Rampant (24 page)

“They still have no idea where he is?” I asked, and took her hand.

“No. The men of this world are getting themselves lost left and right, if you ask me. Brandt, that Marten Jaeger man, the boy who was dating Phil.” Her grip turned firm. “I want you to promise not to get mixed up with any of them ever again.”

“Ever?” I said as lightly as I could. “Come on, Mom. Don’t you want grandkids one day? More little unicorn hunters?”

“Promise!” She slammed my hand against the armrest.

My blood ignited, and stars exploded behind my eyes. “Stop!” I cried.

“Promise.” Lilith’s voice was calm, almost quiet. “I can’t lose you, Astrid. I’ve waited too long.”

I whimpered and dropped to my knees as my mother slowly ground my hand against the ridges of the alicorn. Images flared to life behind my burning eyes:
girls sprinting across a sea of mud while a hundred hooves shook the earth and the sound of inhuman screams rent the air. Blood and venom mingled in the tiny, red streams running through a wasteland filled with
bodies of both unicorn and hunter.

Jutland.

What was happening to me? I fought the pain, as I had that night on the bench with the karkadann, but control slipped through my grasp like the slippery, water-weed hair of a kirin.

A hunter screamed as her face was splashed with blood. Another, on the ground, struggled to breathe as the giant head of a re’em loomed over her, his face blotting out the sun. The metallic clang of sword hitting horn echoed, and the cries of the dead and dying could hardly be discerned from those still battling.

The invading visions piled up, overlapping and tumbling around one another in my head until they found a free place to rest.

One hunter, her blond hair almost obscured by mud and gore, tore a sword from the dead hand of her comrade, then whirled around and gutted a charging einhorn. She straightened, pushed her hair out of her face, and stared at me. “Promise.”

And from far away, I heard the sound of footsteps on stone. Cory skipped into the chapter house, her arms filled with papers. “Here they are—Astrid?”

I yanked my hand back so hard the skin tore on the edge of an alicorn. I fell hard onto the floor and gasped for breath. Lilith looked up at the intruder, her face a mask of geniality.

The wound on my hand closed up tight, and I saw my mother smile.

I had not believed that my mother could have instituted so much change in so little time, but in the week following Neil’s departure, the Cloisters became a different place. We were roused well before dawn, made to do calisthenics and Pilates
for three hours, then given breakfast. Afterward, we were put to work learning to preserve the hide of the re’em, and then it was another two hours of target practice. Since we were low on modern weaponry, Lilith had authorized use of the ancient bows and arrows lining the walls in the chapter house. These bows were harder to hold, harder to draw, and harder to aim. Two hours shooting them felt like forty. After that, we had lunch.

I don’t even want to talk about the afternoon.

“I don’t know,” Phil said one evening, watching the hunters limp around the dormitory floor after Lilith had locked us upstairs for the night. “I don’t want to trash Neil, but Aunt Lilith is superfocused. Maybe this will be good for you guys?”

Phil had been very careful not to use the word “us” when referring to hunters, after the first time my mother had heard her and made it perfectly clear that Phil only remained in the Cloisters by the grace of Lilith.

“We
are
becoming better archers,” I said at last, taking in Phil’s hopeful expression. “Grace has nerves of steel these days. You’re right. Maybe this is…good for us.”

Phil looked relieved, and inwardly I cringed. Nowadays, it seemed as if the moment dinner was over and my mother sent us upstairs, I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. I had little time to think of my half-finished experiments, of the still-missing Marten Jaeger and Seth, of my strange karkadann dreams, or of Giovanni.

I was also having Giovanni dreams. They usually got me through my second round of crunches.

Cory’s gaze flashed toward mine and away. We’d never
spoken about Lilith’s little trick with the chair, but that moment marked the beginning of the end of Cory’s infatuation with my mother. The real death blow came when my mother had assumed responsibility for all archives, and Cornelia Bartoli, renovator of the Cloisters, founder of the newly formed Order of the Lioness, was relegated to second-class status within her own walls.

Melissende and Grace were in heaven—Neil’s favorites displaced, and a donna who also seemed to long for the good old days. At the same time, my mother’s supposed “favoritism” of her own daughter amounted to little more than extra sets of push-ups and an increasingly watchful eye. I hobbled toward my bedroom door, eager to slip beneath the covers and shut the world away.

It was not to be. I’d barely crossed the threshold to my room when Lilith bustled into the hall and began issuing orders.

“There’s a report of an attack in the suburbs. It’s clearly a unicorn. I think it’s time for a field exercise.”

Everyone groaned.

Phil shook her head. “Look at them, Aunt Lilith. They’re exhausted. You can’t mean to send them out now, after everything you’ve put them through today.”

Lilith ignored her and turned to Cory. “Please gather up the weaponry. I want at least six recurves and full quivers but throw in a few crossbows, too, as backups. I’m sending out all eight of you.”

“Do you even have an idea how many unicorns there are?” Phil asked. “Last time we went hunting, it took six of us to bring down
one
.”

“I don’t see us as having much of an option,” Lilith replied
coldly. “I’d like to have more hunters on my roster as well, but it’s out of both our hands.”

Phil shut her mouth.

Lilith turned to the other girls and raised her voice. “Back into street clothes, ladies. I want you downstairs and ready to go in ten minutes.”

Around me, the other hunters were grumbling and heading into their rooms to get dressed, but I hadn’t changed yet, so I followed Phil and Lilith down the stairs.

“I think I should come along,” Phil was saying. “Be support staff.”

“Absolutely not,” Lilith said. “You’re a liability.”

“When we went hunting before, we brought our archery trainer along. He never got in the way of the unicorns, and he was able to coach us during the hunt.”

“I don’t really care how you did things before, Philippa. I’m the donna now, and I will plan our strategies.”

“With what experience, Aunt Lilith?” Phil asked as the three of us arrived at the lower landing and exited into the rotunda. “Did I miss that time you were in the army? That time you had any field practice hunting at all?”

Lilith turned around and raised her hand, and for a moment, I thought she was going to slap Phil across the face. The don’s ring glinted on her finger. “Did I miss that time that you were stripped of your hunter powers through your own poor decisions and irresponsible behavior? The time that you put my daughter in a situation where she was regularly associating with a rapist?”

“Mom!” I cried, appalled.

She whirled on me. “Astrid, I don’t want to hear from you.
I’m your mother, and you and your cousin have been sneaking around behind my back for months, flouting my rules as well as the rules of the people I entrusted to care for you.”

“Your rules!” I shouted. “You said go to Rome and be a hunter. Well, here I am!”

“Yes,” Lilith said drily. “Dating. Sneaking around. Who knows how far things would have gone?”

“So what?” I said. “It’s my choice.”

“But it isn’t always, is it?” Lilith hissed, looking at Phil.

“That’s really uncalled for,” Phil said.

“Is it?” Lilith folded her arms over her chest. “Guess I’m just not like perfect, easygoing Neil, who is far too polite to say the things that need to be said. Well, maybe it’s not proper, but if you stayed inside,
where you belonged
, this never would have happened.”

“Enough!” I shouted so loudly that the words reverberated off the mosaic walls. Phil’s chin was high but trembling. “How can you possibly talk that way to her, knowing what she’s been through?”

“Because Philippa knows full well she’d get a hell of a lot worse from her father. Why do you think she’s staying here rather than going home?”

Phil wouldn’t meet my eyes.

Okay. New tactic. “And I think Phil’s right. She has some experience at this, Mom, and she can coach the girls who don’t. As long as she stays out of the way—”

“When I want your opinion, Astrid, I’ll ask for it. Phil, go upstairs.”

“Do not tell me what to do, Aunt Lilith,” Phil said, in a low, dangerous voice. “As you are so fond of pointing out, I’m not a hunter anymore.”

“Go to your room,” Lilith repeated, “or I’ll let Bonegrinder out of her cage.”

For a moment, everything was silent, then Phil turned and headed back up the stairs. I glared at my mother, then ran after my cousin.

She was a few steps up the spiral stairs, leaning against the curved wall and looking out of the slit windows at the street beyond.

“Phil, I’m so sorry—”

“I’m leaving, Astrid.” She kept her eyes on the window. “I thought I could stay a bit, make this easier for you, laugh about your mom, like always, but…I can’t put up with that. She makes me feel like dirt.”

“She’s full of it,” I said. “She’s always been full of it.”

Phil shook her head, and I could see tears glistening in her eyes. “Not about everything. She was right about the unicorns, remember? And she’s right about you. You’re something special.” She swallowed hard. “And maybe she’s right about that other thing, too.”

“No, Phil, how could we have known?”

She shrugged. “I don’t think we could have. But it doesn’t make what she said any less true. If I’d stayed inside, I’d be…”

“You’d shrivel up,” I said. “We aren’t going to live in a cloister, Phil. Neither of us. I don’t care what she says.”

Phil nodded. “That’s why I need to go. But not home. I’m not sure yet. Maybe I’ll try to help Neil find Marten Jaeger. I have a couple of questions I’d like to ask the guy.” She straightened. “You better go back down there. Your ten minutes are almost up.”

“There it is.” My words were a breath on the night wind to the knot of hunters huddled on the edge of the highway. Given the
presence of policemen, journalists, and onlookers, it had been no small feat to sneak our weaponry out of Lilith’s rented car. It’s not like you can slip a longbow into your purse. We’d been forced to drive pretty far away from the actual crime scene—a car dealership by the side of the highway in which four salesmen and a mechanic had been found torn to pieces—in order to find a discreet place to unload. We’d immediately turned away from the highway and toward the surrounding area. Both buildings and tree cover were sparse, but there was a small knot of woods over the next hill that was our best bet. And, sure enough, as we drew closer, I caught a flash of darkness on darkness, and a whiff of ashes and mold.

“I can’t see it,” Melissende said by my side, “but I can feel it.”

“Me, too,” said Grace. “Think it feels us?”

“If it doesn’t,” Cory said facetiously, “it hears us.” That would matter in normal hunting. With unicorns, it made no difference.

“Fan out,” I said. “Not too far. I don’t want any of us in an angle of fire.” Why was it just standing there at the edge of the woods? I could barely make out an outline now. Perhaps it hoped that if it stayed frozen, we wouldn’t be able to see it at all. “Stay in pairs so you have a backup ready if the unicorn string-jumps your first shot.”

“Who do you think you are?” Melissende said. “We’ve got it.”

But they followed my suggestions anyway. Arrow on the string, we began to stalk. Fifty feet, and the kirin remained frozen. Forty, and I could feel my world narrowing, focusing on the midnight-brindled coat, the sweet spot just behind the heart. It was almost too perfect—the kirin angled broadside to me. How soon should I risk a shot? When would it flee?

At thirty feet, I knew the other hunters felt the same way, saw their hesitation from the corner of my eyes. Once one of us moved, we’d all need to be ready. This would work; it would actually work. Never mind that we didn’t have our high-tech bows, with their balanced sights and their geared strings, and their perfect, synthetic-fletched arrows. We had something even better—skill and a perfect shot. Perhaps this would be Melissende’s first kill. That would get her off my back for a while. Or maybe Grace, to ease the bitterness of the last hunt.

My blood began to sing that now-familiar chord, and the scent of unicorn rose with every breath. Who would shoot first?

With my hunter quickness, I caught sight of Melissende. She raised her crossbow, lowered her head over the sight, and let loose. The unicorn sprang into the brush.

The woods are filled with golden eyes.

On either side of me, the hunters rushed forward, but I remained rooted to the spot.

“No!” I shouted, but it was too late.

From all around they came, a dozen, maybe more, their horns lowered, their teeth bared, their coats flashing the colors of midnight as they shot through the darkness.

Ambush.

I saw Ilesha go down, whether by horn or hoof, I couldn’t tell. Rosamund was firing her crossbow into the pack, and when the bolts were gone, she threw it and ran. Two kirin followed her, and I shot arrows at them both, hitting one in the flank and the other in the neck. Neither would be enough to kill.

In my mind’s eye, I saw the field of mud, the dying hunters, the bloody sky. I shot every arrow I had, and when the last flew
from my bow and found its mark in the eye of a kirin, I threw down my bow and grabbed my curved alicorn knife.

“Retreat!” I heard Cory cry. Valerija was screaming, half draped across the back of a kirin, and slicing hard at its legs with a long knife. Melissende was still discharging her crossbow, but she’d soon be out of bolts. Grace spun in the center of a group of rearing kirin, a light sword all that stood between her and their horns. Zelda must be down, for I saw her nowhere. The hunters still on their feet were running for the highway now, the kirin racing back toward the trees.