Rampant (17 page)

“Y
OU’RE A BADASS
, C
UZ
,” Phil said, when we were standing in the chapter house alone. Somewhere upstairs, Melissende and Grace were being lectured at, threatened with calls to their parents, made to feel the full weight of their “irresponsible and violent actions.” Ilesha and Ursula had been hustled to their room by a shaken Rosamund and were probably being cosseted and fed bonbons this very moment. Cory, no doubt, was listening at Neil’s door. And I couldn’t calm down. My foot still tingled from hitting the sword. I can’t believe I did that.

“I’m not.” I rubbed one ankle against the other and cast a glance at the claymore, now lying still and silent on the stones. “I was just trying to stop her.” A badass move would have been actually using the alicorn I’d been holding in my hands. So I kicked a sword. Big whoop.

“Well, you stopped her!” Phil said. “Stopped everyone. I think Neil even heard you upstairs.”

I shrugged. That would be another miracle to chalk up to the acoustic anomalies of the chapter house. I restored the alicorn
in its rightful spot on the Wall of First Kills, wincing slightly as the vibrations grew stronger. The bones on the wall seemed to ripple in place, and I turned away before I felt sick.

“Let’s put this room in order and then go back to the courtyard.” I needed sunshine, and air untainted by the scent of fire and flood.

“You got it.” Phil gave a little giggle and righted a chair. “After all, I wouldn’t want to get on your bad side.”

“Why do you keep saying stuff like that?”

She shook her head and started reassembling the chess set. The pieces had scattered during the altercation. “Because you should have seen your face, Astrid. Like Judgment Day had come and you were an avenging angel about to sock Grace Bo into hell. I was even scared of you for a second.”

“I don’t know what came over me.”

“I do. They were threatening the youngsters. Llewelyns don’t roll with that.”

I dismissed her with a sniff. “So then you’re tough, too.”

“You bet I am.” She flicked a lock of hair behind her shoulder. “Watch.” She tiptoed over to the throne of bones and poised her finger over the armrest.

“Don’t do it,” I said, smiling.

Her hand descended in slow motion, while Phil kept up a running commentary. “Will she do it? Can she?”

“Is she a moron?” I asked.

“Closer…clooooooser…”

I rolled my eyes.

“ZAP!”
Phil shouted.

I flinched, and Phil started laughing. “Yeah, we’re both
real
tough.”

I shook my head and went to pick up the sword. It was much heavier than I’d expected. How had Grace held it aloft at all? I tried to lift the sword entirely off the ground twice before I managed to get it horizontal. Straight up, with the point against the stone, the hilt of the claymore rested right below my chin. I had newfound respect for good old Clothilde, if she could wield this monster sword on a regular basis.

“Hey, Phil, come help me hang this up.” She bounded up the steps to the weapons wall, and together we wrestled the claymore back into its stand.

“Still pretty sharp,” Phil said, examining the edge of the blade. “You have to admit, seeing this stuff is unbelievably cool.”

I cast my eyes over the other weapons stored here. “I think I prefer our newfangled bows, with their state-of-the-art sights and levels and release aids.”

“True.” Phil twanged one of the bowstrings on the wall, which set off a whole new wave of vibrations from the bones opposite. “Lino did say that finger releases could throw off our aim.”

Below the claymore hung a small, highly curved dagger made from a single piece of carved alicorn. It was a curious piece, different from almost every other weapon on the wall.

I looked back at the Wall of First Kills. There was no trophy for Clothilde Llewelyn. Could this alicorn knife be from her first kill? I lifted it from the wall, surprised that the hilt felt so warm in my palm.

“I say we get out of here tonight,” Phil said, still running her fingers over the weaponry.

What would such a small dagger be good for? In my fist, the blade curved like a scythe. Maybe skinning a dead unicorn? “You mean call the guys?”

Phil shrugged. “Eh. Not unless you want to see Jo.” Phil had taken to calling Giovanni that, in imitation of Seth. “But maybe we can convince Neil that we all need a night out. Clear the air, so to speak.”

I took a couple of practice swipes with the blade. “Like a Cloisters field trip?”

“Sure! I think we’re all going a little stir crazy in here. Melissende just feels left out. She didn’t get to go with us to Tuscany; she’s stuck being a bitch while the rest of us are fabulous all the time. That’s got to be depressing.”

I laughed, then switched hands. “But all those hunters in the same place are bound to draw in some unicorns.” I shuddered, remembering the scene in the park. Why had the unicorns fought each other? Why were they there to start with? Had they been coming for us when they started to fight? Had it been a battle for rights—who would get to eat the unarmed hunters? And if so, why did the surviving unicorn retreat? I stared down at the alicorn blade. There were no markings on the hilt or pommel to indicate the name of the hunter to whom it had belonged. I wondered if, like the sword it hung beside, it belonged to Clothilde. I liked the way it felt in my hands.

“I think we’ll be fine if we stay in populated areas. No dark, quiet make-out spots. No unicorn is going to come at us in the middle of a piazza.” Phil put the arrow she was examining back on the wall. “Come on. Let’s go ask Neil.”

I wasn’t entirely sure this whole scheme didn’t revolve around Phil having a night on the town with Neil, but I didn’t know how to ask her that, so I simply followed as she headed up the stairs toward his office. It wasn’t until I passed the tableau of Clothilde and Bucephalus that I realized I still held the dagger
in my hands. I hid it beneath Clothilde’s billowing skirts, then caught up with my cousin.

Neil showed zero interest in squiring a bunch of teenage girls around Rome’s night spots, and Cory worried that an evening out now would be tantamount to rewarding bad behavior.

“Well then how about just Ilesha and Ursula?” Phil asked. “Cheer them up?”

“Then who will police the others?” He shook his head. “I’m the don here. I have to have some rules.”

Yes, his supervision had been marvelously effective down in the chapter house.

“Besides, they’re children, Pippa. Not coeds. I can’t allow these girls to go running about the streets of Rome at will.”

I snorted. They all looked at me. “Please,” I said. “Valerija was a homeless addict before she showed up on our doorstep. I doubt she needs protection from you.”

“What about Ilesha and Dorcas and Ursula?” Neil asked. “What about Grace?” He shook his head. “Parents put me in charge of their children. I have to do what I think is best for them.”

“So it’s okay to endanger their lives by sending them off to chase man-eating unicorns, but you can’t risk letting them go out for gelato?” Phil asked. “It may be time to rethink your system.”

“It’s not safe,” he said. “Every time you and your cousin go wandering around the city, you get attacked by a kirin.”

Phil threw her hands in the air. “And left to their own devices, these girls almost sliced each other up with swords right here in the Cloisters! What’s more dangerous? I’m talking about a
movie or something. Get some fresh air.”

“Things have been a bit slow around here,” Neil admitted, “what with the loss of our trainer. I suppose boredom is part of the reason the girls have taken to picking on one another.”

“We still haven’t gotten a new assignment from Gordian?” Cory asked.

“No,” Neil said, his tone clipped and frustrated. “It’s aggravating, to say the least. We need more equipment, more training. The hunters have been doing phenomenally well by themselves, but we had an agreement with Gordian, and it’s not keeping its end of the bargain. I don’t know how far Cory and my resources will stretch without the company’s assistance.”

“Marten Jaeger’s a jerk,” Phil said.

“Don’t say that,” Cory said. “He’s made it all possible. He’s responsible for everything we’re doing.”

“‘Everything we’re doing’ amounts to driving an endangered species back into extinction so he can get his hands on a drug that will make him richer than he already is,” Phil replied. “If he really wanted to do some good, how about finding a sustainable way to deal with the unicorn problem? He’s as bad as those poachers hunting tigers in Asia.” Phil stopped. “Actually,
we’re
as bad as them. We’re poachers.”

“Poachers,” Cory corrected, “are hunters who steal game from other people’s lands. Unicorns are not game, and we were invited onto that farm. Ergo, not poaching.”

“We’re something, then, and it’s not good.” Phil crossed her arms and looked at Neil. “No opinion at all?”

“Poaching,” he said, “can also be defined as hunting a species it is illegal to hunt
according to law.”

Phil glowered, then turned away from the Bartolis altogether
and tried to win me. “Marten Jaeger’s
also
a jerk, Astroturf, because he doesn’t give you enough credit. I’ve seen the way he blows you off every time you try to talk to him about his research.”

“What should he be giving me credit for? The fact that I come to the same conclusions that his staff did months ago?” I was lucky he was encouraging me at all.

“Well, you told him about Brandt, didn’t you? The only living human to have received a dose of the Remedy?”

True. I wondered if Marten had ever tracked him down and tested him, or if my ex had run away from home before he’d gotten the chance. I doubted Brandt would be an eager volunteer. And maybe the Remedy worked like standard anti-venom, and was metabolized by the body after use along with the venom it “soaked up.” I sighed. I didn’t know enough about any of these topics to really make myself useful to someone who had an entire pharmaceutical company at his beck and call. I wasn’t good for much more than my aim and my unicorn proximity radar. Since I hadn’t brought down a unicorn of my own yet, and my first instinct when I sensed a unicorn was to run in the other direction, I wasn’t even good for those.

Satisfied she’d made her point, Phil turned back to the subject at hand. “The hunters need to get out of here for a few hours. This isn’t good for anyone.”

“How many of the girls speak enough Italian to understand a film?” Cory asked.

“An action movie, then, so dialogue doesn’t matter.” She glared at Cory. “Or just wander around a piazza for a few hours. Get away from the whole hunting scene for a bit. No wonder they feel competitive and pressured. This is all they’ve been
doing for weeks.” She caught herself. “All we’ve been doing.”

If Neil noticed the slip, he gave no indication of it.

“And we’ll be in a group,” Phil was arguing now. “We can even carry weapons, if that will make you happy.”

“Oh,” Cory said. “Very inconspicuous, climbing the Spanish Steps with a longbow strapped to your back?”

“Then what do you suggest?” Phil asked. “You know all the history. What did hunters of yore do?”

“Stayed inside where they belonged,” Cory replied.

“Well
I
don’t belong locked up in here.” Phil lifted her chin. “None of us do.”

My cousin pouted to beat the band, and Neil called her “Pippa” no fewer than four times, and in the end, Cory, Phil, and I were charged with escorting the other girls to a movie and a gelato parlor, then straight back to the Cloisters before ten. Alone.

The first thing Phil did was call Seth and ask if he wanted to join us. We were standing in the courtyard at the time, watching Bonegrinder tear a shank of pork to pieces while the afternoon sun slanted down and made the twisting marble columns glow white. I marveled at the zhi’s enthusiasm for her dinner. She was acting awfully ferocious, considering the meat was already dead. How different, I wondered, was Bonegrinder’s behavior from that of a zhi raised in the wild? If food were scarce, would she cannibalize her own kind? Was that what we’d seen that night in the park? But why would a unicorn attack another unicorn when there were loads of unarmed, tasty people about?

Phil shoved her phone at me. “Giovanni wants to talk to you.”

“Astrid the Warrior,” he drawled when I picked up. “How’s life in the Wildlife Control Nun business?”

“Frustrating.” At least he was joking about it. He’d seemed a bit shell-shocked after seeing those corpses a few days ago.

“I thought we talked about this habit you have of waiting for Phil to make plans before you’ll see me.”

Phil, leaning close enough to hear both sides of the conversation, raised her eyebrows at me.

“What can I say?” I replied. “I don’t have my own phone.”

“I think you like playing hard to get.”

“Ouch.” Hard to get? I’d thrown myself at him!

He went on in that same mocking tone, “So, you’re deigning to see me tonight, I hear?”

I turned away from Phil and walked a few columns down. “I
want
to see you tonight. I’m sorry I didn’t call myself, but I’ve—”

“Been busy with those wild animals. I get it.”

My throat started to burn again, but it had nothing to do with alicorn venom. I’d never heard him like this before. “What are you talking about? Giovanni—”

“—not wild enough for you,” he was saying, as if I wasn’t even there. I looked over at Phil, who was staring back, every bit as clueless as I was. “Baby, you’ve got no idea.”

“Are you drunk?” I asked, and Phil’s eyebrows shot skyward again.

Seth came on the line. “So, we’ll see you both at Piazza Navona tonight?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.” The last thing I wanted was for Giovanni and I to get into a fight in front of the other hunters. I’d lived through one public breakup. I didn’t need another.

“Nonsense, mini Phil!” he said with a laugh that set my teeth
on edge. “We’ll have a blast. Bring all your little friends, too.” He hung up.

I looked up at Phil. “This was a mistake. Let’s not meet them.”