Rampant (5 page)

“Buongiorno,”
Cory called. She snarled at Bonegrinder, who was chained to the radiator and happily gnawing away at what looked like a bovine spinal column—tendons attached. “Not giving you any trouble, is it?”

Lucia tucked a bit of gray hair back into her nun’s habit.
“Bella bambina?
No, no.” She chucked the zhi under the chin and the animal swished her tale back and forth on the floor. “You feed her; she loves you.”

No, you’re the virgin descendant of Alexander the Great; she loves you.
The feeding was just a perk. I watched Lucia hobble over to the counter to lift a huge copper pot, and rushed to offer my help. She shooed me off. Cory unhooked Bonegrinder’s chain and hauled the zhi to her feet. Bonegrinder made a feeble attempt to pick up the spine in her mouth, but the end dragged on the floor, and Cory kicked it away. Defeated, the unicorn slumped.

Both Lucia and I shook our heads at her and I retrieved the gory chew toy, holding it gingerly between two fingers.

“We’ll just take care of her for you,” I said.

“Go, go,” Lucia said, waving her hands at us. “The kitchen is my place. The battleground is yours.”

“Forty years and one hip-replacement surgery ago, that woman would have made a hell of a hunter,” I said to Cory once we were back in the arcade.

“She’s a Saint Marie.” Cory shrugged, as if that explained all. “They were never the battleground type.” Bonegrinder stopped to sniff at the ground, and Cory tugged on the chain, pulling her along.

Cory has this strange idea—one of many—that each of the twelve hunter families has a specific caste. I’m a Llewelyn, therefore I’m automatically an excellent hunter. She’s from the Leandrus line, which were supposedly the record keepers. It’s all so silly.

Almost as silly as the idea that any of our families have power over unicorns at all.

It was too bad, really. From my few interactions with Lucia, I gathered that she was intrigued by the idea of unicorn hunting. Becoming a nun had been a long-held tradition among the women of her family, but the order she’d chosen was not quite as thrilling as her ancestors’ vows to the Order of the Lioness. And yet she was stuck in a kitchen while my “place was on the battlefield”? I wondered if I could concoct some sort of medical discharge, like one did for the army. Break my leg, maybe. Cut off a pinky toe?

Ick. Maybe not.

“I think we’ll have to try below in the chapter house,” Cory said, and led the way back into the dome, grabbing a pair of lanterns on the way. Behind the tableau of Clothilde and the karkadann was a small door, which Cory unlocked with a
slender golden key. I followed her into a narrow hallway that descended beneath the cloister courtyard, and Bonegrinder trotted obediently behind. This was the true heart of the Cloisters of Ctesias; not the dormitories or the refectory or even the grand dome. Beneath the ground lay our crypt, our training rooms, holding pens, and even our burial grounds. Here sat the charred remains of our scriptorium, a sort of combination library and laboratory, where Cory had taken me on my first day. There was little left but ashes now, hundreds of years of records reduced to piles of blackened pages. Chairs and tables overturned, frozen in time to the night mobs had invaded this place in a desperate search for the Remedy.

They’d never found it. Or if they did, the formula was lost to history long ago. No trace remained now. As we passed the burned and broken door to the scriptorium, I glanced in. Tiny bits of glass and brass glittered in the light from my lantern—pieces of the hunters’ alchemy sets, fragments of alembics, crucibles, scales, and phials scattered among the ashen remnants of books, maps, and scrolls. I wondered what family was known for its contributions to science. Bonegrinder paused here, too, and gave the threshold an exploratory sniff. According to Cory, unicorns had a highly advanced sense of smell. They could detect gunpowder from nearly a mile away.

Whatever this unicorn sensed in the scriptorium, it was clear she wasn’t happy. She shied back against my legs, and even through the denim of my jeans I could feel her shudder.

Cory tested the rotted wood on each door we passed. “Too much of this area has seen damage,” she said. “It’ll bash through any of these.”

We stooped as we traveled deeper beneath the Cloisters. The
stone walls closed in on all sides, and I put my hand out to feel my way along the dark stairs. My fingers trailed over tiny knobs and bumps of bones, here and there punctuated by the sharper ridges of a zhi’s screw-shaped alicorn protruding from the masonry. I wondered if the zhi walking beside me recognized these artifacts for what they were. The farther in we got, the less sure the unicorn seemed to be about our path. Her clopping steps turned hesitant, then downright stubborn, and it took both Cory and me to tug her along.

The strange atmosphere of the Cloisters was stronger down here, pressing in around me more thickly than the walls themselves. My head felt stuffed with it, my sinuses suffused with darkness and death.

Presently, the corridor dropped into a steep spiral stair, and Bonegrinder stopped dead. Cory grabbed her by the collar, while I shoved against her haunches until she finally began mincing her way down. Around and around we went, on glossy, worn steps that sloped dangerously downward without the benefit of a banister. The lantern light ricocheted off the walls, careening from alicorn to hoof, from a spinal column that bisected the regular rows of stone to the leering, eyeless glare of a skull.

I reared back and slipped on the stairs, the soles of my feet knocking against Cory’s calves. Bonegrinder bleated in complaint.

“Relax,” came Cory’s crisp voice through the darkness. “It’s just a kirin.”

And a dead one at that. I shuffled through my comparatively small store of unicorn knowledge. Kirins were the third largest kind of unicorn. They were originally from Asia, but by the time of the “first extinction” they’d spread throughout Europe as
well. In ancient China and Japan, the horse-sized monsters had been worshipped as gods by villagers terrified of the alternative. A timely sacrifice here and there was preferable to wholesale destruction. The kirin were wily creatures, who hunted in herds and had even been known to kill for sport. According to Cory, the overpositive portraits of them in much of Eastern lore existed to appease their vindictive tempers—not dissimilar to the characterization of cruel Celtic fairies as “the Good Folk.” Treat them well, and maybe they’ll leave you alone.

Unlike zhi, kirin had no special affinity for hunters. They’d kill us as easily as any other person.

Cory still hadn’t found a decent description of them. They were alternately portrayed as wreathed in mists or flame, or as being covered in ever-changing scales that camouflaged them perfectly. I stared up at the all-too solid kirin skull, which laughed at me, at my fright, and at all the secrets I didn’t know.

Cory twisted the horn, which opened the door at the base of the stair into a room I’d never entered before. “This is the chapter house,” she said. “Brace yourself.” She placed the lantern in a small glass cage and hoisted it high, illuminating the cavernous space. Even braced, I hadn’t been sure of what to expect.

It was a trophy room. One curving wall was covered top to bottom with skulls, horns, and other bits, some mounted on plaques and marked with tiny cards or engraved nameplates, some affixed to the wall with metal spikes and carved with the name of their killer. Skull after skull ogled me, their dark, empty eye sockets seeming to flicker and wink in the shadowed lamplight.

Bonegrinder was bleating in earnest now, tugging backward against her collar, her hooves sliding and clicking on the stone
as she fought for purchase. I held fast to the chain, and her bleats turned into snorts.

“What is it?” I whispered in horror.

“The Wall of First Kills,” Cory replied. “For hundreds of years, the hunters marked their passage into the Order by bringing a piece of their kill to hang here. She pointed at one enormous, broken skull. “Look, this is a Llewelyn. Katherine Llewelyn, aged fourteen. Can you imagine if your first kill was a re’em?”

A re’em. The giant unicorn of the Bible, second only in size and ferocity to a karkadann. The oxlike beast had roamed the deserts and plains of the Holy Land for millennia before being subdued by unicorn hunters sometime after the Crusades. In more recent translations of the Bible, they’d downgraded descriptions of the animal to a type of wild ox called an aurochs—a fact that made my mother’s blood boil.

Fourteen, and up against something the size of a raving bull.

“No,” I said. “I can’t imagine.”

Cory surveyed the room, a shadowed conglomeration of ancient furniture and large, muslin-draped shapes. “Let’s find a good spot to anchor the chain.”

I cast a look back at Bonegrinder. Her blue eyes were bulging, and she was practically choking in her eagerness to escape. “We can’t leave her here!” I said. “In the dark, alone, with all these…
bones
.” The place smelled of death. It was a monument to the prowess of the hunters, a shrine to the destruction of Bonegrinder’s species.

Cory snorted. “It likes bones, remember?” She snatched the bloody, gnawed spine from my hand and waved it in front of Bonegrinder. “Nice unicorn. Yummy. See?” She tossed it a few
feet away. Bonegrinder paid little attention.

I stared at the wall and dug my hand into the unicorn’s coat. With the still-swinging lamplight casting strange shadows over the bones, they seemed to pulsate in place, as if muscles moved just beneath the surface of the stone. I shuddered and put my other hand to my head. It had begun to pound, no doubt my airways and lymph system reacting to the dust and stale air.

“It’s only temporary,” Cory went on, drawing the chain forward and beginning to wind it around the leg of a table. “Until we can find a more permanent place…”

“It’s a tomb,” I argued. The skulls all laughed at me, laughed at Bonegrinder, who had become almost frantic in her fevered attempts to escape her bonds.

What we were, you are now; what we are, you soon will be
…

Cory groaned in frustration. “You and my uncle! It doesn’t need a bloody palace. It won’t die, and it won’t be in our way. In a few days, there will be half a dozen girls here. And Bonegrinder will be constantly underfoot, constantly in danger of getting free—do you have any idea what would happen if it got loose and went rampaging through the streets of Rome?” Her voice turned low and dangerous. “Blood, death, destruction…”

My eyes remained fixed to the engraved trophies on the wall, which pulsed and echoed back
blood death destruction
.

And then, from impossibly far away, I heard a coppery clang, like the great metal doors of the Cloisters opening, and the zhi leaped to her feet and took off. The chain slid through Cory’s hands and whipped past me, disappearing up the stairs.

“Astrid!” I heard Cory call. “Catch it!”

But I was way ahead of her. My eyes zeroed in on the fluffy white behind of the zhi as she vanished up the spiral stair, and it was as if a band snapped tight. The world slowed—the sickly, swinging light, Cory’s shrill tones, the strangely vibrating walls—but I did not.

Hunter powers indeed.

I didn’t feel the stairs, the weight of time, the depths of the darkness. I felt nothing but pursuit, fresh and free. Have you ever run on a moving walkway or escalator and felt yourself careening forward much faster than you could possibly imagine? I was a tidal wave of feet pounding, a lightning bolt of pumping arms. My blood boiled and my vision dimmed, until all I could see was the outline of the zhi. My prey.

I was almost on top of her as we spilled into the relative brightness of the rotunda. I saw it all in the space of a second: the large doors, slightly ajar, the figure who stood just inside, and the sunny street beyond, populated with the rest of the world, dogs and vendors, nuns and children whose bones would be another addition to our collection if I didn’t stop the unicorn.

And then my hands sunk into her fur. “Gotcha!” I cried as we sprawled on the mosaic as one. I closed a hand around her horn and yanked it backward, moving my other arm into a choke hold around her neck. Bonegrinder screamed and snapped her jaws in frustration as I wrestled her into the tiles. She flailed her four legs in the air, and I ducked to keep from being conked in the face by one of her hooves.

A second later, Cory appeared by my side. “Got it?” she asked. I nodded and looked up, blowing stringy strands of my pale hair off my face.

A few feet away stood my cousin, tanned and leggy, with her dirty blond hair pulled into a jaunty ponytail and a huge pair of sunglasses pushing her bangs back from her face.

“Asteroid!” exclaimed Philippa Llewelyn. “Surprise!”

I
’
D NEVER BEEN HAPPIER
to see my cousin. Ignoring the venomous monster I was supposed to be restraining, I catapulted myself into Phil’s arms.

“Whoa there,” she said, hugging me back. “Miss me much?” She glanced down. “My God, they’re real.” She drew away and leaned over Bonegrinder, who currently knelt at her feet, horn pressed against the floor. “Real, and adorable…and a little smelly. Buddy, who bathes you?”

“One takes one’s life in one’s hands to try,” Cory said, pushing the bronze doors shut.

“Hi,” Phil said, and stuck out her hand toward my roommate. “Philippa Llewelyn, reporting for unicorn hunting duty.” No attempt whatsoever to keep a straight face.

Cory looked blank. “Another Llewelyn?”

You’d think she’d be happy about the idea. “Phil’s my cousin,” I said.

Cory shook her head. “I know who she is. Nineteen. A volleyball player at Pomona.”

“Been stalking me?” asked Phil with a laugh.

“It’s just that your mother made no mention of other eligible hunters in your family,” Cory said, as if she hadn’t heard. “I just assumed…”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Phil said, “knowing Aunt Lilith. It was like pulling teeth to get her to give up the goods on where you’d scurried off to, Asterisk. And then, as soon as I heard, how could I resist? Free trip to Rome? Count me in! So, where do we go to get reimbursed?”

“Here, I suppose,” said a male voice, and I instinctively grabbed hold of Bonegrinder’s collar. We turned to see Neil standing in the doorway to his rooms with a distinguished-looking gentleman with white hair and pale blue eyes in an immaculate gray three-piece suit. “Good catch, Astrid.”

“Who’s the hottie?” Phil whispered. I
hoped
she meant Neil.

“Very impressive, indeed,” said Neil’s companion. He had a slight accent, but I couldn’t identify its origin. “And two Llewelyns. Intriguing.” He stepped forward, hand extended, and Bonegrinder began to snarl. “My name is Marten Jaeger. It’s a pleasure to meet you both.” He came close enough to touch us, but when Bonegrinder lowered her horn, he backed off and ran a hand through his straight white hair, clearly uncomfortable in such close proximity to a man-eating beast. I was surprised that any nonhunter other than Neil was allowed inside.

Neil, armed with the ring, shook Phil’s hand and introduced himself, adding, “Mr. Jaeger is sponsoring the renovations and upkeep to the Cloisters.”

“And its inhabitants,” Cory added under her breath. She tugged Bonegrinder’s chain from my hands. “I’ll just take care of this.”

“So this isn’t being run by the Church?” I asked.

“We’re working in cooperation with the Church. Donors, if you will,” Marten Jaeger explained. “I’m the CEO of Gordian Pharmaceuticals, and we have a vested interest in seeing the lost knowledge of your Order restored.”

Of course. The Remedy. I brightened. “So there
is
a scientific wing to this outfit.”

“Naturally, Miss Llewelyn. This is the twenty-first century, after all. My staff biologists are fascinated by the return of these marvelous creatures and eager to see if the historical claims are actually fact. So far, they have been holding up, but we’ve had…difficulties keeping a unicorn captive for testing.”

“Right.” Phil nodded slowly, as the pieces began to fall into place. “Because only a hunter can catch and kill one. Isn’t that what your mom says, Astrid?”

I shrugged, distracted. “I’d be really interested to see what kind of data you’ve collected so far, Mr. Jaeger. I’m very interested in medicine. In fact, the potential for rediscovering the Remedy is the main reason I’m here.” Well, other than the obsessed mother.

He smiled. “How fascinating. I would have thought a natural-born hunter like you would be more comfortable with a bow than a beaker.”

“I’m not—”

“I’ll bring some information for you the next time I drop by.” He turned to Neil. “It appears that you will have your hands full. I should leave you to get your newest recruit settled.”

I watched Mr. Jaeger retreat to the bright, busy world beyond the bronze doors. Out there, people were doing real work. Out there was real science. But I was apparently a natural-
born killer. So I was trapped inside, as thoroughly chained as Bonegrinder.

I brought Phil up to my bedroom while Cory went off to figure out where to put her on a more permanent basis. Over my roommate’s protestations, Phil brought the “darling” Bonegrinder along, and proceeded to cuddle it on her lap in the middle of the floor. The unicorn was clearly in heaven.

“Aren’t you a puddums?” Phil cooed, rubbing the monster’s tummy. Bonegrinder stretched, and her horn screeched along the floor.

I gritted my teeth and decided not to tell my cousin about the raw cow haunch that the “puddums” had devoured for lunch. “But how did you get your father to agree to let you come?” I asked, incredulous. The
U
word was like an A-bomb in Uncle John’s house.

“Summer abroad.” Phil winked. “I told him that I made a club exhibition team and we’d be traveling across Europe showing off our volleyball skills.” Since said skills had earned Phil a college scholarship, I could understand Uncle John’s willingness to let her take off. She leaned back against my bed and pillowed her hands behind her head. “We’re going to have such a blast here!”

“A blast? You do realize what we do here, right? Kill things like that,” I nudged Bonegrinder with my toe. “Bathe in their blood for all I know.” Let’s see how that sat with her! Phil had been a vegetarian for as long as I could remember.

“That’s old-school. Didn’t you hear that Jaeger guy? This is the twenty-first century. I’m sure no one here has any interest in the kind of irresponsible hunting practices that caused the last tragedy.”

Funny. She called the first extinction of venomous, man-eating monsters a tragedy.

“But I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t endorse responsible culling,” Phil went on, like she was reading from her Environmental Studies 101 textbook. “That’s all we’re dealing with here, I’m sure of it. We’ve got to do something to stop these attacks Aunt Lilith was telling me about.” She leaned in and lowered her voice. “There was a rumor going around campus that the attacks were because our government was testing some kind of bizarre new weapon. I’m relieved that it’s just animals doing what they do. So we have to act like responsible custodians of the planet, and I’m pleased to do my part!” She grinned. “Make sure the unicorns aren’t a threat to any human populations, keep them in check—then go have fun in Rome. Sounds perfect, right?”

Cory entered, and her eyes narrowed at the site of Bonegrinder on our floor. I had nervous flashbacks to my first day, but she just clenched her fists and paused. Interesting. Perhaps two Llewelyns were better than one.

“I’ve your room ready,” she said in a flat voice. “Didn’t have time to make up the bed, but…”

“Oh, that’s fine,” Phil said brightly, standing and brushing bits of white, fluffy hair from her denim skirt onto the coral carpet. Cory’s face was a thundercloud. “Astrodome has made plenty of beds in her day, haven’t you, squirt? Come on—help me get unpacked.”

But Cory blocked the door. “In the future, I’d appreciate it if you remember that the house zhi is not permitted in the residence hall.”

“The what in the who now?” Phil said.

“Bonegrinder,”
Cory spat. “Not allowed up here.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I wasn’t thinking. I was just so surprised to see Phil here and I forgot…” But the excuse sounded lame to my ears. One did not forget what happened the last time the zhi got into this room, and Cory knew it.

Phil glanced at me and her expression turned contrite. “Man, I’m sorry. Here for five minutes and already screwing up the rules. I’ll just take her with me. Thanks so much for understanding, Cory.” She brushed through the door. Bonegrinder and I followed, and as I passed, Cory caught my eye. Her expression was impossible to mistake.

She was holding herself in check.

In the privacy of Phil’s new room, my cousin turned to me. “Nice girl, but a little intense, huh?”

“You have no idea.” I shook the sheets out onto Phil’s bed and started tucking as she opened her suitcase. “She’s not going to appreciate your ‘responsible culling’ theory, I’ll tell you that much. She wants the unicorns extinct.” And she’s only tolerating the two of us because she thinks we’re genetically predisposed to make it happen.

“We’ll talk her out of that.” Phil’s tone was light as she unpacked yet another adorable little sundress.

I doubted Cory would be swayed by an environmental treatise. The girl was on a mission. I stuffed a pillow in a purple pillowcase and tossed it at the headboard. “It’s probably a good idea to keep Bonegrinder out of here, though. Cory hates her.”

“Eh, she can’t say boo if I’ve got her in my own room. Right, doll face?” Phil stuck her tongue out at the unicorn. Bonegrinder bleated happily and pounced on the freshly made bed.

Great. My one respite from Cory’s unicorn monomania and Phil decided to take a zhi for a roommate. The unicorn pawed
at the bedspread and snuggled in. Her horn ripped a long tear in the coverlet.

I sighed, but Phil merely joined the creature. “Astrid, don’t worry about it. We’re going to have the time of our lives here.”

“This isn’t a vacation,” I said. “Didn’t my mom tell you anything? We have a
duty
.”

“That too,” she replied. “But all work and no play in the city that never sleeps?”

“That’s New York. Rome is the Eternal City.”

“Whatever. The point is, they may have been nuns around here in the Middle Ages, but we’re party girls today.”

“How much can we party in a convent?”

Phil rolled her eyes. “And who says we have to
stay
in the convent? I’m sure all that Order of the Lioness stuff is just to keep the rent down. There’s no lock on that door, and I’m fully old enough to come and go as I please…and squire around my impressionable little cousin. Let’s get out of here!”

Finally, someone who showed interest in actually seeing the city. But…“I don’t know if we’re supposed to leave.” On the one hand, they did let me come in from the airport on my own. But on the other, Cory balked every time I started talking about taking in some of the tourist sites. “We should ask Neil.”

“That adorable British dude from downstairs?” Phil giggled. “Ten euros says as soon as he’s tucked you girls into bed, he heads out to the clubs himself. That guy is the most gorgeous chaperone I’ve ever given the slip to.”

Now I laughed for what felt like the first time since Brandt had been attacked.

“Come on, Cuz. It’s my first night in Rome, and we’re going to see the town. I left you alone for too long back home, and
look what happened. You started dating Brandt, of all people. Have I taught you nothing?” She reached over and fluffed my hair. “Not going to let it happen again. First, we get some quality cappuccinos. Then we hang out with some quality guys. You’ll see. We’re going to have a great time.”

Looking at Phil’s smiling face, listening to her sunny voice, like a breath from my pre-unicorn past, I could almost believe it.

Then Bonegrinder burped, and I smelled blood.

It took a bit of maneuvering to escape the Cloisters without alerting Cory to our plans. I felt a little bad about leaving her behind—if anyone needed a night off, it was Cornelia Bartoli—but I also wanted some alone time with Phil. We’d barely seen each other since she went off to college, and I was dying for a chance to talk about something other than unicorns.

Phil, however, did not share my desire.

“How crazy was it when you just tackled Bonegrinder like that?” she asked, as we boarded one of the city’s orange public buses and slid into our molded plastic seats. “I’ve never seen you move so fast before. Practically a blur. Did you join the track team or something after I left?”

I shrugged, because the only answer I could think of sounded too bizarre to contemplate. I’d caught Bonegrinder because I had special unicorn hunting powers. But was it any crazier than what I’d already seen? Bones that moved on their own, a unicorn that could shake off a two-story drop to a stone floor, the way Brandt’s wound knit together before my eyes?

“I think it’s all connected,” I said aloud. “I bet you can do it, too.” Phil would probably be even better, since she was already a great athlete.

Twenty minutes later, we were making our first circuit around the Piazza Navona, a vast, oblong plaza packed with tourists, Italians, cafés, and gelato stands. From our vantage point at the far end, it was easy to see the piazza’s origins as an ancient Roman racetrack. The buildings that had grown around the border maintained the outline of the field, and giant marble fountains were the only break in the flat, cobblestoned court.

“This is gorgeous!” Phil exclaimed, holding her arms out wide. I tried to look inconspicuous, but two teenaged blond girls in Rome were apparently something to stare at. And harass. Every few seconds, a man approached me with a handful of withering roses, trying to make a sale. A few feet ahead, swathed in wraps despite the afternoon sun, a Gypsy woman hobbled along, bent nearly double with osteoporosis. Near the fountain stood a knot of children in dirty T-shirts and shorts with pieces of cardboard in their hands. While Phil brushed off the latest flower guy, I observed the kids, wondering what they were doing out here alone.

It was a mistake. As soon as they noticed me staring, they converged upon me, chattering away in a language that didn’t quite sound like Italian, holding their cardboard panels up like serving trays as they pushed against me.

“Stop it!” Phil cried. “Astrid, get away from them!” But I wasn’t going to shove a child out of my way. In another second it was over and the kids scurried off.

With my purse.

“No!” Each one was going in a different direction. “No! They’re pickpockets!”

“You think?” Phil said drily, but I’d already taken off after the nearest one.

“Stop, thief!” I cried. I sprinted past the fountain, leaped over the legs of a few people sitting on the edge, and kept running. The boy ahead of me dodged and ducked through the crowd with practiced ease, and I started falling behind. Unlike my earlier pursuit of Bonegrinder, here there was no supernatural speed, no strange narrowing of the universe. Here I was just a girl. Not a hunter.