Rampant (9 page)

Between the alicorn throne and the hum from the Wall of First Kills, Rosamund was the only one who was willing to spend any amount of time down in the chapter house, banging away at the piano, which, miraculously, had lost neither strings nor tune in the centuries since it had last been played.

I wondered if the instrument employed unicorn gut instead of cat.

Phil and I were the only representatives at the Cloisters from our family line. The next to arrive, sixteen-year-old Melissende Holtz, was, like Rosamund, another descendant of the Temerins. They were a family, Cory informed me in hushed tones, that accounted for some of the most ferocious and bloodthirsty hunters in all of her records. Personally, I wondered how far back their common ancestor was located, for I’d never seen two more dissimilar girls. Rosamund was a tall, elegant redhead who’d bonded instantly with Zelda and Phil and whose clear, well-trained soprano had been echoing through the stone residence halls since her arrival. Melissende had black hair, gray eyes, and a permanently sullen expression on her face. She seemed to like it here as little as I did, but, if asked, would only say in her gruff smoker’s voice how thrilled she was to get out of Bavaria. Her parents had been aware of their unicorn hunting heritage, and when reports started to leak into the media about the Reemergence, they contacted us.

Melissende also completely ignored her kid sister, Ursula, to the point that the younger girl had been in the Cloisters for almost a full day before I realized they were related. Ursula, twelve, had been intended as fourteen-year-old Dorcas’s roommate, and at first Cory was worried that Ursula would feel isolated without someone closer to her age around. Luckily, around that time, Neil received reports of a twelve-year-old outside Delhi who had been keeping a zhi as a pet, and we added Ilesha Araki to our roster and to Ursula’s room.

We did not, however, add her zhi, as Bonegrinder more than kept our hands full. Ilesha was reportedly heartbroken at leaving him behind. Cory wondered why they hadn’t put the beast out of its misery then and there.

“We’re supposed to kill the bastards, not feed them,” she argued, knee-deep in a vain search to trace Ilesha’s ancestry. “Am I the only one around here to remember that?”

“Neil says she’s got a little sister who promised to take care of it.” I was helping Cory, mostly because Neil’s office was one of the few places in the Cloisters that didn’t make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I found the hum of his computer rather soothing, but it was the complete lack of unicorn carcasses that really pulled the room together.

Cory switched to her Latin dictionary. “That little sister would be far better served coming here and learning how to kill unicorns than staying home and caring for one. Ten is more than old enough to be away from home, in my opinion. What was my uncle thinking?”

Perhaps that he didn’t want to pay for two tickets from Delhi if the kid would wimp out within the week.

Then came Grace and Mika Bo, of the Singaporean family
Bo. According to Neil, the Bos had been highly discriminated against in the previous incarnation of the Order of the Lioness because, back then, the European families considered them “Oriental savages.” It had apparently taken a Herculean effort by Neil and the influence of Marten Jaeger to get the family to agree to come to Rome at all.

The hunters had taken to gathering in the rotunda to witness the trial by zhi, and as we formed our customary shield around Mr. and Mrs. Bo, all I could think was that the father seemed quite happy with the proceedings, while the mother looked ready to cry.

“There’s nothing to fear, ma,” the older girl, Grace, said over her shoulder as she brushed past our shield. “Ugh, what is that smell?”

The younger girl sniffed at the air. “What? I can’t smell anything.”

“Because you’re a snot nose.” Grace yanked her younger sister by the hand. “Come, Mika.”

Her father glared at her. “Gentle with your sister.” Grace rolled her eyes.

Phil was standing across the rotunda, restraining the zhi with a hand on the bright blue bandanna she’d foolishly tied around the monster’s neck, and Bonegrinder practically hanged herself on it in her eagerness to get at the newcomers. The Bo girls took their place before the shield, hands joined, and Bonegrinder began to yip in short, breathy gasps.

“Oh, do strangle yourself,” Cory whispered.

Behind me, Mrs. Bo sobbed softly. On either side of me, Cory and Rosamund were exchanging glances of uncertainty. But I felt it, too. Something was wrong. Together, we glanced back at
Bonegrinder as Phil released her hold on the bandanna.

There was bloodlust in the zhi’s eyes.

“No!” Mrs. Bo cried, breaking out from between Cory and me. “Take me!” She slid to her knees in front of the body of her youngest as Bonegrinder barreled toward them, her horn aimed directly at the woman’s heart.

N
OT AGAIN
.
I
STOOD
, frozen, as the unicorn galloped toward the girls. In my mind’s eye, I saw Brandt’s face, purple and poisoned, but I could not will my feet to move. The scent of death filled my nostrils, blood roared in my ears. And yet, even through my fear, I could feel myself—my innate hunter instinct—gauging the distance between my body and the unicorn’s. The world slowed, just like the last time I’d chased her, just like the time I’d gone after the kirin. My thigh muscles tensed as if to spring. And yet I didn’t move. I couldn’t make it in time. It was too late.

Grace Bo put out her hand and grabbed Bonegrinder by the horn as she flew by. She swung the beast roughly around, and Bonegrinder’s hooves knocked Mrs. Bo to the floor. Mika Bo cried. Everyone screamed.

The other hunters hastened to re-form the shield around Mika and her mother, as Grace, with Phil’s help, wrestled the unicorn to the ground.

Mr. Bo’s face had turned purple. “What is the meaning of this?”

Mrs. Bo lowered her head and clutched her daughter to her chest, but did not respond.

Grace pushed her long black hair out of her face and stood, leaving Phil to wrangle Bonegrinder. “Ba ba,” she said to her father, bouncing on her toes. “Did you see me? Did you see me take the unicorn?”

He brushed her aside, pushed into the shield, grabbed his wife roughly by the elbow, and pulled her to her feet. “Who has been messing with my daughter?” he seethed.

Tears fell freely down Mrs. Bo’s face, and she shook her head. He moved on to Mika. “Tell me, light of my life. I shall ruin him. Tell me.”

“I swear, Ba ba, I swear…” Mika began.

“Don’t you see, Ba ba?” Grace said. “She’s not hurt. She’s just not yours.” The words echoed around the stone enclosure, and the girl once more circled until she faced her father.
“I’m
your daughter, Ba ba.
I
am.”

Mr. Bo just looked at his wife and blinked.

“Phil,” Neil warned, and my cousin sprang into action. She herded the rest of the hunters out of the rotunda, keeping tight hold of Bonegrinder’s bandana collar.

Dorcas shook her head as we were hustled away. “I don’t get it. What was wrong with that girl?”

“Have you ever seen that before?” Ursula asked Cory. We had retreated to Rosamund and Zelda’s room, a spot that had quickly become the social center of the dormitory floor. Zelda lay sprawled on her bed, flipping through a magazine thick with glossy photos of bony models. Rosamund was painting her nails. Phil was brushing Bonegrinder, and Cory was
looking green around the gills.

“Not that particular issue, no,” Cory said. “I’ve seen a few who failed the trial by zhi, which was awkward in the extreme. But in most cases, it’s a self-selecting process. If the girl understands the danger Bonegrinder poses, she will admit if she’s ineligible, no matter what the consequences might be at home. We’ve even fudged the facts for the parents if the girl comes to us privately.”

“What I don’t understand,” Phil said, “is why you don’t just give every girl being tested the ring Neil wears. That way, if she doesn’t pass on her own merit, at least she isn’t hurt.”

“Then what would Uncle Neil do for protection?” Cory asked.

“What does Neil need to be there for?” Phil said. “Make a hunter administer the trials.”

“But now that we’re all here,” Cory said, “we hunters will be preoccupied with training.”

Phil shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems barbaric, the way we do it now. In the old days, I bet they used to let the girls who failed the test be killed by the zhi.”

I shuddered.

“They used to do all kinds of horrific things in the past,” said Melissende. “One of my ancestors was a donna of the Cloisters, and every year she tested the girls by piercing their chests with the tip of an alicorn. If they healed, they could stay.”

Gross.

“And if they didn’t, they were dead anyway,” Cory said. “Immunity to the poison is contingent on virginity.”

“There are many bad ways to die,” said Rosamund. “A vestal virgin who was guilty of breaking her vows was buried alive.”

Yeah, but suffocation was supposed to be like going to sleep. Alicorn poisoning was gruesome. Then again, at least it was quick.

Dorcas looked up from where she was biting her nails. “Were the vestal virgins unicorn hunters, too?”

“Wirklich?”
Rosamund exclaimed. “Then they would have something more to do than tend a hearth all day. I always think that job is too easy.”

“There’s some evidence for it,” Cory said. “Especially since the cult of the goddess Diana was based outside Rome—in Aricia—in ancient times.”

Phil leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Who were the vestal virgins again?”

Cory looked over, smirked, and broke into lecture mode. “Vesta was the Roman goddess of the hearth. The vestal virgins were her priestesses. Their job was to make sure that the sacred fire in her temple in the Roman Forum never went out. According to legend, as long as it was lit, Rome would not fall.”

“Got it. Thanks,” Phil said brightly. “So what—”

But Cory wasn’t finished. “They also were in charge of various and sundry items that were sacred to the Roman people. They performed certain rites, presided over the court system, and had rights and privileges that no other Roman woman possessed.”

“Interesting,” Phil said, in a tone that meant
enough
.

“Like what?” Ursula asked.

“They could own property, for one.” Cory began counting off on her fingers.

“So not just
chattel
,” Phil whispered.

“And they could be carried around the streets on a litter. And
if they met a condemned prisoner on his way to execution, he was pardoned.”

Zelda flipped a page in her magazine. “What does any of that have to do with unicorn hunting? So far, they’re just other virgins. Like Catholic nuns. Isn’t that what the Order of the Lioness pretended to be?”

“Right, but all the vestal virgins’ responsibilities were associated with purification,” Cory said. “They performed ceremonies that supposedly kept the granaries free from poison, and for the festival of Lupercal, they made these special cakes that supposedly induced fertility and health in anyone who ate them.”

“The Remedy,” I said softly. “They were the hunters in charge of the Remedy.”

Cory nodded. “Exactly. The priestesses of Diana in the temple in the Arician countryside south of Rome were the hunters. But the priestesses of Vesta, here in the city’s center…”

“Were the healers,” I finished. So ancient Rome divided up the hunter responsibilities between those who killed the unicorns and those who healed the people. I liked that idea. It must not have been combined until the medieval period, when priestesses of pagan gods gave way to Catholic nuns.

Dorcas piped up again. “My father always said our gifts are a heritage from Alexander the Great.”

“The lineage of Alexander the Great determines who gets hunter powers,” Phil said, clearly happy she knew something about it. “If you’re his descendant and a female and a virgin…”

“Very stupid,” Rosamund said. “He was not a woman or a virgin!”

“Had to be a virgin at some point,” Melissende grumbled. Phil laughed.

“But do you know why that is?” Cory asked Phil. “Do you even know why we’re here in the first place?”

“I’m sure
you
do,” Phil said, and seemed very interested in a knot of hair under Bonegrinder’s chin. She tugged, and the animal nipped at her fingers with razor-sharp little teeth.

Cory did indeed know. “In 356
B.C.
,” she began, as if narrating the prologue from an epic blockbuster, “on a hot summer night, a fire broke out in the Temple of Diana at Ephesus—in modern-day Turkey—one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.”

Zelda stopped flipping pages. Rosamund paused, her polish brush hovering over her thumbnail.

“They say it was set by a man named Herostratus, who wanted to be remembered for some action of his.”

“Arson?” Phil twirled her finger in the air. “Whoop-de-do.”

I shrugged. Clearly, it worked. Now
I
knew his name.

“The temple was the home of many priestesses of Diana. In one of her incarnations, she was the Mistress of the Animals and held sway over all the creatures of the forest, the mountains, and the desert. Like her, many of her priestesses were virgin hunters charged with tracking and culling the beasts of the land.” Cory paused. “The most fearsome of which was the unicorn.”

Bonegrinder started licking her own belly.

“On the night of the fire, these priestesses were trapped within the temple and burned alive.”

A chill passed through my body.

“The goddess was not present to save her priestesses, because, in her incarnation as the goddess of childbirth, she was in Macedonia, watching over the wife of King Philip as she gave
birth to his son, Alexander. So the story goes that in memory of the priestesses she lost, the goddess Diana bestowed upon Alexander the Great and his female descendants the powers of the virgin huntress.” Cory smiled beatifically, and everyone was silent.

I snorted. “Are you serious?
That’s
the explanation?”

Cory looked offended. “Of course.”

“That’s idiotic,” I said. “First of all, we don’t have any special hunting powers for bears or boar or mallard ducks. Just unicorns. Diana must have been a little stingy, huh?”

“It was unicorns because they are the most deadly of all the animals!” Cory argued.

“Okay,” I said. “Here’s another thing. Why does Alexander get to be the only guy with special unicorn powers, and after that it’s just the female descendants?”

“Because it was Alexander’s birth that prevented her from stopping the fire.”

“So all of a sudden the goddess Diana, who isn’t exactly man friendly, decides to sacrifice all of her priestesses, her entire virgin huntress entourage, for the sake of one baby boy who is more interested in conquering cities and doing stuff that virgins
certainly
aren’t doing—otherwise we descendants wouldn’t be here in the first place—than doing the whole virgin hunting thing?”

Rosamund looked thoughtful. “Even more, Alexander the Great didn’t hunt unicorns. He tamed them. His warhorse Bucephalus, the one he tamed as a child, he was a karkadann, yes?”

Melissende nodded. “In my family, they say that Alexander’s military power was due to Bucephalus. That he planned his
strategy with the unicorn, carried on conversations with it. That’s why he couldn’t conquer anymore after Bucephalus was gone.”

“A talking unicorn?” Cory said skeptically. “I think that’s a tad unrealistic.”

I let out a bark of laughter.
That
was the unrealistic part? “This whole story is nothing more than a myth! Who were the hunters before the birth of Alexander? Just those priestesses? Are you saying no one had any defense against unicorns outside this one Turkish temple—no one in the Far East or in Western Europe—because they didn’t worship the goddess Diana?”

Cory crossed her arms. “Okay, Astrid. What’s your oh-so-rational explanation?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “I think the whole thing is nonsense, frankly.”

“How can you say that after everything you’ve seen?” Cory asked. “After what we all just witnessed with the Bos? One a descendant of Alexander, one not. And look what happened.”

“Just because I don’t know doesn’t mean there isn’t a good explanation,” I said.

“You work on that,” Cory said, “and I’ll use the explanation we’ve got.”

Phil looked back and forth between us. “Come on, girls. Don’t tell me we’re going to have to separate you two. Sock one of you in the Temple of Vesta and the other in…Where was the Roman Diana place again?”

“The Temple of Diana in Aricia,” Cory said. “But it doesn’t work anyway, because I’m a Leandrus, and she’s a Llewelyn, and the Llewelyns are supposed to be the best hunters—”

I groaned. “Oh for the love of—”

Bonegrinder jerked almost out of Phil’s grasp. In the hall, we heard voices, and I stopped talking.

“You aren’t leaving already?” It was Grace Bo.

“I’m afraid we must,” said her father. “It’s a long trip home.”

“But, Ba ba—”

“Do not shame our family.” Footsteps in the hall. A door closed.

Bonegrinder pulled to her feet and Phil led her out of the room. She crossed the hall to the door marked
MELISSEND AND GRACE
and knelt on the floor.

Cory glared at me. “Explain that.”

Now that we had gathered a good group of hunters, Neil wisely decided it would be best if we were actually trained to, you know,
hunt.
He and Marten brought in an archery and bowhunting expert from the countryside to teach us the basics. His name was Lino, and they found him after a news story on the rise of wild animal attacks profiled him as one of the top game hunters in the country who, despite his prowess, had been unable even to hit one of the strange animals who were depleting livestock in his area.

The poor guy was despairing of our abilities before we’d finished setting up the targets in the courtyard. Lino watched us struggle to anchor the legs of the target in the ground, shaking his head and casting worried glances back at Neil, who sat with Marten Jaeger on the edge of the wall separating the aisles from the courtyard. At the far end of the courtyard, Phil was fastening Bonegrinder’s chain to a metal ring set in the stone walls. The presence of the three men agitated the beast more than a little. She’d been drooling all morning.

The overcast sky had been threatening rain for the past hour, and I secretly wished the barometer would drop a bit more. Perhaps a storm would send us all inside. Then again, Cory hadn’t spoken to me since our argument about Alexander the Great, so maybe being trapped in our shared room was a fate worse than archery.

Last night at dinner—which Grace Bo had not attended—Cory had taken one look at our table, which featured a full-throttle Phil regaling Neil and the other hunters with a story about last semester’s state volleyball competition, and remembered some very important research she’d had to do in Neil’s office. I almost wanted to join her. Post–Mad Goat Incident, I knew exactly what it was like to feel left out.