Year One by Nora Roberts Page B

dark. The self-dubbed Raiders. Was there any other word for them? Lana wondered. They came out, roaming in packs like rabid wolves, roaring along the streets on motorcycles. Firing guns, heaving rocks or firebombs through windows. Smashing, burning, looting, laughing.
    The night before, awakened by the shouts, the gunshots, Lana had risked a look. She’d seen a pack of Raiders all but on the doorstep of their building. She’d watched two argue, fight, draw knives while others circled to cheer on the blood. They left the vanquished bleeding on the street—but not before kicking him, stomping on him.
    Max had called the police. His own growing powers helped him boost the signal, as phones—landlines or cells—rarely connected now.
    They’d come, clad in riot gear, a full hour after the call. They had bagged the body and taken it away—but hadn’t bothered to come in and interview her or Max.
    She could see the blood on the street from the window.
    How could the world have gone so dark, so cruel? And at the same time when such light had come into her? She felt it bloom, felt it glow, felt that rush of power whenever she opened herself to it.
    She knew it was the same for Max, that blooming, that discovery.
    She’d seen for herself there were others. The woman she’d watchedleap off the roof of the building across the street. Not in despair, but to soar joyfully on luminous, spreading wings.
    Or the boy of no more than ten she’d watched skipping down the street, turning the streetlights off and on with his waving arms.
    She’d seen the dance of tiny lights, watched some flutter close enough to her window that she could make out their figures—male, female.
    Wonders, she thought. From this very window she’d witnessed wonders. And viciousness. Human cruelty that rampaged with guns and knives and wild eyes. The dark side of magicks that tossed lethal balls of fire or struck others down with black, screaming swords.
    So even as her light grew, the world died, in front of her eyes.
    With a shuddering heart, Lana thought of the numbers reported by the woman on TV. More than a billion and a half dead. A billion and a half lives wiped away, not by terrorism, not by bombs and tanks or mad ideology. But by a virus, germs, some microscopic bug scientists labeled dispassionately with letters.
    And people more succinctly, to her mind, called the Doom.
    Arlys Reid was now Lana’s primary touchstone with the world outside the loft. She clung to the daily broadcasts because the reporter seemed so calm, so impossibly calm as she spoke of horror.
    And hope, Lana reminded herself. The continuing work on a cure. But even when it came—would it come?—nothing would ever be the same again.
    The Doom spread its poison so fast, while magicks, both the dark and the light, rose up to fill the void death created.
    What would be left at the end of things?
    â€œLana, come away from the window. It’s not safe.”
    â€œI shielded it. No one can see in.”
    â€œDid you bulletproof it?” Max strode to her, pulled her back.
    She turned into him, squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh, Max. How can this be real? There’s smoke to the west. It’s all but blocking out the sky. New York’s dying, Max.”
    â€œI know it.” Enfolding her, he stared over her head, at the smoke, at what looked to be birds, black against the gray, circling. “I finally got ahold of Eric.”
    Lana drew back quickly. Max had been trying to reach his younger brother for days. “Thank God! He’s all right?”
    â€œYes. He hasn’t been able to reach our parents, either. With them traveling in France when this hit … There’s no way to know. I haven’t been able to push the signal that far. Yet.”
    â€œI know they’re all right. I just know they are. Where is Eric?”
    â€œStill at Penn State, but he says it’s bad, and he’s going