Rampant (4 page)

It was as big as an elephant. The hide was a deep chestnut red and in consistency something between a horse’s and what I imagined a wooly mammoth’s would be like. The nostrils flared on a long, wide snout, and its mouth was open in a snarl, revealing jaws that would make a sabertooth tiger envious. Each cloven hoof was the size of a truck tire, and the beast stood in an aggressive pose, tilting a curved, creamy yellow horn as thick and long as my leg directly back at the hunter.

This was the karkadann, the most dreaded and deadly of all unicorns. This was the creature of nightmares, the thing my family fought for so many generations, the monster that my great-to-the-fifth aunt Clothilde finally defeated, though the battle cost her her life.

Before me stood my enemy. Ancient, unstoppable, unfathomable. The brochure had said that no one knew how old this creature was. It was believed by some—as commemorated on the plaque—that Clothilde had slain the great Bucephalus, the loyal steed of Alexander the Great. All those years I ridiculed my mother for not being able to point to any unicorn remains? Here it was. Every inch of the karkadann’s body rippled with power, even in death, even a century and a half after being stuffed.

However, it was the eyes that had me mesmerized. On some level, I understood that these could not be the monster’s true eyeballs, and that a taxidermist had replaced them with round black pits that gleamed with red and orange flame. And yet I couldn’t look away.

I knew these eyes. In a place beyond memory, I knew them, and I was terrified. I knew every sinew of this beast, how quickly it moved, the shape of its hatred as it turned in my direction, the vibrations that echoed through the earth as it galloped toward me, the sting of poison from its horn.

I stared, and the karkadann stared back.

And then it whinnied.

I shot away from the dais, slid on the slick marble, and wound up sprawled facedown in a mosaic of mermaids about five feet away.

Laughter. Light, bubbling giggles. I stood gingerly, rubbing my butt where I’d smacked it on the stone floor. A girl about my age filled the far doorway, smiling brightly at me. “Forgive me,” she said in a crisp British accent. “I simply couldn’t resist. You looked so intent there.” She stepped forward into the dim light trickling down from a clerestory that ringed the room. “Of course, you’ve very little to worry about. There hasn’t been a single report of a karkadann sighting. And they probably wouldn’t be making horse sounds, at any rate—”

“Who are you?” I asked, before I could hear her dissertation on the vocal emissions of various unicorn species.

“Cornelia Bartoli,” she said. “You must be Astrid.”

“Corneli
a
?” I asked. “I thought you were a man.” So had Lilith. An older, more responsible man.

“No, that’s my Uncle Cornelius. But I go by Cory and he by Neil.”

“I go by Astrid,” I said, and nodded at the dais. “Nice décor.”

“You should be proud,” Cory said, smiling wistfully at the figures locked in combat. “That’s not my ancestor up there.” She touched the hem of Clothilde’s robe, a look of reverence on
her round, freckled face. “You look just like her, don’t you?”

I bit my lip to keep from saying that I’d spent my childhood wishing I wasn’t related to her, or at least not the daughter of someone so obsessed with our freakazoid lineage.

“I can’t believe how well this was preserved,” she went on, her short, brown curls bouncing as she spoke. “This place was sealed for a century, and yet this figure looks almost new, doesn’t it? Nothing else survived this well. The laboratory is a shambles.”

Perhaps that was the smell. Rot and stale air. But no, that wasn’t quite right either. “Was there…a fire in here?”

Cory frowned. “Probably. Every plague imaginable was visited upon the Cloisters after the unicorns disappeared. Apparently, it was ransacked several times by mobs looking for the secret of the Remedy. I’ve spent the last month mucking this place out. It was rather disgusting before I got my hands on it. Speaking of which, would you like the tour?”

I reshouldered my backpack and grabbed the handle of my rolly bag. “Yes. But can we start with my room?”

She brightened at this. “Of course. You must be so jet-lagged. This way.” And off she bounced toward the door whence she’d come. I did my best to keep up, but the plastic wheels of my suitcase kept catching on ridges in the floor mosaic. Behind me, I could feel the eyes of the karkadann.

As if, even in death, it watched.

The door led to a small hallway and then to narrow, twisting stairs lit by bare yellow bulbs. “The wiring is still a bit spotty,” Cory explained, pointing to duct-taped twists of wires running up the walls. Between each bulb was an empty sconce formed with an upturned hock and hoof. All through the stairwell, pieces of bone and horn poked out from the masonry. Even
the walls here were made from unicorn. This place was like an elephant graveyard. I shuddered and did my best to keep toward the center of the stairwell.

We reached the next floor amid a tsunami of unicorn history chatter from Cory. She and Lilith would be incredible chums. This girl was every bit as gung ho about hunting as my mother. “So you’ve been here for a month?” I asked hopefully. “How are you liking Rome? Have you been to the Vatican Museum?” I asked. “Or the Spanish Steps?”

She looked at me, brows knitted. “Why? All the unicorn information is right here.”

Um, okay then. This chick was clearly a barrel of fun. Finally we spilled out into a decently sized hallway flanked by a row of doors on one side and open archways overlooking a courtyard on the other. I poked my head over the parapet and looked down into the partially paved courtyard, which currently lay in the shade of the dome we’d just left. Two wide cobblestone walkways intersected in the shape of a cross, forming a small square court in the center, while grassy, untended gardens comprised the rest of the space. The brochure had mentioned that this courtyard and walkways were the cloisters that gave the property its name.

“This is the dormitory,” Cory announced, sweeping her arms out. “Our residential hall. Bathroom at the end. The plumbing, thank goodness, is moderately more reliable than the electricity.”

She opened a door about halfway down. “And this is our room.” She stepped aside for me to peek in, but I simply stared at the hand-stenciled sign that proclaimed
CORY AND ASTRID
. There were pencil-drawn unicorns rearing up on either side of
our names. The horn of one practically punctured the
A
. Great. It was like the Myerson girls’ bedroom all over again.

“How many of us will there be?”

“Perhaps nine? My uncle says it’s still too early to tell.” She flounced into the room. “You’re lucky you got here early. I gave us the biggest one.”

I checked out the endless hallway. “But aren’t there a lot of rooms?”

“Not habitable ones. Not yet. Do come in.”

I followed her inside. It was a lovely room, complete with colorful curtains and neatly made beds. Fluffy white pillows and bedspreads in shades of spring green and purple, coral carpets and wooden desks with matching lamps. In contrast to the antique and creepy air that characterized the rest of the building, this room was modern and cheerful, devoid of the weird bones and skulls evident everywhere else.

Cory obviously kept her things neat, and a quick survey of the space revealed that she’d given me the better side of the room, near a window that looked out onto a sea of terra-cotta and stone rooftops. I wheeled my belongings over to the bed clearly meant to be mine and dropped my backpack onto the perfectly smooth coverlet.

“We’re going to have so much fun!” Cory assured me, catching on to my lack of enthusiasm. “With all the work I’ve been doing around here, I know this place like I built it myself. And I’ll show you all the really brilliant, secret stuff.”

Fun? Killing unicorns? The only thing that excited me about this whole trip was the idea of gelato. I swallowed. Pretty as this room was, it didn’t feel right. The walls were too thick, the ceilings too high. The light in the window was brighter than back
home. The bedding was totally new, but the place still smelled of ages. Not the comfortable dilapidation of the apartment I shared with Lilith, but ancient blood and ancient danger.

“And it will be good to have another hand to help with the cleaning,” she went on. Her bright tone was beginning to sound a tad forced. “I’ve been on my own for so long.”

“What about your uncle?” I said, taking a deep breath. All old houses smelled funny. This one was just older than most.

“Oh.” Her voice turned vague. “He’s quite busy himself, finding hunters and trying to get the training materials ready. I’ve been put in charge of the living arrangements.”

“It’s a very pretty room,” I said, hoping to appease her.

“Yes, well enough of that. I expect you’d like to see the rest.” Cory looked hopeful, but I had a sudden terror of going on the tour, of heading deeper into this place, back where the skeletons and the scent held more sway. And I didn’t want to room with this girl who thought it was funny to pretend I was being attacked by a karkadann. This girl who seemed to like the idea that there were such things as karkadanns. Everything about Cornelia Bartoli was small and round, from her petite, curvy body and apple-cheeked face to her bouncy curls and deep brown eyes. Yet something in the way she carried herself made me realize that this girl was not as soft as she appeared.

I looked longingly at my bed, then back at her, and my protests died on my lips.

There was a unicorn curled up on Cornelia Bartoli’s bed.

How did it get there? That bed had been empty a second or two ago.

“Oh no, Cory. Stand still. Don’t. Move.” I pictured Brandt’s face after he was poisoned. My mom wasn’t around with her
decanter and her can of Coke this time. We were both going to die, right here on the coral carpet.

Cory looked over her shoulder to see what caught my attention and proceeded to go completely berserk.

“Bonegrinder!” she shrieked in a voice I barely recognized as human. “No! Bad!” She picked up her desk chair and flung it wildly in the direction of the bed. It glanced off the stone wall, bounced once near the headboard, and clattered to the floor.

The unicorn barely blinked. And then Cory really went nuts.

“You horrid little beast! You know you’re not allowed in the dorm!” Her voice was the shriek of a fire alarm, of an air raid siren, of a harpy. She didn’t even seem like the same person who’d showed me to our room. “Get off my bed! Get out!
Get out! GET OUT!”
She flew at it, fists raised.

The unicorn, its blue eyes as wide and limpid as any of the fictional creatures in children’s fantasy books, leaped straight into the air in a tangle of cloven hooves and spindly white legs and scrabbled toward the door. It didn’t make it.

Cory grabbed it by one leg and its horn and swept it up in her arms. It was bleating now, a pathetic, wheezing sound. In two steps, Cory had it out the door, then she swung it in a wide arc and flung it out over the courtyard.

It flew through the air, legs splayed, then plummeted the two stories to the cobblestoned court. I watched in horror, unable to breathe, as it crashed into the ground with a sound of shattering bones and rending flesh that echoed and bounced along the walls and columns. And then, silence.

Cory stood at the gallery, shivering with rage, staring blindly at the spot where the beast had fallen. Then she turned to me,
her face drained of all color except two magenta spots on her cheeks. Tears flowed freely from her eyes.

I was too shocked to cry.
This
was a hunter. This was what Lilith wanted of me. This cruelty, this brutality.

I wanted to ask her what we should do. I wanted to ask her what the hell a unicorn was doing in the Cloisters of Ctesias. But I was afraid to speak. I was afraid to even close my mouth, which hung open, stupid and in shock. I’d never seen anything like that in my life.

And then it got worse, because I spotted movement below. The unicorn was rising, shaking itself off and staring up at us. There was blood smeared along its white coat, but when it moved, it didn’t look injured at all.

I gasped, but Cory didn’t turn around.

“Trust me,” she said. “It’s very hard to kill.”

M
OMENTS LATER, THERE
were footsteps on the stairs. “Cornelia Sybil Bartoli!” shouted a voice, and then into the hallway stepped an absolutely gorgeous young man in a terra-cotta-colored Oxford cloth shirt and a pair of brown slacks. Black wavy hair curled over his forehead, shadowing deep brown eyes and a tan complexion. “What have I told you about—” He stopped short. “Oh. Hello there.”

Cory nodded at me. “Astrid Llewelyn.” She crossed her arms and set her jaw. “And if that thing knew what was good for it, it would keep well away from me.”

“She can’t control herself and you know it,” he snapped back. He turned to me and cleared his throat. “I’m Cornelius Bartoli. The, er, don of the Cloisters. You may call me Neil.”

Neil couldn’t be over twenty-five. This was the crusty dude responsible for the brochure? This was the weirdo who’d been talking to my mother online? This was the guy
in charge?
He shook my hand, and his grip was firm and cool. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing an expensive-looking watch and a ring
set with a deep red stone. I’m not usually into rings on guys, but this one looked just as masculine as the rest of him.

“What was that thing?” I blurted.

“Bonegrinder,” Neil said. “She’s our house zhi.” He eyed me strangely. “She didn’t try to attack you, did she? I’d understood from your mother that you’d already passed the trial by zhi.”

I shook my head in disbelief. Had no one seen what just happened? “We keep unicorns around here? As what, target practice?”

Cory looked thrilled at the idea, but Neil shot her a dirty look. “The zhi are unique to the species,” he said. “We’ve domesticated them. At least, the hunters have. The zhi yields to the true unicorn hunter, but to all others it is a deadly beast. That’s how your kind have been tested for centuries.”

Tested. Our virginity. “Aren’t there easier ways to…test us?” I asked. Ways that didn’t put our lives in danger?

“No matter what your magazines might say, there’s no physiological evidence for virginity, Astrid.”

Thanks for the anatomy lesson, mister, but I promise you, I know what hymens are, and the many, many ways that they can be broken that don’t involve sex. I’d even read an article talking about how they can be reconstructed with plastic surgery for women in cultures where a lack of hymen can mean a public stoning in a town square. Didn’t make them virginal, though.

And a hunter virginity test was, apparently, no less dangerous. “Those things are deadly.”

“Like all unicorns, yes. But we do have safeguards.” He pulled out a whistle and blew it, one low, warbling note. Cory retreated into her bedroom and shut the door as I heard hoofbeats on the stone steps. I stiffened, but Neil seemed unconcerned.

I heard it clattering in the hall and then a large, white bundle skidded to a stop near us. It untangled its limbs and horn and straightened, looking at Neil with enormous blue eyes filled with utter contempt. A growl curled the corner of its jaw, revealing tiny, sharp fangs. Blood was drying in its slightly matted hair, but I saw no injuries at all. It turned to me and, just like the one in the woods, swept into a quick bow.

“She hardly tolerates my presence,” Neil said, as Bonegrinder began to nuzzle against my leg with the side of her face. I kept stepping back, but she was persistent, and when she looked up at me, it was with soft, sweet, puppy-dog eyes. Now I could see she was a good deal smaller than the one I’d seen in the woods. A juvenile unicorn was what? A fawn? A colt? “But she won’t attack me with this ring on.” He waved his hand in front of her and she cuddled even closer to me. “According to the few records we have, all the dons wore it. It’s some kind of zhi kryptonite.”

“That’s impossible,” I said.

He smiled. “Doesn’t all of this seem impossible to you?”

At last, someone reasonable! “Yes. I don’t believe in magic.”

“I take it Cornelia hasn’t shown you around yet.”

Would the rest of this crumbling ruin change my mind? “No, she’s been too busy throwing animals off balconies.” Wasn’t that some sort of sign of a budding sociopath?

Neil set his jaw. “I apologize for that. It was completely unacceptable, and I assure you, it shall not happen again.”

Oh, well, as long as he promised, I guess I’d go ahead and room with the lunatic!

I held out my hand to the beast, and she insinuated herself beneath my palm, bleating happily. “I can’t believe this is
happening.” I petted the zhi, and she calmed down.

“It’s surprising how quickly it becomes commonplace,” he said, his voice weary. “I’d gathered from your mother that you were raised knowing your heritage.”

But not believing. Not for years. “Being here is different.”

“It is indeed. Six months ago, I was in school, studying to be a barrister. And now I’m…” he trailed off. I found it difficult to picture him managing a gaggle of teenage girls. Had he ever even been a babysitter? “I’ll take Bonegrinder away.” He held his hand out toward the beast, and she growled, baring a mouthful of fangs, then cowered as the ring got closer. “I presume Cory has offered to show you around?”

“I—” Don’t leave me with her, I thought. She might throw
me
off something next.

“Or perhaps you’d like to rest from your trip.”

I grabbed at that one and nodded. “Yes, thank you.”

Neil knocked on our door. “Cory, please come take care of the zhi. Astrid would like to take a short nap before the tour.”

A moment later, the door opened. “What would you like me to do to it?” she asked, with a smile that did not quite meet her eyes.

“Wash the blood off would be a start,” he said. “Then put her back in her cage for safekeeping. And I think we talked about these displays, did we not? She
can
feel pain, you know.”

Cory glared at the unicorn, who pressed her flank against my thigh for protection. “Not enough.”

Alone in the bedroom I was supposed to share with Cory, I couldn’t fall asleep. What if she returned while I was unconscious? I may have always thought my mother was a few
pills short of a full prescription, but I never worried that she’d hurt me. However…a girl who threw animals off balconies? She’d seemed so friendly at first, if a bit too focused on unicorns for my taste.

I looked around at the cheerful decor, the bright colors and fluffy pillows, the cobalt-blue vase filled with an artful array of wildflowers, the smattering of photos in chunky glass frames. It looked like a room in a magazine, everything so shiny and new.

I missed the sagging sofa cushions in my apartment back home. They weren’t gray, they weren’t brown, and they almost always felt just the slightest bit damp, but they fit into our little home perfectly. These mod coverlets and prefab furniture clashed terribly with the carved stone walls, with the bone sconces and stuffed heads, with the smell of mold and ashes that no posies in the world could cover.

I lay back against the bed and flung my arm over my burning eyes. My head ached, and I just wanted to go home.

When Cory returned, I lay very still, hoping she’d think I was asleep.

“That can’t be comfortable, with your suitcase taking up half the bed and your shoes still on.”

Busted. I sat up and smoothed my hair down.

“My uncle says I’m to apologize to you for my earlier…display, but I don’t think you need that, do you?”

I remained very quiet and very cautious.

“I know what happened to you in the States. I know that you understand exactly how dangerous these monsters are.”

“Yes.”

“So don’t you agree that we should take every precaution?”

“She wasn’t going to attack us. You knew that.”

“I also knew I couldn’t really hurt it.” She turned away from me and faced her desk.

“Don’t do that again.” The words fell from my lips before I could stop them. After all, what leverage did I have? This girl could take me in a fight, and I was at her mercy here in the Cloisters.

She looked over her shoulder. “I beg your pardon?”

“You did hurt her. Not permanently, maybe, but pain is pain.”

“It’s not a
pet,
whatever Uncle Neil may want you to believe.” She laughed harshly. “What is it you think we’re here to do, Astrid? We’re
supposed
to kill them. It’s our purpose.”

“You already said you knew you weren’t going to kill it. Hunting is one thing. Torturing an animal is another. Don’t do that again.”

She stared at me for a long moment, and I waited for an “or what?” that never came. Then she turned back to her desktop and traced the frame of one of the photos. I glanced past her. The girl in the photograph wasn’t yet ten, but I could tell it was Cory. It had been taken at Christmastime, and Cory sat in front of a tree, laughing as she and a woman who looked just like a female Neil posed beside a large, spotted spaniel puppy with a wreath of evergreen draped around its neck.

“Is that your dog?” I asked, to break the silence. I wondered if she’d ever thrown it off a balcony. It was too odd—she cuddled puppies; liked pretty, colorful fabrics and flowers; and then went maniacal on me.

She nodded. “His name is Galahad. We had to leave him in England. It’s not safe…for him here.”

Because Bonegrinder would eat him. Still, that was no excuse for Cory’s behavior. Abuse one pet because it kept her from another?

“Do you know,” she said abruptly, “what it takes to kill a unicorn?”

“No.”

“Their flesh regenerates. Their bones knit. Their skin closes over wounds.”

“Silver bullet?” I suggested, half joking. Unicorns were apparently like starfish on steroids. But I’d seen the Remedy in action. If it were possible to isolate that quality of the unicorn, it would change the world as we knew it. Perhaps Lilith was right; it was worth putting up with the danger.

“Bullets just vanish into their flesh. They need to be torn apart. Decapitation works well, or a wound kept open, like one made with an arrow or a spear.” She turned to me now. “That’s one of the reasons we make better hunters. We actually stay alive long enough to bring them down, since we’re not affected by the poison.”

“Being gored through the heart is still the same.”

Cory looked down at her hands, squeezing her fingers apart and together several times. “It is, at that. Humans die too easily, hunter or not.”

I glanced back at the picture: Cory, the dog, and a woman who was almost certainly her mother. A mother that neither of the Bartolis had mentioned.

“Cory,” I said softly. She was rubbing her hands together in earnest now, her movements almost compulsive.

“I won’t hurt it anymore, if that’s what it takes,” she blurted out. “Because I really want you here.”

“Why?” I asked. There had to be other hunters coming. Ones who actually knew a little something about killing things.

“You’re a Llewelyn. You’re from the family that always had the best hunters. The family that got rid of the unicorns last time. I want you to help me get rid of them again.”

Over the next few days, I came to the conclusion that Cornelia Bartoli and Lilith would be best friends forever. I didn’t know anyone
could
be more obsessed with unicorn trivia than mommy dearest, but this Cory girl had her beat hands down. I’d tried in vain to interest her in any subject that didn’t involve unicorns or the killing thereof. I’d asked her what her favorite books were, and she’d responded that the chronicles of Dona Annabelle Leandrus from 1642 were a bit tough to translate, but had all the best battle descriptions. I’d asked about her favorite movies and she said there wasn’t yet any video evidence of the Reemergence.

All that, and she screamed in her sleep.

So not an ideal roommate, but she
had
kept her word to me regarding Bonegrinder—no mean feat, considering the penchant the animal showed for following us around. There hadn’t been a morning since I’d arrived that we hadn’t woken to find the creature curled outside our bedroom door. The first time it happened, I’d been afraid to disturb her. Cory had shown no such concern; she’d calmly walked to the threshold and shoved Bonegrinder across the hall. But I felt it constituted progress. I’m sure, had I not been present, that shove would have been a kick. And yet the zhi proved a veritable glutton for punishment and came back every night until Cory complained to Neil and had Bonegrinder confined to her steel crate at all times.

That worked well for two days, until she gnawed through the locks.

So now we were in pursuit of a more permanent home for the zhi. I trailed Cory through the covered passageways of the cloister, while she tried various doors and dismissed the rooms they opened into out of hand.

“These rooms were made for the public,” she explained. “You just don’t have the same amount of security.”

I could believe that. The central courtyard—or cloister—was the most delicate part of the whole building. And, aside from the residence hall, it was the one most devoid of unicorn bones, instead merely suggesting the building’s true purpose. The four barrel-vaulted aisles that bounded the cloister were separated from the open court by rows of arches, each supported by a pair of columns that swirled upward in graceful imitation of alicorns. Small gates topped with arrowheads and guarded by pairs of carved stone lionesses marked the north and south entrances, and the interior walls of the courtyard were ringed with mosaics depicting fair maidens and mythical monsters.

It was almost peaceful—if one avoided the bloodstains in the corner where Bonegrinder had fallen.

Cory told me that in ancient days, pilgrims had entered the cloister through the now-padlocked doors against the far wall on the south end, and waited in the courtyard for the hunters to receive them and distribute the Remedy. Currently, that door led to the church next door, and, as far as its officials were concerned, the Cloisters of Ctesias was the home of a now-defunct nunnery, once known as the Order of the Lioness, whose grounds were being used for storage.

“It’s not entirely inaccurate,” Cory said.

“Except for the ‘defunct’ part,” I replied. We curved around the northern aisle, which bordered the rotunda, and eventually came to the eastern aisle, where I could hear the sound of pots banging around and the unmistakable odor of oregano. Cory and I poked our head into the refectory, where Lucia, our cook, was already working on the evening’s marinara. Neil had found Lucia while doing research for eligible members of hunting families, and the abbess of her convent agreed to lend her out to the Order of the Lioness. I think Lucia was enjoying the change in scenery.