“What are our options, Pippa?”
There were none. Not if we were hunters. We were in the middle of the city, and we were still attracting wild animals. We all knew it. But Phil and I were the people the new rules would most affect. We were the ones always sneaking out.
Of course, if Giovanni had dumped me, it didn’t matter as much. I’d barely thought of him since the attack. Amazing how being bathed in arterial blood can wash out any lingering romantic disappointments. Extraordinary how seeing a friend gored before your eyes can make you forget all about your dating life.
I rested my head in my hands, and the argument went on above me.
Later that afternoon, when Phil and I were alone in my room, she held up her cell phone. “Twenty messages from Seth. Voice mails, texts, everything.”
“Did he apologize?” I was lying on my bed, combing grass seeds from Bonegrinder’s coat, while Phil wore grooves in the floor with her pacing. Strange, I’d never been one to cuddle the zhi much before. That had always been Phil’s job. But feeling her warm little body curled close to mine was somehow comforting now.
“A million times.”
“A million times in twenty messages? Wow. Must be long messages.” I smiled ruefully. “Have you called him back? Told him what happened?” But these questions weren’t the ones I really wanted to know the answer to. Twenty messages from Seth. Did any of them mention Giovanni? Did Giovanni mention me? Didn’t he care enough to admit that he’d been acting like a jerk, too? Would he do the same, if I had my own phone?
She shook her head. “He wants to meet.”
I sat up, dislodging Bonegrinder, who bleated in protest. “Are you looking for me to give you permission?”
“No!”
“To come with you, then.”
Phil pressed fists to her temples. “No! Astrid, I thought you’d understand.” She sat down beside me and laid her head on top of Bonegrinder’s tummy. The zhi was in heaven, sandwiched between us. “I need to get out of here. This past day and a half, it’s been torture. Nothing to do but sit here and think about all the things I could have done to prevent this—”
“There’s nothing you could have done,” I said. “It was an ambush, like you said. We barely knew that re’em was there until he was on top of us.”
“I need to get away from the Cloisters for a little while. Clear my head.”
“Maybe you can go with Neil when he takes his trip up to Gordian.”
She turned her face into Bonegrinder’s hair, so her response was muffled. “Nnoo. Mmeed to leaf somva here to watch you gguys.”
“I think Cory and I can hold down the fort.” Contusion or no.
“An adult.” She lifted her head. “Besides, I bet Gordian will call back today and it won’t be necessary for him to leave the Cloisters at all. It won’t be necessary for any of us to leave, ever again.” She stroked her fingers through Bonegrinder’s coat, and the zhi beamed at her in adoration. “And I can’t wait that long. I’ll go mad if I have to stay here another hour. Don’t you feel it?”
Usually, but I was still wiped from my fight with the re’em. I understood now why Phil had been so out of it after she killed the kirin yearling. “I don’t like it. It’s dangerous.”
“Asteroid,” Phil groaned. “You sound like one of them.”
“Sorry. But it’s true. I don’t want you hurt. I couldn’t bear that.” I remembered Melissende’s face in the hospital. Frantic, horrified. She and her sister may not have gotten along, but she still loved Ursula.
“Then come with me. We’ll carry weapons. There’s safety in numbers.”
There was also a greater attraction to the unicorns that were lying in wait. I scratched Bonegrinder behind the ears, bowing my face forward so my hair hid Phil from view. “I…don’t want to. Please, Phil, don’t think I’m a coward. I just can’t. Not yet.”
I felt the mattress lift as Phil stood. “Fine. I’ll pretend it’s because you don’t want to play third wheel to Seth and me.”
That, too, but it was far from the top of my list. And I still couldn’t look her in the eyes. I glanced instead at the bedside table, where the alicorn dagger sat, nice and clean. I picked it up, and Bonegrinder started in my lap.
“Take this,” I said, and held it out to her, eyes still downturned.
She grabbed the hilt. “I was thinking a crossbow, but it doesn’t hurt to have a backup weapon.”
I watched her examining the knife, turning it over and over in her hands. “It’s weird,” I said. “That first stab wound I gave the re’em? It didn’t heal.”
She shrugged. “Maybe it didn’t have time to before you cut its throat.”
“Maybe.” But the kirin had healed pretty quickly after it had torn Grace’s arrow from its shoulder. “And I suppose it bled out too quickly for the neck wound to heal, either?” But then, the kirin yearling’s wounds also seemed to knit, even after death. Were re’ems different somehow?
Phil made a few practice swipes with the knife. “I don’t know, Asterisk. You were always better at the science stuff than me.” She leaned over and gave me a quick kiss on the forehead. “I expect you’ll have it figured out by the time I get home tonight. I’m going to go call Seth.”
I grabbed her knife hand. “Please be safe, okay?”
“You got it.”
She headed for the door, and Bonegrinder leaped up off the bed to follow her, bleating pitifully.
“No, no, sweetie, you stay here and keep Astrid company, okay?” She ruffled the thicker fur on the zhi’s neck. “I’ll be home to play with you later.” She waved at me. “Sleep tight, Cuz.”
She closed the door, leaving Bonegrinder and me to stare after her in dismay.
By the evening, I was going stir-crazy myself. Much as I may have wanted to, I couldn’t spend the rest of my life hiding in my room with Bonegrinder. After all, if the zhi got any hungrier, I might begin to look tasty. I headed downstairs and found Cory in Neil’s office, reading.
“The others are in the chapter house,” she said when I knocked. “I get too much vertigo when I try to navigate the stairs, so I’m stuck on the ground floor for a few more days.”
“Are you sure you’re supposed to be straining your eyes to read those old documents?”
“On the contrary, I’m under physicians’ orders not to.” She smiled and turned a page.
“Are Melissende and Grace still at the hospital?”
“They came home a few hours ago. Grace said Melissende hasn’t slept at all. Looked it, too. She’s apparently been after the doctors nonstop to give Ursula our blood.”
“Even if we designate our donations for Ursula, they still have to go through the same screening process. It will take time.” I sat beside her. “Did they ever experiment with your blood at Gordian?”
“Hmmm?”
“Testing whether hunter blood has something to do with the Remedy. Transfusing our blood into a non-hunter and seeing if that gives them immunity to the alicorn venom.”
“Would be difficult to find a volunteer to test it on,” Cory said. “If it didn’t work, they’d be done for.”
“True.” And it wasn’t like they could transfuse our blood into animals and carry out a trial like that. Could it be as simple as our blood, though? Maybe the Remedy made by hunters was not a product of the unicorns they killed, but a product of the hunters themselves?
But as soon as the thought occurred to me, I dismissed it. That was ridiculous. If it was hunters’ blood, there wouldn’t be such a secret surrounding the production of the Remedy. The hunters in the Cloisters wouldn’t have needed an entire laboratory to create it. And the histories would have been filled with stories of hunters kidnapped and drained dry, rather than breathless depictions of unicorn battles.
Besides, hunters weren’t invincible. Cory and Dorcas were proof enough of that. It was only when we were wounded by an alicorn itself that we saw the same regenerative powers evident in the unicorns and recipients of the R
emedy. And Cory had already been the subject of an experiment where alicorn venom had been dripped into an incision made by a steel scalpel. Nothing happened. So it couldn’t be a mix of our blood and alicorn venom, either.
“Cory,” I said, “are there any instances in the histories that describe a hunter receiving a dose of the Remedy? Not as a cure to alicorn poisoning but for an illness or some other injury?”
“I can’t recall any offhand, but you’re welcome to look through our archives.”
Hint, hint. Well, it was about time to put my money where my mouth was. I’d been complaining for weeks that we didn’t have enough information about the unicorns. That we should look into this history or that theory. But shuffling through musty old papers—only half of which were written in English and an even smaller percentage of which were decipherable—was the last thing I wanted to do after I spent the day shooting arrows until it felt like my arms would fall off. They reminded me too much of my mother’s strange, mildewed books, filled with their crazy theories and pseudoscience.
On the other side of that door, lying in the rotunda, was a monster. A giant, venomous, deadly monster. A shark, a snake, a panther, and a rampaging hippopotamus all rolled into one. And I’d killed it. Me, who’d never killed anything bigger than a cockroach. And all these ancient, ignorant old archives would tell me was that the reason I was able to do so was because I had some sort of magical genetic predisposition for killing unicorns.
I longed to know the truth, but it wouldn’t be found here. So I got chills every time a unicorn came near. That was called survival instinct. So I didn’t understand the distortion in time perception when we went into battle. I’m sure half a dozen papers had been written about a mind’s increased ability to process information in an emergency situation. How about the unusual aim, strength, and speed? Well, I had been doing nothing but training for weeks on end. And I shouldn’t discount the placebo effect. Tell a bunch of teenage girls that we have special powers hunting unicorns and see what we can make of it.
Every don, every hunter, bought into the magic, relied on it, believed that because you were a member of one family you were capable of tracking, and because you were a member of another family you were capable of hunting. They didn’t seek to understand why that was. They just believed it. Predestination. The will of God. Whatever. If it ain’t broke, don’t examine it.
Tell that to the girl lying in the hospital on top of the hill.
“Actually,” Cory said, “I think there might be something in the account of the Jutland Campaign.” She pointed at a modern, bound set of photocopies on Neil’s desk. “We just got our hands on the records when I was researching into the alicorn throne from downstairs. A lot of hunters died in those battles. The Danes gave us that throne as a memorial. They apparently made a similar one for their monarch.”
I picked up the spiral-bound manuscript. “It’s in English?” And typed?
“We borrowed an English translation from the Vatican archives. They were fascinated with Magrete the First of Denmark—never more so than when she called the entire Order up north to help rid her land of the scourge of unicorns. And there’s not much mention in the archives of this, but I think the Vatican was afraid of losing the Order of the Lioness to her. Powerful women sticking together and all.”
Science or not, I wanted to hear this story.
Very late that night, Phil returned from her date with Seth. I didn’t even know she’d come back until Valerija knocked on Neil’s office.
“Astrid?” she asked. “Philippa is in our room. You see her?”
I shook my head. “No, why?”
Valerija’s face was drawn. “I think you go see her. She is…sad.”
Cory and I exchanged quick glances and then we both followed Valerija up the stairs, head injury and all.
Phil was curled up on her bed, facing the wall, hugging a throw pillow to her chest. The lamp on the desk cast soft, yellow light on her blond hair, her wrinkled denim skirt, her pink tank top, and her golden summer skin.
“Phil?” I sat down beside her. “Are you all right?”
She nodded but said nothing. She hadn’t even taken her shoes off, and they were leaving dusty smears on her coverlet. In fact, she was pretty dusty all over.
“Were you in a fight?” I asked. “Did you get attacked by a unicorn?”
“No. Asteroid, I’m really tired, okay?”
By the door, Cory leaned over to Valerija. “Fetch Neil, would you?” Valerija nodded and was off. I glared at Cory. Fetch Neil so he could scold her for going out against his recommendation? Yes, that would make her feel grand.
But, much to my surprise, Phil didn’t protest, just curled into an even tighter ball.
I tried to brush the tangled strands of hair from her face, but they stuck to her cheeks. I saw dried tear tracks.
“Phil, honey, look at me. Did you argue with Seth?”
She nodded, squeezing her eyes shut.
A small knot of hunters had gathered outside the door. Perfect. I’d hated breaking up with Brandt in front of everyone, and now Phil was faced with dealing with the aftermath of her breakup while the whole Order looked on.
“Astrid, it’s late, I’m tired, can you just leave me alone?” She turned her face toward me, and I saw her eyes, red and puffy.
And then she looked beyond me. “Neil.”
I turned around. The don was standing on the threshold, while the other hunters clustered around. “Good God, Pippa, are you all right?”
She sat up then and shook her head miserably as he joined us on the bed. “I’m so sorry, Neil.”
She reached out her hands, and he took them in his and looked at her, long and hard.
“Cory,” he said very carefully. “Close the door.”
“Come on, everyone,” Cory said, bossy as ever. “Let’s leave her alone. Stop staring.” The girls began to disperse and head back toward their own rooms.
Phil began to cry, crouching forward, her head drooping beneath her shoulders. I reached out to put my arm around her and she shuddered.
“I’m so sorry.”
Sorry for what? For going out? “Shhhh, honey, it’s all right.”
“Close the door, Cory,” Neil said, more forcefully this time. But Cory had also left. Valerija, leaning against the wardrobe near the threshold, suddenly straightened.
And then I heard it, the unmistakeable clatter of hooves on stone. Bonegrinder, galloping toward us.
“Close the door!” Neil shouted. I stood, but I was too late. Through the doorway, I saw a flash of white, and Cory, struggling to run, with her hand to her head. Valerija grabbed the door handle and shoved hard.
A microsecond later, Bonegrinder slammed against the wood, growling and shrieking like the bloodthirsty beast she was. I heard splintering as her horn scratched the door, as her hooves scrabbled against it, then a high-pitched yelp as someone on the other side dragged her away.
Phil buried her face in her hands.
18
WHEREIN ASTRID MEETS A MONSTER
IF MY HUNTER POWERS make my body move faster than normal, do they do the opposite for my brain? That was the only explanation for how long it took me to understand what had just happened. One minute, I was caught in the grip of a hunter’s desire to subdue a raging unicorn, and the next, I was staring at my cousin in shock.
Bonegrinder had wanted to attack her.
“No,” I whispered.
“Astrid, go away!” Phil cried, but this time, she wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Please, go away.” She glanced at Neil. “All of you.”
He stood, his jaw clenched as tightly as the hands by his side. “Are you hurt? Just tell me, are you hurt?”
Phil gave a tiny, miserable shake of her head. “Go. Away.”
“Well, you’re not happy about it, and that worries me. Were you ever?”
My heart seemed to implode in my chest, and I reached out blindly for the edge of the desk, for anything to support myself. Val
erija stood at the door, her expression impassive. She might have been blind, deaf, like the marble fountain in the front courtyard. Everyone was so silent, and I wanted to scream.
“Philippa, I couldn’t care less about the Order. I care about you.” Neil’s voice almost cracked on the words. “Tell me. Was this your choice?”
I’ll be home to play with you later. That’s what she’d said to Bonegrinder.
Phil’s head drooped farther forward, and her reply was inaudible. It didn’t matter.
“Who was he?”
Phil didn’t respond. Neil looked at me.
“Her boyfriend,” I said immediately. Neil’s eyes flickered slightly at the word. “Seth Gavriel. He’s doing a language program at a boarding school in Trastevere.” I told him the name.
Neil nodded. “I’m calling the police.”
“No, Neil,” Phil said. “Don’t.”
“But, Phil,” I said, incredulous. “If he—”
“Astrid!” she screamed. “Get out!”
My eyes burned stronger than alicorn venom, and I headed for the door. Neil put his hand on my shoulder and I shook him off. Valerija exited with me, but as soon as I hit the hall, I broke into a sprint.
Down in the rotunda, I saw Cory exiting the door to the lower levels. She’d braved the stairs after all.
“I shut Bonegrinder up in the catacombs,” she said. “We should really consider doing that more often. We cleaned it up specifically for her and then we spoil her rotten, letting her stay above all the time—” she looked at my face. “Are you all right?”
“No.” At that moment, I thought I’d never be all right again. I stared at the carcass, at the tableau, at anything. My hands clenched, my fingers strained. I wanted to claw his eyes out. I wanted to kick his face in. Didn’t he know we were hunters? Didn’t he know what we were capable of?
All of a sudden, I understood what Melissende had said about the ancient hunters, sending out packs of zhi to cut down Actaeons. There was nothing I wanted more than to sic Bonegrinder on Seth Gavriel.
No sooner had the thought occurred to me than I found myself climbing upon the dais. I wrenched the sword from the mannequin’s hand. I checked the blade. Still sharp. Not the real claymore of Clothilde Llewelyn, but it would do.
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