Rampant (23 page)

“No!”

Neil nodded curtly, his face drawn with concern and frustration. “I can’t account for it. Marten has always been a phone call away, always eager to show up at odd times, to be involved in the running of the Cloisters…and now, I have injured hunters, an ineligible hunter, a body rotting in the rotunda—” He noted Giovanni’s stricken expression. “A
unicorn
body.”

“Of course!” Giovanni practically snorted.

Neil beckoned to me. “Come along, Astrid. We clearly have no information this young man will find useful. When we know the location of his friend, we will be informing the police.”

“Astrid.” Giovanni’s voice was nothing but plea, but there was no shape to it, as if he didn’t even know what he wanted to ask from me. I understood completely. Walking away from
him was the worst kind of torture.

But I did it anyway.

Neil’s news was received with the appropriate amount of shock and dismay by the other hunters, but it was nothing to compare with what he told Phil, Cory, and me privately later on.

“I’m afraid we may have made a very grave mistake,” he said.

“No kidding.” I stood against the door of Neil’s office, arms crossed over my chest. Cory and Phil were seated on the chairs in front of Neil’s desk. “I think we trusted a real sicko. According to Giovanni, he was soliciting volunteers to deflower us.”

“According to your ex-boyfriend, the friend of the man who raped Phil?” Cory said. “Yes, he sounds like an extremely trustworthy sort.”

“Guys,” Phil warned. She turned to Neil. “No one at the Gordian labs would tell you anything about how to contact Marten?”

“No one was
there.”
Neil clarified. “The place was abandoned. I contacted the landlord, and found that his number for them had been disconnected as well. They are paid for three more months, so he wasn’t particularly concerned.”

“And you guys have no other contact information?” I asked. “No other address?”

“This is all my fault,” Neil said, his posture stiff. “I’ve endangered the hunters under my care and I’ve been counting on support from a source that has proven unreliable.”

“This must be some horrible mistake,” Cory said. “He’s been so supportive of me—of us—all this time. I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation—”

“Like what?” I asked. “‘I closed my business and skipped town. Oops, meant to tell you?’”

“I never trusted him,” Phil said. “He fired Lino and never replaced him or our weapons.”

“You never liked Lino,” Cory snapped. “And you don’t know if he had a good reason for his actions then.”

“Neither do you,” I said. “We weren’t able to get an answer out of Marten. Just. Like. Now.”

“Why would Marten be trying to sabotage you?” Cory pressed. “He’s been doing nothing but encouraging you to hunt. Half the girls here hate the constant stream of Llewelyn this and Llewelyn that.”

“TThen maybe you shouldn’t add to it,” I grumbled. “Giovanni described him to me.”

“Described a distinguished middle-aged European businessman in Rome?” Cory said. “Imagine how uncommon they are.”

“Men who know about Phil and me?” I replied. “Who know all about the unicorns? How likely is
that
?” I left Cory to ponder the improbability on her own.

“Look,” Phil said. “I know I don’t have any status here anymore. I’m not a don, I’m not a trainer, I’m not a hunter. I should probably just pack up and go home.”

Neil blinked. Hard. And I wasn’t the only one to notice it, judging by the way Cory’s head turned in his direction.

“It’s dangerous for me even to be inside this building,” she went on. “We only have one ring, and we have a very slippery little zhi on our hands.”

Which reminded me—someone should go check on Bonegrinder, chained up in the chapter house. Just to make sure she didn’t escape.

“And it’s no secret that I don’t like Marten Jaeger and never have,” Phil said. “But I also can’t imagine why he’d want either of us out of the hunting business.”

“Maybe he wants us all out,” I said, “but we were the only ones with boyfriends he could bribe.”

“Then why wouldn’t he just cut funding to the Cloisters?” Cory asked.

“Well,” Neil said, “he
has
disappeared off the face of the earth. Perhaps that’s what he’s doing now.” He shook his head. “But that still won’t stop us. We still have our ties to the Church. We’d have to change some of our policies, but the Order would survive. There would still be hunters.”

“It still doesn’t answer the question of why,” Phil said. Cory looked vindicated. “Maybe everything Giovanni told you was true, Astroturf, but why? Why would he want to get rid of us?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Because we hunted them to extinction last time, and he needs them to make his new superdrug?” But how many unicorns would he need, really? And how many would we actually end up killing before he found a better solution?

“Besides,” Cory said, “you can’t permanently get rid of us. There are always more being born.”

“True,” said Phil. “Short of killing off the family lines…”

Neil cleared his throat. “This is all speculation, anyway. Right now, I will continue trying to contact Marten Jaeger, and until I have, I don’t want anyone to leave the Cloisters without my knowledge and permission. Bonegrinder will be confined to the lower quarters until we figure out how to deal with the presence of multiple non-hunters. I’m going to start calling everyone’s parents right now, to inform them that the situation has moved
beyond our control. Ursula and Melissende’s parents are already on their way. And”—he cleared his throat—“I will be leaving at once to look for Marten at the other Gordian offices in Europe. If he doesn’t answer his phone, I’ll beard the lion in his den. He can’t have vanished into thin air.”

“Leaving!” I gasped.

“After what Giovanni told you, Astrid, I believe very strongly that when we find Marten, we will find Seth or the means to locate him, at the very least.” He looked at Phil. “I will not allow either of them to get away with this.”

“And what about the rest of us?” Cory said, with a quick, harsh shake of her head that made her curls fly. “You can’t just leave me—us here.”

Phil spoke up. “We have an idea, actually, of someone who could step in and watch over the other hunters, while Neil conducts his search.” She exchanged a glance with Neil.

“Someone familiar with the history,” he added. “Sympathetic to the cause.”

“Like who?” I asked. There weren’t a lot of unicorn experts around.

Neil looked at me. “I was thinking of Lilith Llewelyn.”

“L
OOK AT IT THIS WAY
, Asterisk,” Phil said, nocking another practice arrow on her string. “You know how much crap the teachers’ kids get away with at school? It’s the same thing. Only with unicorns.” She let the arrow fly. It went way wide. Phil sighed.

I marked another zero next to Phil’s name on the sheet, then took the bow and quiver from her. At least she was still able to draw the string. It was a bright, sunny morning, and I was conducting an experiment in the Cloisters courtyard.

“Maybe, but I’d rather any of our teachers than Lilith.” Ready, aim, fire. Bull’s-eye. Again. I handed the bow to Cory, then marked the data down on the sheet. Besides, I wasn’t quite sure what kind of “unicorn crap” I could potentially pull off. You might lie about having lost your homework, but I wouldn’t be able to pretend I’d killed a kirin if I hadn’t.

And Lilith wasn’t the most lenient taskmaster, either.

Cory pulled the last arrow from the quiver, then got set up in her stance. “What is so wrong with your mother, Astrid? I know
that your family didn’t put much credence in her studies before. But now you must admit she was right.”

I think Cory would be a much better archer if she weren’t always so concerned about the exact placement of her feet. It’s as if she needed to line up on little markings on the ground every time she went to take a shot.
Twang. Thunk.
Still, not bad. Not a bull’s-eye, but she hit the target.

And that was without the unicorn.

“Her mom’s not bad,” Phil said. “She’s a little intense maybe, but it could work for us. I talked to her the other day about…things.”

I whirled on Phil. “You didn’t tell me that!”

She shrugged. “Well, it’s not like I could call my dad.”

I shook my head and shouldered the bow. “Okay, bring in the zhi!” I called. The door near the rotunda opened, and Bonegrinder came bounding out, trotting toward Cory and me and giving Phil a wide berth. My cousin pretended not to notice and went to retrieve the arrows.

Only once had she forgotten herself and tried to pet the unicorn. Bonegrinder had almost bitten her fingers off.

We started again, and I moved to the “with unicorn” column on the spreadsheet. Phil’s aim was the same. Arrow after arrow missed the target and clattered against the masonry at the far side of the courtyard. I shot another series of bull’s-eyes. But this time, so did Cory.

“Amazing,” Phil said, turning Neil’s ring around and around on her thumb, which was the only finger on which it would stay. What I want to know is why I’m worse than you normally, even
before
Bonegrinder came out. When did you become such an ace archer?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. It could be the ambient unicorn influence here. Or the months of practice.”

“But we’ve all been shooting nonstop since we got here. Shouldn’t I have at least developed some natural skills?”

I shook my head at the data. It was true. Phil had always been a much more capable athlete than I. “Maybe you never really developed your natural skills. Just relied on your hunter powers. Like people who suddenly lose one sense and then realize how hard they have to work to develop the others?”

Though it still didn’t make sense. Cory had more experience than either of us, and she wasn’t as good a shooter as I was, whether or not Bonegrinder was present.

“Close your eyes and do it,” Phil said. “I want to see if you can bull’s-eye without concentrating.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Cory said. “It’s not like I can just shoot an arrow in the air and it will hit the target. It’s almost as if—” She hesitated, searching for the right words. “The power comes over me, and the target is all I can see. Like we’re connected.”

“I agree.” I yanked the arrows out of the target. “Like I can’t help but concentrate. There’s nothing in the world except me and the monster.”

“True,” Phil said. “I never thought of it that way. It just seemed natural. Like zeroing in on a spiked ball.” Her face fell. “You don’t think I was somehow using my powers to play volleyball, do you?”

“Not unless we had unicorns in the school gym,” I reassured her. Did that mean Phil was leaving? Heading back home to college and her volleyball team? Could I blame her?

I ran the experiment with all the hunters who were well
enough to shoot, which included everyone but Dorcas, still in her cast. Ursula had been dismissed from the hospital two days ago, but she remained confined to a bed downstairs. As predicted, her healing had begun to accelerate again as her own blood overtook the donated, non-hunter blood in her system. The doctors were mystified.

What mystified
me
was that no one from Gordian seemed even remotely curious about the re’em, the attack, the changing pace of her recovery, and what any of it might mean for their own research into the Remedy. Neil continued to wait in vain for a return of any of our messages. As soon as Lilith arrived, he planned to leave Italy and search for clues as to Marten’s whereabouts.

The police hadn’t found Seth either. I was pretty sure he’d left Italy.

Since we’d been restricted to the Cloisters, I had decided to spend some time studying the nature of our powers. These were things that none of the ancient hunters knew about. They didn’t run trials testing the relative powers of each hunting family, nor the powers of hunters versus non-hunters, like Phil. If I was going to be stuck here, I’d at least attempt to add something to the faulty, anecdotal, incomplete data we had on file.

Maybe it was magic, but that didn’t mean I shouldn’t try to understand it.

The early data conformed to what we already knew. Each hunter was a better shot when Bonegrinder was present, but proximity to a unicorn made no difference in Phil’s archery talent. When Bonegrinder was not present, the hunters exhibited a range of talent, but there seemed to be little to no relationship
between their natural skill and their hunter powers. A bad natural shot could be a good hunter—better, even, than a good natural shot. And certain foibles of each hunter were present whether or not they were accessing their powers. Cory still had her bizarre stance ritual. Grace was still very susceptible to performance anxiety. She usually got off her first shot just fine, then buckled. Sometimes she couldn’t even draw the string to take a second shot.

“I lose all my focus,” she explained curtly, then went off to sulk and refused to stay for the rest of the test.

I also couldn’t figure out where I’d suddenly acquired my own mad skills.

Maybe there
was
something to be said for the ambient unicorn presence inside the Cloisters. I wished I could repeat the test somewhere in the open, really test the proximity variable. But that might prove dangerous to the public. I wondered if it would work with a unicorn
corpse
…

Phil interrupted me while I was lost in thought, planning hunting crusades where each hunter wore a coat of unicorn fur. What had come over me the last few days? I’d gotten downright bloodthirsty ever since I’d killed that re’em. At least, that’s when I think it started. It had been a busy few days. But I wasn’t the same girl I’d been in the United States. Not the same person who flinched when Giovanni had grabbed the suspected pickpocket. Not the same as the one who’d almost lost her lunch when Phil had stabbed the kirin in Tuscany.

Like it or not, I’d become a hunter. Astrid the Warrior, indeed.

“Asteroid.”

I snapped out of it, then became promptly appalled by my
line of thought. “Sorry,” I said to Phil. “What?”

“She’s here.”

As you might expect, Lilith was very pleased with the Cloisters. After our quick reunion and an introduction to the other hunters, we got her settled into her room. Neil still occupied the don’s quarters, and no one mistook my mother’s pursed-lipped smile for joy at that fact, but at least she didn’t complain out loud. As anxious as I’d been about her arrival, it was nice to see my mother again, to hug her and smell the scents of home. Phil was curious about her parents, and Lilith gave us a brief update on news from home, but it was clear that she wasn’t the slightest bit interested in anything outside the unicorn hunting world. She’d come to the Cloisters at last.

So we gave her the tour, and as Cory talked nonstop, I watched my mother preen beneath the tableau of Clothilde and the karkadann that may or may not be Bucephalus. I watched her touch the alicorns labeled Llewelyn on the Wall of First Kills in the chapter house, pointing out which hunters were from our direct line and which were from other branches. Cory ate it up.

“I didn’t know you had so much genealogical information, Lilith. Perhaps you can help me fill in some of the gaps I’m dealing with—”

“Ah, the throne!” Lilith swept past Cory to the central column and began examining the alicorn chair. “Astrid, do you know what this is?”

“A torture device?” I said.

She shot me an exasperated expression. “It’s from the Jutland Campaign. This is how I first discovered the hunters.”

“I know,” I said. Cory looked enthralled. “I was just reading
up on that the other day.”

“I’m not surprised,” Lilith said. “It’s one of the only times in history that the hunters were really in the mainstream. So many of them died in the battle against the unicorns massing there. Lots of Llewelyns. That’s how I found them. I was studying cemetery records, and I wanted to know why there were so many young Llewelyn women buried in some random town in Denmark. Where were their families? What were all these young women doing by themselves?” She ran her hands along the armrest. “The truth changed my life forever.”

And mine. “Well, that’s a lot closer than any of us hunters can get to it. It hurts us to touch it.”

Lilith raised her eyebrows. “Really.”

Cory cut in. “Lilith, would you mind if I showed you some of the paperwork I’m having difficulty translating? You seem to have a much greater understanding of—”

“Of course,” Lilith said, waving her hand benevolently at Cory. She sat in the throne, and disappointment flashed across her features so quickly that anyone who didn’t know my mother might have missed it entirely. But for that moment, she reminded me of Phil. “Just bring it down here. I would like to have a private word with my daughter.”

Cory scampered off. I turned to my mom, feeling suddenly like a supplicant before a great queen.

“It’s so good to see you again, Astrid,” she said.

“You, too.”

“I was a bit disappointed to hear from Neil on the drive over here that you’d killed a re’em. Why didn’t
you
tell me?”

I hung my head. “I meant to. I just…everything happened so fast. The hospital, and then Phil—”

“I’m incredibly proud of you,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard. “A re’em. And barely armed, I’m told! I knew you had it in you.” She eyed me. “You don’t look happy about it.”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly a celebration,” I said. “Ursula almost died, and then—”

“I don’t think your ancestors would think like that. Victory is victory. There are always casualties. But you’re still the best hunter here.”

I shook my head. “No, I—”

“Of course you are. The Llewelyns always were.” She glanced around the room. “I can see, though, that we have our work cut out for us. Between you and me, the way Neil has been running this place is positively shameful. I listened to him jabber the whole way back from the airport about his ridiculous isolationist policies. Does he honestly believe he’s protecting you by keeping you here, festering and atrophying? No, he’s just making you all that much weaker, letting you indulge in your fear. It’s going to be so much harder to get those younger girls to go back and hunt now.”

“Ursula is barely out of the hospital—”

“As I said, casualties happen. You girls are going to have to get used to it.” She gestured to her seat. “Every horn in this throne killed a hunter, Astrid. Jutland was a massacre. But they persisted, and eventually they were victorious. The way Neil is acting, you’ve already surrendered. Did you think this was going to be a piece of cake?”

“No,” I whispered. Far from it. I knew the dangers in coming here. That’s why I hadn’t wanted to do it.

“Good. At least I didn’t raise a coward.” She leaned back in the chair. “Now, the other issue. Your cousin’s despicable behavior—”

My mouth dropped open. “Phil did nothing wrong!”

Lilith rolled her eyes. “Nothing wrong? What business does a hunter—any hunter—have dating? Neil has informed me that you had a little boyfriend yourself. Is this true?”

“Yes, but—”

“It’s over,” Lilith ordered.

“It already was,” I said through clenched teeth. “But Phil—”

My mother waved me off with her hand. “I couldn’t care less about Phil. At least she’s not in your way anymore.”

“In my way!” I gasped.

“Of course. You’re the Llewelyn, here, Astrid. The only one now. And I’m going to see to it that people begin to recognize that.”

“No!” I stared at her in horror. “Mom, there are already plenty of problems here with cliques and favoritism. We don’t need anything to add to it. If you would look at the research I’ve been doing, you’d see that there’s no discernible difference between a Llewelyn hunter and one who—”

“Astrid,” she said, laughing and shaking her head, “trust me on this, okay? Why don’t you ever trust me?”

I swallowed heavily. It’s not that I didn’t trust her. I just didn’t agree with her.

“Things are getting worse out there, Astrid. People are already starting to realize the truth about the Reemergence. These aren’t just any wild animals: they’re unicorns. And they can’t be killed by wildlife experts or national guards or SWAT teams. Just hunters. And when the public realizes that, they’ll turn to us. They’ll turn to you, the descendant of Clothilde Llewelyn.”

“Or as close to it as you can get,” I said. “Since Clothilde didn’t have kids.”

Lilith smiled and sat back in her seat.

“So that’s what you want?” I said wearily. “For me to be a spokesperson for Unicorn Hunters R Us?”

“I wish you wouldn’t be so cavalier about our birthright, sweetie.” She held out her hand to me. “It’s time for you to stop complaining and start accepting. Take this boy thing. Even if you weren’t a hunter, I don’t think you’ve shown the best judgment when it comes to dating. First, that silly Brandt, who was a waste of the Remedy, if you ask me. We save his life, and his response is to humiliate you and then run away from home?”