Rampant

by Diana Peterfreund

  A massive roar shook the earth, and kirin and hunter alike seemed to freeze for a second and hunker down. Ursula lowered her bow, and even from this distance, I could see the look of dismay on her face. Hooves the size of manhole covers thundered up the hillock toward her. The karkadann’s horn was lowered, and Ursula’s arrow protruded from its flank.

  “No!” I screamed again, and swiped at a charging kirin. “No! No! You promised!”

  The karkadann roared again.

  Treachery! Treachery, Daughter of Alexander!

  At this, I saw every hunter still. They’d heard him, too.

  The karkadann paused, then raised himself on his hind legs, towering over Ursula’s head, half as high again as the mound upon which they both stood.

  “No!” With all my voice, all my heart, all my soul. “She doesn’t know!”

  He came crashing down, feet from Ursula, and the tomb crumbled beneath his weight, Ursula shrieked as the ground gave way under her feet and she slipped into the darkness below.

  “Ursula!” Melissende wailed, then aimed her crossbow at the karkadann, balancing on the wreckage.

  Try me, Daughter of Alexander. The karkadann faced her flat on.

  She paused, in shock, then lowered her weapon. “Wie bitte?”

  Of course. It made words in our heads. Melissende’s words would be German.

  Grace, nearest to the tomb, was shouting. “She’s inside. She says she’s stuck! Someone help me move the rocks!”

  But the kirin had started up again, and now the tone of their thoughts had changed. Threaded through the murderous rage was an element of…

  Treachery?

  “They’re moving!” Rosamund called out from the pine. The battlefield was emptying, kirin sprinting off in ever-greater numbers.

  Cory made the victory signal and shouted, before whirling and slicing off the head of a yearling racing by.

  No. They weren’t retreating. They were discovering another target. The karkadann’s eyes met mine and he jumped down from the collapsed hill and began to chase the others.

  Treachery comes in every human face.

  I scowled and sprinted after him.

  “Astrid!” Cory’s voice came from behind me. “We did it!”

  I ran, hardly even sure where we headed, but certain that it was far from over.

  The path narrowed as it moved farther away from the tombs, and the deep banks on either side of the excavation gave way to low, gentle slopes and tree-covered wilds. I couldn’t keep up with the animals, hard as I tried, and as their lead increased, I found I couldn’t keep up the inhuman hunter pace, either. I began to shed my heavier weapons. The claymore. The bow and quiver.

  Every hundred yards or so, I came across another dead kirin. Bucephalus was taking them out as he came upon them. The trail of dead was enough for me to follow, and I soldiered on; but then I could find no more bodies, and my hunter sense was scattered and vague. I couldn’t sense the karkadann at all, and I knew every kirin had fled. I was ready to stop altogether, when the house came into view. The chain link gate separating the path from the yard had been battered to smithereens.

  I put on a fresh burst of speed, clambering over the broken gate and rushing into the yard as fast as my tired legs would take me. There were two dead German shepherds near the building, and three dead kirin on the terrace. No sound came from the building.

  Near the back was a sliding glass door, now as smashed as Giovanni’s windshield. The furniture within had been knocked about or flattened, and there were two more kirin bodies bleeding out on the floor. I followed the trail of destruction, though I knew it was too late.

  There was a large hallway lined with empty cages big enough to hold zhis. Beyond this, the building opened into a large central courtyard. Here I saw the final kirin facing off against the karkadann.

  “What are you doing?” I screamed with what little voice I had left, but he did not answer me, just pounced on the smaller animal and ran it through. I stared, appalled, as he gutted the kirin, dragging out its entrails and stomping them into mush against the stone.

  She was the leader.

  The karkadann’s explanation slammed into my brain like a punch. She had betrayed him, condemned who knows how many of her own kind to lab rat slavery for some supposed chance of glory. Bucephalus wasn’t happy, and he clearly didn’t appreciate my reaction to his gruesome show of power. I wasn’t allowed to judge their monstrous ways. He faced me, horn lowered.

  And now, for the human.

  “What?” I tightened my hand on my knife, though I doubted it would be a defense. Talk about treachery! “You said—”

  And then I heard it. A pathetic little whimper from behind me. I risked a glance. Marten Jaeger, in a sweat suit, cowered behind a potted plant.

  Treachery.

  Marten hadn’t gone back up north. Neil was wasting his time. He’d been here all along, hiding a few miles outside Rome in his secret unicorn hideout, perhaps continuing his testing. And the kirin must have thought he was responsible for tipping us off to their location. All of a sudden, the rapid retreat and chase made perfect sense. They weren’t angry at the karkadann. They were angry at their false Alexander.

  “Astrid,” Marten whispered. “Thank God. Do something. Kill it.”

  Get out of my way, Daughter of Alexander.

  “Where have you been?” I asked him. “Why—why did you do this to us?” My voice cracked on the words, and fresh, hot tears poured down my blood-spattered face. “To Phil!”

  Out of my way. I shall kill this pretender.

  “I was trying to protect you!” he said, his words garbled with terror. “If you weren’t hunters, you’d be safe. Alive. That’s all I intended. Those boys, they were your ticket out! I didn’t want anyone hurt.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I swear! When the kirin saw Llewelyn hunters, they wanted you dead. They brought me dead blonds until I understood.”

  My hand flew to my mouth.

  “It’s like—like they know about Clothilde, and they do not want a Llewelyn anywhere near a bow.”

  So then he didn’t know the truth about Clothilde, even if the kirin did. If they even did. I no longer knew what I could trust about the karkadann’s story, nor could I imagine what he’d told the other unicorns to get them to agree to exile. I stared Marten Jaeger down. “But then—why didn’t you just convince us to go home?”

  “I tried, in Tuscany. Remember? But you said it yourself, you’d still be hunters, no matter where you went. It wouldn’t be enough for them. I did the only thing I could think of.”

  The karkadann growled behind me, and I could feel the venom pouring off his body.

  Move!

  Marten’s face was turning red, his eyes watering, and his breath coming in short, shallow pants. “Help me, Astrid!”

  Help him. How he’d helped us? How he’d plotted against us, hurt us, risked all our lives? Imprisoned Valerija, abandoned us all, kept us in the dark about the danger we faced? Help him. Help him what? Protect him from a behemoth with bloody murder emanating from every pore? With my single tiny alicorn knife? Choose him over the creature who’d saved my life again and again?

  “Why did you do this to us?” I sobbed, refusing to move, despite the karkadann’s repeated orders in my head. “To all of us?” The hunters, the unicorns. Everyone he’d manipulated and hurt.

  Marten stared at me in disbelief. “For the Remedy. I needed the Remedy. I needed to find it. I—had to.” He coughed, as the alicorn venom seeped into his lungs. “So many lives saved. It was worth it, Astrid. And…I did it. I know the secret. We can save everyone, cure everything, change the world. Help me.”

  I almost collapsed where I stood. The Remedy. He’d found it. Everything inside me wanted to sing in exultation. Astrid the Warrior and Astrid the healer merged for one brief, shining moment, and I pictured humanity transformed. What was vengeance in the face of that?

  I turned around and faced the unico
rn. “Please,” I said. “It’s over.”

  No.

  “You’ve stopped the kirin. That’s enough.”

  No.

  “For me!” I clasped my hands together in front of my chest.

  I have already spared one life for you today.

  His massive head swept to the side and I flew several yards and landed hard against tiled steps, cracking my skull on the floor. For a moment, starbursts filled the air, and when I looked again, it was over. Marten’s face was twisted and purple, veins protruding from every angle. The tiny hole in his chest hardly bled at all.

  And the karkadann was gone.

  The walk back to the necropolis seemed miles longer than I’d remembered. The sky went from silver to periwinkle to blue during my hike, and the sun burned off every trace of mist.

  Bucephalus had barely touched Marten. With the kirin leader, he’d shown no compunction over decimating and defiling her body. With Marten, who’d been complicit in the entire scheme, he’d only punctured him enough to kill. I didn’t understand it. Perhaps I never would. The karkadann possessed his own scales of justice.

  I retrieved my weapons from where I’d dropped them, but the claymore was pretty much dragging in the dirt behind me as I rounded the last corner into the Via degli Inferni.

  Ursula and Grace sat near a pile of unicorn corpses. Grace was binding Ursula’s arm in a sling and holding her own leg at an awkward angle. They both looked up as I approached.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Looking for you,” Grace said. “We thought you’d been dragged off again.” She turned her head and called for Rosamund, who was rounding the hill with Melissende, each dragging a kirin corpse by the legs. “Get them back! Astrid’s here!”

  I checked out Grace’s leg and Ursula’s arm. Were these our only injuries? Were there any casualties?

  “We killed dozens,” Grace said matter-of-factly, finishing her first aid. “But even more managed to escape. Should we burn the corpses, do you think?”

  One by one, I saw Cory, Zelda, and Valerija come running. They looked scraped up, and Cory had an enormous bloodstain on her leg that made me think she’d been gored. But nothing major. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Did you get it?” Melissende asked. On the hill, Giovanni emerged from his van and saluted me. There was a nasty bruise forming on his brow, but he looked otherwise unharmed. I waved him down, but he seemed to hesitate.

  “Get what?”

  “The karkadann.”

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t know if he can be killed.”

  “Well, he certainly doesn’t like being shot,” Ursula said.

  “He saved our lives,” Zelda said. “Isn’t that weird?”

  “No,” I repeated. “He’s saved my life a few times now.” I bit my lip, weighing my words carefully. I needed to tell them about the karkadann, about Marten Jaeger, about the Remedy. But an official debriefing might be beyond my ability right now. There would be time back at the Cloisters, once we regrouped, bathed, slept, healed. Once I talked to Phil.

  Or cried on her shoulder.

  “I’m glad you didn’t get him,” Melissende said abruptly. “He’s like our own Bucephalus, eh?” Then she turned around and went back to preparing the pyre.

  She is a smart girl.

  The thought was a whisper.

  And ferocious. I like.

  Where was he?

  Far away, and farther still, Astrid Llewelyn.

  He called me by name now?

  You deserve a name. You are your own. Not Alexander’s. Not Clothilde’s. Not even your mother’s.

  I wandered away from the group, away from their chatter, worried somehow that they’d hear him as well. “Are you going into exile again?” I murmured. Was this the new last hunt?

  Our exile is gone. We have no choice. And so, I know to stay far from any hunter, far from danger. Far from anything that would give you cause to hunt me down.

  I drew a shuddering breath. We would not have survived this morning without him. There were too few of us, and the unicorns were so strong.

  The image of the Myersons’ sparkly, silly little bedtime story resurrected itself from the depths of my brain. “I will never really leave,” said the unicorn. “I will always live in your heart.”

  My weapons clanked against my side, and my clothes were turning sticky with dried gore. My blood burned and sang, and my fingers itched to shoot something. Power and bloodlust coursed through every strand of my DNA. I breathed, smelling fire and flood, blood and death, and knew he was right. The unicorn would be inside me forever. There was no going back.

  “Hey,” Giovanni said from behind me. I turned, wiping tears from my eyes. “You okay?”

  “Are you?” Better not to answer.

  “I’m in much better shape than the van,” he said. “I’m going to get kicked out of school for sure this time.” He pointed behind his shoulder. The van looked more like a crumpled newspaper than anything you’d drive around in.

  “Giovanni, I’m so sorry—”

  He shrugged. “I’m used to it by now.” He was silent for a moment, looking over the carnage-strewn path. “So you weren’t kidding about the danger.”

  “I told you.”

  “Or about the superpowers.” He shook his head. “I suppose it’s safe to admit now that I peeked a few times. You know, before they started playing Whac-a-Mole with my vehicle. You’re…amazing, Astrid. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Thanks.” Amazing, huh? Covered in blood, bristling with blades, and smelling like a butcher shop.

  “And I’ve come to a decision.”

  I blinked. “You have?”

  “I think it’s vital that we do not sleep together. You know, for the safety of the world.” His eyes sparkled and there was just a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth.

  “Okay,” I said, and smiled back at him. “But kissing is allowed, right?”

  “Oh, definitely,” he said, and pulled me close. “After all, the warrior always wins the heart of the fair young…man.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Rampant would be more endangered than unicorns if not for the patient, insightful efforts of master marksman Kristin Daly, who loves killer unicorns almost more than I do; the strong, hunter instincts of Deidre Knight; the friendship of Anna Hays, who heard about this from day one; Lauren Perlgut, who still thinks I should be calling this book The Horn Identity; Mackenzie Baris, who made me Astrid the Unicorn Hunter action figures; and the deadly accurate critical aim of fellow writers Justine Larbalestier, Marley Gibson, and Carrie Ryan.

  Thank you to everyone on the HarperCollins team who shepherded this book through the wilderness: Alessandra Balzar, Donna Bray, Corey Mallonee, Ruta Rimas, Jon Howard, Laura Kaplan, and Barbara Fitzsimmons and the design team at HarperCollins Children’s Books.

  As always, I am grateful to my supportive friends and family, especially my father, who loves science, medicine, and fantasy adventures; my uncle Chuck, who gave me a bow to practice on; and my brother Luke, who has steadily fed my unicorn habit.

  I owe a deep debt of gratitude to bow hunter Tara Quinn, who was patient and highly creative while I pestered her during the research for this novel. Her knowledge about hunting animals both real and imaginary was indispensable to the creation of this story. She’s a great hunter; any mistakes are my own. Also, thank you to her husband, Sean, for his demonstrations of both bow and taxidermy, and to my father-in-law for introducing me to both of them.

  A special shout-out to my friends and colleagues who encouraged me to make the genre leap: Julie Leto, C. L. Wilson, Erica Ridley, TARA, WRW, Libba Bray, Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Cecil Castellucci, Margaret Crocker, and Scott Westerfeld, who kept asking about Bonegrinder.

  Speaking of inspirations, thank you to those who have portrayed and created warrior women of film and literature. Astrid would not exist were it not for Princess Leia, Sarah Connor, Ripley, Eowyn, Aravis Tarkheena, an
d Buffy Summers, all of whom taught me that women are powerful and loving, and showed me whom I should write about.

  And finally, thank you to Dan, who was there when I woke up from my dream of being chased by a killer unicorn, explored the depths of Etruscan burial grounds by my side, stood beneath me as I balanced in a tree stand, and hugged me when I wrote “The End.” This one’s for you.

  About the Author

  DIANA PETERFREUND has lain in silence on a forest floor while a panther stalked its prey nearby. She’s swum with sharks in the Great Barrier Reef, lived next door to a very lonely alligator, let piranhas nibble on her toes, and watched as a hyena seriously considered eating her husband. She’s seen all kinds of predators, but nothing scares her more than unicorns. To write this book, she visited taxidermy studios, sat in tree stands, climbed into ancient tombs (armed with nothing more than a flashlight), traveled all over Italy, and learned that shooting a bow is a lot harder than it looks. A graduate of Yale University, she now lives in Washington, D.C., and has written five books for adults and teens. Find out more about Diana, unicorns, and the world of RAMPANT at: www.dianapeterfreund.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Credits

  Jacket photos © 2009 by Duncan Walker / iStock, and Emily Jose / iStock

  Jacket design by Greg Stadnyk / Ray Shappell

  Copyright

  RAMPANT. Copyright © 2009 by Diana Peterfreund. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.