Ascendant

by Diana Peterfreund

  “I miss Manhattan water,” he said as the bubbles fizzed in the plastic glasses he’d brought. He handed me one and went back to rummaging in his bag for silverware. “Huh. I can’t find my knife.” He looked at me. “You didn’t happen to …”

  My eyes went wide. “You want to cut cheese with my alicorn knife?”

  “Well, it’s clean, isn’t it? We’re not going to poison ourselves with unicorn blood or anything like that, right?”

  “The blood’s not poisonous. At least, I don’t think it is.” I sighed, reached into my purse, and handed it over. “Be careful, it’s an antique.”

  Carved from a single piece of alicorn, the knife had been the relic of my ancestor Clothilde Llewelyn’s first kill. Though the hunters tended to share our small store of ancient weapons, I’d laid an early claim to the knife, and no one—not even Melissende—had challenged me for it. I kept it on me at all times. I’d brought down my first unicorn with it.

  Giovanni began sawing into the bread and I looked away, a little sick to my stomach. The knife was a killing tool, not an eating utensil. He handed it back to me, and I ran my hand along the flat, brushing bread crumbs from the creamy exterior.

  “Astrid,” Giovanni said, and I tore my eyes off my weapon. He gazed at me, his expression a mix of care and concern, and held out a piece of bread with cheese smeared on top. “Stay with me.”

  I pursed my lips. “I’m sorry. I just find the whole concept of using this for food a little morbid, that’s all.”

  “Any port in a storm,” Giovanni replied, and stuffed a piece of bread in his mouth. “So, let’s spend five minutes not talking about Cloisters politics, or unicorns, or how this knife we’re using on the cheese is usually covered in blood and guts. It’s a gorgeous day and there are no monsters in sight.”

  “Fine.” But I sat, silent and dumb, and munched my bread. What was there to talk about? I hadn’t seen any movies. I hadn’t read any books. I didn’t even know what was going on in the news right now outside of my mom’s television appearances and the semiregular reports of unicorn attacks, or worse, the failed attempts by nonhunters to stop the unicorns themselves.

  I will give credit to my mother for this—and only this—she was doing her best to spread the word that the only people capable of handling unicorns were trained unicorn hunters. If we could just convince people to keep out of areas infested with unicorns, and above all to not try to hunt them themselves, we’d probably be halfway to reaching Phil’s goal of noninterference.

  Only, who decided which places were going to be reserved for monsters?

  Giovanni stared out over the rest of the villa and volunteered no topics of conversation, either. Great, now I was the boring girlfriend. What did I have to offer other than ruminations about bloodthirsty, magical beasts? I leaned over and kissed his neck.

  “Thank you for doing this,” I whispered against his skin, filling my senses with Giovanni until even the memories of unicorns were obliterated. “It’s so beautiful here.”

  We forgot about bread and cheese and knives for a bit.

  When Giovanni lifted his head at last, we were both a little breathless and warm, even in the shade of the tree. My lips felt swollen and flushed from his kisses, and I could see beads of sweat had formed on his temples.

  Since Giovanni had learned the truth about the unicorn hunters, he’d become rather militant about keeping strict parameters when it came to getting physical. We kissed—a lot. But nothing more. I wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be satisfied with that arrangement. I wasn’t sure how much longer I would.

  He lay above me, breathing hard, and traced his finger over my lips.

  “Do you ever wish—” I asked.

  “No.” He fixed me with a look. “Never. I’ll take you on whatever terms I can have you, Astrid. You’re a hunter, which means you’ve made a commitment. A meaningful one. An important one.” He sat up and resumed staring out over the greenery and brick ruins. “Summer’s ending.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. I sat up and smoothed my hair back down.

  “Have you thought at all about what you’re going to do for school?”

  Phil had brought up enrolling me in an international program once or twice, even petitioning Neil and Cory for the funds, but we’d never followed up on it. Now, after losing the money Gordian was providing us, I worried that the Bartolis had enough trouble keeping the Cloisters open on their own dime. I knew Cory was wealthy in her own right, but I had no idea what she could afford. The ancient monastery was in constant need of repair. Neil was in talks with representatives of the Catholic Church to see if they would contribute anything to its upkeep, but he and Phil worried that church involvement in the Order of the Lioness would bring with it restrictions that we weren’t ready to accept.

  Things like forbidding make-out sessions in Roman ruins with my boyfriend.

  “It’s still a little up in the air,” I said at last. “There’s so much work at the Cloisters.” How would I fit in classes and homework with my grueling training schedule and my hunting trips? Could I squeeze in calculus problems between life-and-death moments on the battlefield?

  “You need to finish high school,” Giovanni said. “If you were in college or something, I could understand taking a year off, or even a few—people in the military do it. Phil is doing it. But you need to think about your future as well.”

  “For all I know, this is the only future I have.”

  “Don’t say that!” he said, turning back to me. “Astrid, someday this is going to be—over. Somehow. And you’re going to go to med school, just like you wanted.”

  I folded my hands in my lap and studied them. They were strong hands now. Killing hands.

  “That’s still what you want, right?” Giovanni asked.

  I shrugged. “Yeah, but I could also die on a hunt tomorrow.”

  He said nothing for a long time.

  “Tell me again what you saw that day?” I asked him. “In the tombs? What could you see?” Giovanni was one of the few non-hunters who’d witnessed us in action. I wondered what it would be like to stand outside of us, outside of the magic. What was a unicorn to one who couldn’t read its mind or see its speed?

  “Blurs, mostly,” he said. “You move so fast. Like streaks of color, like streaks of light. And behind you, corpses. And screams. And these creatures—animals I’ve never seen, could never imagine.”

  “Some art student you are.”

  He snorted. “Okay. It looks like a nightmare. Like Hieronymus Bosch at his very scariest.” He lifted his eyebrows as if to tease me. “Better?”

  “Much.”

  “And the smell—” He made a face. “But then you stop, Astrid, you snap out of it, and you stand there, covered in wounds and weapons, and you look like a goddess. Like a hero in a comic book. Like a statue in a temple. Athena.”

  “Diana.”

  “Whoever.” When he turned to me, his expression was somber, but his eyes practically shone. “You look breathtaking. Beautiful and terrible all at once.”

  I gave him a skeptical glare. “And you’re attracted to that?”

  “I’m terrified not to be.” He thought for a moment. “I never really saw the little black ones until they were dead.”

  I laughed at the idea of a zebra-sized kirin being called

  “little.”

  “But the big one, I could see it. I saw it try to trample Ursula. It was—Where can something that big hide?”

  Bucephalus. I often wondered that myself. I hadn’t seen the karkadann since he killed Marten Jaeger and escaped before anyone could kill him in return. If I did see him again, would I be obligated to hunt him? A unicorn? A man-eating killer? No matter that he was the one who had explained my power to me, who had saved my life many times over? No matter that he was thousands of years old, that he’d struck bargains with Alexander the Great and Clothilde Llewelyn and me?

  “I’m losing you again,” Giovanni said.

  “I’
m sorry. I’m right here, I just—”

  “I know.” He sighed. “When I first met you, I knew there was something different about you. And the more I saw of Astrid the Warrior, the more amazing I found it all. But don’t get lost in her. You were someone else before you were a hunter, and you’ll be someone else after.”

  I blushed again and looked away. Before was a world away, and after seemed like a fantasy. Even here, on this sunny hillside, with the sound of summer insects in my ear, and Giovanni warm and wonderful beside me, and no trace of unicorns as far as I could sense—the old Astrid was beyond my reach. And the strangest thing of all was that I hadn’t even noticed her slipping away. For a few moments we were quiet, our arms brushing against each other as we watched the tourists scrambling over the ruins.

  He turned back to me. “I have something to tell you.”

  I froze. Like “no offense,” that phrase was rarely followed by anything good. “Okay.”

  “I got into an art program back home.”

  That wasn’t what I’d been expecting. “But I thought you needed to pass your summer course before your college would let you back in.” And he hadn’t passed. He’d been expelled for destroying the van. Or letting unicorns destroy it. For me.

  Expelled again. First from college for fighting and then from his second-chance summer school—because of me. Good to hear you still got third chances.

  “This is a different school. I’m not going back to SUNY. This one—Pratt—it’s in New York City—”

  Each word was a jolt of alicorn venom. “You’re leaving.”

  “Yes.”

  I nodded, and felt my throat closing up. I wasn’t immune to this.

  “I have to,” he said. “I have to finish college. I can’t just keep bumming around. It’s not like Phil, who is running the Cloisters. This is my job. Being a student.”

  “I understand,” I said. “What … about us?”

  Another pause, but he followed it with, “I want to be with you. I don’t care if there’s an ocean between us.”

  I laughed then, a horrible, bitter sound. “Why, Giovanni? Why? It makes no difference to me.”

  He flinched. “Don’t say that.”

  “I’m a celibate unicorn hunter living in a nunnery. I’m that whether you’re here or a million miles away. But you don’t have to have that. Back in New York, there are thousands of girls. Girls who aren’t like me.” Models, actresses, artists, coeds. I couldn’t breathe, thinking about all the girls he could have.

  “I don’t want girls who aren’t like you,” he snapped back. “I like unicorn hunters.”

  “Ew, don’t say that.” I shuddered.

  “I like you, Astrid. There are other girls in Rome and I like you. It’ll be the same in New York.”

  I rolled to my feet, filled with the need to run, to leap, to shoot something. “You say that now, but in a month or two, you’ll forget about me. You’ll find someone …” The words choked me. I felt trapped by my body, imprisoned until the moment a unicorn came and set the magic free.

  And then I felt Giovanni’s hand slip into mine and the storm calmed.

  “Are you saying you don’t want to try?” he asked softly. “You want to break up?”

  “I don’t want to,” I whispered, folding myself into his arms, hoping he’d hold me tight enough to keep me there. Every second I could get of Giovanni would be worth it when he was gone. “But what choice do we have?”

  What choice did I ever have? Dating Giovanni was my only taste of normalcy, the only part of me that remained tethered to my old life, the old Astrid. Giovanni reminded me that hands could be used for holding people, not swords, and that my heart could pound when I wasn’t in pursuit of prey. He took me outside the Cloisters for art, not battle, and used my hunting knife to cut cheese. Giovanni had helped to make me a warrior, but he knew that I was also a girl. If he left, what would be left of me?

  3

  WHEREIN ASTRID RECEIVES A MESSAGE

  The night before Giovanni left, an unseasonable storm blew in from the sea. I stood on the parapet overlooking the Cloisters courtyard and watched the clouds moving over the terra-cotta rooftops of Rome.

  Maybe his flight would be canceled.

  Wasn’t it just the way of things? There was one guy in the world who didn’t care about me being a hunter, and he had to move to New York City. Last I heard, the island of Manhattan was still, blissfully, unicorn-free. What possible reason would I ever have to go there?

  I watched the hunters in the courtyard scatter as the rain began, and Cory joined me at the parapet, shaking droplets of water out of her curls.

  “All right?”

  “Not really.”

  Cory braced her hands on the stone balcony and rocked back on her heels. “Maybe this is for the best?” She turned to me. “You know I like Giovanni, but your relationship had to end sometime. You can’t be with someone and be a unicorn hunter.”

  “Um, I have been. All summer.”

  Cory sighed. “This is hard for all of us, you know. You aren’t the only one who has had to give things up.”

  “Have you left a boyfriend back home?” It’d be the first I’d heard of it. I only knew she missed her pet dog.

  “No.” Cory watched the storm. “I’ve never had a boyfriend.”

  “Then don’t try to imagine what it feels like,” I said, my tone clipped.

  “You think I don’t know loss?” Her clipped tone tore mine to shreds.

  I swallowed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply—”

  Cory’s anger dissipated. “And I didn’t mean to be insensitive. Of course you’re upset about Giovanni. I don’t see it your way, but it’s obvious he’s quite important to you.”

  My lip quirked. Is this what passed for comfort from Cory? I supposed it would have to do. “Thanks. You know, outside Giovanni, meeting you is one of the only good things about coming to Rome.”

  “What’s another?”

  I considered. “Gelato.”

  She snorted. “I’m happy to rank higher than ice cream, then.”

  “I didn’t say higher,” I corrected, and she laughed. For a few seconds, we stood there looking out over the storm. Then she spoke.

  “I care about you a lot, Astrid. I hope you realize that.”

  “I do.” Of course I did. We’d saved each other’s lives, over and over. Sisters at war.

  She took a deep breath. “And if Giovanni is who you love, then I’m sorry you’re being parted from him. I’m sorry when anything happens to make you sad.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to that except to say, “Thank you.”

  Cory stood silent beside me, staring down at her hands against the stone. Presently, she lifted her head. “Want to raid the refectory for some of that gelato you like so much more than me?”

  I smiled. “Sure.”

  In the dream, Bucephalus called to me in the voice of Marten Jaeger. The karkadann could speak to me only through the telepathic link unicorns shared with all hunters. When it came to the lesser unicorns, the link allowed us to feel their emotions, intentions, movements—allowed us to predict better where they were and how to kill them. But the ancient karkadann had somehow developed the ability to put thoughts inside my head—to dredge from my memory images and voices that, with time and very painful practice, I’d learned to translate into a rough form of communication.

  Somehow, with the sort of logic that made sense only in a dream, I knew it was Bucephalus who spoke, though it sounded like poor dead Marten. I was searching for him, stumbling through a tangled wood, my feet catching on roots and vines determined to stand in my way.

  I hadn’t seen the unicorn since the battle at Cerveteri. He’d vanished, clearly fearing our partnership would dissolve once we’d dealt with the threat of the rogue kirin. Though I’d scoured reports of unicorn attacks and sightings for any description of an elephant-sized monster, I’d found none. Bucephalus remained in hiding.

  The wood
in the dream suddenly gave way to a clearing bathed in moonlight, and I stopped short in recognition. It was the garden outside the Borghese museum, the spot where I’d first kissed Giovanni. The place where I’d first met the karkadann.

  Bucephalus was there, as massive and deadly as always. In the voice of Marten Jaeger, he spoke. The price has been paid.

  What price? my dream self asked. Bucephalus was in no debt to me, if a creature such as him could think in terms of debt and repayments. If he could ever imagine himself owing anything to us. Even hunters, we were powerless before him. He’d almost killed Ursula. He’d killed Marten, though I’d begged him not to. I couldn’t stop it, or him. Giant, three-thousand-year-old monsters could do as they pleased.

  The karkadann stepped aside, and there, on the ground near his hooves, lay the body of a young man, his face bathed in blood.

  It was Giovanni.

  “Astrid!”

  I sat up in bed at the sound of my name. It wasn’t quite dawn; the rooftops beyond the window were dark and indistinct beneath purple clouds and lingering rain. In the bed across the room, Cory remained unconscious.

  “Astrid!” The voice was a distant cry, and for a moment, I wasn’t sure if it was inside my head or beyond it. The karka-dann? At the edge of my mind, I sensed Bonegrinder wake, her instinctive fascination with hunters rousing as I did. My new cell phone lay dead on my desk—it never kept a charge within the Cloisters walls.

  “Astrid!” At the third cry, my brain clicked into recognition. Giovanni, shouting to me from the street. I shot out of bed, even as I felt Bonegrinder slamming against the walls of her cage down in the don’s office.

  Great. She’d wake the whole nunnery if her growing interest in our visitor turned to out-and-out bloodlust. I bolted down the stairs in bare feet and pajamas, sprinted across the mosaic tiles of the entrance hall, and opened the bronze doors as silently as I could.

  Giovanni stood in the street just beyond the courtyard. A car sat idling behind him, a very amused Italian in the driver’s seat.