Нора Робертс - Year One

Lana saw a man—tall, lean, his golden mane of hair rippling— lift a rifle, aiming it up as Fred rose, wings furiously batting, one of the babies wrapped in her arms.

In seconds, only seconds, the world changed.

Lana had no weapon but her power, and threw it out, all instinct. The rifle aimed at Fred and the child flew out of the man’s hands. And he turned his crazed blue gaze on her.

“There.” He pointed. The man beside him, dark and muscular, the purity tattoo bold on his biceps, lifted his hands. He held a gun in each. “Kill the witch!” he shouted.

Even as Lana lifted her hands to fight, to protect her child, thunder blasted. The ground shook with it.

“Ours!”

Rising behind the building, wings scorched, faces scarred, Eric and Allegra loomed.

Everything seemed to stop. An illusion as she heard the screams, the gunfire, even the slicing swish of the stalks as some ran to hide there.

They’d survived. They lived. And she saw death in their eyes.

She gathered all she had to fight.

Max sprinted to her, shoved her back. “Run!”

“Where?” Spewing black bolts toward the sky, Eric let out a laugh. “Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Step aside, brother. We don’t want you this time.”

“We want what’s inside her.” With a flash of wings, Allegra swooped lower. Max thrust out, pushed Lana back.

“Run. Save our daughter.”

“Together. We’re stronger. We have more.” Lana gripped Max’s hand.

“There’s no need for this, Eric, for any of it,” Max shouted. “You’re aligning yourself with a madman who hunts our kind. He’ll turn on you. They’ll all turn on you.”

“Wow, I never thought of that.” He shot Allegra a surprised look. “Maybe we should think about this. Except … Yeah, I forgot one thing. You tried to kill me. I was wrong, Max. We do want you. Dead.”

“Both of them. The three of them!” Pale hair flying, Allegra shouted. “We call the dark. We rule the dark! And with it cut off the light.”

As Lana did with Max, Allegra gripped Eric’s hand. Snarling thunder, black lightning. With Max, Lana blocked the blows, shoved them back.

And felt the power quake the ground under her feet.

Blood bloomed on Max’s arm where a bolt slipped through. Across the field, others ran toward them. Flynn and Lupa, Jonah, Aaron.

For a moment, her hope leaped. Together, all of them, they’d push back the dark.

“They’re coming to help. We just have to—”

Lana saw the wave of black, felt the first biting edge of it before Max spun her around. His eyes met hers, held hers as he cloaked her, cloaked their child with his body.

He took the full force of the hate, of the dark. The shock jolted through him into her as they flew together, fell together into the stalks. Blood ran from the gash where that keen edge caught her arm.

Breath gone, head spinning, she crawled free, rolled, tried to drag Max to safety.

He lay covered with blood from countless wounds, his skin scored from burns.

“No. No. Max.” She knew, even as she dragged his body into her arms, even as she pressed her face to his, she knew he was gone.

Gone. Taken. Murdered.

The rage, the grief, the roaring fury spewed up in her. Covered in his blood, spilling her own, she released it on a scream that cleaved the air like a blade.

It gushed out wild and red against the oily black.

She heard her scream answered with howls of pain.

Run. He’d told her to run, but she hadn’t listened. He’d told her to save their child, but he’d given his life to save them both.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Choking on sobs, she dragged Max’s gun belt free. Tenderly, she drew the ring from his finger, pushed it onto her thumb. She kissed his face, his lips, his hands.

Save the child, whatever the cost.

She heard his voice in her head, in her heart and, sobbing, pushed through the stalks toward the forest. She began to run.

A movement to her right had her whirling, hand thrown up to fight, to defend. Starr flowed out of the tree.

“You’re hurt.”

Lana could only shake her head.

“You hurt them more.”

As Starr gestured back, Lana looked toward the park. Whatever had exploded out of her, that mad, red, raging grief, had leveled some of the attackers. She saw no sign of Eric or Allegra other than a thin haze of smoke smearing the sky.

It twisted the raw edges of her already shattered heart to see Arlys limping toward Carla’s body, Rachel kneeling beside an unconscious and bloodied Chuck. Others she knew, cared for, rushing to help, or racing toward the street, guns in hand.

“Katie, the babies?”

“Jonah got them inside. They killed Rainbow. She was good. They came for you. For her,” Starr said, reaching out and for the first time in weeks touching anyone, touched a hand to Lana’s child.

“I can’t stay. They’ll come back. I can’t … They killed Max.”

“I’m sorry. He was good.” Starr bowed her head. “They want us dead, all of us, but the Savior most.”

“She’s not the Savior,” Lana said fiercely. “She’s my daughter.”

“She’s both. I could hear them.” Now Starr pressed a hand to her head. “Hear all the hate. It hurts my head, so I ran and hid, like I did with my mother. I didn’t fight, but I will next time. I will. They’ll help, they’ll protect you. Her.”

“I have to protect her. I can’t stay. They’ll try again. They’ll come back and try again.”

Starr nodded. “Then you have to run. You have to hide. I can still hear them in my head. I’ll put Max’s name on the tree for you.”

Blinded by tears, Lana ran. She ran into all the dreams that had haunted her nights.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Lana kept off the main roads for days. She took shelter where she could, scavenging remote houses for clothes and supplies. Along with clothes she found a chain and threaded it through Max’s ring to wear around her neck.

She ate what she could find, and worried about the baby.

Whenever she saw crows circling overhead or heard their call, she changed direction.

Once, exhausted, she dropped down at the base of a dead tree, too steeped in fatigue and grief to go on. Staring at the sky through its skeletal branches, she drifted away, she dreamed. Dreamed of a slim young woman with gray eyes and black hair telling her to get up, to move, to keep going.

So Lana got up, moved, kept going.

One terrible day blurred into every terrible night.

With no sense of time or distance, she slept in an abandoned car on the side of the road, and woke in the shimmer of dawn to the sound of engines.

Her first instinct was to call for help, but the stronger one ordered her to stay still and quiet. The stronger one had her skin shivering as those engines stopped.

Car doors opened, slammed. Men’s voices floated through the windows she’d left open in hopes of a breeze.

“We ought to go back to that shit-hole town, level it. Somebody there knows where the bitch is.”

“The Rev says she ain’t there, she ain’t there.”

She heard footsteps coming closer, tightened her grip on the gun she slept with. Then the distinctive sound of a zipper, the sound of water striking asphalt.

“Waste of gas, you ask me, and if those two freaks want her so bad, they should’ve taken her out when they had the chance. Instead we lost six good men. We’re supposed to be killing freaks not working with them.”

“Don’t see nobody asking you. The Rev knows what he’s doing. He’s got a plan, and I expect we’ll be taking those freaks out after we do the woman. Fucking witch. I got a score to settle with her now.”

“Aw, did she mess up your pretty face when she cut loose?”