By now GB's list of unknown names had acquired the faces of every grasping, vicious entrepreneur and self-serving yuppie loafer who had overrun and fouled his once-beloved Taubolt. They were to blame for this! They'd forced this hateful choice upon him the minute they'd started shoveling all their filth into his home! If someone had to die now because of it, why shouldn't it be them?

Greed, Joby thought, should be a virus; the kind that killed whoever caught it swiftly. Then maybe people wouldn't rush to embrace it so, and soon there'd be no more greedy people. The same for lies, and theft, and every other kind of hurtful satisfaction!

When Joby reached the cliff tops, he headed south along a deer trail in the knee-deep grass until he came upon a weathered stack of stone half-overgrown in ancient Cypress trees. There he slumped against a rough gray trunk and stared out at the water. The sun had just begun to set behind a narrow band of fog far out to sea, throwing pastel rays of color up into the sky. The scene nagged at him somehow, as if he were remembering what he saw instead of merely viewing it. His mind was clearly going, but who could be surprised at that? Where was that aneurysm? What was taking it so long?

"What is it that I haven't done?" he cried. "All my life I've tried, and tried. . . . But everything I touch . . . just turns to ash. . . . Why?"

He began to weep, and hated himself for that as well, and willed the tears to stop.

"Just show me what to do!" he whispered at the sky, watching in vain for any kind of sign. "I've tried," he groaned, weeping once again. "But the world just withdraws, and withdraws. . . . Please! . . . Just once . . . just answer me! I need to know . . . what I should do!" He looked up in anguish at the clouds, turned salmon in the darkening air. "Please," he whispered one more time. "What have I not given?"

There was no answer but the wind, soughing through the brittle grass and cypress boughs around him. Only wind.

"It's costing me my son!" Joby shouted at the air. "I've sacrificed my son! Isn't that enough? Don't you care at all?" Receiving only silence still, he left the trees, breathing hard, slicked with sweat, and filled with fury. "Well, I will care then! I will act!" he raged. "I will give them all the justice that you've never given me!"

Joby stalked away then, not back up toward his house, but north, toward town, to find GB and tell him he had made his choice. The boy had been right all along. Empty faith was impotent. Only action changed things.

36.

( The Final Measure ) Merlin didn't bother watching anything the TV screens portrayed now. There wasn't time. The storm was breaking, and he had to be there when it did.

He was so close, so close. And even as he thought this, the last knot slipped away, and he simply was! The mall whirled around him and dissolved as those few, by now barely perceptible, particles of blood drew his spirit back to Joby's empty former room at Gladys Lindsay's inn. Merlin gazed about him in stunned elation, returned at last to space and time, if not yet to his body, which was, of course, no longer here. Having come this far, however, that last step would not be hard. Urgently, he called out to find his flesh, and followed its reply to Santa Rosa.

Lucifer sat beside their little fire in exaltation, watching Joby practice the spell by which he'd kill half of Taubolt's children in the morning, including their five teenage channels, who would be consumed as well by the darkness they'd be there to amplify. GB had even managed to convince Joby that their ritual must be performed up on the Garden Coast, at last giving Lucifer access to that offensive refuge too.

It had all come off so perfectly! Like clockwork, in a single year! Whatever had his troop of morons done with all that other time? Lucifer could only shake his head, suspecting they just hadn't any sense of timing. Timing, after all, had been the key.

He should just have faced the unpleasant task of coming here to do the job himself far sooner. There was so much blah, blah, blah in Hell about how domineering, unsupportive, and untrusting he was, but look what delegation had gotten him! If not for his misguided urge to nurture all their botched attempts, who knew what Joby might have been by now? Dictator of all America, quite possibly, doing evil of historic significance, instead of just some paltry wickedness like murdering numbers of anonymous children-again. Alas, that would have to satisfy at this late date, though there were still enough years left for Joby to do at least a few worse things afterward. That's how it always worked, of course. Get a man to do something so unendurably shameful that he'd do any number of even worse things to hide what he'd become, until he'd gladly burn the entire world just to hide his dirty laundry-from no one but himself, of course, by then.

It was such a simple concept, really. Why did so many of his own employees seem to have such trouble grasping it?

Getting back into his body had been as simple as falling into bed. Getting out of the hospital with it, much less back to Taubolt, would be by far the greater challenge. Merlin found his flesh attached to a labyrinth of life support almost as tangled as the knots by which Lucifer had held him in oblivion. His poor body had become so atrophied that magic was required just to move it now. Still, there was cause for thanks. It seemed nurses came seldom to the bedside of a man who'd been a vegetable for months, so he suffered no interruptions while executing the demanding and often unpleasant tricks required to free himself without setting off alarms. The surprising lack of demonic guards was an unexpected blessing too. Apparently, Lucifer had been that sure of Merlin's helplessness.

Since no one near him was alert to the use of magic, Merlin was able to wander from his room in search of an exit using nothing more elaborate than a few simple cantrips for disguise and misdirection. He stopped once along the way to steal a wallet and some keys, with silent apologies, from the pocket of a busy doctor-along with that man's knowledge of where his car was parked. Merlin frowned on theft, but with so much strength required just to animate his wasted body, Taubolt was much too far away to leap to by any of the usual magic means. The good doctor would see his car again at any rate, and Merlin would be sure the tank was full. In fact, the man would hereafter find his mileage quite improved.

As dawn spread over Taubolt's summer fields, Joby lay awake in bed, having failed to sleep at all for the third night in a row. The moment was at hand, but he felt too paper-thin to rise, though they were doubtless waiting at the school already-GB and his little band of "channel"-to be taken to the Garden Coast. Joby groaned, and rolled his face into the mattress.

He no longer cared what happened to himself. There seemed no self left for anything to happen to. He'd lost the last thing he had ever cared about when he'd become so angrily absorbed in planning with GB that he'd forgotten Hawk's ten o'clock deadline. He had intended to be there, to talk some sense into his son, make him see that nothing was ever that black and white, but, God help him, he'd forgotten, until coming home well after midnight to find all of Hawk's things gone. Falling directly into bed, he'd thought of little else all night but what Hawk must have made of his failure even to appear. No second chances. Those words seemed etched into his soul now.

"What have I done?" he groaned.

Forcing himself from bed at last, he stumbled miserably toward the bathroom. It was all a sacrifice. That was the only way to see it now. When he'd done what he was going to do, he'd probably not even have a soul left, but Taubolt would be saved. That was all that justified his very existence now: what countless others would gain when Taubolt had been cleansed of Hamilton and Donaldson and all their hellish associates.

Then he reached the bathroom, and found the battered little book that Hawk had taped onto the mirror. The only thing his son had left: Rose's book of flower fairies! Seeing it pinned to the reflection of his own ghastly, pale face, every detail of Rose's memorial service returned with razor sharpness-most clearly of all, the moment he had rushed to hug the son he'd feared dead.

Joby staggered back to sit roughly on the toilet, trembling with dismay as an unendurable parade passed before his inner eyes, of all the things he'd loved, but starved or thrown away to feed, instead, the things he'd feared or hated. The last balloon to pass was the memory of his tantrum in the fields the night before. I've sacrificed my son! he'd screamed. And it was true. That was precisely what he'd done!

For what?

To save someone else's children? To save the Garden Coast; a patch of old trees and exotic flowers? In exchange for his son? What made the Garden Coast that much better refuge than a hundred others they might run to? Had Joby even asked? No! Suddenly it all seemed so preposterous! The entire scheme. The secrecy. The tragic, heroic poses! These were the stuff of adolescence! Fantasies that no one but a boy should be able to take seriously, yet Joby had let himself be led by just such an adolescent, when he, the adult, should have done the leading! How had he allowed it? How could he have thrown away his son for this? Had Hamilton been right when she'd accused him of not knowing how to act his age?

At the disgust even this brief thought of Hamilton brought him, the remaining scales fell from Joby's eyes, and he saw the awful truth. As stupid as these other reasons were, he'd let himself be led for an even more pathetic one: He'd wanted to believe the boy. He'd been so angry, so eager to blame and punish someone, so sure he knew who deserved that punishment, and . . . so sure that he was right. He'd thrown away the son he loved just to purge his little town of those he loathed, as if the world wouldn't merely send another wave of loathsome creeps to Taubolt from its bottomless supply. GB had been wrong. It wasn't just about who died. It was about who did the killing too, or Taubolt would be saved for nothing but a whole new generation of monstrous prosecutors-like Joby had become, or was about to. Hawk had tried to tell him that just yesterday, and it brought Joby grief to know now that he'd have heard his son if only he had listened with his heart instead of with his righteous anger.

If demons were about to burn the Garden Coast, both that news and GB should be taken straight to Jake, who was neither demon spy nor gossip, and had proven more than able to shield many other children from attack. Had there been any doubt before, Joby knew now that the biggest ass in human history was himself.

Leaping up, he headed for his room to dress in desperation. There had to be a way to fix this. First, he'd have to go stop this madness and get GB under Jake's protection. However much the boy might hate him for it now, he'd be grateful later. And if not? Ah well. Joby had broken everything else he valued, why not this friendship too? Then Joby would find his son, wherever he had gone, and tell Hawk he'd been right. It couldn't really be too late to choose! Were such bonds broken so quickly? God, he hoped not.

As he yanked his shoes on, Joby decided to call Laura if their son refused to listen. He had hurt her, yes, but she'd never been a petty or vindictive person. Surely she would help him. As he rushed outside to jump into his car, Joby dared to hope. He'd missed Hawk's deadline, but he hadn't done the things Hawk had been trying to prevent. Wasn't that the choice his son had given him; come with me, or do your thing? The clock might have run out, but Joby prayed the choice was still in motion.

As she looked around at Merlin's living room, Kallaystra couldn't help but be impressed. More than half the house was literally made of magic. The old man had clearly lost none of his prowess since she'd been sent to lure him into confinement the last time Arthur's endeavors had collapsed. She ran her fingers down a door frame of remarkably believable wood, marveling at how much power must be woven into this structure, amazed, despite herself, that any mortal man could be so potent. What a shame to waste that virile body on a coma. He'd even been strong enough to leave his house protected by a self-sustaining spell that had forced her to incarnate not three steps into his yard. She'd just had time to will herself into Nimue's form one more time for old times' sake, as it took hold.

Tique had intercepted a phone call that morning, to Joby's cottage from the hospital, nervously reporting that Mr. Rand was missing. Incredulous that Merlin had escaped, Lucifer had sent Kallaystra and the Triangle to watch the several locations he thought Merlin most likely to return to, though Kallaystra could not imagine how even such a powerful enchanter would pose much threat wearing a body as far gone as his must be now.

The thought was hardly done before a door slammed shut somewhere in the back end of the house. Kallaystra whirled in alarm. Footsteps echoed down the hallway. Then Merlin stepped into the room and pulled up short, looking as surprised as she was.

"Nimue!" Merlin exclaimed angrily.

"Merlin!" Kallaystra gasped.

He was terribly pale and thin, but she wasn't reassured. Any man who'd gotten out of Lucifer's captivity and moved that frail body all the way from Santa Rosa, not to mention having made this house from virtually nothing, might be an opponent to concern her even in such weakened condition. "You do seem remarkably improved, but not as well as you pretend, I think," she said.

Merlin leaned against the wall behind him for support, as if hoping she would not notice his discomfort. "I warn you, demoness, weak as you may think me, I've surprises still tucked up my sleeve, and I will not go back a third time to that-"

"Perish the thought!" Kallaystra cut him off with an upraised hand. "As it happens, I was just lamenting your wasteful coma." She looked down shyly. "I've always regretted what happened, you know. In all these centuries, I've never found another lover who came within light-years of moving me like you did," she said breathlessly. Glancing around as if to make certain no one listened, she said, "Lucifer is quite distracted at the moment. I'm sure he has no idea that you're here. I could help you get to someplace he would never look." She gave Merlin her most seductive smile. "Then, later, when it's safe, maybe we could make another try at-"

"If you wish to stop me, do so," Merlin said impatiently. "I've not come all this way to trifle with you. My grandson needs me."

"Your grandson," Kallaystra sighed. "I could hardly believe it when they told me. Who was the lucky woman?"

"I have things to attend to," Merlin said coldly. "Let's get this combat over with."

"Combat?" Kallaystra laughed. "In your condition? What bravado!" she said duskily. "I can think of far more enjoyable alternatives to combat if you're feeling that frisky." That was when she noticed he no longer looked so pale. In fact, his color was improving even as she watched. "What are you-" Then she realized, and knew it was too late to stop him. As if to confirm her theory, a rumbling crash came from the kitchen. "So that's why you came here first." She smiled.

"I think you'll find my condition much improved now," Merlin said, still leaning on the wall, but not in weakness. Above them came another crash, then a horrendous cacophony from the far side of the house. Kallaystra suspected that the room they stood in might be the only one still "remodeled."

"I'd stored a lot of power in this little battery," said Merlin, stepping forward to confront her, "for emergencies."

"What makes you think I wish to stop you?" Kallaystra mused.

"Why should I think you don't?" Merlin countered.

The time for flirtation was over. He clearly wasn't going to fall for that again. "To be honest, I'm rather miffed with my employer at present." She smiled. "I've served him very well, and he's served me like a cheap whore." A look she chose to ignore crossed Merlin's face. "Doubtless he'd expect me to cover his majestic ass again now, but I ask you, has he ever covered mine?" She didn't have to fake the irritation she wanted him to see. "The festivities will probably be under way before you can get back to town, but I think I'd like to let you try," she smiled coquettishly, "for old times' sake, as long as you promise never to tell Lucifer that you were here. It would serve him right to have his special day blemished. He'll never know I helped you, of course. But I will, and you will, and," she smiled again, "that's enough for me."

"Why should I make deals with you?" Merlin growled with overt disgust.

"Because even if you're able to get past me at the moment, I can surely slow you down," she said severely. "Right now, I'd say speed is of the essence if you want to bother him at all, so promise what I ask, and I'll facilitate. Otherwise, I'll have to fight you. I wouldn't survive any other choice when he found out."

"Fine," Merlin said. "I promise never to tell Lucifer we met."

"Oh no," Kallaystra said. "Swear by something binding, or we have no deal."

"I swear by my immortal soul then," Merlin replied tiredly.

"Really!" Kallaystra jeered. "Do you think me stupid? Your soul's as good as signed and sealed to us already, after all the ways you've disobeyed your Lord's commands. Try something convincing this time, or I may change my mind."

"I swear on my grandson's immortal soul," Merlin said less comfortably. "If I ever speak a word of this to Lucifer, Hell may have him. Will that do?"

"Of course not!" Kallaystra snapped. "His soul will by ours by sunset too! Really, what do you take me for? You have one last chance, old man, or I will find out just how powerful you really are, while Joby perishes without you!"

Merlin sagged, and said, "I promise, then, on the soul of my great-grandson, whom you know I love as well, that I will never speak a word of this to Lucifer."

"Hawk's soul." Kallaystra smiled. "Yes, that will do. He is likely beyond our reach now, and I think that you would not betray him. . . . Very well. Be gone, and may Lucifer enjoy the loyalty he's so richly earned."

Merlin leaned against the wall once more, and said, "You realize, of course, you've left me free to tell everybody else."

Before she could react, he was gone, and her scream of rage was buried in a mighty roar of falling beams and masonry as the remaining house collapsed around her corporeal body: drained, as Merlin vanished, of all the power that had held it up.

GB leapt up eagerly as Joby came around the corner of the school building. "Man, I thought you'd chickened out!" He grinned in obvious relief.

"I have," Joby said, seeing no point in mincing words. "GB, I've had a chance to think things through more clearly than before, and this is not a good idea."

"What?" GB demanded in dismay. "You're selling us out?"

"No," Joby said. "I'm trying not to sell you out for the first time in months. We'd all have regretted this terribly as soon as it was done. I've been thinking, and I know how I can approach the Council without letting on that you-"

"I don't believe this!" GB cut him off, looking furious and hurt. "You might as well hang us all up on butcher's hooks outside Donaldson's station house right now!" Behind him their five teenage channels watched in confusion. "Did I do something to make you hate me all of a sudden, or have you just been lying to me all along?"

"GB, calm down. I don't hate you. I just-"

"Calm down?" GB shrieked. "My ass is dead! But that's not your problem, is it. Just go on home, dude. Better yet, take a fuckin' vacation. Maybe when you come back, we'll all be dead, and you'll be completely off the hook." GB wiped tears angrily from his reddened face as confusion turned to alarm on the faces of his five young friends.

"Vacation's not a bad idea," came a voice that Joby recognized with shock. "It's the first good one you've had, in fact."

Everyone spun to gape at Solomon.

"You!" GB gasped, looking strangely furious. "How did you-"

"You'll find your pretty sentinel buried in her work, I fear." Solomon smiled.

"Solomon?" Joby said, feeling numb. "You're . . . How did-When . . ."

"You meddling maggot!" GB shouted at Solomon. "You'll regret this day for as long as-" Seeming suddenly to remember those around him, GB's mouth clamped shut.

Meddling maggot? Joby looked from Solomon to GB, feeling extremely light-headed and thinking that he should have had some breakfast. On top of three sleepless nights, Joby had eaten nothing since the previous morning. "GB?" he said, but he couldn't seem to formulate his question.

"I think it's time Joby knew what 'GB' really stands for, don't you?" Solomon asked. Before GB could answer, Solomon turned to Joby and said, "It's 'Goddamned Bastard,' if I'm not mistaken." Then he threw a hand up toward GB who shrieked in surprise and began to change before everyone's eyes.

Where the flaxen-haired youth had stood, a far taller man with huge wings of black leather, horns protruding from his coal-dark locks, and a long spade-tipped tail now gaped in horror at his own reflection in the school building's plate-glass windows.

"How dare you?" screamed the apparition. "I have never looked like that!" A spastic wave of its hand banished the wings, horns, and tail, but the rest of its appearance remained unchanged. "We are betrayed!" it shouted at the empty air above it.

At this, the openmouthed paralysis in which everyone had been suspended shattered. GB's gang of teenagers ran off in all directions screaming in terror. Joby felt, suddenly, too drained to stand. Struggling to remain conscious, he half-sat, half-fell onto the pavement, finally understanding that GB must have been-must be. . . . "Oh, Hawk!" he moaned. "You were right about it all, and I've betrayed you."

"Moron!" the demon yelled at Solomon. "Did you think to win for him?"

"Joby had made his decision before I even got here," Solomon replied. "He'd already refused your offer. You heard as well as I did."

The senseless words they fired at each other began to swim and swirl through Joby's vision like schools of small black fish. "Win what?" he said palely. But neither man paid him any heed.

"I still had three years left!" snapped the demon, regaining some of his composure. "All you've done is guarantee your own damnation, and won the chance to watch me destroy the last of everything your grandson loves-beginning with you!" The demon jerked an arm into the air, and arcs of crackling light flared from his fingers, but Solomon was already wrapped inside a luminescent shell of green, and shot back from within it streams of violet fire.

Stunned beyond endurance, Joby lost his grip on consciousness.

He settled gently to the grass, like a fallen leaf, and looked around the lawn behind his parents' house, wondering where he'd put his book. He thought about it very hard, then stood up and walked, and walked, beyond his backyard fence, beyond the fields he played in until he found himself before a ring of cypress trees that seemed familiar, though he didn't know from where. There was pretty music coming from them, and a pretty, dark-haired girl waving to him from high up in the branches. He was quite impressed that she had climbed so high.

"The bark is rough," the girl laughed, "but it won't hurt your hands. Come up and listen to the song with me!"

Happily, Joby began to climb. Boys were climbers. That's what his father said. Finally he sat down beside her, laughing in delight at the way everything around him swayed to the music in the wind. Such pretty, pretty music, Joby thought and turned to ask the girl if there were words, but found her holding out a shiny cup he hadn't seen her holding before. Suddenly it seemed that all the music came from inside that.

As the Cup shown brighter and brighter Joby wanted very badly to take a drink from it-more than he'd ever wanted anything before, or, no, maybe once before.

"Can I have some?" he asked the girl, afraid she might say no.

She smiled and nodded. "Yes, but first I have a secret, and you have to tell."

Joby leaned in closer while she whispered in his ear, "Tell Hawk I know, and I am waiting, but for now, he has to live, and love, and do everything he can." She leaned away and smiled again, and Joby didn't know what any of it meant, but didn't think he would forget.

"Can I have some now?" he asked.

She handed him the Cup at last and said, "Feed your heart, Joby."

He pulled it to his lips and drank the way the ocean drinks a river at low tide.

Then a man's voice called his name, and Joby looked up to find the girl gone, the wind a gale, and himself no longer young but grown, trying to grab the thrashing branch with one hand while clinging to the Cup with his other.

"Feed your heart," the man's voice sighed again, and though Joby couldn't tell where it was coming from, he knew whose voice it was.

"Why did I forget?" he asked, struggling not to fall as the wind increased. "Why do I keep forgetting?" Afraid not just of falling, but of spilling what was in the Cup, he looked down to find a face beneath the liquid's surface, crowned in bloody thorns!

Lurching back in terror, Joby dropped the Cup and fell seamlessly into running, running from that thorn-crowned face, through empty darkness filled with candles that went out as he approached. Amidst the roar of rushing wind, yet another voice behind him in the darkness started calling out his name. Joby just ran faster. "Joby!" called the voice again, as something grabbed him from behind and yanked him off the ground- "Joby! Can you hear me?" Jake stared at him and shook his shoulders once again. "Get out of here," he said urgently. "His demons are destroying the village."

Joby found himself held upright, but putting weight upon his feet, he saw that he was fine. In fact, he'd never felt so fit and full of life.