Rampant (27 page)

“I believe my own eyes.” He gestured to my back. “So, yeah. Man, I wish I could watch you shoot sometime. When you were describing it just now—I’ve never seen you look so alive.”

I drew back, aghast. “That’s not true!”

He held up his hands. “Whoa, what did I say? It was just an observation.”

“Don’t say that. Hunting was awful. I’m so relieved to be free of it.” I lay down on the bed, resting on my side so as not to put pressure on my back, and tried to forget his words. He was wrong. Plain wrong.

Yet bowstrings twanged and swords clashed inside my mind.

Giovanni scooted up next to me. “Why do you think you’re free?”

“Because all the other hunters think I’m dead.”

“Your family.”

I was quiet for a moment, imagining what it would be like not to see Phil again. Or even my mom. “It will be okay.”

“Hmmm.” He curled his body to match mine, leaving a few inches between my back and his front, and caressed my arm. “I’m not sure. That doesn’t sound like you, leaving those girls to fend for themselves. Didn’t you say some of them were twelve or even younger? Remember the night we met? You
wouldn’t even let me thrash that gypsy kid who stole your purse.”

“That was different.” In my head, I pictured Ilesha, falling as the kirin charged. I didn’t even know if she was okay. Bucephalus had said none of the hunters had died, but the karkadann wasn’t omniscient. I wondered if anyone else had been seriously injured.

The information the karkadann had given me—would it help them? Would it protect them the next time they went on a hunt, save them from another kirin ambush? Did they even understand that it had been an ambush?

“What are you thinking, Astrid?” His hand traveled up and down my arm, but no farther.

“How nice it is to lie here with you.”

He made that unconvinced little harrumph again.

“Why?” I asked. “What are you thinking?” Sex, probably. We were lying on a bed, after all. And I’d taken my clothes off in front of him. And he was a teenage boy.

But Giovanni surprised me again. “I’m thinking about how you’re not really free. From everything you told me, it sounds like you draw unicorns to you, just by dint of who you are. That’s dangerous, isn’t it?”

“It stops when I’m…not a virgin.”

“Really tempting request,” he whispered into my hair. My entire body seemed to tingle, and the scars on my back burned like a brand. He exhaled hard against my skin.
“Really.”

I rose on my elbow and looked down at him, his head making a dent on the beat-up pillow, his skin, dark against the sheets, his big brown eyes and the little hollow beneath his Adam’s apple where his pulse fluttered so fast I could
hardly tell one beat from the next. I twisted and lowered myself until I was lying across his chest, and we started kissing. Our bodies meshed together, mine damp and raw and sensitive to every touch, his warm and solid and human and wonderful. I grabbed handfuls of his shirt, clinging to him as my heartbeat raced to catch up to his, as our lips and tongues touched and everything seemed so perfect I wanted to cry out in triumph. I slid over, just a few inches, until I was lying more completely on top of him. He reached up to pull me in close, and I whimpered in pain. His hands dropped to the side.

No! Stupid wound.

“If you could do it now,” he said softly, lying utterly still beneath me, as if he was terrified of hurting me again. “Tonight. Would you?”

“I don’t know. I would want to.”

“And if it wasn’t me, would you want to still?”

I knew what he was asking, really. Was it freedom, or was it him? I kissed his chest through his T-shirt, breathed him in—the fresh, living scent of Giovanni, untainted by any touch of unicorn, any whiff of fire or flood. “No. It’s you.”

“It’s you, too, Astrid the Warrior.”

I pulled away. “Stop calling me that.”

“Why? It’s true, isn’t it? It’s what you are.”

I slid off the bed, crossed the room to the window, and stared out at the night. Even Rome was far vaster than what I knew of my little neighborhood near the Cloisters. How could he expect me to return there, knowing how isolated it was? Knowing how dangerous?

“That unicorn, the one that talked to you—”

“Bucephalus.”

“He said that it was especially bad for the other girls now. For anyone with your…abilities. That those other unicorns were trying to hunt you down and would go after the other girls when you were gone. He said you could stop that. Make it safe again. And then you could do whatever you wanted.”

I looked over my shoulder at him. He was sitting on the bed, looking amazing and warm and oh, so out of reach! “Like you?”

“You think I do what I want?”

“No. I think what I want to do is you.”

He laughed, but then got serious again right away. “Astrid, look at your back. You could have died. Should have died. That you didn’t is a miracle. Do you want to mess with that? Considering there are man-eating monsters out there?”

I looked out the window again. Somewhere in the dark, the karkadann waited. I couldn’t hear him anymore, but I could still tell. It was such a part of me now, this unicorn sense. To lose it would be like going blind.

Giovanni went on. “Do you want to…sideline yourself, knowing how bad it is for your friends?”

I swallowed, defiant. But Clothilde had done it, and no one blamed her.

Had she, though? Clothilde hadn’t abandoned the other hunters to their doom. When she ran away, she’d first struck a deal with the karkadann that would protect everyone from the unicorns. Hunters and laymen alike. And what’s more, she’d protected the unicorns from mankind as well.

Astrid the Warrior, Daughter of Alexander, descendant of Clothilde Llewelyn, unicorn hunter—these were the names everyone else had given me. Were they my names? Were they me?

Could I turn my back—my scarred, unicorn-marked back—on them even if I wanted to? Even tonight, so sure I wanted to vanish from that world forever, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Remedy; couldn’t stop recounting to Giovanni in breathless, excruciating details what it had been like to slit the throat of a rampaging re’em; couldn’t stop scanning the countryside, even now, for a glimpse of a unicorn in the darkness.

I
was
a hunter—in bone, in flesh, in blood, in fact.

I needed to return.

B
oys are curious creatures. The second you give in and offer them what they’ve been hounding you for, they start to question it. Thus it was that as Giovanni drove me to the Cloisters the next day, he was no longer so certain that we’d made the right decision.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” he said, navigating crazy Roman traffic and narrow streets. “And I’m worried about your safety. Sure, you survived the last goring, but what about the next battle? I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you.”

I smiled at him. “That’s sweet.”

“Also, what about us?” He swerved around a Vespa and ran a yellow light. I gripped the jump bar. “If you commit yourself to this, can you—? Can we—well, what
can
we do?” He honked angrily at a pedestrian and downshifted. I marveled that a kid from New York knew how to drive at all.

“You’re just horny this morning, aren’t you?”

He didn’t answer that. He didn’t need to. We’d spent the
night wrapped in each other’s arms, kissing some, talking some, but mostly just lying there, making sure our bodies touched as much as possible through our clothes. We knew, perhaps, it would be the last time. My mother was still in charge at the Cloisters, and she was adamant that there would be no men in her hunters’ lives, in any capacity. And there was still that very real possibility that death would catch me the next time I drew my bow.

The morning light was soft on the front courtyard’s mosaics as Giovanni pulled up outside. Sunlight sparkled on the water in the fountain. The stone girl stood there, stoic as always, dipping her alicorn into the basin and announcing her sacrifice to anyone who cared to read the Latin inscription at her feet. Smug bitch.

“Here we are,” he said, and let the car engine idle. “Do you want me to go inside with you?”

“That’s dangerous, until we know where Bonegrinder is.” Or, you know, my mother, whom I wouldn’t put it past to sic the zhi on any intruders or potential Actaeons.

He nodded. “Right, the little pet…unicorn.” In the light of day, he seemed to have a tougher time saying the word. I didn’t blame him. “So.” He played with the keys dangling from the ignition. “You’ll call me?”

“Yes. As soon as I know what’s going on.” I looked down at my hands. “Do you have any idea where you’ll be?”

“At school if they don’t figure out I stole the van and kick me out. With my mom’s family if they do. Either way, I’ll have my cell phone. I’m not leaving Italy anytime soon.” His tone gave little away, but I understood nevertheless. He’d sacrificed a lot to come to me last night. His position at the school, maybe even
his future. And he didn’t even get sex out of the deal. Didn’t even get a girlfriend, since I was going back to the Cloisters with no clue what would happen next. Most incredible of all, he’d encouraged me to do it.

I slid out of the passenger seat and stood there, hand on the door, unsure what to say next. Giovanni stared straight ahead, gripping the wheel in both hands. “It’s right,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”

He nodded curtly. “Be careful, Astrid. Just—” he broke off.
“Ti voglio…ti voglio tanto bene.”

“What does that mean?” I asked. He’d said it before, on the hillside, but now, it sounded as if his heart would break.

He hesitated. “It means everything. It means I love you. It means I want you. It means I want you to be okay. It means everything.”

Yes, it did.
“Ti voglio tanto bene, Giovanni.”
I shut the van door and after a moment, he drove away, and I faced the Cloisters alone.

The rotunda was dark and silent. I went first to Lilith’s offices, but they proved empty of both my mother and the haphazard piles of documents that had been lying around during Neil’s tenure. My mother had been more of a pack rat than either of the Bartolis. Where did everything disappear to? Her room was also empty—her bed didn’t even look slept in.

“Hello?” I called, as I exited back into the rotunda. Nothing. The door to the underground area—the scriptorium, chapter house, and catacombs—was closed, and the cloistered courtyard was empty. I looked toward the second level, but there was no sign of life upstairs either. Was it possible that they
were all out on a hunt this morning? And where was Phil? I know she had been planning on leaving, but I’d hoped she would delay her trip a day or two if I turned up dead.

There was a scratching at the closed door to the stairwell. Bonegrinder! I opened it, and the zhi came bounding out, bleating happily and gamboling around me. “Where is everyone, girl?”

Bonegrinder stopped mid-cavort, then headed up the stairs, looking back every few steps to make sure I followed. What, now she obeyed orders? Curiouser and curiouser.

The dormitory hall was chaos. Half-packed suitcases warred for space with rolled-up rugs and garbage bags stuffed with Cory’s carefully chosen throw pillows and comforters. I knocked on Phil and Valerija’s door.

“What?” came a groggy voice inside. “The first train’s not till noon, so—” Phil threw open the door and stopped. My hand tightened on Bonegrinder’s collar until I saw the ring on Phil’s thumb.

“Oh my God, Astrid.” Her red, shadowed eyes grew wide and filled with tears. She went as if to hug me and I stepped back.

“Careful. My back.”

“You’re alive!” she cried. “How? Val said—” Behind her, Valerija sat up in bed now, rubbing her eyes. I waved at her. Her mouth dropped open. “She said the kirin got you.”

“They did,” I replied. “It’s a really long story, but the quick version is I spent a day lying in a pool of my own blood in the middle of nowhere and then I walked out.”

“Hey, everyone! Astrid’s alive!” Tears were running freely down Phil’s face. She grabbed my hands in her own. “Oh, Astrid, we thought—your clothes. What are you wearing? Why didn’t you call?”

Another really long story. Down the hall, doors opened and faces peeked out, filled with shock and joy. Cory and Rosamund came running, Zelda, Dorcas, and Ursula following after. Even Melissende and Grace seemed happy to see me. I backed against the parapet, leery of being trapped in a bone-crushing hug. My back felt better this morning, and Giovanni had said the scars looked less livid then they had the previous evening, but I knew I wasn’t a hundred percent yet.

“Why can’t I hug you?” Phil said. “I need to hug you.” She grabbed my head in her hands and squeezed. She kissed my forehead, my cheeks, my nose. “Thank God, thank God, oh, Asteroid, you have no idea—” she stopped. “Have you seen Aunt Lilith?”

I shook my head. “I couldn’t find her.”

“No, well, you wouldn’t, would you?” Cory said.

“What? Why?”

Phil tugged on my arm. “Come here,” she said softly. “I’ll fill you in.” To the group, she said, “All right, everyone, back to packing. Astrid’s safe and sound.”

“Packing?” I asked, as Phil pulled me into her room and shut the door.

Phil told me everything. The kirin ambush had taken its toll on the hunters. We’d lost three bows, two knives,
me
—and Ilesha was currently in the hospital with a crushed femur and a cracked pelvis. She’d been trampled. When Lilith had heard about what had happened to me, she’d broken down completely, tearing off her ring and falling to her knees in front of Bonegrinder. It had been Cory who’d tackled the creature to the floor before she could attack.

“I talked her down,” Phil said. “But I don’t know if that was worse.” Lilith had then announced that the Cloisters was closing, and sent everyone to pack while she called all their parents and made travel arrangements. Phil had tried to call Neil to complain, and Lilith had confiscated her phone. Later, Phil had found her down in the chapter house, ripping the trophies off the Wall of First Kills.

“What?”

“She was screaming like a banshee, Astroturf. I tried to stop her, but she pushed me out the door, then locked it. She’s been in there all night.”

“And you left her there!” I cried. “With all those weapons, in that state of mind—” I flung the door to Phil’s room open and started to run.

“Astrid, wait—” Phil called after me as I sprinted down the stairs. “Don’t you think we tried? But by the time I got a hunter to help me, she’d shoved—” Bonegrinder, sensing an imminent chase, bounded along beside me. Phil’s voice faded, and the zhi and I sprinted into the rotunda. “We’ve been trying to break down that door—”

I threw a glance over my shoulder at the door to the lower quarters. Phil skidded to a stop at the base of the stairs. “No ax to be had in this place?”

Cory bumped into her from behind. “She locked them all in with her.”

“So?” I cried. “Rip a bone from the wall.” I started down the stairs, Bonegrinder hot on my heels, and the other girls following at whatever pace they could manage.

“Mom!” I screamed. “Mom, it’s Astrid!” Please, please let her be thinking clearly. I reached the bottom of the stairs. The
skeletal kirin’s head above the door leered at me as I raised my foot to kick. The door showed signs of splintering but stood firm. The first attack splintered it further, but it didn’t collapse. She had barricaded herself in.

“Mom!” I called again. “Open the door!”

Cory materialized by my side. This time she had a unicorn femur with her. “Here,” she said. “But be careful. She’s shoved the throne up and it’ll hurt you if you touch—”

“Motheeeerrrr!” I shrieked and battered at the door until the bone shattered in my hand. “Open the door! It’s all right! I’m alive.”

From within, there was no sound at all.
No
…

“Mommy! Please!” I placed both hands against the door to shove.

“Astrid, no!” Cory said, but it was too late.

The field of mud rose in my mind’s eye, the wormy, smoke-filled sky, the stench of mold and ashes, of blood and human waste and death. Unicorns and hunters screamed, bows twanged and swords clashed with horn and skin and bone. Fangs tore at flesh, and hooves crushed skulls. Human voices shouted in foreign languages and galloping monsters sounded like thunderclaps in the desolate air.

But there was no pain.

“Phil!” I said. “Help me!”

“It doesn’t hurt you?” Cory asked as Phil took her place by my side, but I was too busy pushing to answer, ignoring the visions and the renewed agony in my back and putting all my weight against the broken door, against the bits of alicorn throne that showed through, against the ghosts of hundreds of dead hunters who shouted above it all.

Once I had a foot or so of space, I climbed through the wreckage. “Mom!” I called again as I stumbled onto the floor, free of the chair, and the visions evaporated. I limped forward, conscious of the excruciating pain in my back. The room was a wreck, as Phil had said. All the trophies had been torn down and strewn across the floor. Tables and chairs were overturned, the piano was lying at a crazy angle. My mother stood before the weapon wall, the claymore of Clothilde Llewelyn in her hands.

“Astrid?” she said. She looked at me, her eyes hollow and haunted, her lips and cheeks pale. And for the first time, I knew what it would look like if my mother really
were
crazy. She’d spent the last night insane with grief. “Oh, honey, is it really you?” The sword clattered to the floor and we met in the middle of the room. She enfolded me in her arms, but I barely noticed the sting of her hands on the tender flesh of my back. “Oh, Astrid, Astrid.”

“Didn’t you hear me yelling for you?”

“I didn’t…” She shook her head and started crying again. “I didn’t know what to think. They’ve been trying to break in all night long.”

I looked around the room. “Mom, what did you do?”

“I sent you to your death, sweetheart. I killed my daughter. My daughter!”

I shook my head. “No. I’m right here.”

“It’s a miracle!” she gushed. “And one I’m not risking again. Just making you come here, and the other girls…It’s too dangerous. There’s no way we can fight them. It’s all a lie. The ancient hunters trained their whole lives. I make you train for a few weeks, a few months, and I somehow expect you to survive? It’s impossible.”

I nodded. “I know, Mom. I’ve been saying it all along. It’s dangerous. It’s terrifying. But at least here, if we draw them, we’re somewhat prepared. We’re not like Cory or I were when we each met the zhis in the woods—no weapons, no nothing.”

She pointed to the trophies strewn about the room. “These hunters…they may have been successful at first, but in the end, they all fell.”

“Not all of them, Mom.” I pulled away, crossed my arms in front of my chest. “There was Clothilde.”

She stared at me.

“Why didn’t you tell me about my father—that he was a Llewelyn? That he was descended straight from Clothilde?”

She turned and retrieved the sword from where it had fallen. “I did,” she said. “You don’t remember, but when you were young, you knew. You used to run around the house with a tinfoil sword.” She smiled wistfully. “You were so adorable then. And when you stopped listening to me, when you started trusting John over me, it was just another thing you chose to forget. All the magic. All the fun we used to have together. So, yes,” she said, lifting her chin. “Then I kept it to myself. My own secret, my own revenge. I didn’t want you to have another crazy story to hate me for or claim it was incest or some other nonsense.”

Please. Way too many generations had passed for it to be incest. If my mom had ever paid the slightest bit of attention to a genetics book published after Mendel first started breeding pea plants, she’d know that.

“But you didn’t tell the Bartolis, either,” I said. Were the rest of the hunters outside the door, listening to this? Did I care? “They could have found other hunters…a whole line! Why?”

My mother kept her face down. “Because, sweetie, I wanted
it for you. Llewelyn from both sides—Clothilde Llewelyn, even. The greatest hunter ever. The one who killed the karkadann!”

But she hadn’t killed the karkadann. Or didn’t my mother know that?

“Your father’s family—they don’t even know who they are, honey,” my mom said. “They didn’t deserve it, like you.”

“Didn’t deserve being sent off to die?”

“You’re right,” she said. “They don’t deserve that. None of us do. I understand that now. I didn’t before—I was just thinking about glory. It’s the only thing we have, Astrid. The only thing that makes us special.”