“What was that thing?” I blurted.
“Bonegrinder,” Neil said. “She’s our house zhi.” He eyed me strangely. “She didn’t try to attack you, did she? I’d understood from your mother that you’d already passed the trial by zhi.”
I shook my head in disbelief. Had no one seen what just happened? “We keep unicorns around here? As what, target practice?”
Cory looked thrilled at the idea, but Neil shot her a dirty look. “The zhi are unique to the species,” he said. “We’ve domesticated them. At least, the hunters have. The zhi yields to the true unicorn hunter, but to all others it is a deadly beast. That’s how your kind have been tested for centuries.”
Tested. Our virginity. “Aren’t there easier ways to…test us?” I asked. Ways that didn’t put our lives in danger?
“No matter what your magazines might say, there’s no physiological evidence for virginity, Astrid.”
Thanks for the anatomy lesson, mister, but I promise you, I know what hymens are, and the many, many ways that they can be broken that don’t involve sex. I’d even read an article talking about how they can be reconstructed with plastic surgery for women in cultures where a lack of hymen can mean a public stoning in a town square. Didn’t make them virginal, though.
And a hunter virginity test was, apparently, no less dangerous. “Those things are deadly.”
“Like all unicorns, yes. But we do have safeguards.” He pulled out a whistle and blew it, one low, warbling note. Cory retreated into her bedroom and shut the door as I heard hoofbeats on the stone steps. I stiffened, but Neil seemed unconcerned.
I heard it clattering in the hall and then a large, white bundle skidded to a stop near us. It untangled its limbs and horn and straightened, looking at Neil with enormous blue eyes filled with utter contempt. A growl curled the corner of its jaw, revealing tiny, sharp fangs. Blood was drying in its slightly matted hair, but I saw no injuries at all. It turned to me and, just like the one in the woods, swept into a quick bow.
“She hardly tolerates my presence,” Neil said, as Bonegrinder began to nuzzle against my leg with the side of her face. I kept stepping back, but she was persistent, and when she looked up at me, it was with soft, sweet, puppy-dog eyes. Now I could see she was a good deal smaller than the one I’d seen in the woods. A juvenile unicorn was what? A fawn? A colt? “But she won’t attack me with this ring on.” He waved his hand in front of her and she cuddled even closer to me. “According to the few records we have, all the dons wore it. It’s some kind of zhi kryptonite.”
“That’s impossible,” I said.
He smiled. “Doesn’t all of this seem impossible to you?”
At last, someone reasonable! “Yes. I don’t believe in magic.”
“I take it Cornelia hasn’t shown you around yet.”
Would the rest of this crumbling ruin change my mind? “No, she’s been too busy throwing animals off balconies.” Wasn’t that some sort of sign of a budding sociopath?
Neil set his jaw. “I apologize for that. It was completely unacceptable, and I assure you, it shall not happen again.”
Oh, well, as long as he promised, I guess I’d go ahead and room with the lunatic!
I held out my hand to the beast, and she insinuated herself beneath my palm, bleating happily. “I can’t believe this is happening.” I petted the zhi, and she calmed down.
“It’s surprising how quickly it becomes commonplace,” he said, his voice weary. “I’d gathered from your mother that you were raised knowing your heritage.”
But not believing. Not for years. “Being here is different.”
“It is indeed. Six months ago, I was in school, studying to be a barrister. And now I’m…” he trailed off. I found it difficult to picture him managing a gaggle of teenage girls. Had he ever even been a babysitter? “I’ll take Bonegrinder away.” He held his hand out toward the beast, and she growled, baring a mouthful of fangs, then cowered as the ring got closer. “I presume Cory has offered to show you around?”
“I—” Don’t leave me with her, I thought. She might throw me off something next.
“Or perhaps you’d like to rest from your trip.”
I grabbed at that one and nodded. “Yes, thank you.”
Neil knocked on our door. “Cory, please come take care of the zhi. Astrid would like to take a short nap before the tour.”
A moment later, the door opened. “What would you like me to do to it?” she asked, with a smile that did not quite meet her eyes.
“Wash the blood off would be a start,” he said. “Then put her back in her cage for safekeeping. And I think we talked about these displays, did we not? She can feel pain, you know.”
Cory glared at the unicorn, who pressed her flank against my thigh for protection. “Not enough.”
Alone in the bedroom I was supposed to share with Cory, I couldn’t fall asleep. What if she returned while I was unconscious? I may have always thought my mother was a few pills short of a full prescription, but I never worried that she’d hurt me. However…a girl who threw animals off balconies? She’d seemed so friendly at first, if a bit too focused on unicorns for my taste.
I looked around at the cheerful decor, the bright colors and fluffy pillows, the cobalt-blue vase filled with an artful array of wildflowers, the smattering of photos in chunky glass frames. It looked like a room in a magazine, everything so shiny and new.
I missed the sagging sofa cushions in my apartment back home. They weren’t gray, they weren’t brown, and they almost always felt just the slightest bit damp, but they fit into our little home perfectly. These mod coverlets and prefab furniture clashed terribly with the carved stone walls, with the bone sconces and stuffed heads, with the smell of mold and ashes that no posies in the world could cover.
I lay back against the bed and flung my arm over my burning eyes. My head ached, and I just wanted to go home.
When Cory returned, I lay very still, hoping she’d think I was asleep.
“That can’t be comfortable, with your suitcase taking up half the bed and your shoes still on.”
Busted. I sat up and smoothed my hair down.
“My uncle says I’m to apologize to you for my earlier…display, but I don’t think you need that, do you?”
I remained very quiet and very cautious.
“I know what happened to you in the States. I know that you understand exactly how dangerous these monsters are.”
“Yes.”
“So don’t you agree that we should take every precaution?”
“She wasn’t going to attack us. You knew that.”
“I also knew I couldn’t really hurt it.” She turned away from me and faced her desk.
“Don’t do that again.” The words fell from my lips before I could stop them. After all, what leverage did I have? This girl could take me in a fight, and I was at her mercy here in the Cloisters.
She looked over her shoulder. “I beg your pardon?”
“You did hurt her. Not permanently, maybe, but pain is pain.”
“It’s not a pet, whatever Uncle Neil may want you to believe.” She laughed harshly. “What is it you think we’re here to do, Astrid? We’re supposed to kill them. It’s our purpose.”
“You already said you knew you weren’t going to kill it. Hunting is one thing. Torturing an animal is another. Don’t do that again.”
She stared at me for a long moment, and I waited for an “or what?” that never came. Then she turned back to her desktop and traced the frame of one of the photos. I glanced past her. The girl in the photograph wasn’t yet ten, but I could tell it was Cory. It had been taken at Christmastime, and Cory sat in front of a tree, laughing as she and a woman who looked just like a female Neil posed beside a large, spotted spaniel puppy with a wreath of evergreen draped around its neck.
“Is that your dog?” I asked, to break the silence. I wondered if she’d ever thrown it off a balcony. It was too odd—she cuddled puppies; liked pretty, colorful fabr
ics and flowers; and then went maniacal on me.
She nodded. “His name is Galahad. We had to leave him in England. It’s not safe…for him here.”
Because Bonegrinder would eat him. Still, that was no excuse for Cory’s behavior. Abuse one pet because it kept her from another?
“Do you know,” she said abruptly, “what it takes to kill a unicorn?”
“No.”
“Their flesh regenerates. Their bones knit. Their skin closes over wounds.”
“Silver bullet?” I suggested, half joking. Unicorns were apparently like starfish on steroids. But I’d seen the Remedy in action. If it were possible to isolate that quality of the unicorn, it would change the world as we knew it. Perhaps Lilith was right; it was worth putting up with the danger.
“Bullets just vanish into their flesh. They need to be torn apart. Decapitation works well, or a wound kept open, like one made with an arrow or a spear.” She turned to me now. “That’s one of the reasons we make better hunters. We actually stay alive long enough to bring them down, since we’re not affected by the poison.”
“Being gored through the heart is still the same.”
Cory looked down at her hands, squeezing her fingers apart and together several times. “It is, at that. Humans die too easily, hunter or not.”
I glanced back at the picture: Cory, the dog, and a woman who was almost certainly her mother. A mother that neither of the Bartolis had mentioned.
“Cory,” I said softly. She was rubbing her hands together in earnest now, her movements almost compulsive.
“I won’t hurt it anymore, if that’s what it takes,” she blurted out. “Because I really want you here.”
“Why?” I asked. There had to be other hunters coming. Ones who actually knew a little something about killing things.
“You’re a Llewelyn. You’re from the family that always had the best hunters. The family that got rid of the unicorns last time. I want you to help me get rid of them again.”
Over the next few days, I came to the conclusion that Cornelia Bartoli and Lilith would be best friends forever. I didn’t know anyone could be more obsessed with unicorn trivia than mommy dearest, but this Cory girl had her beat hands down. I’d tried in vain to interest her in any subject that didn’t involve unicorns or the killing thereof. I’d asked her what her favorite books were, and she’d responded that the chronicles of Dona Annabelle Leandrus from 1642 were a bit tough to translate, but had all the best battle descriptions. I’d asked about her favorite movies and she said there wasn’t yet any video evidence of the Reemergence.
All that, and she screamed in her sleep.
So not an ideal roommate, but she had kept her word to me regarding Bonegrinder—no mean feat, considering the penchant the animal showed for following us around. There hadn’t been a morning since I’d arrived that we hadn’t woken to find the creature curled outside our bedroom door. The first time it happened, I’d been afraid to disturb her. Cory had shown no such concern; she’d calmly walked to the threshold and shoved Bonegrinder across the hall. But I felt it constituted progress. I’m sure, had I not been present, that shove would have been a kick. And yet the zhi proved a veritable glutton for punishment and came back every night until Cory complained to Neil and had Bonegrinder confined to her steel crate at all times.
That worked well for two days, until she gnawed through the locks.
So now we were in pursuit of a more permanent home for the zhi. I trailed Cory through the covered passageways of the cloister, while she tried various doors and dismissed the rooms they opened into out of hand.
“These rooms were made for the public,” she explained. “You just don’t have the same amount of security.”
I could believe that. The central courtyard—or cloister—was the most delicate part of the whole building. And, aside from the residence hall, it was the one most devoid of unicorn bones, instead merely suggesting the building’s true purpose. The four barrel-vaulted aisles that bounded the cloister were separated from the open court by rows of arches, each supported by a pair of columns that swirled upward in graceful imitation of alicorns. Small gates topped with arrowheads and guarded by pairs of carved stone lionesses marked the north and south entrances, and the interior walls of the courtyard were ringed with mosaics depicting fair maidens and mythical monsters.
It was almost peaceful—if one avoided the bloodstains in the corner where Bonegrinder had fallen.
Cory told me that in ancient days, pilgrims had entered the cloister through the now-padlocked doors against the far wall on the south end, and waited in the courtyard for the hunters to receive them and distribute the Remedy. Currently, that door led to the church next door, and, as far as its officials were concerned, the Cloisters of Ctesias was the home of a now-defunct nunnery, once known as the Order of the Lioness, whose grounds were being used for storage.
“It’s not entirely inaccurate,” Cory said.
“Except for the ‘defunct’ part,” I replied. We curved around the northern aisle, which bordered the rotunda, and eventually came to the eastern aisle, where I could hear the sound of pots banging around and the unmistakable odor of oregano. Cory and I poked our head into the refectory, where Lucia, our cook, was already working on the evening’s marinara. Neil had found Lucia while doing research for eligible members of hunting families, and the abbess of her convent agreed to lend her out to the Order of the Lioness. I think Lucia was enjoying the change in scenery.
“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.
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