Rampant (8 page)

Neil looked beaten. “Usually, the old don or a quorum of experienced hunters. In this situation, we had none, and so I just stepped into the role.”

Good thing Lilith hadn’t known Neil’s position was self-appointed, or I had no doubt she’d have tried to usurp it.

“But maybe that was a mistake. Before, when it was just Marten, Cornelia, and me, it all seemed cut-and-dry. But in practice…maybe you’re right. The old system won’t work anymore. And maybe this is something we all need to discuss, as an Order, together. Nobody owns you; no one can force you to do this. And I’ll admit to you: I’ve been hating every minute of it.”

No one can force me to do this? Neil
had
been talking to my mother, right?

Phil shook her head. “If you hate it, then why are you here? No one’s forcing you, either.”

“Depends upon how you look at it.” He put his head in his hands and was silent for several long moments. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. None of it. But you’re right. What makes me any more qualified to be in charge here than Philippa? At least she’s a hunter. The dons never were before, but this is now.”

I saw Phil lift her chin, but I was still watching Neil. He sounded nothing like the crusty Cornelius Bartoli who’d been
so eagerly e-mailing back and forth with my mother.

“My sister,” he began, still crumpled on the desk, “was a genealogist. It is from her records that we have been able to track most of the families. She thought the unicorns were an interesting family story, helpful only as far as they gave an intricate portrait and a series of records she could use to trace our line. She never believed it.” He straightened and met our eyes. “One day about six months ago, she was out in the woods with her daughter, and they were set upon by a herd of zhi. She was killed.”

“Oh my God,” Phil whispered. “Neil, I’m so sorry.” But I was shaking so hard I couldn’t speak.
Just like Brandt.
Just like Brandt, only no one was there to save her.

“When I found them,” he said, “the zhi were dead. Cornelia had bludgeoned them to death. All but one. She’d passed out, covered in cuts. The only one left was fast asleep on her lap.”

I swallowed hard. “Bonegrinder.” No wonder she’d wanted it dead. And I’d protected it. And Phil had…
cuddled
it.

He nodded, miserable. “The unicorn is drawn to the hunter, always.” After a moment, he went on. “Cory knew nothing about this, nothing about her abilities. You wouldn’t have recognized her then. She’s changed so much. When she went through her mother’s things, she discovered the existence of hunters, of the Cloisters, of the Order. Became obsessed, really. It was Cory who contacted Marten Jaeger, who contacted Lilith Llewelyn.”

So it had never been Neil writing as Cornelius. Always Cory. No wonder he sounded so different in person than in Lilith’s e-mails.

“We needed an adult to become don, to keep looking for new hunters, so I came aboard. What else could I do? Sybil was my
sister, and now I’m all her daughter has left.”

Phil reached out and laid her hand on his shoulder. “Neil,” she said softly.

“You’re a fraud,” I said. “You and Cory brought us here under false pretenses. You haven’t the first clue how to turn us into hunters.”

Neil set his jaw. “We have whatever records remain, and we’ve been working night and day to form a program. I’ve got an expert bowman coming in to teach you archery; we’ve got Gordian Pharmaceuticals for any other resources we might need. No, we have no experience—no one does, anymore—but we know more about the unicorns than anyone alive.”

“And,” Phil said in encouragement, “I’m sure that the new hunters might have family records that could come in handy.” She smiled at him and I felt the urge to scream.

I stood up. “Yeah, you people are just
steeped
in expertise. I’m going to call my mother and tell her exactly what’s going on here.”

Now Phil did turn on me. “Think it will make a difference to her, Astrid? ‘Oh, sure, sweetie. Forget that whole unicorn hunter business and come on home.’ Yeah, right.” She looked back at Neil. “I want to help you. You’ve been through way too much on your own. But it has to be on equal footing. I’m a hunter, yes, but I’m not going to sit back and be anyone’s…chattel, or whatever. I’m a grown woman and I get to make my own decisions.”

“Agreed,” Neil said, and he sounded relieved.

She glanced at me. “And we should take into account the desires of the underage hunters as well. Not just Cory but all of them. I’m not saying chaos, but it’s unfair to enforce
centuries-old rules where they no longer apply. I know we can work something out.”

I made a sound of protest, but she ignored me, continuing to outline her little coup to Neil. That was it. I’d been bossed onto a plane by Lilith, bossed around since I arrived by Cory. I would not be bossed around by my three-years-older cousin. I whirled on my heel and stormed out of the office.

Phil caught up to me before I was halfway across the rotunda. “Astrid, wait.”

“No!” I hugged my arm to my chest and kept on going. “You were supposed to make all this better. Bearable! And now you’re buying into it. I wish you belonged to Mom and I belonged to Uncle John! Then I’d never have to be here.”

She tugged me in close. “Astroturf, come on. Don’t be like that.” Inside her arms, she felt like Lilith. Taller than me. Stronger than me. I tried to push away, but Phil had spent hours in the gym and could spike a volleyball so hard into the court it left a mark. “Don’t you see how much better this is going to be?”

“No. I’m trapped here either way.”

“But not forever. And not the way they want. Think about it. You said Cory wants to hunt the unicorns into extinction. And if your mom had her way, she’d lock you up in here and throw away the key. I may not know all your fancy words, I may not know anything about hunting at all, but I can read Neil. He can’t do this alone. He needs us, as hunters and as helpers. And we need him on our side. Don’t you see?
Work
the system. Don’t fight it.”

“Fight the unicorns?” I scoffed, pushing away and holding out my injured arm. “So that next time they can hit me someplace much more delicate? We may be immune to the
poison, but no one is immune to a big sharp horn through the gut. A foot to the right, and I could have died tonight. Brandt could have died in the woods back home. Sybil Bartoli?
Dead
. And nobody here has the slightest clue about how to train us, how to make us safe.”

Phil had no answer to that.

I pointed at the figure of Clothilde behind us. “She trained all her life, and she was still killed by the karkadann. Unicorn hunters
die,
Phil. This isn’t a game. You can make all the pacts you want so that we can go on dates, go to college, leave after however many years in service, but it doesn’t change the fact that my life is in danger here. I don’t want this. I’m
not
a warrior.”

“But tonight—”

“Tonight I was crazy. It won’t happen again.” I stopped talking, suddenly feeling very out of breath.

Phil bit her lip and studied me. “Astrid, I love you so much. And I swear—I swear—that I want you to be safe, and I want you to be happy. And I’m going to do what it takes to make that happen.”

“You’re going to get me out of here?”

She didn’t respond.

“Didn’t think so. Good night.”

I took the stairs, wincing when I reached for the banister and stretched the scab on my arm. I wanted to rip the bone sconces from the walls. I wanted to smash the bones that jutted from the masonry. On the dormitory floor, I saw a light on beneath the door of another room that must belong to the new hunter. I glanced at the names on the door as I passed by on my way to the bathroom at the end of the hall.
DORCAS AND URSULA.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

I washed and disinfected the nearly healed cut as best as I could. I may be immune to alicorn venom, but who knew what kind of germs unicorns carried? On the plus side, I got to use some of the first-aid supplies Lilith had packed for me. I applied both a liquid bandage and a surprisingly neat row of butterfly stitches—considering I was putting them on one-handed.

The light was off in the room I shared with Cory, and the lump on her bed clearly had nothing to say to me. Moonlight glinted off the glass frames on her shelf, the pictures of her mother, of her dog, of a time when she, too, was normal.

I tried to be as silent as possible as I tiptoed in, changed into pajamas, and climbed into bed. I lay still and breathed deep but remained awake. Phil had joined me at the Cloisters, but she wasn’t on my side. My passport was gone, so I couldn’t even run away. And I’d never see Giovanni again. Minutes passed, maybe even hours, but my head was too full for sleep. My eyes burned, my head ached, and my arm itched, but I didn’t cry.

Instead, I thought of the kirin.

W
HEN
I
WOKE THE NEXT
morning, Cory had already dressed and vamoosed, which, to be honest, was a relief. I still didn’t know what to say to her. I made my bed, then padded off down the hall to the bathroom, rubbing my thumb against my palm. I’d washed it thoroughly last night, but it hadn’t made a difference. My dreams had been filled with kirin, and my skin smelled of fire and flood. When I emerged from the shower, seven lukewarm and trickly minutes later, I saw a tiny, pale-skinned girl with a mousy brown shag standing over the sink, dabbing at her red-rimmed eyes.

“Hi,” I said. This must be Dorcas. Or maybe Ursula.

She burst into tears and ran from the room. At last, someone who wanted to be a hunter even less than I did. I hurried after her, tying a knot in my robe belt as I went. I saw her brush past Cory in the hallway and disappear into her room, slamming the door behind her.

Cory shifted the bundle of linen in her arms and snorted. Then, without acknowledging me, she walked into yet another
of the rooms. I followed.

“Is she okay?” I asked.

Cory turned her back on me and heaved the linens onto one of the beds. “Dorcas Bourg, of the family Bourg. Belgian by birth and spoiled princess by trade. You should have seen her complaining about the rooms yesterday.” She ducked her head into the wardrobe and began rummaging around.

“Is there anything I can do to help you?”

The sounds stopped, but Cory stayed behind the door. “Aren’t you going home soon? With your cousin?”

“No. We had a long talk with Neil and—”

Cory slammed the wardrobe closed and glared at me. “He told you.”

I met her gaze. “Yes. Cory, I’m so sorry.”

She clenched her fists, then stretched out her fingers several times, breathing hard. I thought she might throw something again. I thought she might throw
me
.

“I can’t imagine what you’ve been going through,” I managed.

She crossed to the bed and starting snapping out the sheets, whipping them across the mattress and tucking them in so tightly I was surprised the bed didn’t buckle under the onslaught. I fell silent. My wet hair dripped onto the carpet.

At last, she said, “We’ve two more hunters arriving soon, so there’s plenty of work to be done.”

And that was that. She didn’t speak again, and she avoided me for the rest of the day. Even when our chores brought us together, she wouldn’t look me in the face, and she refused to join any conversation Phil and I had. Even the ones about unicorns. Now that Phil had decided to take on a more active role at the Cloisters, she was filled with curiosity. There was no escape.

I caught myself thinking about the kirin quite a bit, remembering its greasy mane, the fire in my blood when its horn punctured my skin. The scab on my arm was almost completely healed, thanks to my careful ministrations. But I could still feel kirin eyeball against the pad of my thumb.

Dorcas’s parents returned to the Cloisters to take their leave. They swept by us—the husband in a business suit, the wife bejeweled and smelling of expensive perfume—with nary a backward glance, and disappeared into Dorcas’s room. I noted that Ursula’s name was crossed off the sign on her door.

“Apparently,” Phil whispered to me, “she can’t have a roommate.”

“What, like she’s allergic?” Maybe I should have tried that excuse myself.

“No, she
can’t
have one or she won’t stay, according to Neil.” Phil shrugged. “See what I mean about negotiable?”

To judge from Dorcas’s behavior in the days that followed, it was also negotiable whether or not she would come out of her room to join us. Neil, Cory, Phil, and I worked night and day to get the Cloisters ready for real training. I mucked out ancient, dusty stalls filled with the bones of rats—better than unicorns—and dusted off targets galore. We hauled mattresses and swept closets and helped Cory organize stacks of yellowed diaries and other records.

Cory began to speak to me again, and I studiously avoided any conversation that might touch upon her mother. I worried every time I mentioned my own in her presence. How could I talk about how much I resented Lilith when I knew that every moment Cory would kill to have her mom bossing her around?
Had
killed.

The next hunters to arrive were Rosamund Belanger, a budding pianist from Vienna, and Zelda Deschamps, a Parisian model Phil swore she recognized from last fall’s
Vogue.
Zelda was about six feet tall and had the most gorgeous skin I’ve ever seen—smooth and so black it almost looked blue in the half-light of the entrance hall.

Both Rosamund and Zelda seemed skeptical about the displays in the front hall, as well as the existence of Bonegrinder—who acted just as happy to see them as she was to make the acquaintance of all the hunters. Phil had been keeping the zhi in her room, which kept me well out of it. I’d been creeped out by the unicorn before, but now, knowing what it had done, I wanted to be nowhere near the animal.

Cory had said nothing about the new sleeping arrangements. I think she worried that broaching the topic of Bonegrinder with Phil would no doubt lead back to the reason the zhi lived here in the first place.

But I was dying to ask her who had named it.

“You must understand,” Rosamund said in accented English, stroking Bonegrinder’s soft fur with long, slender fingers. “My family knows nothing of our heritage. Cornelius Bartoli told us that we are of the”—she looked at Cory as if for confirmation—“Temerin line.”

“Female descent,” Cory clarified happily, and I wondered if it had been she or Neil who’d been acting as “Cornelius” when talking to Rosamund’s family. “But for all we know, that could make you even stronger. I’m from a bastard line myself—several generations back of course. Great-great-great-grandmother was a governess in a Leandrus household.”

“When did you guys strike it rich?” Phil asked. I frowned.
The Bartolis were rich? And Phil knew it?

Cory grinned. “When her hunter daughter saved a son of the noble line of Bartoli from a particularly nasty re’em. Apparently, it was love at first sight.”

“Wait,” I said. “She was a hunter who left the Order to get married? I thought that was verboten.”

“No,” said Cory. “This was around the time of Clothilde and the Last Hunt. She was out of a job.”

Good for her.

Zelda had kept her distance from the zhi during this exchange. “I don’t do animals,” she said.

“That’s going to make this mission of ours a little tough,” said Phil, ruffling Bonegrinder’s floppy ears.

“Not if all I have to do is kill them.”

I heard Cory mutter under her breath, “I like this one.”

Both Rosamund and Zelda were seventeen, and Cory had assigned them to the same room. Early the following morning, though, Zelda was still in bed while Rosamund stood dressed and ready at our door, asking where the music room could be found.

Cory had blinked. “I think there’s a piano or something downstairs in the chapter house. But I would be shocked to discover that it worked after all this time.”

Phil joined us, with Bonegrinder clopping along at her heels. Zelda emerged, sleepy eyed and wearing a silk robe, and even Dorcas deigned to trail along, curiosity clearly getting the better of her determined isolation.

Back into the bowels of the Cloisters, down to the chapter house, with its Wall of First Kills, its darkness and its grimacing
skulls. Even if the piano worked, I didn’t know how Rosamund planned to play it in the dark, with all those dead things watching her.

We all took lanterns this time, so at least there was a little more light. In fact, well lit, and facing away from the Wall of First Kills, the room was almost cozy. Perhaps the horror factor was entirely due to the decor. Walls of bones might have been the height of interior design fashion in the sixteenth century, but I’d take a chair rail and a still life with fruit over that any day.

The vaulted ceiling was high and practically airy, like a giant cavern or even a cathedral. Phil pulled the muslin covers from the furniture, revealing chairs, tables, even couches. She moved across the vast space, shoving aside dustcovers and lighting sconces as she went, and I realized that not all the room looked like a student lounge.

On the far side of the chapter house, another wall was hung with rows upon rows of weaponry. Axes, spears, bayonets, long bows and crossbows, a katana engraved with golden lions, and small round copper shields showing dents and puncture marks all through their colorful emblems and embellishments. Arrow tips of alicorn and swords whose grips and pommels were set with shavings of the same. There was indeed a piano, with legs that swirled upward like mahogany alicorn and keys not made of ivory, but of bone; as well as a harp that seemed constructed of a giant, curved horn like an elephant tusk, carved with fanciful beasts and resting on a base of golden lions.

Was everything in this room made of unicorn?

“Wow, look at this.” Phil pulled off another cover. Smack-dab in the center of the room sat the largest relic of all, an enormous
throne, resting against the base of the composite column that supported the vault of the ceiling. Every inch of this throne was constructed of alicorn, from the enormous arcing horns that made up the frame, to the twisting maze of many-sized alicorns that crossed and recrossed the back, sides, seat, and base. From a distance, the horns seemed to twist around one another like snakes, endlessly writhing within the prison of the throne, patterns forming and dissolving in each flicker of lamplight. Every time I blinked, I saw something different—a crescent moon, a lion digging its claws into a unicorn’s back, a vast field of battle, a temple afire.

I hated it. It made the hair on the back of my neck, my arms, everything, stand on end. I swayed on my feet, fighting back waves of nausea, dizziness that had erupted the moment Phil had uncovered the throne. I stayed back, choosing to hug the formerly terrifying Wall of First Kills.

Cory stared at it, agog. “Unreal,” she said. “There’s no mention of an artifact this intricate in the records I’ve seen.”

“Maybe they wanted to keep it a secret,” Phil said, “if horns are as valuable as you say.”

Cory looked at Zelda. “You’re from the Hornafius line—the craftsmen. Could they have made this?”

Why was she so insistent that we carried on the same specializations as our distant ancestors? Despite the trials by zhi, I still wasn’t sure there was anything to the claims of Alexander the Great’s DNA being responsible for our abilities. I certainly didn’t feel like I had anything in common with a Macedonian warlord. Genetics didn’t work like that, anyway.

But my roommate never let a little thing like science get in the way of her quest to eradicate an entire species of mammal.
She confronted Zelda. “Does your family have anything—”

Zelda threw back her head and laughed. “My grandparents disowned my mother when she took up with my father. I’m afraid I won’t be much assistance on the family history front.”

“But,” Cory argued, “now that you have adopted your family birthright…”

“They’re racist pigs, more interested in the purity of their family legacy than the reality of their actual family.” She shook her head. “I want nothing to do with the Hornafii.”

Rosamund wandered toward the wall, then stopped short. “Do you hear that?” she said.

We all glanced at each other. “What?”

“The wall. It hums.” She leaned in. “This note.” She sang a single note, high and clear.

Cory shook her head. “I hear nothing.” Philippa, Zelda, and Dorcas concurred, but I stood there, frozen.

I didn’t hear anything…not exactly, but when she’d sung, I felt…I don’t know. I felt the same sharp pain the wall always caused. “Sounds are vibrations, right?” I asked. “I feel…vibrations, near these bones.”

The other four looked at me in shock, and then, one by one, came closer to the wall and placed their palms against it. I gritted my teeth and joined them, and Rosamund did the same.

And then, at once, we heard it. A chord, wild and triumphant, stark and cold. And then, again, stronger than ever, I tasted the same scent I had encountered the first time I’d entered the Cloisters. Fire and fungus, oldness and ozone.

We took our hands away and the chord stopped. Rosamund crossed to the piano and sat down on a small stool, brushing her red hair away from her face as she placed her hands on the
yellowed keys. “This chord…it was this chord.” She played something, and the strings vibrated that same wild sound.

Zelda shook her head. “I know little of music. What does that mean?”

Cory watched Rosamund intently. “I can’t believe it…I’ve been here for weeks, and I never heard.”

I lifted my hands. “Okay, while we’re talking about weird things we’re sensing around here, does anyone else notice that smell?”

Zelda looked at me. “I thought it was mold.”

Dorcas shook her head and spoke for the first time. “No, it smells like wood burn. That’s what I thought it was.”

Cory looked clueless and bit her lip as all the other hunters concurred. “I smelled it,” she protested finally. “At first. I just…haven’t in a while. I’ve been here so long, I guess I just got used to it. I’m going to do more research into these vibrations,” she added quickly, then turned away from the wall.

“Great!” Phil said, plopping down on the throne. “Now maybe we can hear Rosamund play—” Her words dissolved into a scream and she leaped up as if burnt.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, rushing forward. Phil’s arms shook, and she seemed to have trouble standing.

“It…shocked me,” she whispered, then choked, as if retching. Everyone backed away from the throne, and I helped Phil to another chair. “It hurts.”

Phil felt better after a minute or two, and in the end, Cory and Neil roped off the chair until we’d looked into the situation. According to the records we found later, the throne had been a gift to the Order from the people of Denmark, following a particularly bloody battle in the fourteenth century. Phil went
around touching every bit of bone in the building, but she said nothing shocked her the way that throne did. I suggested that maybe it had been a fluke of static electricity, but then Dorcas dared me to go near it, and I’d hardly gotten my hand on the armrest before I felt arrows of pain shooting up to my elbow.