The man and woman had died together, holding on to each other even in their last moments. The damage that was done to them was horrible to see.
The hunters were now doing here what they did at the Mar-trollid camp. Simple killing, with no need to take others away. Something had changed.
Although he knew what he would find, Solomon checked the other two buildings that had been broken into, finding more of the same. His stomach roiled at the last one, finding not only adults, but children as well.
Not every building had been entered. Several still had intact doors, and he saw the twitch of more than one curtain as he moved from place to place. People were still alive here, only now so frightened that they wouldn’t even come out when it was fully light.
Why only some buildings?
The answer came to him, carried along with an icy feeling of dread.
Because they were where the hunters had come from. Their families.
Like Greta and Friedrich.
Solomon ran.
♦ ♦ ♦
It only took a few moments to reach their house, and he was relieved to see the door still intact, the wood still over the windows. There were other people he wanted to check on. Doc Mia and Old Sam. But first he needed to make sure that Celia and the others were safe.
The door opened as he approached, and there was Christoph, smiling out at him. Solomon felt his own face split into a large grin at the sight of the boy. If things had gone badly here, his greeting would have been much different.
“You’re back!” the boy shouted, then turned and dashed into the house, yelling out that Solomon had returned.
Moments later he was inside, surrounded by the children, and smiling at the two older people. Celia was seated at the table and returned his smile with one of her own. It still seemed strained to him, and for a second, he wondered if things would ever return to what they once were. Part of him doubted it.
Then he noticed the strain on Friedrich’s face.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
The room fell silent.
“Lyssa?”
“Sit down,” Celia said. “There’s a lot to tell you.”
Solomon took a seat. “All right. I have news also. It’s not good.”
“You first,” Celia said. “Yours is probably quicker.”
He told them about seeing the hunters run past him the morning before and knowing they were returning to Dunfield. About questioning whether he should return or continue on.
“You did the right thing,” Friedrich said. “It’s not as if we thought they were gone for good. We just weren’t expecting…. well, finish your tale first, then we’ll tell ours.”
“All right,” Solomon agreed. “It was as we feared. The hunters did go to the Mar-trollid camp. They attacked and killed several of them, including Gan-Rowe.” He stopped at the hard look on Celia’s face, sure that she was thinking that here was yet another thing that he had failed at. She wasn’t wrong.
“Go on,” Celia said, ice in her voice.
“The Mar-trollid killed some of them, too. But they burned them before I got there, so I didn’t have a chance to examine one.”
“No need. I did,” Celia said.
“There was a time I would have been surprised at that,” he said. She didn’t return his faint smile.
“Anyway,” he continued after a moment, “the upshot is that the Mar-trollid are leaving.”
“Going where?” Greta asked.
“Leaving this world. They told Celia and I there was a portal back to the Greenweald here somewhere. But they don’t need that one. I guess they have their own means of moving from world to world, somewhere far from here.”
“The world will be poorer without them,” Friedrich said.
“It will,” Solomon agreed. “More than that, though, I think whatever is behind this purposely tried to eliminate them.”
“To get rid of something that it couldn’t corrupt,” Celia said. “Yes. That makes sense.”
“And now I come back to find that the hunters have started doing here what they did there. But you knew that part already, didn’t you?”
The three adults looked at each other, Greta’s eyes welling with tears. Friedrich put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him.
“We did,” he said. “And Lyssa, or something pretending to be her, came here, trying to get us to let her in.”
“It wasn’t her,” Greta said. “It wasn’t her voice. What sort of monster doesn’t think a mother knows the voice of her own child?”
“She stayed out there, begging to be let in, over and over,” Celia said. “Until it started to get lighter, then she turned and ran away. Back to the manor, I assume.”
“It wasn’t her,” Greta said again, trying to convince herself as much as anyone else.
“It wasn’t,” Celia said. “We knew that already.”
“How?” Solomon asked.
Celia told him about the red hunter and her discovery, about going into the Manor again and the door in the basement, and about the mask and what happened when she put it on.
“Do you still have it?” Solomon asked.
“The mask? Yes. Of course. Why?”
“I’d like to see it.”
“Why? Do you think you can do it? Even though I couldn’t?”
The challenge in her voice was evident and it burrowed into Solomon’s chest. At one time, she wouldn’t have questioned this. Now, it wasn’t just that she wanted him to see that she was capable of doing things, it was that she was resentful that he was.
“No,” he answered carefully. “I don’t think that.”
“Then why do you need to see it?”
This was ridiculous. There was no time for petty rivalries, especially between the two of them. And yes, dammit, maybe he could do something with it that she couldn’t.
He was opening his mouth to reply, an answer that probably would have done more harm
