Rampant (31 page)

She was the leader.

The karkadann’s explanation slammed into my brain like a punch. She had betrayed him, condemned who knows how many of her own kind to lab rat slavery for some supposed chance of glory. Bucephalus wasn’t happy, and he clearly didn’t appreciate my reaction to his gruesome show of power. I wasn’t allowed to judge their monstrous ways. He faced me, horn lowered.

And now, for the human.

“What?” I tightened my hand on my knife, though I doubted it would be a defense. Talk about treachery! “You said—”

And then I heard it. A pathetic little whimper from behind me. I risked a glance. Marten Jaeger, in a sweat suit, cowered behind a potted plant.

Treachery.

Marten hadn’t gone back up north. Neil was wasting his time. He’d been here all along, hiding a few miles outside Rome in his secret unicorn hideout, perhaps continuing his testing. And the kirin must have thought he was responsible for tipping us off to their location. All of a sudden, the rapid retreat and chase made perfect sense. They weren’t angry at the karkadann. They were angry at their false Alexander.

“Astrid,” Marten whispered. “Thank God. Do something. Kill it.”

Get out of my way, Daughter of Alexander.

“Where have you been?” I asked him. “Why—why did you do this to us?” My voice cracked on the words, and fresh, hot tears poured down my blood-spattered face. “To Phil!”

Out of my way. I shall kill this pretender.

“I was trying to protect you!” he said, his words garbled with terror. “If you weren’t hunters, you’d be safe. Alive. That’s all I intended. Those boys, they were your ticket out! I didn’t want anyone hurt.”

“You’re lying.”

“I swear! When the kirin saw Llewelyn hunters, they wanted you dead. They brought me dead blonds until I understood.”

My hand flew to my mouth.

“It’s like—like they know about Clothilde, and they do not want a Llewelyn anywhere near a bow.”

So then he didn’t know the truth about Clothilde, even if the kirin did. If they even did. I no longer knew what I could trust about the karkadann’s story, nor could I imagine what he’d told the other unicorns to get them to agree to exile. I stared Marten Jaeger down. “But then—why didn’t you just convince us to go home?”

“I tried, in Tuscany. Remember? But you said it yourself, you’d still be hunters, no matter where you went. It wouldn’t be enough for them. I did the only thing I could think of.”

The karkadann growled behind me, and I could feel the venom pouring off his body.

Move!

Marten’s face was turning red, his eyes watering, and his
breath coming in short, shallow pants. “Help me, Astrid!”

Help him. How he’d helped us? How he’d plotted against us, hurt us, risked all our lives? Imprisoned Valerija, abandoned us all, kept us in the dark about the danger we faced? Help him. Help him what? Protect him from a behemoth with bloody murder emanating from every pore? With my single tiny alicorn knife? Choose him over the creature who’d saved my life again and again?

“Why did you do this to us?” I sobbed, refusing to move, despite the karkadann’s repeated orders in my head. “To all of us?” The hunters, the unicorns. Everyone he’d manipulated and hurt.

Marten stared at me in disbelief. “For the Remedy. I needed the Remedy. I needed to find it. I—had to.” He coughed, as the alicorn venom seeped into his lungs. “So many lives saved. It was worth it, Astrid. And…I did it. I know the secret. We can save everyone, cure everything, change the world. Help me.”

I almost collapsed where I stood. The Remedy. He’d found it. Everything inside me wanted to sing in exultation. Astrid the Warrior and Astrid the healer merged for one brief, shining moment, and I pictured humanity transformed. What was vengeance in the face of that?

I turned around and faced the unicorn. “Please,” I said. “It’s over.”

No.

“You’ve stopped the kirin. That’s enough.”

No.

“For me!” I clasped my hands together in front of my chest.

I have already spared one life for you today.

His massive head swept to the side and I flew several yards
and landed hard against tiled steps, cracking my skull on the floor. For a moment, starbursts filled the air, and when I looked again, it was over. Marten’s face was twisted and purple, veins protruding from every angle. The tiny hole in his chest hardly bled at all.

And the karkadann was gone.

The walk back to the necropolis seemed miles longer than I’d remembered. The sky went from silver to periwinkle to blue during my hike, and the sun burned off every trace of mist.

Bucephalus had barely touched Marten. With the kirin leader, he’d shown no compunction over decimating and defiling her body. With Marten, who’d been complicit in the entire scheme, he’d only punctured him enough to kill. I didn’t understand it. Perhaps I never would. The karkadann possessed his own scales of justice.

I retrieved my weapons from where I’d dropped them, but the claymore was pretty much dragging in the dirt behind me as I rounded the last corner into the Via degli Inferni.

Ursula and Grace sat near a pile of unicorn corpses. Grace was binding Ursula’s arm in a sling and holding her own leg at an awkward angle. They both looked up as I approached.

“Where is everyone?”

“Looking for you,” Grace said. “We thought you’d been dragged off again.” She turned her head and called for Rosamund, who was rounding the hill with Melissende, each dragging a kirin corpse by the legs. “Get them back! Astrid’s here!”

I checked out Grace’s leg and Ursula’s arm. Were these our only injuries? Were there any casualties?

“We killed dozens,” Grace said matter-of-factly, finishing her first aid. “But even more managed to escape. Should we burn the corpses, do you think?”

One by one, I saw Cory, Zelda, and Valerija come running. They looked scraped up, and Cory had an enormous bloodstain on her leg that made me think she’d been gored. But nothing major. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Did you get it?” Melissende asked. On the hill, Giovanni emerged from his van and saluted me. There was a nasty bruise forming on his brow, but he looked otherwise unharmed. I waved him down, but he seemed to hesitate.

“Get what?”

“The karkadann.”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t know if he can be killed.”

“Well, he certainly doesn’t like being shot,” Ursula said.

“He saved our lives,” Zelda said. “Isn’t that weird?”

“No,” I repeated. “He’s saved my life a few times now.” I bit my lip, weighing my words carefully. I needed to tell them about the karkadann, about Marten Jaeger, about the Remedy. But an official debriefing might be beyond my ability right now. There would be time back at the Cloisters, once we regrouped, bathed, slept, healed. Once I talked to Phil.

Or cried on her shoulder.

“I’m glad you didn’t get him,” Melissende said abruptly. “He’s like our own Bucephalus, eh?” Then she turned around and went back to preparing the pyre.

She is a smart girl.

The thought was a whisper.

And ferocious. I like.

Where was he?

Far away, and farther still, Astrid Llewelyn.

He called me by name now?

You deserve a name. You are your own. Not Alexander’s. Not Clothilde’s. Not even your mother’s.

I wandered away from the group, away from their chatter, worried somehow that they’d hear him as well. “Are you going into exile again?” I murmured. Was this the new last hunt?

Our exile is gone. We have no choice. And so, I know to stay far from any hunter, far from danger. Far from anything that would give you cause to hunt me down.

I drew a shuddering breath. We would not have survived this morning without him. There were too few of us, and the unicorns were so strong.

The image of the Myersons’ sparkly, silly little bedtime story resurrected itself from the depths of my brain.
“I will never really leave,” said the unicorn.
“I will always live in your heart.”

My weapons clanked against my side, and my clothes were turning sticky with dried gore. My blood burned and sang, and my fingers itched to shoot something. Power and bloodlust coursed through every strand of my DNA. I breathed, smelling fire and flood, blood and death, and knew he was right. The unicorn would be inside me forever. There was no going back.

“Hey,” Giovanni said from behind me. I turned, wiping tears from my eyes. “You okay?”

“Are you?” Better not to answer.

“I’m in much better shape than the van,” he said. “I’m going to get kicked out of school for sure this time.” He pointed behind his shoulder. The van looked more like a crumpled newspaper than anything you’d drive around in.

“Giovanni, I’m so sorry—”

He shrugged. “I’m used to it by now.” He was silent for a moment, looking over the carnage-strewn path. “So you weren’t kidding about the danger.”

“I told you.”

“Or about the superpowers.” He shook his head. “I suppose it’s safe to admit now that I peeked a few times. You know, before they started playing Whac-a-Mole with my vehicle. You’re…amazing, Astrid. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Thanks.” Amazing, huh? Covered in blood, bristling with blades, and smelling like a butcher shop.

“And I’ve come to a decision.”

I blinked. “You have?”

“I think it’s
vital
that we do not sleep together. You know, for the safety of the world.” His eyes sparkled and there was just a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth.

“Okay,” I said, and smiled back at him. “But kissing is allowed, right?”

“Oh, definitely,” he said, and pulled me close. “After all, the warrior always wins the heart of the fair young…man.”

R
ampant
would be more endangered than unicorns if not for the patient, insightful efforts of master marksman Kristin Daly, who loves killer unicorns almost more than I do; the strong, hunter instincts of Deidre Knight; the friendship of Anna Hays, who heard about this from day one; Lauren Perlgut, who still thinks I should be calling this book
The Horn Identity;
Mackenzie Baris, who made me Astrid the Unicorn Hunter action figures; and the deadly accurate critical aim of fellow writers Justine Larbalestier, Marley Gibson, and Carrie Ryan.

Thank you to everyone on the HarperCollins team who shepherded this book through the wilderness: Alessandra Balzar, Donna Bray, Corey Mallonee, Ruta Rimas, Jon Howard, Laura Kaplan, and Barbara Fitzsimmons and the design team at HarperCollins Children’s Books.

As always, I am grateful to my supportive friends and family, especially my father, who loves science, medicine, and fantasy adventures; my uncle Chuck, who gave me a bow to practice on; and my brother Luke, who has steadily fed my unicorn habit.

I owe a deep debt of gratitude to bow hunter Tara Quinn, who was patient and highly creative while I pestered her during the
research for this novel. Her knowledge about hunting animals both real and imaginary was indispensable to the creation of this story. She’s a great hunter; any mistakes are my own. Also, thank you to her husband, Sean, for his demonstrations of both bow and taxidermy, and to my father-in-law for introducing me to both of them.

A special shout-out to my friends and colleagues who encouraged me to make the genre leap: Julie Leto, C. L. Wilson, Erica Ridley, TARA, WRW, Libba Bray, Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Cecil Castellucci, Margaret Crocker, and Scott Westerfeld, who kept asking about Bonegrinder.

Speaking of inspirations, thank you to those who have portrayed and created warrior women of film and literature. Astrid would not exist were it not for Princess Leia, Sarah Connor, Ripley, Eowyn, Aravis Tarkheena, and Buffy Summers, all of whom taught me that women are powerful and loving, and showed me whom I should write about.

And finally, thank you to Dan, who was there when I woke up from my dream of being chased by a killer unicorn, explored the depths of Etruscan burial grounds by my side, stood beneath me as I balanced in a tree stand, and hugged me when I wrote “The End.” This one’s for you.

Jacket photos © 2009 by Duncan Walker / iStock, and Emily Jose / iStock

Jacket design by Greg Stadnyk / Ray Shappell