Rampant (2 page)

What did I really know about him? I knew he wanted to get a swimming scholarship to college and that he had three older brothers and that his favorite pizza topping was barbecued
chicken and that he didn’t read books, not even Harry Potter.

(Lilith wouldn’t let me read Harry Potter because there was a whole thing in there about drinking unicorn blood that she said was inappropriate. I sneaked Kaitlyn’s copy and the unicorn bit is maybe a paragraph or so of the entire novel. Whatever.)

Were these the sort of things that I wanted to base an intimate relationship on? Barbecued chicken pizza and the butterfly stroke? He’d never even asked me why I spent so many hours at the hospital. Never asked me what I wanted to do in college.

On the other hand, the prom was a month from now, and if Brandt took me, I’d be one of the few sophomores at the dance. I could deal with
that
variety of abnormal. Going to prom would be…something. Maybe something worth letting him put his hands inside my pants for.

In the woods, the darkness shifted.

“Did you see that?” I asked, sitting up straight. I
knew
there’d been something out there.

The braid popped out of Brandt’s fingertips. “No. What?” “There’s something moving in there.” I could see it. I could…
feel it.
Like earlier, on the porch, only more so. So much more so. “What do you think it is?”

He shrugged. “A deer.”

Of course. It was just the size for a deer, too. So then why was I standing up and striding off the blanket and into the trees? I’d seen plenty of deer.

“Astrid! Where are you going?”

If it were a deer, then Brandt’s whining and my shuffling through the carpet of fallen leaves would have scared it off. Heck, almost any wild animal would have been leery of all that noise. But there it was, just a few trees over. Standing, frozen,
as if waiting. I stepped into the tiny clearing, and the creature emerged from the shadows.

And, no, it was not a deer.

Not a goat, either, though that would be the closest term I could use to describe the way it looked. A goat, or maybe some sort of small antelope. Its fur was white and shaggy and reminded me a bit of the hair on a llama. Its back was about thigh high, and its head and neck hovered somewhere near my waist. Of course, the horn made the creature look much bigger. Protruding in a straight line from the center of its forehead, it was easily half the length of my arm, and twisted like a screw.

Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. My mother’s psychosis was not only genetic, it had uniformity of type as well.

I was seeing
unicorns
.

The unicorn looked up at me with eyes as blue as a Siamese cat’s, and let out a little bleat that sounded nothing whatsoever like fairy bells. It stepped forward cautiously. This was no hallucination. I prepared to be rammed through the heart, and wondered idly if the poison was very fast acting.

Now I wished I’d paid attention to Lilith all those years. Of course, if I had, I’d simply think that unicorns didn’t exist
anymore,
rather than that Mom was nuts and they’d never existed at all.

The unicorn was only a few inches away from me now. I couldn’t look away. But then it bent one leg and swept into what looked for all the world like a low, very formal bow. The tip of its horn missed my body by millimeters in its semicircular trip to the ground.

I stood stock-still for several seconds, but the unicorn didn’t appear to be preparing for the death blow. Maybe I could just
back out of the clearing slowly. But as soon as I lifted my foot from the ground, the unicorn looked up.

“Nice goat,” I said softly. “Gooooood goat. Stay…” I took a step. The unicorn came forward and pushed its head under my hand like some sort of horned golden retriever waiting to be scratched behind the ears.

Terrified of angering it, I scratched. The unicorn bleated in ecstasy. Lilith had never once mentioned this. Why wasn’t I being killed on the spot?

“Astrid? You okay?”

The unicorn stiffened, and the noises it was making turned into menacing growls. Did Brandt see what I saw?

“Fine, Brandt. Just, um, stay where you are, okay?” The unicorn trembled with rage. Its lips curled in a snarl, revealing pointed white teeth.

“Christ, Astrid, what is that thing?” Brandt broke into the clearing.

With the shrieking howl of a bloodthirsty beast, the unicorn charged straight at him.

I
WATCHED IN HORROR
as Brandt fell backward. I think I even screamed. The unicorn, ready for a second attack, froze, then promptly reared and took off, cloven hooves scattering the fallen leaves as it went.

Brandt was gulping and squealing, clasping his leg as blood gushed out in a macabre little fountain from the puncture wound the unicorn had left in his thigh. My first aid training told me this meant the unicorn had ruptured Brandt’s femoral artery. And it soon became clear that the blood loss was the least of our worries.

Brandt’s skin became pallid, and his blood vessels stood out in a violent violet red, protruding so far from his body that they looked almost like the ridges on corduroy. His eyeballs drained of color, and from the sounds he was making as he tried to breathe, I guessed his throat was closing up. I had no idea what these symptoms meant. Not anaphylactic shock, as there was no way he’d come in contact with a unicorn before. Septic shock would reduce the blood flow as his heart shut down, but if
anything it seemed as if Brandt was suffering from tachycardia. I could almost hear his pulse pounding from a foot away.

Yep, the horn poison was fast acting, all right. And what could 911 do to counteract alicorn venom?

I called my mom. “Lilith, I” said, cradling the phone against my ear as I tied an arm of my sweater in a tourniquet around Brandt’s leg and weighed how best to break the news. She hated when I teased her.

“Astrid, we’ve talked about how you’re only supposed to use your phone for emergencies. Our budget’s tight.” Lilith sounded bored. But I was about to feed her delusion for the first time in ten years. Uncle John would be
so
disappointed in me.

“This guy got gored by a unicorn and he’s turning purple.”

Brandt let out a muffled moan. His tongue had swelled and his skin was clammy to the touch. I clearly needed to brush up on my diagnostics, because I hadn’t the slightest clue what to do next. Keep his airways clear. Stop the bleeding. But cleanse the poison? Way too late.

“What?” Lilith seemed to wake up on the other end. Little wonder. She’d probably been waiting her whole life for this moment.

“A unicorn,” I repeated. “Mom, come quick. He might die.” As soon as I gave her the directions and hung up, I dialed 911 and told them to get a paramedic over here, stat. And then I sat there and stared at Brandt. I stroked his hand and made soothing noises. I made sure he was comfortable there on the ground and that the tourniquet was tight. I marveled how quickly I’d stopped thinking of him as “boyfriend” and started to picture him only as “patient.”

Blood began to soak through my sweater and pool in the
leaves. It was a really nice sweater, too. Angora blend, a gift from Phil. Not that it mattered if it could save his life. But I doubted it would be the blood loss that did him in. I looked at his face and tried not to be sick. I’d kissed that face. I’d seen it across the lunch table for more than a month. But now I barely recognized it. Alicorn venom was clearly some nasty stuff. Either that or my blossoming madness had supplied visions far worse than any I’d found in diagnostics illustrations.

“Hang on, Brandt.” I forced myself to stick by his side, though more than anything I wanted to—in order—vomit in the leaves, run for the hills, and dump a whole carton of stain remover on my sweater. Why couldn’t I do this? I wanted to be a doctor, for goodness sake! I’d seen much worse as a candy striper at the hospital.

But never someone I knew; never someone I was debating letting get to third base; and, most of all, never a victim of my childhood terror, the unicorn.

Why hadn’t it attacked me? And where was it now? I thought about the baby monitor, back on the blanket. Should I run and get it? Could I leave Brandt alone?

“I’ll be right back, okay?”

But he grabbed me with a bloody hand, choked out something unintelligible, and stared at me wide-eyed. I sank back to my knees. The kids should be fine. The door was closed. As long as they didn’t wander outside…Oh, God, please don’t let them wander outside!

At long last, I heard my mother calling from the edge of the woods. She strode through the trees, and I saw that she’d brought with her this gorgeous, golden, blown-glass vial that has been sitting in a place of honor in our den for as long as I
can remember. She’d always claimed that she got it in the same spot where she met my de facto sperm donor—I mean, my father—and that it contained something very precious.

I’d never wanted to know what exactly she found so precious about a dirty glass she procured during an anonymous one-night stand that had cost her a scholarship and a career. My friends wonder why I’m not sleeping around? Let’s just say I
live
with my cautionary tale.

I waved her over, and she took in the scene at once: my tousled hair and swollen lips; the rumpled blanket a few yards away; and most of all, Brandt, who was by this time the color of rotten meat and quaking with odd spasms. She gave me a look that clearly said
we’ll talk later,
brushed me aside, knelt, and brandished the vial over him like a magician performing a trick.

Suffice it to say, the stuff in the vial had dried out, but she poured some lukewarm Coke—of all things—inside, swished it around, and dumped most of the contents down Brandt’s throat.

As soon as he stopped convulsing, which was relatively quickly, Brandt grabbed Lilith’s hand. “What did you give me, you psycho?”

Lilith responded by shaking the rest of the mixture onto his wound, which began to close immediately. Brandt took one look at that and started screaming, which seemed a bit odd to me, given the fact that the danger was over.
Now
he screamed? He must not have gotten a good look at his corduroyed face. I had, and, let me tell you—totally screamworthy. Plus, he was writhing so much that I could barely observe the effects of the Coke on his leg.

“That’s it,” Lilith said with a shrug. “God help us if it attacks again.” She blew her shaggy bangs out of her face and looked at me, completely ignoring Brandt’s shrieks and the fact that lights were turning on all over the neighborhood. I could only imagine what Bethany and Brittany were thinking. “Do you know where it is now, Astrid?”

I looked at Lilith, incredulous. “It ran off.”

“I know,” she said, clearly annoyed. “Where is it
now?
”

As if I would somehow know!

Pretty soon after that, the police and EMT came, and Lilith fed them some story about a rabid goat roaming the woods that had attacked Brandt and me. See? She’s usually quite lucid. And, probably thanks to the effect her theories had on her thesis adviser, she liked to keep this unicorn stuff in the family. Otherwise, I’m sure Uncle John would have had her committed long ago.

I backed her up of course (what, you think I’m going to say “unicorn” to cops?), and Brandt seemed a bit foggy on the details. According to the paramedic, the wound looked way too small to have resulted in so much blood loss, but Brandt might need a transfusion, judging by his sluggish pulse and low blood pressure. Considering the way his veins had been looking before my mom showed up—and I think I saw practically every one—I thought that might be a good idea.

The Myersons returned home about that time to discover their driveway overrun with every parent’s worst nightmare: cars with flashing lights. Though appalled that all this happened in their backyard, they seemed far more relieved to learn that their children had come through unscathed than upset that I’d left Brittany and Bethany alone in the house
while my boyfriend came over.

They were also too distraught by the situation to remember to pay me, but I figured I shouldn’t push my luck.

Of course, the fun part of my evening was just beginning. First, I had to wrestle the car keys off my mother, who was entirely too excited to drive. The whole way home, I was treated to a monologue about how this discovery would be the end of all our problems, would make people believe in her research at last; speculation about where in the world this pocket of surviving unicorns could have been hiding for the past hundred years—the Canadian Rockies?—and what could have made this particular unicorn wander out now; and of course, an earful on the merits of
waiting.

The weekend was more of the same. My mother went back to the forest near the Myersons’ house on three separate occasions, twice during the day and once at night, searching for more evidence that Brandt and I had indeed seen a unicorn. Nothing. No spoor, no tracks, no tiny mutilated animals that would have indicated that a poisonous, killer beast had moved into the neighborhood. I stayed indoors and waited for the police to call and tell me they’d found a wandering madwoman in the woods. They never called me, but, then again, neither did Brandt, and the one time I phoned
him
, his mother informed me that he wasn’t home. He wasn’t at the hospital, either—I checked. Where else would you go the day after you almost died?

In between, I was a captive audience for Lilith’s lectures on the history of our illustrious family, starting from when Alexander the Great was nine years old and tamed the fearsome karkadann, Bucephalus. Though the history books teach that Bucephalus was Alexander’s trusty warhorse, according to my mom—and
several ancient Alexander biographers whose sources were, shall we say,
extremely
suspect—the beast that the great king rode when he conquered half the world was actually a giant, man-eating Persian species of unicorn called a karkadann.

In the accounts my mother read me, the stable keepers in Alexander’s father’s palace were planning on having the “horse” destroyed because he was
anthrophagos
, which is Greek for “he breakfasted on the stable boy”—or something like that. His name, Bucephalus, was another clue: it meant “ox head”—apparently, they couldn’t figure out what a horse was doing with a horn. Alexander, not even a teenager yet, was the only person who could approach the monster, the only one who could tame him. And thus, Bucephalus was spared, and a legendary partnership born.

Between Bucephalus’s dietary proclivities, venomous horn, and sharp fangs and Alexander’s military strategy and prowess with a sword, the two of them cut quite a swath through the Middle East back in the day, conquering every civilization they came across, taking over half the known world. According to my history teacher, the horse died somewhere in what is now Pakistan, where Alexander named a city after him, then went home for good.

According to my
mother
, Bucephalus vanished into the Himalayas, and Alexander, distraught, found he no longer wielded the power that proximity to the unicorn had given him all his life.

So basically, everything was business as usual in my own personal nuthouse until school on Monday, when Brandt finally put together all of the details of the evening. Or at least enough of them to know that we’d forced him to drink something and
that I’d called my mom
before
I dialed 911. His revenge was swift and terrible, and I found myself boyfriendless and humiliated before first period was over.

By lunchtime, even Kaitlyn was giving me a wide berth. “Is it true?” she asked, her voice muffled by the bathroom stall door. I was hiding in the girls’ room until I could be sure that my face had gone from utter-mortification magenta to a more reasonable I’ve-been-dumped mauve.

I sniffled once or twice and availed myself of another square of toilet paper. I still hadn’t determined if I was most upset by the public breakup, the fact that I might have inherited mental instability, or the possibility that my mom was actually right.

“It depends on what he’s saying.” For instance, if he was saying that he’d been attacked and poisoned by a miniature unicorn and then magically cured with the final dregs of a mystical panacea known as the Remedy—and everything else my mom had been blabbing about all weekend—then yeah. Pretty much true.

“Brandt’s telling everyone you slipped him drugs and sicced a rabid goat on him, then you and your mom orchestrated a massive cover-up when the police came.”

“That’s a lie!” I lied. Okay, it was about 80 percent true, though not in that order and definitely not with that intent.

“But then what
did
happen?”

I sighed. Maybe it would have been easier to let him die. Not too Hippocratic oathy of me, but fewer witnesses meant so much less explaining. “Like I told the police, we were in the woods, and this crazy…thing came out of nowhere, gored Brandt, then ran off.”

“But then what was your mom doing there? And why is there
that weird mark on his leg?”

“What mark?”

Kaitlyn hesitated. I pictured her on the other side of the door, tugging on the hair near her left temple the way she always does when she’s upset. “He was showing everyone in PE. There’s this weird…thing there. He says it’s probably a side effect from the drugs you gave him. He’s having it removed by a dermatologist next week.”

I opened the door and met her face. “What kind of weird thing?”

Kaitlyn backed up a few feet, and now that I could see her eyes, I realized that she was much more freaked out than she’d sounded.

“Kaitlyn? What weird thing?”

She gestured weakly at her leg. “This weird…red thing. Like dark red. It wasn’t like a cut at all. Looked kind of like a bruise, but shiny. Like a bruise and a boil. Shaped like a figure eight. It was weird. And, Astrid, that’s not all.”

My throat hitched.

“I didn’t want to say anything in the gym, but”—she checked to see if there was anyone else in the stalls—“he was talking about that bottle. The pretty yellow one from your den?”

Busted. And I should work on my poker face, too. Kaitlyn’s eyes got very wide. “Oh, God, Astrid, you
did
drug him, didn’t you?”

We saved his life is what we did. “Kaitlyn, I’m going to tell you something, and you aren’t going to believe me, but—”

She shook her head and backed up until her butt hit the sinks. “No. I don’t want to know. I will not be your accomplice.”

“
My accomplice?
Kaitlyn—”