Ascendant (9 page)

He shook his head and smiled.
“Señorita
, please do not be alarmed. This is not a police state, and I am not your enemy.”

I brushed past them both and took the stairs to the dorm floor. Yeah, well, the last time some strange man holding the purse strings told us that, he was Marten Jaeger.

And when he’d tried to destroy us, I’d turned the tables and let him be killed.

In the shower, I washed off the sweat of the Italian afternoon and tried to rinse the memory of Clothilde’s voice from my brain. As a nun—even a lapsed one—Clothilde would have been Catholic. She would have been raised in the original Order of the Lioness, the kind that carved prayers into their swords and truly believed that they were vessels of God, charged to kill unicorns and dispense doses of the Remedy as the Church saw fit.

That was the Order that Clothilde had rebelled against. That had been the life she’d faked her own death to escape.

I wish I’d known more about her, this mysterious, revered, misunderstood ancestor of mine. It was well documented in Cloisters’s records that most hunters who sought to escape their duties turned to the services of what the Order had long called “actaeons,” after the mythological man who’d spied on the hunter goddess, Diana, in her bath. An actaeon was a fancy name for a lover—a guy specifically employed to divest a unicorn hunter of her virginity and thus her magic. The mythological Actaeon had been punished for his boldness when Diana had turned him into a stag to be torn to pieces by his own dogs. When the ancient Order of the Lioness caught an actaeon in the act, they fed him to their house zhi.

Yes, I was part of a long line of extremely hard-core nuns.

But Clothilde had not gone the actaeon route. She was still a hunter—had to have been to be able to communicate—when she made the deal with Bucephalus that had sent every unicorn in the world into hiding and had convinced the world they’d become extinct.

Naturally, all records of Clothilde had disappeared from the history. I did know, however, that she’d married and had children. I was a direct descendant, on my father’s side. A father that my unicorn-obsessed mother had long ago tracked down and seduced. Possibly—I had recently realized with disgust—for the sheer purpose of getting a hunter daughter with a more prestigious lineage.

Lucky Lilith, not to have borne a son.

The Order of the Lioness may not know what happened to Clothilde, but my mother somehow did. She’d found my father once, though she’d told me he knew nothing of our lineage. And yet, the only thing she’d kept from their tryst (aside from me) was a single golden, blown-glass vial of the Remedy—the only one in existence. A vial she’d kept my whole life, until the day my boyfriend Brandt got gored by a unicorn in the woods and she’d cured him with it.

Naturally, my father, whoever he was, would have no knowledge of its value. To him, it may have been nothing more than a family antique. Maybe he didn’t even know my mother had it.

I wondered where my father was. I wondered if he had a family—daughters who may not know what kind of danger they were in. Untrained hunters were in the same position as Cory—unable to help themselves or their loved ones when the unicorns would inevitably be drawn to them.

I left the bathroom, got dressed, and tied my hair into a damp braid whose hard elastic end slapped against the alicorn scars on my back as I took the stairs to the don’s office.

The desk was covered with the usual piles of paperwork: reports of unicorn attacks, family trees and other genealogical records to trace the location of possible unicorn hunters, and the newest, disturbing addition—letters from people across the globe begging for help from the Cloisters.
Please, come get the unicorn in our town. These monsters have already killed three people. We can’t figure out how to stop it. They’ve had to close the park/the school/the logging operation …

Well, maybe I didn’t so much mind that last one.

The letters came from all over the world, especially remote locations that would be nearly impossible (and cost-prohibitive) for us to visit. Tiny villages in the Canadian tundra, mountaintop monasteries in Tibet, cattle ranches in South America. There weren’t many, but it was clear that as people began to learn who we were, the requests would increase. We needed more resources, even than the Church could provide. And we needed more hunters.

My mother answered the phone on the second ring.

“Astrid?”

“Hi, Mom.” Probably best not to lead with a request. Our relationship had been strained enough since Phil and I had kicked her out of the Cloisters. “How are things?”

“Great,” she said. “My agent is in talks with the networks for a major exposé.”

Not that she appeared to have suffered too greatly.

“We might come back to Rome and tour the Cloisters if this goes through.”

“Have you spoken to Phil and Neil about it? “ Not to mention Father Guillermo.

Lilith was quiet for a moment. “Well, Sweetie, there’s quite a bit of money involved. Given how tight things have been around there recently, I figured they’d welcome an influx of cash.”

Translation: she hadn’t planned on asking for permission.

“Actually,” I said, “we’ve been getting some support from the Vatican.”

Lilith snorted. “Right. The habits. Well, they’ll look better on TV, at any rate. Do they hinder your hunting at all?”

Typical. First my mother worries about the aesthetics and only then concerns herself with little practicalities like whether or not her daughter’s life is in danger. “They were designed as hunting costumes.”

“Really?” I picture Lilith, her eyes glowing with interest. “Now that’s an angle.”

“Mom, would you like me to actually
take
some religious vows? You know, to help with the ratings?”

“Ooh, would you? We’d make prime time!”

I almost swallowed the receiver.

“That was a joke, Astrid.” Lilith clucked her tongue at me.

Funny how lightly she could take this all now. She’d barged into the Cloisters, determined to whip us into shape, judgmental and dismissive of the Bartolis’ policies and their more inclusive, democratic attitudes. She’d run the place like a boot camp reminiscent of the ancient Order, and dreamed of hunters victorious in every battle.

The truth, unfortunately, was not quite as glamorous, and when I’d been severely injured the first time she’d sent us out against a group of kirin, she’d flipped out and tried to close the place down. Phil and I had risen up against her and sent her packing back to the States.

From a few thousand miles away, though, I guess the gory reality of unicorn hunting seemed a tad more rosy. I guess she forgot what it was like when I almost died. Maybe her concern was related to proximity, and now that she lived across an ocean, she’d gone back to buying the hype she spewed on television about our “glorious destiny.”

Maybe things with Giovanni would go the same way: out of sight, out of mind.

Time to change the subject before I got too angry to speak. “I need to ask you a few questions about my father.”

“This again?”

“This again?”

“You found him once, Mom. Don’t you think we owe it to whatever family he has to try to find him again?”

“For someone who dislikes hunting so much, you are terribly eager to consign your potential half sisters to the lifestyle.”

I clenched my jaw. My potential half sisters would be sitting ducks unless they were informed of their power to attract killer unicorns.

“You have to make up your mind,” I growled into the phone. “Either you want me to come home and be safe or you want me to be your unicorn-hunting rock star of a daughter.”

For that was the real reason my mother refused to hand over information about the other half of my gene pool. If there were other descendants of Clothilde out there, then they might be the ones to possess the super cool, descendant-of-Clothilde-lewelyn unicorn-hunting skills that had, so far, failed to manifest themselves in me.

It was so ironic. The people at the Cloisters thought I was supposed to be the best hunter because I was a Llewelyn. My mother thought I was supposed to be the best hunter because I was descended from Clothilde Llewelyn, in particular. The Llewelyn who had killed the karkadann. Even the karkadann had come to me instead of to one of the other hunters, because he held a similarly misguided belief about Clothilde’s legacy that if he could talk to her as easily as he’d once talked to Alexander the Great, he could talk to me as well. And he
could
talk to me—but I think he could talk to the other hunters, too, if they tried.

What did I believe? That it was all a lie. The facts were incontrovertible: I was
not
the best hunter in the Order. Why was it that the only people who seemed to recognize this besides me were Melissende and Grace? Grace was the best hunter here. Ilesha was a close second. I liked my place farther down the list.

My mother sighed into the phone. “Sweetie, you made your position quite clear before I left Rome. It’s
you
who wants this now, not me. And
you
who reserves the right to whine about it, too. I gave you the chance to come home. You gave me a long-suffering speech about duty. You’ve caught a fine case of holier-than-thou from these priest friends of yours.”

How was it that she could do this to me? How did she always manage to turn everything around like that? Her dismissal of Father Guillermo and his support of the Cloisters almost had me on the priest’s side, camouflage habits and all.

“Oh yeah?” I said. “And what would you say if I told you I wanted to come home now?”

“Whatever you want, dear,” my mother lied, her tone both blithe and bored. She knew I was bluffing. I wouldn’t come home because of my duty, and if I did, she wouldn’t like it because of the supposed glory involved.

“Fine,” I said. “Book me a ticket. Or I’ll book it. Give me your credit card number.”

My mother hesitated. She wasn’t the only one who knew how to call a bluff. “Certainly. Of course, you know you can’t come here as a hunter. The danger aspect would cause far too many complications. You’d need to give up your … eligibility.”

I swallowed. “Fine. I’ll … do that, too. I’ll stop by … New York on my way home.”

“How very unsentimental of you,” my mother responded.

“You’re one to talk,” I snapped back.

“I hope you won’t regret it when you see people in danger of dying from unicorn attacks. Knowing you could have saved them but would rather just come home and live a small and useless life.”

I gritted my teeth. We had all the steps to this dance down pat. Sometimes I wondered if I was to blame for my mother’s disregard. If Phil and I hadn’t kicked her out last summer, would she still worry for my safety? Had I killed that off in her? And if I had, how strong could her love have been?

Sometimes I wondered. Other times, I was too busy fighting for my life and the lives of those I’d pledged to keep safe. “Mom,” I said. “You have to tell me where my father is. His family is in danger. You just admitted it!”

“Oh, darling,” she said. “It was so long ago. I hardly remember.”

That was utterly untrue. Once upon a time, my mother had been a historian, a Ph.D. candidate whose research had uncovered our hunting legacy and awoken in her this monomaniacal obsession with Clothilde Llewelyn and our magical legacy. She had notes—somewhere—about my father’s family.

“Can’t the Bartolis do something? They’ve been so good about finding all the other hunters. Too bad they’re so bad at everything else. By the way, how is the search going for that horrible boy who raped Phil?”

I slammed the phone down. My fingers itched for a bow to shoot. My arms ached for a sword to swing. My hands reached for the knife usually strapped to my side, and found only the leg of my pants. I twisted the material in my fist, breathing hard, choking on rage so strong I could almost scream. I leaned over the desk, pressing my palms hard into the wood. In the corner of my eyes, I could see my arm muscles flexing beneath my skin. Though I’d never been as athletic as Phil, since coming to the Cloisters, my body had changed. It wasn’t just the scars that twisted along my back and my arms, wasn’t just the magic that coursed through my blood and my bones. Back home, I’d been soft, with slim, round arms that never did more than carry books or push wheelchairs during my candy-striping volunteer hours at the hospital. Now, my arms were muscled, defined like the curves and kinks of an alicorn.

I looked like a bodybuilder. It wasn’t feminine. It wasn’t beautiful.

The anger condensed into tears that boiled from my eyes, and I sank to the floor behind the desk and crawled into the darkness underneath. Screw duty. Maybe my mom was right that it wasn’t worth all this.

With shaking hands, I grabbed the phone and stretched the cord into my little cave. I took a deep breath and dialed his number.

“Hello,” said a stranger in New York.

My mouth refused to open until I could speak without shuddering.

“Hello?” the guy repeated.

“Hi,” I said, and it came out like a squeak. “Can I speak to Giovanni, please?”

“Uh, he’s in class,” the guy said. “Can I take a message?”

Tell him I miss him. Tell him I love him. Tell him I can’t take this anymore and he needs to come back to Italy and get me out of this hunting gig once and for all
.

“Can you, um, tell him that Astrid called?”

“Who?”

I caught the sob in my throat before it could escape. “Astrid,” I somehow managed to get out. This was going to go poorly, I could tell.

“Ass trig?” The guy sounded utterly skeptical.

I heard someone else in the background.
“That’s the girlfriend, man. The nun?
“

And, under the desk in the convent in Rome, my face turned the color of spaghetti sauce.

“Right. Astrid!” the guy said, his tone turning merry. “How are things with the unicorns?”

“Fine,” I blurted, more out of surprise than anything else.

“You keep up the good work,” he said. “I’ll tell G you called. I’m Steve, by the way.”

“Hi, Steve,” I said.