Rampant (28 page)

“That’s not true.”

“But this isn’t special. It’s terrible. When you called me last month, I didn’t understand. But now—” She held her hands out to me. “Come on. Let’s go home. Let’s just leave this place. When I saw that poor little girl, her body all broken—”

“Her name is Ilesha, Mom.”

“—when I thought of you—dead, torn apart,
eaten
—I couldn’t bear it. I can’t bear to let it happen to any other mother’s daughter either.”

“So you throw yourself in front of the nearest zhi? What about all these people? They’re counting on you!” That’s why I’d come back. I didn’t wish for death—either literal or metaphorical.

“I don’t know what I was thinking—I was crazy with grief,” Lilith said, and looked sincerely contrite. “This place, these monsters—it’s too much. It’s nothing like the books I read. Even if there were casualties, it wasn’t—real. It wasn’t someone I loved. And the hunters still won. But last night, I lost you, we lost the battle…Please, Astrid, let’s go home. It’s what you
always wanted. What
you
wanted, sweetie. I want it now, too.”

It was. I couldn’t lie. But things had changed. “I can’t do that.”

“Of course you can. We’ll pack up and go. If the kirin are chasing us, we’ll run. We’ll find someplace they can never get to. Manhattan. A Caribbean island. Anywhere.”

There was a scraping behind us, and the door shoved inward another inch.

“Astrid, darling, listen to me.”

And another. “Astrid!” came the muffled tone from the other side. “What’s going on in there?”

What was going on? My mother was offering me the life of my dreams and I didn’t want it.

No, that’s not true. I wanted it. Desperately. Manhattan. Giovanni lived there. If we went to New York City, we could be together. For real. I could have my old life back, but better. Lilith and I could be on the same page for once.

But I couldn’t take it. I needed answers, closure, vengeance. For Phil. For the hunters. For the karkadann. And for me, too.

Phil squeezed through, leaped over the throne, and glowered at us both. “Asterisk, do you have any hips at all?” She started pulling at the throne. “Help me with this.”

I steeled myself against the visions and started tugging. Inch by battle-bloodied, Jutland-scream-filled inch, the throne moved out of the way. As soon as there was enough space, the other hunters poured through the hole. Cory held Bonegrinder fast by the collar, then hooked her up to the chain in the wall, where she strained and gnashed her teeth at Lilith.

“Are you done packing?” Lilith asked Phil.

Phil simply looked at me. I nodded at her, and understanding passed between us. “I’m not going anywhere, Aunt Lilith.”

“Well, you can’t stay here. I’m closing the Cloisters.”

“No, you’re not,” Cory said. “I opened this place. I won’t watch you destroy it.”

Lilith turned to her. “I’m trying to keep you safe.”

“We’ll keep ourselves safe,” I said. “Hunters have done it for thousands of years. And the really smart ones, like Clothilde, do it on their own terms.”

It was true, and it had been what Phil was talking about all along. Clothilde, too, had rebelled against the society that had bound her as a hunter for all her life. She’d faked her own death to escape it. We wouldn’t do that. It would be a choice, to hunt. A choice I made on my own.

My mother, here, gripping the claymore as if it were one of the tinfoil swords from my childhood, had no concept of what we were doing. To her, unicorn hunting was a story in a dusty old book. She wanted me to be honored, but she didn’t understand the risk such honor entailed. She hadn’t seen her own death—not like Ursula and me. She hadn’t killed anything herself, like I had, like Phil had. And when Cory had watched someone she loved die, it had awakened in her a desire to fight. All my mother wanted to do was flee.

“You can’t lead us,” I realized aloud. “You’re not one of us.”

“Astrid—”

I shook my head. “Mom, you’re right. I think it’s time for you to leave the Cloisters of Ctesias. I swear to you, the Order of the Lioness will be in good hands.” I turned to Phil. “Want to be donna?”

“Second the motion,” Cory said, shocking every Llewelyn in the room.

Phil blinked at me, then at Cory. “Are you guys sure?” She
looked around the room at the other hunters, most of whom were nodding vigorously. Melissende bit her lip and looked down, and her sister elbowed her hard in the gut. Melissende shrugged.

Phil’s eyes turned glassy, but she lifted her chin. “Okay. I’ll do it.” She raised her hand, and the red ring glinted in the light. “After all, I really like the accessories.”

“You’re children!” Lilith said. “I can’t allow you to make this kind of decision for yourselves.”

“No, Mom,” I replied sadly. “We’re not children. We’re warriors. Just what you wanted us to be.”

I
T WAS SURPRISINGLY EASY
to convince Lilith to leave after that. I think my mom knew when she’d been outclassed. She’d already packed most of her things, but I followed her to her room anyway, and we made awkward small talk while she closed up her suitcases and Phil made arrangements to move Lilith’s flight home up a day. “Strange, huh?” Lilith said, as she zipped up the last suitcase. “A few months ago, I was helping send you off. Things certainly have changed, haven’t they?”

I stood by the window, my eyes scanning the streets. There was something tickling the edge of my senses, some whisper of unicorn awareness, but nothing close enough to cause me any real concern. “Yes,” I said at last, turning to face my mother. “They certainly have.”

“You know I only want the best for you, right, sweetie? That’s all I ever wanted.”

I nodded, hoping Phil would come soon and save me from this unwanted tête-à-tête. When she did, we rode with Lilith to return her car, then dropped her off at the train station. She
said she could go on her own, but for some reason, I wanted to see her out of Rome. I wanted to know she was both safe and gone.

“Listen up, people,” Phil said, when the meeting convened in the chapter house later that afternoon. We’d spent the day cleaning up, unpacking the necessary implements, and canceling travel plans. I don’t know how it was that Phil sweet-talked the hunters’ parents into letting them stay after everything that had happened, after Lilith’s hysterical announcements and doomsday predictions to the adults. She’d spent a full hour on the phone to Neil, hashing out a strategy. At the moment, he planned to keep searching for Jaeger, then return to the Cloisters as soon as possible to help out. In the meantime, my guess is that no one’s parents knew they’d just placed the safety of their children in the hands of a teenager. Either that or the next few days would bring a phalanx of angry parents descending on the Cloisters to carry their daughters away.

“As you know, we’ve seen some big changes around here, the most important of which is a move to a more fair and democratic Order of the Lioness for all.”

“Do we have to recite the Yankee pledge of allegiance now?” Cory mocked.

Phil stuck her tongue out at Cory. “First, I want to say that I really appreciate your vote of confidence—”

“Or you could look at it as a vote of no confidence in your aunt,” Grace said, her smile somehow simultaneously sweet and venomous.

“Whatever way it happened, it happened,” Phil said, returning the smile with an equal amount of sugar and punch. “Also, I want to say that I appreciate your hard work this afternoon,
cleaning up the chapter house and the wall. I know it wasn’t easy to figure out where all the bones were supposed to go—”

Dorcas, scratching underneath the edges of her cast, said, “They’re dead. I don’t think they care where they hang on the wall.”

Cory cleared her throat and made a wrap-it-up gesture to Phil.

“We’re going to get to some policy stuff in a bit, but first, let’s turn the floor over to my cousin, the amazing, death-defying Astrid.” She mocked a crowd cheering as I stood up and faced the others. Apparently, you can take the girl out of the volleyball team, but you can’t take the volleyball team out of the girl.

“Thanks. I, um…” Where to start? I spent yesterday talking to a karkadann. I found out that Clothilde Llewelyn never killed him, that unicorns were never extinct, that me and mine were in danger of ambush every second unless we found both Marten Jaeger and the pack of kirin who had pledged loyalty to him? “I wanted to show you guys something.” I turned around and lifted my shirt.

The room filled with gasps.

“This is what happened to me the other night. How I survived, I don’t know. I came to on the ground, but for hours I couldn’t move. The kirin who gored me was dead. He’d been killed by another unicorn.”

“Why?” Zelda asked.

Here’s where things started to get wonky. I lowered my shirt and faced the group. “There seem to be…factions.”

Melissende snorted. I was losing them.

“The other night was no accident. Those kirin ambushed us. They knew we thought there would only be one of them.
I”—I’d been told? By a unicorn?—“believe that these kirin are somehow in league with Marten Jaeger, and if we don’t find them, if we don’t find out what’s going on, there will be more ambushes. More surprise attacks.”

Melissende rolled her eyes now. “Unicorns working with a man? A non-hunter? It makes no sense. How could he get near them? How could he even talk to them?”

“I don’t know,” I said. And neither had the karkadann.

Cory was biting her lip. “Astrid, that’s madness. I’ve been in the Gordian labs, and I’ve worked with Marten for several months. I know that boy told you all sorts of horrible stories, but, honestly, it’s impossible. Marten couldn’t even keep his hands on a zhi unless I was there helping him.”

“Maybe he has other hunters,” Dorcas said. Everyone stared at her. “What? Is that weird?”

“Yes!” Cory said. “Why would he bother funding the Cloisters if he planned to keep his own hunters?”

“But it was
you
who came to
him
, Cory,” I said. “He knew you were gung ho about the Order. Maybe he agreed to help you so that he could keep a close eye on what you did?”

“To what end?” Cory said, jumping up. “Why would he do any of the things he’s done? Why would he disappear now if he wanted to watch us?”

“Control,” Phil said softly. “He’s always wanted to control us. He gave us a trainer, then took him away. He bribed some guys to sleep with me and Astrid when he thought we were getting too good. And then, when things went south there, he left town before he could get in trouble. Maybe he thinks we’re no threat anymore.”

“Even if what you say were true,” Cory went on, pacing now,
“It doesn’t put him in league with some kirin to hunt us all down. I don’t think he wants to hurt anyone. I don’t think it was his idea that Seth force you against your will.”

“I don’t either, but it’s the result, anyway,” Phil said.

“The kirin
are
trying to hunt us down,” I said. “And they are in league with Jaeger. I have it on very good authority—”

“Whose?” Melissende asked.

I hesitated. “Just believe me, okay?”

“I think not,” Melissende scoffed. “My little sister almost died last week. I think I need more than your word to risk putting her in harm’s way again.”

“It is true,” said Valerija from the back of the room. She’d been sitting apart from the rest of us, picking at her nails and glowering. Now she rose. “What Astrid says. The kirin and Jaeger are one. And Dorcas says truth, also. I was a hunter for him.”

We all lapsed into silence and stared at her. “He found me in town. No money, no house. One day I see unicorn, like Bonegrinder, and it does not hurt me. I think people talk about this, and he finds out. So he finds me, gives me pills. He is very nice to me. I think maybe he wants to screw me, but no. He takes me to a house. There are many unicorns, all in a row. Like a farm. There are many scientists. They are very scared. One of them died, maybe many, before I came there. Jaeger says with me there, no one will die.”

Dorcas looked smug. The rest of us, shell-shocked.

“He says I stay as long as I like. He gives me bed and food and anything else I want. But I have to take tests. Some hurt, very bad. Hurt like that chair—” She pointed at the throne, and shuddered. “But he gives me more pills, then.”

“How long did you stay there?” Phil asked.

Valerija shrugged. “Long enough. Then one day, he says I must leave. We get in a van. They tell me what to say, what to do. Say if I do it right, you will feed me, give me a bed, too. If I do it wrong, unicorn will kill me. And if I tell you, unicorn will kill me.” She crossed the room, to where her alicorn hung on the Wall of First Kills, and pulled it down. “Do you hear this? It makes no noise.” She tossed it back and forth between her hands. “I wonder why, many days.” She looked at me. “You wonder, also?”

“Yes,” I said. “I did.” But I’d been too afraid to ask Valerija why.

“I know. You always think, every day. Like the scientists. I see you think, and I am scared if I talk to you, you think until you know the truth. Why do you think it makes no noise?” She waved the horn in the air.

“I think you didn’t kill it,” I said, after a moment of consideration. “I think the magic only works if it is a hunter’s first kill.”

She nodded. “Yes. They gave me head in bag. A unicorn kill it, they say.”

I wondered if it was Bucephalus. If he was protecting me, even then.

“But that was the kirin Astrid attacked,” Phil exclaimed. “The one we saw the night of our first date with Seth and Giovanni. Maybe it was the kirin that reported back to Marten. Maybe it was the kirin who showed him who to look for when he met the boys in the bar!”

Valerija ducked her head. “I am very sorry, Phil, because you are a good person. That night, when you came home, I call the
people at Gordian. I tell them Neil is calling police.”

Phil blinked, hard.
“But I shared my room with you.”

“He says to report anything weird that happens. I report. I think it is why he went away, why he does not call, why Neil can’t find him.”

“How could you do that to me?” Phil asked, her voice breaking.

“I am scared. I am scared unicorn will come to kill me.”

“So why are you telling us all this now?” Grace asked. “Aren’t you afraid the unicorns will kill you?”

“Yes,” Valerija said. “Very afraid. But when unicorn tried to kill me in Tuscany, you protect me, Grace. We both almost died, but you protect me. So I think I will try to be a hunter, for you. When unicorn try to kill me two days ago, Astrid protect me. Astrid die for me.”

“Well, I didn’t really die,” I said with a blush.

“What you say is true. Marten Jaeger is with kirin. Many, many kirin. I know where he is. I know where they are. I can lead you. And I want to. Because now I know that unicorn come to kill me either way. And you are the only one trying to stop it.”

“Don’t trust her,” Phil hissed. “She’s a liar and a spy.”

But what she said coincided pretty well with what Bucephalus had told me. And what’s more, it explained how Gordian was keeping kirin—they had hunters with them. Were there other girls like Valerija being blackmailed or manipulated into being guinea pigs at the labs?

“I’m serious,” Phil said, when no one backed her up. “I will not have this, this
traitor
under my roof!”

“
Your
roof!” Melissende cried. “Didn’t you just finish talking
about how democratic we would be now?”

Grace looked at her, incredulous. “You
want
the drug-addicted spy to lead us someplace?”

Melissende frowned.

Rosamund spoke up. “Valerija may be telling the truth, but what difference does it make? If the other night proves anything, it’s that we do not have the skill to hunt many unicorns at once.”

“Yet,” I said. “I think we can learn it.” I looked at the alicorn in Valerija’s hand and at the wall, which still let out its faint, buzzing chord. The magic worked because all the bones on the wall were made from unicorns that a hunter had killed. I turned my head and looked at the throne, still sitting awkwardly near the remains of the door to the chapter house.

The throne was made from the horns of unicorns that had killed hunters. The first time I touched it, it burned like alicorn venom, like being near the karkadann. But the next time, I saw a vision of the unicorns’ last battle along with the pain, like the first time I’d talked to the karkadann, when he’d almost killed me with his images and his poison. And now—

I walked over and placed my hand against the armrest. The vision of Jutland swam up in my mind, and I clenched my jaw and swatted it down until it was there but not overwhelming. No pain accompanied the images, the sounds, the smells. It was pure.

Like my last conversation with the karkadann. Had I built up a resistance to the poison? Had I gotten stronger, somehow? Did the throne work the same way?

Daughter of Alexander, I am teaching you now. When the kirin gored you, he taught you. When you pet your—Bonegrinder?
—
she teaches you. When you stand in your prison, surrounded by bones that sing and horns that scream, it is all a lesson.

This throne, this room, this entire building. It wasn’t a torture chamber. It was a training tool.

I needed to test it. “Ursula,” I said, “do me a favor and sit on this throne.”

“What?” the younger girl cried. “No! You’re crazy!”

“I don’t think it will hurt you.”

“Astrid!” Phil said. “What are you doing!”

“Or maybe it will, a little. But it will stop. Look!” I plopped down on the seat, and the dead hunters started fighting again. I smiled through gritted teeth. “See?”

Melissende shook her head. “Absolutely not. I think I recall a week ago, almost getting my head torn off for suggesting the same thing.” She turned toward her sister and began speaking in German.

“I won’t,” Ursula announced, and crossed her arms over her chest.

“But you’re the only one who has had a similar experience to mine,” I argued. “The only one who’s been exposed to enough alicorn venom to start building up the resistance. It’s going to be too much of a shock to the others.”

Ursula shook her head vehemently, and Melissende wrapped her arms around her. “Leave her alone. She’s been through enough.”

“I will do it,” Valerija said. “I go through many tests at the farm. Many poisons. And in Tuscany, I got stabbed by kirin, remember?” She tugged at the shoulder of her faded black shirt, pulling it down until we could all see the double helix markings gracing the hollow beneath her clavicle. “I will do it.”

I stood up, and she joined me in front of the throne and squeezed my hand, hard.

“It is going to hurt, at first,” I warned her, “but just stick through it. Concentrate on what it makes you see.”

“Oh, so now it’s a hallucinogenic chair?” Cory asked.

Valerija nodded, took a deep breath, and dropped onto the chair.