorial. They apparently made a similar one for their monarch.”

I picked up the spiral-bound manuscript. “It’s in English?” And typed?

“We borrowed an English translation from the Vatican archives. They were fascinated with Magrete the First of Denmark—never more so than when she called the entire Order up north to help rid her land of the scourge of unicorns. And there’s not much mention in the archives of this, but I think the Vatican was afraid of losing the Order of the Lioness to her. Powerful women sticking together and all.”

Science or not, I wanted to hear this story.

Very late that night, Phil returned from her date with Seth. I didn’t even know she’d come back until Valerija knocked on Neil’s office.

“Astrid?” she asked. “Philippa is in our room. You see her?”

I shook my head. “No, why?”

Valerija’s face was drawn. “I think you go see her. She is…sad.”

Cory and I exchanged quick glances and then we both followed Valerija up the stairs, head injury and all.

Phil was curled up on her bed, facing the wall, hugging a throw pillow to her chest. The lamp on the desk cast soft, yellow light on her blond hair, her wrinkled denim skirt, her pink tank top, and her golden summer skin.

“Phil?” I sat down beside her. “Are you all right?”

She nodded but said nothing. She hadn’t even taken her shoes off, and they were leaving dusty smears on her coverlet. In fact, she was pretty dusty all over.

“Were you in a fight?” I asked. “Did you get attacked by a unicorn?”

“No. Asteroid, I’m really tired, okay?”

By the door, Cory leaned over to Valerija. “Fetch Neil, would you?” Valerija nodded and was off. I glared at Cory. Fetch Neil so he could scold her for going out against his recommendation? Yes, that would make her feel grand.

But, much to my surprise, Phil didn’t protest, just curled into an even tighter ball.

I tried to brush the tangled strands of hair from her face, but they stuck to her cheeks. I saw dried tear tracks.

“Phil, honey, look at me. Did you argue with Seth?”

She nodded, squeezing her eyes shut.

A small knot of hunters had gathered outside the door. Perfect. I’d hated breaking up with Brandt in front of everyone, and now Phil was faced with dealing with the aftermath of her breakup while the whole Order looked on.

“Astrid, it’s late, I’m tired, can you just leave me alone?” She turned her face toward me, and I saw her eyes, red and puffy.

And then she looked beyond me. “Neil.”

I turned around. The don was standing on the threshold, while the other hunters clustered around. “Good God, Pippa, are you all right?”

She sat up then and shook her head miserably as he joined us on the bed. “I’m so sorry, Neil.”

She reached out her hands, and he took them in his and looked at her, long and hard.

“Cory,” he said very carefully. “Close the door.”

“Come on, everyone,” Cory said, bossy as ever. “Let’s leave her alone. Stop staring.” The girls began to disperse and head back toward their own rooms.

Phil began to cry, crouching forward, her head drooping beneath her shoulders. I reached out to put my arm around her and she shuddered.

“I’m so sorry.”

Sorry for what? For going out? “Shhhh, honey, it’s all right.”

“Close the door, Cory,” Neil said, more forcefully this time. But Cory had also left. Valerija, leaning against the wardrobe near the threshold, suddenly straightened.

And then I heard it, the unmistakeable clatter of hooves on stone. Bonegrinder, galloping toward us.

“Close the door!” Neil shouted. I stood, but I was too late. Through the doorway, I saw a flash of white, and Cory, struggling to run, with her hand to her head. Valerija grabbed the door handle and shoved hard.

A microsecond later, Bonegrinder slammed against the wood, growling and shrieking like the bloodthirsty beast she was. I heard splintering as her horn scratched the door, as her hooves scrabbled against it, then a high-pitched yelp as someone on the other side dragged her away.

Phil buried her face in her hands.

I
F MY HUNTER POWERS
make my body move faster than normal, do they do the opposite for my brain? That was the only explanation for how long it took me to understand what had just happened. One minute, I was caught in the grip of a hunter’s desire to subdue a raging unicorn, and the next, I was staring at my cousin in shock.

Bonegrinder had wanted to attack her.

“No,” I whispered.

“Astrid, go away!” Phil cried, but this time, she wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Please, go away.” She glanced at Neil. “All of you.”

He stood, his jaw clenched as tightly as the hands by his side. “Are you hurt? Just tell me, are you hurt?”

Phil gave a tiny, miserable shake of her head. “Go. Away.”

“Well, you’re not happy about it, and that worries me. Were you
ever
?”

My heart seemed to implode in my chest, and I reached out blindly for the edge of the desk, for anything to support myself. Valerija stood at the door, her expression impassive. She might
have been blind, deaf, like the marble fountain in the front courtyard. Everyone was so silent, and I wanted to scream.

“Philippa, I couldn’t care less about the Order. I care about you.” Neil’s voice almost cracked on the words. “Tell me.
Was this your choice?”

I’ll be home to play with you later.
That’s what she’d said to Bonegrinder.

Phil’s head drooped farther forward, and her reply was inaudible. It didn’t matter.

“Who was he?”

Phil didn’t respond. Neil looked at me.

“Her boyfriend,” I said immediately. Neil’s eyes flickered slightly at the word. “Seth Gavriel. He’s doing a language program at a boarding school in Trastevere.” I told him the name.

Neil nodded. “I’m calling the police.”

“No, Neil,” Phil said. “Don’t.”

“But, Phil,” I said, incredulous. “If he—”

“Astrid!” she screamed. “Get out!”

My eyes burned stronger than alicorn venom, and I headed for the door. Neil put his hand on my shoulder and I shook him off. Valerija exited with me, but as soon as I hit the hall, I broke into a sprint.

Down in the rotunda, I saw Cory exiting the door to the lower levels. She’d braved the stairs after all.

“I shut Bonegrinder up in the catacombs,” she said. “We should really consider doing that more often. We cleaned it up specifically for her and then we spoil her rotten, letting her stay above all the time—” she looked at my face. “Are you all right?”

“No.” At that moment, I thought I’d never be all right again.
I stared at the carcass, at the tableau, at anything. My hands clenched, my fingers strained. I wanted to claw his eyes out. I wanted to kick his face in. Didn’t he know we were hunters? Didn’t he know what we were capable of?

All of a sudden, I understood what Melissende had said about the ancient hunters, sending out packs of zhi to cut down Actaeons. There was nothing I wanted more than to sic Bonegrinder on Seth Gavriel.

No sooner had the thought occurred to me than I found myself climbing upon the dais. I wrenched the sword from the mannequin’s hand. I checked the blade. Still sharp. Not the real claymore of Clothilde Llewelyn, but it would do.

“Astrid,” Cory said in horror. “What are you doing?”

I hopped down and crossed to the carcass of the re’em. I raised the sword over my head, then brought it down hard against the unicorn’s horn.

The clanging echoed through the hall as I hacked away. It took five strokes, but at last, I sliced through the tip of the horn. I hoped it was still fresh enough. I dropped the sword on the remains and lifted the alicorn. It lay heavy and hot in my fist. Still powerful. Maybe still venomous.

Cory stepped in front of me. “Have you gone mad?”

“Yes.” I said. “It started when I came here, and now it’s full-blown.” I turned toward the door.

“Astrid, wait! Where are you going?”

“He raped Phil, Cory. I’m going to kill him.”

It only took two hours of wandering the streets of Rome to realize what a horrible idea that was.

Perhaps it was the fact that I hadn’t brought my bus pass
nor any money, and walking to Trastevere—even running, as I’d done for the first twenty minutes—did a lot to burn off my rage.

Nothing seemed to have changed beyond the doors of the Cloisters. Still the same loud motorbikes, the same happy diners clustered around sidewalk café tables, the same people watchers and gelaterias with their candy-colored displays and pop music. No one knew what had happened to her, to me. The world was inconceivably as it had ever been.

I’d even run past the spot of the re’em attack on Via Claudia. There was blood in the cracks between the cobblestones, but nothing else to reveal the terror and violence of that night. A rainstorm or two, and it would all be gone. I wondered how many more bloodstains had been washed away in the thousands of years since this city’s founding. Gladiators and sacrifices, assassinations and executions, battles and protests and even accidents. What was one act of violence to generations of death? Why did it feel like my world was falling apart?

At last, my feet slowed near another ancient stone wall on the north side of the city. Where was I now? The neighborhood seemed oddly familiar. That’s right—the Villa Borghese, the beautiful park where we’d first seen Seth and Giovanni again. Phil had arranged it; happy, lighthearted, fun-loving Phil. The park was almost unrecognizable in the dark. Every memory I had of this place was now blackened by my new reality.

There was the fountain where Seth and Giovanni had waited for us. Here was the path where we separated when Giovanni took me back to Trastevere. I never should have left her alone. I never should have stayed inside the Cloisters today. Was it my fault? Was it me?

She wouldn’t even speak to me tonight. Wouldn’t look at me. Made me leave the room while she talked with Neil. She must blame me. If I’d gone with her today…

All my life, Phil had protected me. She came to Rome to be with me; she stayed on, even once she decided that she disagreed with the idea of hunting; she had my back, always, whether I was fighting with the Bartolis or a unicorn. She held me when I was scared, comforted me when I was sad, loved me more than anyone I’d ever known.

And the one time I could have protected her, I’d failed.

My legs gave out beneath me and I collapsed, exhausted, on a bench. Of course she couldn’t trust me tonight. She couldn’t trust me ever! Look at me, penniless, on the streets of Rome with a sawed-off alicorn in my hand. I’d gone running into the night with no plan. No knowledge of where to find Seth; no idea what I’d do to him when I found him; no sense of what, in fact, had happened to Phil, other than that she had lost her virginity and it hadn’t been by choice. Had he hurt her? Threatened her? Drugged her?

Had any of us known that he was capable of something like that? Phil? Giovanni? Did Giovanni know what his friend had done? I wanted to hear the awful details—the truth—and yet, I dreaded it with every fiber of my being. Perhaps Phil had been right to throw me out.

I began to sob, boiling hot tears overflowing from eyes that had held them in far too long. I cried for Ursula and Phil, for the terrified look in the eyes of the yearling Phil had stabbed to death, for the photo of Sybil Bartoli that stared up at me from Cory’s desk every day. I shed tears for Lilith, who’d had no idea what she was doing when she sent me to Rome, and for Neil,
who had no idea what to do once we’d gotten there. I wept for Bonegrinder, whose love was so conditional, and for myself, whose love was anything but.

I cried until my eyes burned like brands, and beyond, until my whole body was aflame, lungs and throat and nostrils and skin and flesh. It was only then, when I could barely move from the pain, barely lift my eyelids to look, that I realized I was not alone and it was not my tears that seared my flesh.

There, less than a dozen feet away, stood a karkadann.

Massive beyond all imagining—an elephant, a tank, a battering ram of tightly coiled death, the monster stood and stared at me, shifting its giant head with the graceful slowness of all great animals. Its enormous chest expanded as it inhaled; and when the nostrils flared with exhaled breath, my body started to sting anew.

Why wasn’t I dead yet?

I don’t know how long I remained like that, in agony, too terrified even to move. The living karkadann before me made the one in the rotunda seem like a stuffed teddy bear. Each of its long, wiry hairs carried with it more menace than a dozen kirin; than ten re’ems; than a million white, fluffy zhis. Its eyes glowed orange and black, like banked coals, and frothy, pink-tinged saliva dripped from its enormous fangs. I couldn’t bring myself to look directly at its horn. The ground trembled beneath me as it shifted its weight on its colossal hooves, and I knew why the armies of Asia had succumbed when they saw Alexander astride a creature like this.

I sat, frozen in numb terror, and waited for the end.

It didn’t come forward. Slowly, through the burning, I slid to the side. It made one step, blocking me. I slid back. It did the
same. I stayed perfectly still, and it waited.

“Please,” I whispered. “Kill me, but don’t mock me.”

The kirin, torn to pieces on Monte Mario as Seth choked on the stench of alicorn venom. Me, lying sick in bed in our apartment back home as my mother pressed a cool and comforting hand against my fevered cheek.

Was my life flashing before my eyes? If so, what a strange group of images for it to choose.

Grace holding aloft the claymore of Clothilde Llewelyn. Me hacking away at the carcass of the dead re’em. Bonegrinder gazing at me in adoration then kneeling before my feet.

The karkadann stared at me.

My mother. Me. My mother. Me. My mother. Me.

I pressed my fists against my aching eyes. I’d snapped. My mind was incapable of processing its imminent death. That was the only explanation. But, if so, what were the chances I’d actually be able to recognize it for what it was?

My mother, me. My mother, looking at me, touching me, my mother, me, my mother, and me…

Her Daughter.

The word formed in my mind, and then the images shifted, slid, became a series of statues I knew well, of paintings of battles, of conversations I’d had with Cory.
Alexander the Great.

Daughter of Alexander.

I opened my eyes and looked at the karkadann. It was still standing, head lifted; its terrible, deadly horn pointed like a spear at the stars.

Daughter of Alexander.

It stamped its foot.

“Yes,” I said, as the world I knew burned to ashes. “I am.”

I was beaten, broken, utterly insane. Unicorns were real; I’d accepted that. I was a hunter, immune to the venom, endowed with special abilities as part of a cosmic, genetic joke. I’d even allowed for that. I’d rolled my eyes when they talked about burning temples and the goddess Diana and the marvelous career of a young Macedonian prince and his trusty, one-horned warhorse, but I went along with it. I’d seen the effects of the Remedy firsthand. I’d stood by and watched a zhi yield to a hunter, then attack someone who wasn’t. I’d accepted so much of the Order of the Lioness and its magic.

But as images rose in my mind, unbidden, shifting and sliding in a bizarre puzzle of word association, I began to wonder if all the magic that came before was merely a prelude.

I could
not
be talking to a karkadann.

Daughter of Alexander,
it said to my mind, and then I saw again the dead kirin on the mountain.

“That was you,” I said. “You killed those kirin the other night. Why?”

Why did I think it could possibly understand me? Was this why they said that Alexander had been able to talk to Bucephalus? If I stared very hard at the unicorn, would I be able to force images into its mind? What kind of thoughts did a unicorn have, anyway?

Ugh. Happy ones, I realized, as I suddenly got a very vivid picture of the karkadann devouring the kirin. Gross.

The karkadann snorted and tossed its head. Pride? Was that pride? I put a hand to my pounding brow. It hurt too much. “Why…does it burn?”

Alicorns alicorns alicorns…and professional wrestlers
. Huh?

I was embarrassed to realize that my word association for
strength
was a guy in a metallic Speedo and face paint. Karkadann venom was strong. Strong enough to sense from afar. Strong enough to affect even a hunter.

“Why did you kill the kirin? Food?”

Giovanni with his hand up my shirt
. I grimaced.
A camera
.

They were spying on us. The kirin were
spying
on us?

“Why aren’t you killing me now?”

Daughter of Alexander.

“No,” I said, in too much pain to be anything but blunt. “Daughter of Clothilde Llewelyn.”

Laughter.

“I kill unicorns,” I said. “That’s what I am!”

A chemistry set. A Band-Aid on a scraped knee. The figure of Clothilde Llewelyn. The statue of the hunter in the fountain in the entrance court.

“I don’t understand you.” Did those words just come out of my mouth?

What, Lassie? Did Timmy fall in the well?

I no longer knew which thoughts were my own and which had been dredged up by the monster. Was it toying with me before it attacked? Was it making a joke?

It lowered its head and shook, and I flinched. Apparently, this conversation was every bit as frustrating to the unicorn.

“I take it Alexander was better at this,” I said.

It growled, and I shied away. Was Alexander also able to withstand the stronger poison? How in the world could anyone bear to go near something like this? How did Clothilde have the wherewithal to raise a weapon against it? I could barely breathe, let alone stand.

Daughter of Alexander. Danger.

Images of Lino, aiming at one of our practice targets while Marten looked on. The figure of Clothilde Llewelyn. Phil, stabbing the kirin yearling. Me, slitting the re’em’s throat. The kirin who’d waited for us outside the courtyard. The two kirin who’d watched us on Monte Mario.