You think?
The brochure filled in the rest. Built in the fourteenth century, the Cloisters of Ctesias was a convent of sorts dedicated to training and housing scores of unicorn hunters. From the pictures in the glossy brochure, the Cloisters was a Mediterranean palace, replete with colorful frescoes, marble statues of naked gods and toga-clad saints, and towering columns. So it’s understandable that after I disembarked from the crowded bus, manhandled my rolly bag up a steep hill paved with uneven cobblestones, and turned down the alleyway leading to the Cloisters, I almost missed the place entirely.
In the brochure, they were very careful not to show the crumbling, poster-plastered wall surrounding the building, the shattered plywood boards covering most of the upstairs windows, the pack of stray dogs sunning themselves on the stoop, and the bum leaning against the wall with a ragged rucksack and a cardboard sign covered in Italian.
Any lingering hopes I might have had of a wild summer spent in Rome, riding Vespas and eating gelato at midnight in picturesque piazzas, promptly disintegrated.
I hefted the bag onto my shoulder and maneuvered my way past the slumbering strays. Here goes nothing.
Beyond the enclosing walls lay a small, oblong courtyard paved in dusty, cracked mosaics and littered with trash. In the center stood a marble fountain featuring a pale stone woman in a flowing stone wrap holding the tip of an alicorn in a small catchment basin. Water cascaded around the horn and spilt over the lip of the basin into the large pool at the woman’s feet.
I neared the fountain with care, as if the statue might suddenly spring to life and stab me with the weapon in its hand. I leaned close; the alicorn looked harmless from this vantage point. According to the brochure—which I was beginning not to trust—the horn had been alchemized by some martyred hunter of the past to purify the waters of the fountain. A dollop of bird poop graced one of the twists.
Yeah, some purity.
And yet, attached to a unicorn, a thing like this almost killed a guy in the Myersons’ backyard last month.
Shuddering, I turned toward the doors to the Cloisters, which were large and made of bronze oxidized to a pale, sickly green. Decomposing bas-relief squares appeared to be hunting scenes of some sort, but it was hard to make out more than vague shapes—tall, lithe figures in pursuit of longer, bulkier ones.
This place was a dump.
With some difficulty, I yanked open the door with a pop. A wash of cool air enveloped me and with it, a scent that made my nose prickle. In contrast to the sunny city outside, the Cloisters were dark and…dank? What was that smell? I closed my eyes and sniffed again.
Fire and flood.
Great, two steps inside and this place was already reminding me of ways I could die. I tightened my grip on my suitcase handle. If I left now, how far would my traveling money take me? How much did a Eurorail pass go for nowadays?
No receptionist greeted me. Instead I entered a large gallery, a rotunda whose ceiling was studded with mosaics of gold leaf and dark-veined marble. Stone statues of Alexander the Great and other historical figures connected to the unicorn-hunting lineage stared out from niches every few yards along the wall. The sound of my footsteps withered on the floor, as if even the soles of my shoes were afraid to disturb the tranquility. Rolling my bag over the threshold, I called into the gloom. “Hello?”
As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I saw before me the outline of a woman and a beast on a dais in the center of the room. I approached, only to be met with another set of statues—though these looked more like the mannequins and stuffed figures you’d see in a natural history museum diorama than the hunks of marble in a sculpture gallery. A bronze plaque at the base of the dais identified the figures, and I dropped my backpack in surprise. Clothilde and Bucephalus.
The woman wore a dress of real purple silk, faded where the sun filtered in from the windows above. Long blonde hair not unlike my own hung beneath an elaborately folded headdress of indigo and brilliant white. Her mannequin face was as white as porcelain, her eyes bright marbles with blank black centers. In her hands she brandished a gleaming sword against the monster before her.
It was as big as an elephant. The hide was a deep chestnut red and in consistency something between a horse’s and what I imagined a wooly mammoth’s would be like. The nostrils flared on a long, wide snout, and its mouth was open in a snarl, revealing jaws that would make a sabertooth tiger envious. Each cloven hoof was the size of a truck tire, and the beast stood in an aggressive pose, tilting a curved, creamy yellow horn as thick and long as my leg directly back at the hunter.
This was the karkadann, the most dreaded and deadly of all unicorns. This was the creature of nightmares, the thing my family fought for so many generations, the monster that my great-to-the-fifth aunt Clothilde finally defeated, though the battle cost her her life.
Before me stood my enemy. Ancient, unstoppable, unfathomable. The brochure had said that no one knew how old this creature was. It was believed by some—as commemorated on the plaque—that Clothilde had slain the great Bucephalus, the loyal steed of Alexander the Great. All those years I ridiculed my mother for not being able to point to any unicorn remains? Here it was. Every inch of the karkadann’s body rippled with power, even in death, even a century and a half after being stuffed.
However, it was the eyes that had me mesmerized. On some level, I understood that these could not be the monster’s true eyeballs, and that a taxidermist had replaced them with round black pits that gleamed with red and orange flame. And yet I couldn’t look away.
I knew these eyes. In a place beyond memory, I knew them, and I was terrified. I knew every sinew of this beast, how quickly it moved, the shape of its hatred as it turned in my direction, the vibrations that echoed through the earth as it galloped toward me, the sting of poison from its horn.
I stared, and the karkadann stared back.
And then it whinnied.
I shot away from the dais, slid on the slick marble, and wound up sprawled facedown in a mosaic of mermaids about five feet away.
Laughter. Light, bubbling giggles. I stood gingerly, rubbing my butt where I’d smacked it on the stone floor. A girl about my age filled the far doorway, smiling brightly at me. “Forgive me,” she said in a crisp British accent. “I simply couldn’t resist. You looked so intent there.” She stepped forward into the dim light trickling down from a clerestory that ringed the room. “Of course, you’ve very little to worry about. There hasn’t been a single report of a karkadann sighting. And they probably wouldn’t be making horse sounds, at any rate—”
“Who are you?” I asked, before I could hear her dissertation on the vocal emissions of various unicorn species.
“Cornelia Bartoli,” she said. “You must be Astrid.”
“Cornelia?” I asked. “I thought you were a man.” So had Lilith. An older, more responsible man.
“No, that’s my Uncle Cornelius. But I go by Cory and he by Neil.”
“I go by Astrid,” I said, and nodded at the dais. “Nice décor.”
“You should be proud,” Cory said, smiling wistfully at the figures locked in combat. “That’s not my ancestor up there.” She touched the hem of Clothilde’s robe, a look of reverence on her round, freckled face. “You look just like her, don’t you?”
I bit my lip to keep from saying that I’d spent my childhood wishing I wasn’t related to her, or at least not the daughter of someone so obsessed with our freakazoid lineage.
“I can’t believe how well this was preserved,” she went on, her short, brown curls bouncing as she spoke. “This place was sealed for a century, and yet this figure looks almost new, doesn’t it? Nothing else survived this well. The laboratory is a shambles.”
Perhaps that was the smell. Rot and stale air. But no, that wasn’t quite right either. “Was there…a fire in here?”
Cory frowned. “Probably. Every plague imaginable was visited upon the Cloisters after the unicorns disappeared. Apparently, it was ransack
ed several times by mobs looking for the secret of the Remedy. I’ve spent the last month mucking this place out. It was rather disgusting before I got my hands on it. Speaking of which, would you like the tour?”
I reshouldered my backpack and grabbed the handle of my rolly bag. “Yes. But can we start with my room?”
She brightened at this. “Of course. You must be so jet-lagged. This way.” And off she bounced toward the door whence she’d come. I did my best to keep up, but the plastic wheels of my suitcase kept catching on ridges in the floor mosaic. Behind me, I could feel the eyes of the karkadann.
As if, even in death, it watched.
The door led to a small hallway and then to narrow, twisting stairs lit by bare yellow bulbs. “The wiring is still a bit spotty,” Cory explained, pointing to duct-taped twists of wires running up the walls. Between each bulb was an empty sconce formed with an upturned hock and hoof. All through the stairwell, pieces of bone and horn poked out from the masonry. Even the walls here were made from unicorn. This place was like an elephant graveyard. I shuddered and did my best to keep toward the center of the stairwell.
We reached the next floor amid a tsunami of unicorn history chatter from Cory. She and Lilith would be incredible chums. This girl was every bit as gung ho about hunting as my mother. “So you’ve been here for a month?” I asked hopefully. “How are you liking Rome? Have you been to the Vatican Museum?” I asked. “Or the Spanish Steps?”
She looked at me, brows knitted. “Why? All the unicorn information is right here.”
Um, okay then. This chick was clearly a barrel of fun. Finally we spilled out into a decently sized hallway flanked by a row of doors on one side and open archways overlooking a courtyard on the other. I poked my head over the parapet and looked down into the partially paved courtyard, which currently lay in the shade of the dome we’d just left. Two wide cobblestone walkways intersected in the shape of a cross, forming a small square court in the center, while grassy, untended gardens comprised the rest of the space. The brochure had mentioned that this courtyard and walkways were the cloisters that gave the property its name.
“This is the dormitory,” Cory announced, sweeping her arms out. “Our residential hall. Bathroom at the end. The plumbing, thank goodness, is moderately more reliable than the electricity.”
She opened a door about halfway down. “And this is our room.” She stepped aside for me to peek in, but I simply stared at the hand-stenciled sign that proclaimed CORY AND ASTRID. There were pencil-drawn unicorns rearing up on either side of our names. The horn of one practically punctured the A. Great. It was like the Myerson girls’ bedroom all over again.
“How many of us will there be?”
“Perhaps nine? My uncle says it’s still too early to tell.” She flounced into the room. “You’re lucky you got here early. I gave us the biggest one.”
I checked out the endless hallway. “But aren’t there a lot of rooms?”
“Not habitable ones. Not yet. Do come in.”
I followed her inside. It was a lovely room, complete with colorful curtains and neatly made beds. Fluffy white pillows and bedspreads in shades of spring green and purple, coral carpets and wooden desks with matching lamps. In contrast to the antique and creepy air that characterized the rest of the building, this room was modern and cheerful, devoid of the weird bones and skulls evident everywhere else.
Cory obviously kept her things neat, and a quick survey of the space revealed that she’d given me the better side of the room, near a window that looked out onto a sea of terra-cotta and stone rooftops. I wheeled my belongings over to the bed clearly meant to be mine and dropped my backpack onto the perfectly smooth coverlet.
“We’re going to have so much fun!” Cory assured me, catching on to my lack of enthusiasm. “With all the work I’ve been doing around here, I know this place like I built it myself. And I’ll show you all the really brilliant, secret stuff.”
Fun? Killing unicorns? The only thing that excited me about this whole trip was the idea of gelato. I swallowed. Pretty as this room was, it didn’t feel right. The walls were too thick, the ceilings too high. The light in the window was brighter than back home. The bedding was totally new, but the place still smelled of ages. Not the comfortable dilapidation of the apartment I shared with Lilith, but ancient blood and ancient danger.
“And it will be good to have another hand to help with the cleaning,” she went on. Her bright tone was beginning to sound a tad forced. “I’ve been on my own for so long.”
“What about your uncle?” I said, taking a deep breath. All old houses smelled funny. This one was just older than most.
“Oh.” Her voice turned vague. “He’s quite busy himself, finding hunters and trying to get the training materials ready. I’ve been put in charge of the living arrangements.”
“It’s a very pretty room,” I said, hoping to appease her.
“Yes, well enough of that. I expect you’d like to see the rest.” Cory looked hopeful, but I had a sudden terror of going on the tour, of heading deeper into this place, back where the skeletons and the scent held more sway. And I didn’t want to room with this girl who thought it was funny to pretend I was being attacked by a karkadann. This girl who seemed to like the idea that there were such things as karkadanns. Everything about Cornelia Bartoli was small and round, from her petite, curvy body and apple-cheeked face to her bouncy curls and deep brown eyes. Yet something in the way she carried herself made me realize that this girl was not as soft as she appeared.
I looked longingly at my bed, then back at her, and my protests died on my lips.
There was a unicorn curled up on Cornelia Bartoli’s bed.
How did it get there? That bed had been empty a second or two ago.
“Oh no, Cory. Stand still. Don’t. Move.” I pictured Brandt’s face after he was poisoned. My mom wasn’t around with her decanter and her can of Coke this time. We were both going to die, right here on the coral carpet.
Cory looked over her shoulder to see what caught my attention and proceeded to go completely berserk.
“Bonegrinder!” she shrieked in a voice I barely recognized as human. “No! Bad!” She picked up her desk chair and flung it wildly in the direction of the bed. It glanced off the stone wall, bounced once near the headboard, and clattered to the floor.
The unicorn barely blinked. And then Cory really went nuts.
“You horrid little beast! You know you’re not allowed in the dorm!” Her voice was the shriek of a fire alarm, of an air raid siren, of a harpy. She didn’t even seem like the same person who’d showed me to our room. “Get off my bed! Get out! Get out! GET OUT!” She flew at it, fists raised.
The unicorn, its blue eyes as wide and limpid as any of the fictional creatures in children’s fantasy books, leaped straight into the air in a tangle of cloven hooves and spindly white legs and scrabbled toward the door. It didn’t make it.
Cory grabbed it by one leg and its horn and swept it up in her arms. It was bleating now, a pathetic, wheezing sound. In two steps, Cory had it out the door, then she swung it in a wide arc and flung it out over the courtyard.
It flew through the air, legs splayed, then plummeted the two stories to the cobblestoned court. I watched in horror, unable to breathe, as it crashed into the ground with a sound of shattering bones and rending flesh that echoed and bounced along the walls and columns. And then, silence.
Cory stood at the gallery, shivering with rage, staring blindly at the spot where the beast had fallen. Then she turned to me, her face drained of all color except two magenta spots on her cheeks. Tears flowed freely from her eyes.
I was too shocked to cry. This was a hunter. This was what Lilith wanted of me. This cruelty, this brutality.
I wanted to ask her what we should do. I wanted to ask her what the hell a unicorn was doing in the Cloisters of Ctesias. But I was afraid to speak. I was afraid to even close my mouth, which hung open, stupid and in shock. I’d never seen anything
like that in my life.
And then it got worse, because I spotted movement below. The unicorn was rising, shaking itself off and staring up at us. There was blood smeared along its white coat, but when it moved, it didn’t look injured at all.
I gasped, but Cory didn’t turn around.
“Trust me,” she said. “It’s very hard to kill.”
4
WHEREIN ASTRID FEELS THE RUSH
MOMENTS LATER, THERE were footsteps on the stairs. “Cornelia Sybil Bartoli!” shouted a voice, and then into the hallway stepped an absolutely gorgeous young man in a terra-cotta-colored Oxford cloth shirt and a pair of brown slacks. Black wavy hair curled over his forehead, shadowing deep brown eyes and a tan complexion. “What have I told you about—” He stopped short. “Oh. Hello there.”
Cory nodded at me. “Astrid Llewelyn.” She crossed her arms and set her jaw. “And if that thing knew what was good for it, it would keep well away from me.”
“She can’t control herself and you know it,” he snapped back. He turned to me and cleared his throat. “I’m Cornelius Bartoli. The, er, don of the Cloisters. You may call me Neil.”
Neil couldn’t be over twenty-five. This was the crusty dude responsible for the brochure? This was the weirdo who’d been talking to my mother online? This was the guy in charge? He shook my hand, and his grip was firm and cool. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing an expensive-looking watch and a ring set with a deep red stone. I’m not usually into rings on guys, but this one looked just as masculine as the rest of him.
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