Rampant (15 page)

“Why?” Lino asked in English. “She does not understand me. Do you, Astrid?”

I shook my head. What was I supposed to be understanding that Marten didn’t want me to? Why wasn’t Cory standing here to translate?

“Astrid, don’t listen to him,” Marten said. “He’s a foolish peasant.”

Lino made a rude gesture at Marten. Marten shrugged, crossed to the wall, and picked up a phone. Lino shook his head, then spat on the floor.

“Astrid,” he said to me, as if we were alone in the room. “I have taught you to be a hunter. It was wrong. You are not a hunter here. They are not animals. Even a bear, even a lion, would run. These attack. You are not a hunter.”

“What?” I said.

“You are a soldier.” The words slammed into me like a punch.

Marten looked as if he might throw the phone at Lino, but the archer kept talking to me. “I am leaving now. But I say to you…if you can go home, do it. Go home. This is no place for any of you.”

Two men in security uniforms showed up on either side of Lino. He sneered at them, then turned and walked away as they followed him out.

Marten studied me. “Well, Astrid, I’m sorry you had to witness such a scene. It was apparently a mistake to let someone so irresponsible watch over you girls. I shall not let it happen again.”

I hardly knew what to think. “What was that all about?”

Marten sighed. “I was taking him to task for allowing so many of you to be injured. He did not want to accept any of that responsibility, as you can see. It was very…uncouth of him to be so cruel and unfeeling in your presence.”

“Oh,” I said, still unsure. When even my trainer was telling me that my fears were justified, I didn’t know what to think.

“Of course, he is right about one thing. It is a very dangerous path you have embarked upon. Perhaps you would wish to return to the United States, if you could.”

“If I could,” I said. “I’d be on the next plane. But my mom won’t let me.”

Marten nodded thoughtfully. “Ever thought about
not
going home? About going someplace else?”

Run away? Like Brandt apparently had? A tiny spark of hope flared to life in my chest. “Yes,” I said softly. “But what difference would it make in the end? I’m still a hunter, aren’t I? Anywhere I go, unicorns will be drawn to me.”

“And you would kill them if you had to?” Marten asked.

I bit my lip. I hadn’t finished the yearling today, but I had attacked it. Stabbed it. And the kirin who’d threatened Giovanni. I almost couldn’t help myself. If I was in a situation where it was kill a unicorn or let it kill me or someone else—“What choice do I have?”

Marten looked down at the dead kirin on the slab. “What choice indeed?”

Later, Neil reported that Marten had been dissatisfied with our progress under Lino’s tutelage. He promised us that a new archery trainer would arrive soon to replace him, but that Marten wanted to be sure this time that he hired only the best. Cory wondered if he’d taken Lino’s advice about combat training to heart. I decided I’d believe that the day a Green Beret arrived on the doorstep of the Cloisters.

Meanwhile, we were reduced to training with two practice bows and a half-full quiver that Lino had left behind, which made for a lot of sitting around and twiddling our thumbs while we waited for our turn at the targets.

It was three days after the hunt before I started seeing glimpses of the old Phil again. She hadn’t even bugged me about getting together with the boys since we’d gotten back to Rome, and despite her dutiful practice whenever it was
her turn with the practice bow, I began to wonder if she was having second thoughts about being a unicorn hunter. Maybe she wanted to pack up and go home.

Then one morning I was walking the dormitory hall when I heard her laughing in the courtyard. I looked out to see Phil showing off the new trick she’d taught Bonegrinder to Neil and Lucia. She made the unicorn stand very still while she balanced meatballs on the zhi’s nose. I’d seen Bonegrinder perform obediently before, but today she was being truculent, growling and snapping at Phil as punishment for putting her through the indignity of behaving in front of anyone who wasn’t a hunter.

“That’s enough, Pippa,” Neil said after the fifth meatball went rolling in the grass. “Lucia won’t have any left for tonight.”

“Come on,
Celius,
” Phil trilled and tossed a meatball to Bonegrinder. The zhi caught it in midair, then went snuffling about for the ones she’d dropped. “Pippa’s a dumb nickname. It sounds like a baby bird.”

“Well,
Phil
sounds like a lorry driver.”

“Preferable.” She threw a meatball at him, and he ran when Bonegrinder lunged.

Lucia shook her head at the both of them, wiped her hands on her apron, and headed back into the kitchen. I pulled away from the parapet, suddenly embarrassed to be spying. But when I’d seen Phil later on, it was as if the kirin hunt had never happened.

“Hey, Astronomy,” she said, and plopped down beside me. “Want to go out tonight?”

I was checking the fletching on one of our shafts. The constant use was beginning to show on the arrows. If we didn’t
get a new trainer in the next few days, we should at least get Neil to buy us some supplies to tide us over.

“Giovanni said he had a test tomorrow.” I screwed the point back into place and set the arrow down beside the others.

“I’m sure you can persuade him to blow off studying
one
evening. You two are peas in a pod with the schoolwork, huh?”

Well, neither of us was currently enrolled in degree-granting educational institutions, so yes, she was right there. “You know they’re breaking the rules of their program every time they hang out with us?”

“Another thing you two have in common!” She was grinning now, and I was so glad to see it, I relented at once.

“Okay, call. But make sure Giovanni knows this was
not
my idea.”

Phil and Seth were in rare form that evening, each seemingly determined to top the other in enthusiasm and daring. They conned a dozen roses out of a street vendor, joined a troop of buskers in a dance show, and sweet-talked their way into a nightclub with a line that stretched around the block. I half expected the evening to cap off with either breaking into the Colosseum or taking a midnight dip in the Trevi Fountain. Giovanni watched their antics, amused, but didn’t join in, and I started to wonder if he regretted coming along. He’d been quieter than ever this evening, and I worried he was angry we’d dragged him away from his books. I knew how important it was that he got good grades in his program. His reacceptance to college depended on it.

We ended the evening with desserts at a restaurant on top of
Monte Mario, overlooking the northwest end of the city. Phil and Seth soon wandered off into the darkness, leaving Giovanni and me alone together for the first time since that night in Trastevere. Apparently Phil had decided I could be trusted on my own again. Or she forgot. Or she wanted us both out of the unicorn hunting gig.

Looking at Giovanni, seated in silence all the way across the bench, I doubted that was going to come close to happening.

“This place is nice,” I said, feeling more stupid by the second.

“Do you know what they call it?” His voice floated out of the gathering darkness.
“Collina degli innamorati.
Lover’s Hill.”

“Oh.” He didn’t say anything else, though, and the awkwardness spread faster than the night.

At last he spoke. “I’m probably going to regret asking this, but what have you been up to for the last week?”

“I was sent on a trip. Out of town.”

“Really.”

“Yeah.”

“No more detail than that?”

I spent most nights in a tree, I was stampeded by a herd of sheep, I stabbed a unicorn in the neck, I hated the whole thing, and I dreamed of you every night.
“We were in Tuscany. On a farm,” I managed to say.

“What kind of farm?”

“Sheep.”

“Huh.” Another minute passed, in which there was nothing but city lights twinkling in the distance and the sound of the wind in the tree branches arcing over our heads. And then, “I’m not really sure what either of us is doing here. Well, me, I’m a
sucker for punishment, but I don’t get you. Seth told me that you didn’t want to come out tonight.”

“Is that what he told you?” I said. Is that what Phil had said to him? I recalled what I’d told her about Giovanni’s test, and began to feel sick. “That’s not true. I thought you had to study!”

“Is that why you haven’t called me in a week? Didn’t tell me you were leaving town? And when I see you, it has to be because Seth and Phil plan it?”

“No—”

“What’s your story, really?” Now he sounded angry. “Seth tells me one thing, and you tell me something totally different. I have no idea what to believe.”

Believe
me
. But of course, he couldn’t. I was the one who’d disappeared. I was the one who’d lied to him about the unicorn. I was the one who’d tried to seduce him, then had barely touched him since. I was the one who hadn’t called for a week. No wonder he was angry.

“First he said you were joining a convent. And you say you’re supposed to, but you don’t want to. Fine. But you also say you grew up over your uncle’s garage, and now I hear you and Phil are heiresses that are being shoved into a convent so you can’t claim your fortune. I didn’t even know that was allowed. Is it true?”

I snorted. “Where the hell did Seth get that idea? Phil would never lie like that!”

“To be perfectly honest, I’m beginning to think this whole thing is a huge scam.”

“What whole thing?”

He looked out over the city so I couldn’t read his eyes. “You. Phil. All of it.”

The tiramisu in my stomach turned into rock. I studied his profile, deep in shadow but clear enough to read his expression. Anger. Distrust. I was afraid to open my mouth, afraid what might come spilling out if I did. But looking at him there, I knew I’d lost him already.

“No. We’re not heiresses, but we are stuck here, and my mom wants me—at least—to stay. I just want to go home. More than anything, I want to leave. And if I act like I don’t want to see you, it’s only because I don’t want to get confused about leaving. Because, Giovanni, you’re the only good thing about being in Rome.”

Before I could draw breath to go on, he was kissing me, cradling my face in his hands, his heartbeat pounding beneath my fingertips, which had somehow found their way to his temples. For a few exquisite moments, there was nothing beyond that—our breath, our mouths, our hands in each other’s hair—and the cells in my body sang with it. Forget the jitters I’d felt after the unicorn hunt; this was the only high I ever wanted.

Make that the only
great
thing about being in Rome.

Giovanni pulled away and his eyes were laughing, and for a second I thought I’d spoken that thought aloud. But then he cocked his head behind me. I looked, and back on the patio of the restaurant, the waiter putting chairs up on tables for the night was giving us both dirty looks.

Collina degli innamorati
, indeed.

“Vieni con me,”
Giovanni said, tugging my hand.
Come with me.

We escaped into the surrounding park, and as the trees closed in behind us, Giovanni’s hand slipped to the small of my back.

“I’m sorry. I should have asked you. But you didn’t call….”

“It’s been hard,” I said. Now that I’d started confessing, I wanted to tell him everything. Where to start? “You know all those news stories about wild animal attacks recently?”

“I think we’ll be safe in a city park,” he said, and swung me around until my back was against a tree.

“That’s not what I meant—”

“Let me get this out.” One of his hands was braced on my waist, the other on the tree near my head. “I have been just as unfair. If everything works out at my program, and I can go back to school, what then? Maybe that’s why I assumed the worst when you didn’t call.”

I leaned my head against his hand. “Don’t listen to Seth anymore.”

“If I hadn’t listened to him tonight, I might not have seen you again.”

I lifted my head. “But he’s making it up. Phil doesn’t have to lie to make boys interested in her.”

“You don’t, either.” I could feel his breath against my throat. Was that true? He smelled so good. I closed my eyes, remembering those nights in the tree in Tuscany, my back against the same rough bark, my arms aching in equal part from hanging on to the platform and because I couldn’t reach forward and put them around the guy I was picturing in my mind. And here he was, right in front of me. I hugged him close and thrilled.

“I’m glad,” I said, “because there is something I need to tell you.”

“Tell me anything. Tell me something so I don’t have to listen to anyone else.” His hand traced the hem of my shirt, and
he pressed his palm flat against my stomach. I could barely remember what I was saying.

“So you know how, a long time ago, there were crusader monks? Religious orders who taught their members to be warriors and stuff?”

“Like the Knights Templar?” He brushed my hair off my neck with his other hand and cupped my jaw.

“Yes. Well that convent of mine, it’s one of those.”

“Right. Those kick-ass nuns of yours.” He began to kiss my neck. “Good thing there are no more crusades.”

“Oh, but there are.”

He paused, then lifted his face. “Are you telling me you’re training to be a soldier, Astrid the Warrior?”

I nodded. “More like a…hunter, though.”

“Like an assassin?” The space between his eyebrows crinkled up. A Giovanni frown.

If only it were as easy as sitting on a rooftop and shooting at unicorns with sniper rifles. “No.” Maybe I should backtrack. “You’ve probably seen stuff in the news about the wild animal attacks?”

He looked confused. “Not really. I’ve been doing so much studying, I haven’t really been watching the news.”

This may make things a bit more difficult. “Well, there have been these wild animal attacks. And we’re supposed to stop them.”

“Wildlife Control Nuns?”