Eric saw it all happen. Alana was tossed back from Colchester. Colchester was struggling, trying desperately to break free. The woman in the Well was trying to drag him down into the blackness, but she was hurt. They were impaled together on the sword. She could barely hold on to him.

The bomb went off in Middleton, and the dragon was shattered. The shockwave moved like wind through the trees.

He felt the change. He still had a chance.

Eric summoned up everything he had left. Every bit of magic. Every spell. Every trick. Every bit of his power and strength. He flew high in the air, and hurled it all down at the Well, at Colchester, who was stuck dead-center in the middle of it.

All of his magic was channeled through Alana’s sword, ripping the old magician apart. He curled and split and finally exploded into a million little pieces of darkness, flung out into the night.

Eric dropped like a stone, all the magic gone out of him.

The black muck in the Well rose up again. It enveloped and swallowed what was left of Alana’s mother. It spat back the sword, sending it flying.

The Well closed. A moment later, it was only a ring in the dirt of Snake Hill again.

Alana and Eric sat on the ground. The rain stopped like someone had closed a faucet. The clouds parted, and they could see the moon above them again.

Eric wasn’t supposed to be alive, but he was. He didn’t know how he felt about that.

“Alana?” he said.

“Give me a minute, please,” she said. She hugged her knees and kept staring at the place where her mother had been. Her sword lay next to her, half-hidden by the tall grass.

They could have been any two teenagers sitting on a hill in the night, looking at the stars.

If you didn’t know any better, you’d say everything was back to normal.

Carrie sat up. Danny was on his back, a few feet away from her. She checked and saw his chest rise and fall. She realized she couldn’t hear anything. They’d been thrown a dozen feet by the blast.

She looked around. The school was a smoking ruin. But there was no dragon, no impossible evil.

And no more Followers.

There were still kids from the dance scattered around the football field and parking lot, their bright clothes like petals fallen from a flower. The ones who were not unconscious looked shell-shocked.

In the distance, she saw police lights, even though she couldn’t hear the sirens.

About damn time, Dad.