Rampant Read Online Free PDF

dresses, like Audrey Hepburn wore in Roman Holiday. Lilith, however, packed utilitarian wear—cargo pants made of space-age microfiber that would move the way I did and featured extra loops and pockets for carrying knives, spare bowstrings, sights, and arrow tips. To judge by Lilith’s choices, my duties seemed to involve mostly the skinning of dead animals and setting of traps.
    Watching my mother drool at the windows of various gun and sporting-goods stores gave me the creeps, but I didn’t really start getting scared until I learned that the unicorn hunting scholarship only provided ticket money for the hunter herself, not for the hunter’s mother. I would be leaving the country on my own. Lilith’s reaction moved swiftly from devastated to determined. All I could think about was every news story I’d ever heard about kidnappers. Was it possible that these peoplewere using my mom’s obsession as a way to get me in their clutches?
    I threatened to tell Uncle John about this Roman scheme. “I can’t go there alone. We don’t know anything about these people!”
    “Don’t you dare, Astrid,” my mom said, folding up another top and placing it in my suitcase. I was perched on the edge of the coffee table and my mom was standing over the pull-out couch where I slept. “I raised you to be independent and self-reliant. You’re certainly old enough to get on a plane by yourself.”
    “And put myself in the hands of total strangers?”
    She snapped the lid shut. “What do you take me for? Of course I checked out their stories. I am a researcher, you know. They are who they say they are, and their stories are verifiable. You have nothing to fear. I wouldn’t put my daughter in any danger.”
    “Any danger!” I cried. “What do you call hunting unicorns? Big, sharp horns; fangs…” And those were just the goat-sized ones.
    “I call it your birthright.” Lilith stood tall. “Honey, I know you’ve been down ever since that stupid boy broke up with you, but this is about more than a prom date. Don’t you realize that? You have a destiny. Most people would kill for something like that.”
    If Lilith and this Cornelius guy had their way with me at this boot camp, I was going to kill.
    “Six generations ago, our ancestor Clothilde gave her life to protect people from the karkadann. Now you have a chance to—”
    “Do the same?” I crossed my arms. “Forgive me if enforcedlifelong celibacy and possible death by dismemberment and poisoning don’t exactly get me excited.”
    “How about being part of something ancient and important, something that belongs only to you?”
    And whatever other abnormally unsexed young women they find with the proper bloodlines. “I’m not a hunter, mom. I’m not a killer.”
    “I know that, sweetie,” she said, “but you are a healer.” Her eyes practically glowed. “You want to be a doctor, Astrid? Well, think about this: you could help find the secret to the Remedy. You could help cure every disease the world has ever known.”
    I wanted to shout back that the Remedy was a myth, but how could I? I’d seen what happened to Brandt with my own eyes. Whatever that stuff was, it cured alicorn poisoning at the very least.
    Alicorn poisoning was real, too. It was a nightmare come true. “But do I have to hunt to do that? Isn’t there, like, a research wing?”
    She put her hands on her hips and stared me down. “You have a role to play in this. A vital role. Are you going to shirk it, just because you’d rather have a desk job?”
    I swallowed but couldn’t think of an answer. Lilith stepped forward and folded me in her arms. I buried my face in her sweater and breathed deeply. She smelled like mothballs and lavender, like the damp that always permeated our apartment, like chicken broth and wool and old books and home. I’d never been away from her for more than a night. And now she wanted me to go halfway across the world.
    Her embrace tightened so that I could hardly