LOT'S MOUNTAIN

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE: Those Left Behind

The Glass Man being dead doesn't stop the fighting. The monsters on the Glass Man's side are a whole lot weaker without Glass magic, though. We (I say we, but it's mostly the monsters on this one) take back the side of town that we're on.

The curs try to hunt down the rest of the Glass hounds ... I doubt that they get all of them, but the Huntsman's getting most of them. Without Shard barking orders at them, the hounds scatter.

The ogres that marched into Belle Lake (the ones Grim's orb showed me) get taken out by a group of reinforcements (a Diwata, some Nøkken that are still pissed at South being dead, and some of the rat monsters I saw at Belle Lake). After Belle Lake gets cleared of all the Glass monsters, the rest of the fight goes real quick.

Grief's Dawn ... not much is left. Most of the Stone Angels are gone, too. Loomis, with the cherubs he still has, beats back some spider things that try to destroy what little remains. It takes a while, but he slices through them. The look of grief thing that he did at Unger's place, doesn't work on these things, but his sword does.

The ghosts dance around everything, still oblivious.

Jamie and me do what we can. So does Grim. We're together for a good bit of the fighting. We don't use anymore of that Stone stuff that Jamie and me can do. We can't risk what it'll do. But we can still do stuff. And we do.

Some of the monsters that had been on the side of Glass surrender. I'm there when a bunch of them fall on their knees (a few of them don't have knees, but they fall face down on the ground) in front of the Old Bone Woman. I'm not sure what she's going to do with them. She doesn't say and I don't ask.

Around dawn, all the fighting finally stops. We win, if you can call it that. A good bit of Belle Lake is still on fire, but the Ladies take care of most of it pretty quick now that they don't have to use their magic to fight. The remaining webs in the trees melt and flow over the flames.

The wounded are gathered on one side of the lake. The Mourner's there. He looks real bad off, but he's alive. Diane ... as soon as I see her, I hug her. Yeah, that's weird for me, but I don't care. Diane has claw marks down her face and some on her arm. She's still using every bit of healing that she has for the monsters and people that come in.

I don't tell her about what happened to the Glass Man, that it came down to him and me.

You'd think I'd be blabbing that to everybody. I'm not. I don't mention it to anyone else. I don't tell Grim. Or even Jamie.

While Grim helps guide the living to Belle Lake, some monsters go out to gather the bodies of the dead, of the monster dead. Sooner or later, the rest of the world, or at least the state, will figure out that most of the town isn't here anymore. Hell, it looks like a bomb went off.

The monsters are okay with the rest of the humans not knowing about them existing. They leave the human bodies, what's left of them. The humans that used to be white shirts and are still alive are gathered up and brought to Belle Lake. They're pretty messed up. Even the kids. Most stagger around, not really sure where they are or what happened.

Jamie and me stay with them. That's when the people that used to be curs start to wake up. They're sleeping somewhere ... there ... that's where they're coming from—a thicket in the center of some blackberry brambles.

Mindy's one of the first to push her way out and stumble forward. And her parents are next.

"Dill Pickles!" she exclaims and runs up to me. No, she doesn't run. She skips and throws her arms around my neck. Then she kisses me on the check and adds, "I don't know why, but I think you deserve that."

She grabs her parents by the hands and starts yammering about the crazy dream she just had. Her parents look a lot more stunned than she does. How much do they remember? The fact that a Diwata walks by them just now doesn't really help.

As more people crawls out of the weeds, the Huntsman strides up to stand next to me. He still looks bad off, but someone's wrapped bandages around his chest.

"Deirdre okay?" I ask.

"Her song can lull some to sleep, others ... the voice of a banshee can be powerful." I'm betting she took quite a few of the enemy out. I've read a few stories about banshees. I doubt she does any head exploding or stuff like that, but I bet she can definitely hold her own. Looking glum, the Huntsman adds, "She fought well."

Fought. All past tense. And he doesn't add anything present tense. Like there isn't a present tense for her anymore.

"Shit, I'm sorry."

"Yes, she fought well." Then he looks over at me. "And she remains to hunt another day."

Ass. He did that on purpose.

Pointing at some other ex-curs stumbling toward where the others our standing, I ask, "And they'll remember?"

"All things fade with time," he says.

Even now, he has to be all cryptic. But I think he's wrong. Not all things. He'll always remember the princess from the Once-Kingdom. And I think that he'll always remember what it felt like to kill that son of a bitch Shard. I reckon he's talking about the humans ... They'll slowly forget what it was like to be curs and convince themselves that it didn't happen, that what they're seeing now isn't really happening.

I leave the Huntsman's side when I see Mark wake up. I help him over to where Jamie is. The little kid she rescued from the church is his little brother. We haven't found his parents or his little sister. They weren't with the other white shirts or in the shirts.

There's a lot of hugging and crying. Some people call out names, but nobody answers them.

Mark just hangs onto his little brother and Jamie sits there with him. I can't. I can take out the Glass Man, but I can't sit there listening to the noises that Mark's making. He's not worried about looking cool or tough.

And what also hits me (luckily not literally), I don't see Stan Estes anywhere. You'd think I'd be happy not to see him. But not seeing him here ... I know what that means. I see Cheryl, but not anybody else that used to sit with us at the lunch table.

That's when I see the Huntsman again and the Old Bone Woman's with him. They wade into where the ex-curs came from. Looking back, I see Dennis. He must have stepped out of the woods from a different place. He sits with Jamie and Mark.

Drew Sherman's alive, too (he woke up a little after Mindy and her folks). He's talking to Tim. Yeah, Tim made it. I can't hear what they're saying, but Tim pulls away.

He's leaving. This is his last night in the town. He doesn't bother saying good-bye to Diane.

Grim ... He's with the Nøkken. I wish he was here right now.

Following the Huntsman and the Old Bone Woman, I see just how many of the curs didn't wake up. These weren't the ones that always followed the Hunt. These were the ones from Father Sherman's church.

I walk between the bodies. They aren't spirits anymore. I keep looking down into their grey faces, hoping their eyes are going to open.

They don't.

One by one, the Huntsman scoops them up and takes them to a place deeper into Belle Lake, a place I haven't been before.

I pick up the last one. The body's real light in my arms. There aren't any bruises on it or any of the other bodies. No cuts or blood. Is that worse? That they look like they're only sleeping?

The Huntsman takes the last one from me.

Keeping me from following him, the Old Bone Woman says, "There's a quiet place, where the oldest willows and oak trees grow. He takes care of his own, but we can take them in. It's a place of honor and respect. Few humans earn being buried there, but they have."

"We couldn't save everything," I say. Or everyone.

"No," she says. "We never can."