by Nora Roberts
“They’re young.”
“And we’re so old.”
He laughed. “Younger. They can use a night of dissing each other over games, trash talking and bragging.”
He drew her into the bedroom, and into his arms. “And we can use this,” he said, took her mouth.
“There are things I want to tell you.”
“We’ve got all night to talk. I’ve missed you, Lana.” He drew out the pins she’d used to bundle her hair up while cooking. “I’ve missed shutting the world out so it’s just you and me.”
This first then, she thought. Yes, this first. The world shut away so all that remained was love.
He lit the fire; she lit the candles. And the glow of magick joined love.
From two feet away, she turned down the duvet with a sweep of her hand, making him laugh.
“A little something I’ve been working on.”
“So I see. Well, not to be outdone…” He lifted his hands, drew them down in the air. Her clothes slid off to pool at her feet.
Delighted, she looked down at herself. “This doesn’t seem like the act of a serious and sober witch.”
“It’s the act of a man who wants you. My lovely Lana. I haven’t taken enough time to just look at you.”
“We’ll take it now.” She opened her arms.
Yes, this, she thought. This time, with their hands on each other, their mouths meeting. She drew his sweater off to feel the shape of him—leaner than he had been, tauter. So much stress, she thought, so much work and worry.
She’d give him more than that tonight. So much more.
She thrilled at the way he swept her up, wrapped around her as they lay together on the cool sheets. He pressed her hand to his heart, then to his lips. She drew him down so their mouths met. Blessed, she thought, she was blessed to be so loved, to have such love inside her.
His hands, palms rougher than they’d been, roamed over her. He knew, he knew where she yearned to be touched, what glide and press would quicken her pulse. He knew where to taste to send the blood swimming under her skin.
Weak with love, she gave herself to him. Dizzy with lust, she shifted to rush kisses over his chest. His heart beat so strong, so vital. Hers galloped to match it.
She opened, took him in, held tight and close.
“This,” she whispered. “Just this for a moment.”
No movement, no urgency. Just held together, fitted into one. Just that moment of being with his eyes, that rich smoke, locked with hers.
Then she arched, lifted to him. Rose and fell with him, and let the moment, and the next, the next, the next, sweep them both away.
She thought of the night weeks ago, a world away, when they’d curled together like this, replete. When the light inside her had been struck.
With the fire simmering, the candles flickering, she combed her fingers through his hair. A little choppy, she thought with a smile, from her amateur attempt to trim it for him. She brushed her fingers over his cheek—rough with several days’ worth of stubble.
So many changes, she thought, small and enormous for both of them.
And the most enormous she’d yet to tell him.
“Max.” She rolled to sit up, realized then that he wasn’t just replete, but half asleep. The day, full of stress, effort, strain—personal, physical, magickal—wore hard.
She considered waiting until morning, then decided no, now, before she put the candles out. Now, while the act of their love still hummed in the air.
“Max,” she repeated. “I have something I need to tell you. It’s important.”
“Mmm.”
“Very important.”
His eyes flashed open. He pushed up. “What’s wrong? Something happened when I was gone today?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” She took his hand, and with her eyes on his, pressed his hand to her belly. “Max. We’re having a baby.”
“A—”
She saw it, all the layers. Confusion, shock, caution.
“Are you sure?”
Rather than speak, she got up, walked to the dresser, drew the pregnancy test out from where she’d hidden it. It sparkled in her hand. Then in his when she gave it to him.
“It’s what we made together. You. Me.”
He looked up at her, and she saw what she’d most needed. She saw the joy.
“Lana.” He drew her to him, pressing his face between her breasts. Breathed her in, breathed in the miracle of the moment.
“A child. Our child. Are you all right? Have you been sick? Do you—”
“I feel stronger than I ever have. I’m carrying what we made together. Our love, our light, our magick. You’re happy.”
“I don’t have words,” he told her. “Words are my business, but I don’t have the words for what I feel.” He laid a hand protectively over her belly. “Ours.”
“Ours,” she repeated, pressing her hand over his. “I want to keep it just ours for now. I don’t want to tell the others. Well, Eddie knows. I didn’t want to say anything to you until I was sure, so I asked him to get the test. But I don’t want to tell anyone else.”
“Why? It’s momentous. It’s beautiful.”
“Ours,” she said again. “Like tonight. Just ours. And maybe part of it is simple superstition. I think they say not to tell people until the end of the first trimester. And that’s about all I know about being pregnant. God.”
She sat beside him, immediately stood again. “And no alcohol. That’s off the table. It might be why that glass of wine Allegra gave me smelled off. Anyway. God! It’s not like I can just Google what to do and not to do, what to expect. I’m nervous about that part, about not knowing. And maybe I’m selfish and superstitious about not telling.”
“Then we won’t tell anyone else until you’re ready. And we’ll find out … whatever we need to.”
“How?”
“We’ll find a book. There has to be a library or a bookstore somewhere. In the meantime, we’ll use common sense. Rest when you need to rest, good nutrition.”
“I think there are special vitamins I’m supposed to take.”
“Maybe we can come up with those, too. But women have had babies for thousands of years without them.”
On a half laugh, she sent him a steely stare. “Easy for a man to say.”
“It is, isn’t it?” He reached for her hand. “I’ll take care of you, both of you, I swear it. This is meant, Lana. How it happened, when we took every precaution. When it happened. This sign,” he added, looking at the sparkle. “This child is meant. We’ll learn what needs to be done to bring him or her into the world, and to make the world safe for our child.”
She sat beside him again. “You always know how to keep me calm. Give me confidence. I believe you. This is meant. We’ll find a way.”
He turned her face to his, kissed her. “I love you. I love both of you already.”
“Max. I feel the same.”
He took her hands in his. “I pledge to you, all I am, all I have or will have. I will protect you, defend you, love you with every breath. Be my partner, my wife, my mate, from this moment.”
Her heart simply swelled. “I will. I am. I pledge to you, all I am, all I have or will have. I will protect you, defend you, love you with every breath. Be my partner, my husband, my mate, from this moment.”
“I will. I am.” He kissed their joined hands, then sealed the promise with his lips on hers.
“This is all we need between us, but I want to give you a ring. I want that symbol for us.”
“Both of us,” she said. “The circle, the symbol.”
“For both of us.” He lay down with her again, stroked her as they lay face-to-face. “I didn’t ask if you know how far along you are.”
“Nearly seven weeks.”
She saw the understanding in his eyes. “Of course. It’s meant,” he murmured, holding his wife and child.
* * *
The mood stayed bright, a study in group cooperation, for
two full weeks.
Max knew himself, and his brother. As predicted, they clashed more than once over practice and study. But Max reported to Lana they made progress.
Arguments broke out, but normal ones that ebbed and flowed as they might with any insular group.
An early March thaw melted some of the snow, and though it turned everything sloppy, the sign that spring would return someday lured everyone outside for longer stretches.
Poe scavenged a hunting bow and spent an hour practicing every day. Lana often watched him from the kitchen window as he shot arrows into a target he’d drawn on a square of plywood.
He was getting better. To her relief, he had yet to aim one of his arrows at any of the deer that wandered freely out of the forest.
Shaun and Eddie bonded over fishing and Xbox.
Poe went down with Max, and reported the Wolf Boy, as he called the boy Flynn, didn’t seem interested in joining the group.
Max slipped Lana some prenatal vitamins he’d found at the pharmacy.
As she entered her ninth week, Lana felt healthy and strong. She cooked, joined practices with Max and Eric, took long walks with Max or with Eddie and Joe, and participated—generally losing—in what became the three-times-weekly game night.
She knew Max pored over maps and routes, looking for the best direction for them to go in the spring. Though she’d begun to feel settled, even content, in their strange new home, she understood his reasoning.
They needed to find more people, a location they could defend rather than one with only one road in or out. And even with what they’d found in the little village, supplies wouldn’t last forever.
“Why wait?” Allegra asked at a group discussion. “Why not leave now?”
“Because we have shelter and supplies. We have heat and light,” Max reminded her. “We don’t want to end up traveling without any of that and get hit with a snowstorm. Another month, we’ll be past that.”
“Another month.” Allegra pressed her hands to her head, shook it. “I know I’m whining, but oh shit. We’ve already been here forever. We haven’t seen another soul—except for that weird kid you ran into. If the goal’s to find people, we’re failing big-time.”
“And if we run into the wrong kind of people?” Kim asked. “When we’re not prepared?”
“Okay, I know things were crazy back at college, and even on the way here. But that was weeks ago. For all we know things are getting back to normal. They’ve got to have come up with a vaccine by now. We don’t know anything because we’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“She’s got a point,” Eric put in.
“Yeah, and I get we’re in this box and don’t know what’s outside it.” Shaun shifted in his seat. “But Max is right about snow through March into early April. We had a thaw, so we’re getting antsy again, but it won’t last.”
“What, you’re the new local meteorologist?”
He flushed a little at Allegra’s swipe, but stuck. His friendship with Eddie had built his confidence, Lana thought.
“No, but I’ve spent a lot more time here than you. Than any of you. We were damn lucky to get here. We wait until we’re into April, we’ll have a better chance of getting out of the box without getting stuck or getting frostbite, and finding out what’s out there.”
“Tell them what you told me,” Poe said to Kim. “Come on,” he insisted when she stared at him. “We need to add it in.”
“Fine. Big downer.” She sat back in her chair, drummed her fingers on the table. “Back in February, we heard the report—Eddie heard the same one—out of New York. No progress on the vaccine, government in shambles, over two billion dead.”
“We don’t know if all of that’s true,” Allegra objected. “Or any of it.”
“Empirical evidence supports. What we saw with our own eyes. You can try optimism and hope progress on the vaccine flew from that point, and within another week or so they had it. Then you’ve got to get it produced in mass quantities, and distributed when transportation is also in shambles. But sticking with optimism, the vaccine is created, produced, and distributed. That takes time,” Kim pointed out. “People were dropping like flies. Would this vaccine immunize or would it cure? Would it cure someone already dying? At the rate those infected and not immune succumbed, we could realistically estimate another billion deaths. We could realistically estimate nearly half the world’s population wiped out. And that’s going with optimism.”
“Give them the pessimist’s version,” Poe urged.
“The vaccine never happens. Using our own campus as the gauge, we could have a death rate of seventy percent—that’s about five billion people.”
“I’m not going to believe that.” Allegra’s voice shook as she groped for Eric’s hand. “I don’t believe that.”
“Take the middle ground between optimist and pessimist.” Kim paused a moment, but got a go-ahead signal from Poe. “Even with that middle ground, it’s going to be a hell of a mess out there. Bodies not properly disposed of will spread other diseases. Panic and violent assholes will cause more deaths. Despair will lead to suicides. Add in failed infrastructure, spoiled food, lack of power, unreliable communication. Being stuck here for a couple months is going to feel like a picnic.”
“What’s your solution?” Eric demanded. “Just stay here for-fucking-ever?”
“No, we can’t. We won’t have enough fuel to get through another winter. We don’t have enough defenses if somebody wants to take what we have. And we have to know,” Kim added. “We need people, and we’d better hope some of the survivors are doctors, scientists, engineers, carpenters, welders, farmers. We’d better hope people still want to make babies. We need to form communities, safe havens.
“You know how many guns are probably in this state alone?” she continued. “We’re not going to be the only ones armed. Jesus, think of the nuclear weapons, the bioweapons some nutcase could get hands on. So, yeah, we have to get out there, try to start putting things back together before somebody else blows it all the way up.”
“I…” Allegra pressed a hand to her temple. “I’ve got a headache. Can I…”
Lana rose, went to their store of medication. “Scale of one to ten.”
“An eight. Maybe a nine.”
“Take two.” She brought Allegra two Advil.
“Thanks.” She downed them with her water. “I’m really not feeling very well. I’m going to go lie down.”
“I’m sorry,” Kim began, but Allegra shook her head.
“No.” She shook her head again. “No.”
“Do you really think it’s that bad?” Eric asked.
“I think we have to be prepared for it, yeah.”
“Jesus Christ.” He shut his eyes, blew out a breath. “I’m going to go up, make sure she’s all right.” He started out, paused, looked at Max. “What about people like us?”
“Good and bad, just like anyone else.”
“Yeah.”
Eddie sat, kept stroking his hand over Joe’s head. “I guess when we go, we ought to think about heading south, down toward Kentucky to start. I know that part of things. Like Poe said back when, we need to find someplace we can hunt, fish, grow shit.”
“We’re good at fishing.”
Eddie grinned at Shaun. “Yeah, we are.”
Bracing herself, Lana turned to Kim. “Optimist or pessimist? Don’t hedge,” she added when she saw Kim prepare to do just that.
“Pessimist. Look, the reporter wasn’t some crackpot. I’d been watching her for a week solid before that last report. She held it together, even when she had a gun to her head, even when that guy shot his face off beside her. She said what she knew, what she believed, and what she felt people needed to know. The numbers at that point, the crumbling of the government? Martial law, all of it with no vaccine on the near horizon? Seventy percent, maybe more. Hell, if you get up that high in casualties, you’re already fucked anyway.”
“All right.” She’d be clear-sighted
, Lana told herself. For her child. “We all have our strengths. Poe’s getting pretty good with the bow.”
“We all need weapons training,” Max said. “We all have to learn how to defend ourselves, and how to hunt, how to fish. How to cook.”
Lana smiled a little. “I’m available for lessons there. I’ll trade them for driving lessons.”
“I’m a good driver. No Asian driver cracks, black boy.”
Poe snickered at Kim. “It’s the black part of you that can drive. We’ve got a month to work it all out.”
“Then south.” Max nodded at Eddie. “Warmer climate, longer growing season.”
“We get power. Wind or water energy,” Kim said. “We build a greenhouse—extend the growing season. There’s got to be a lot of livestock out there. We herd up cows, chickens, pigs.”
“Build ourselves a world?” Eddie asked.
Kim shrugged. “It’s what we’ve got.”
* * *
Lana slept poorly, chased by dreams.
Crows circling as they had over the black circle. And the flash of something more, something darker all but blanking out the sky. Bloody lightning flamed with it, and roaring thunder followed.
She ran, an arm cradled under her heavy belly, her breath whistling, sweat and blood running. When she could no longer run, she hid, crouching in the shadows while whatever pursued her thrashed, streaked, sneaked, slithered.
When the terrible dream night ended, she walked with her broken heart weeping inside her. She walked, armed with a knife and a gun, a woman the one she’d been in New York wouldn’t recognize.
She walked, a mile, two, then three, with only one purpose. She would protect the child inside her at all costs.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
For two weeks, time was divided between plots, plans, routes, alternates, and the kind of instruction Lana never imagined herself involved in.
She’d never held a gun in her life, and now knew how to fire a revolver, a semiauto, a rifle, and a double-barreled shotgun. Her accuracy improved—still needed work—but she doubted she’d ever overcome her visceral distaste for the shock that ran through her when she pulled a trigger.
Pulling that trigger fired a missile designed to tear through flesh. She hoped, with all she was, she’d never have to aim a weapon at a living thing and pull that trigger.
But she had stopped jerking away every time she fired a gun.
She preferred being the instructor: demonstrating, explaining, walking someone else through how to make a basic soup, how to combine a set number of ingredients into a palatable meal on the fly.
She worked on her archery, though she—and everyone else—considered herself a miserable failure there. She learned how to change a tire and siphon gas, and took daily driving lessons. Those lessons comprised her favorite part of the day—an hour behind the wheel with only Max beside her.
It meant an hour learning a skill she actually liked owning, and time for them to talk about the baby.
Lessons had to be postponed when snow blew in, thick and fast. It melted under sunny skies, froze as night temperatures dipped, and left them with slicks of ice under and over the remaining snow. They spread ash they’d shoveled from the fireplaces to keep paths clear.
Lana sensed everyone, like her, longed for spring. And feared the unknown that would come with the greening.
With Max and Poe on a scavenging trip, Lana decided on a full-house inventory, making notes on what she thought they should take with them. Numerous
