The Book of Joby (119 page)

“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—