Page 68 of Take You Home (Redwater Demons #3)
C hester is pretty sure he’s dying.
“Just keep breathing,” JJ mumbles, holding Chester upright as he stumbles unsteadily down the hallway. “That’s it, Chester?—just a little longer, and…”
Chester’s vision keeps fading in and out, lightening to piercing white and darkening to almost black in a chaotic dance. Distantly, he can hear the sounds of a battle raging around him, the roar of Cass’s true form and a deeper, more guttural, more ancient sound that Chester knows has to be Obie??—
Both of them keeping the hunters at bay to protect Chester and JJ. “I saw Cass propose,” Chester says hoarsely. “It was?—it was sweet. I’m glad you said yes.”
JJ huffs out a startled laugh, pulling Chester closer against his side.
“That’s right. You were Kyle. You were?—?” His voice catches.
“I always wondered why I got along with Kyle so well. Why I trusted him almost immediately, even with Desi. I missed you so much, man. I wanted to come back and get you out, I swear I did, but?—but I didn’t think you’d believe me. I’m so sorry, Chester, I??—?”
JJ is sorry? Chester wheezes out a laugh. “You’re right. I wouldn’t have believed you. It took Obie weeks to convince me.” His vision blurs over, and somehow, he doesn’t think it’s from blood loss this time. “Should’ve been obvious. They?—they tried to separate us from the start.”
JJ’s arm tightens around Chester. “Yeah, well, that ends now. The only person who’s going to get to hang out with you more than me is Obie. In fact, I might just move into Obie’s house to keep an eye on you. Someone clearly needs to be around at all times to keep you out of trouble.”
Chester’s heart squeezes. Even after all this time, even after everything Chester put JJ through, JJ is still as steadfast and loyal as ever.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I never should’ve taken those assignments.
I never should’ve hurt you, not even for my final exam.
You’re my best friend, you’re my brother, and??—?”
“You did what you had to do to survive.” JJ’s voice is soft. “We both did. And?—and we have to do it again now, too. Just keep moving, Chester. Keep breathing. Survival now, apologies later.”
Chester’s lungs scream in protest as he obeys, trying to focus on putting one foot in front of the other.
Down the main hall ahead of them, Obie tears his way through a trio of armed interrogators without missing a beat, only giving the briefest of glances behind him before lunging for the next one unlucky enough to cross his path.
Only checking that Chester is okay before jumping back into the fight.
“My boyfriend is so hot,” Chester mumbles drowsily.
JJ snorts. “Yeah, I think the three of us won the lottery.”
Right on cue, Roma’s voice sounds off from behind them. “Jayj! Locke! We got them! ”
Relief floods through Chester. “Are they okay?” he croaks, trying to look over his shoulder. “Are they??—??”
“Yeah, Locke, we’re good,” another voice says, and??—
Chester’s jaw drops. “Bryant?”
Bryant Nehemiah, looking absolutely no worse for wear since Chester last saw her, looks him up and down with raised eyebrows. “Why do you look more like crap than I do?”
“But you?—?” JJ sounds bewildered. “Chester said they were going to experiment on you and Maggie. Force a soul bond between you. How??—??”
“They did,” a curt voice says, and Maggie strides up next to them, her jaw tense. “Ez healed the physical damage, but the soul bond?—the soul exchange? —is still there.”
The words strike a dissonant chord in Chester’s head. How are they so clearly okay while Chester feels like he’s dying? He heard them screaming from the adjacent hallway. He heard them screaming, and??—
A bloodred dire wolf with nightmarish proportions races up beside them with a snarl, and in a flash of black smoke, Ez turns back into a human. “Long story that’s probably going to have dire consequences for all involved,” she says, “but we’re dealing with those later. Move.”
JJ immediately starts pulling Chester forward again. Fighting back a whimper, Chester turns his head to find Bryant. “Bryant,” he rasps. “I’m so sorry. You weren’t supposed to get hurt?—you weren’t??—?”
“We’ll talk about how pissed I am at you later, Locke.” Bryant’s voice is tight, but her gaze flickers over to meet his, just for a moment. “You should’ve talked to me. We could’ve figured it out.”
Chester’s eyes burn. “They’ve been lying to us,” he whispers. “They killed my family. JJ’s, too. They??—? ”
“Yeah, and you didn’t think to tell me that?” Bryant snaps. “I told you I wasn’t losing another friend this year, remember?”
And Chester??—
Chester doesn’t know what would’ve happened if he’d rolled the dice and tried to tell Bryant without concrete evidence. He doesn’t know if she would’ve believed him, doesn’t know if she would’ve defected with him.
But he suddenly realizes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she would’ve at least heard him out. “I won’t doubt you again,” he says haltingly. “I promise.”
“You’d better not.”
“While this is all very heartwarming,” Sawyer says curtly, edging between them with her escrima sticks bared, “can we please get a move on?”
“You’re on thin goddamn ice right now, too,” Bryant bites out, shoving past Sawyer to take her place at Chester’s side and loop his other arm over her shoulders. “Come on, Locke. Let’s get you fixed up so I can yell at you some more.”
Chester manages a weak smile. “I look forward to it.”
And, with JJ and Bryant on either side of him and Roma leading the way with magic dancing around her fingers, Chester feels safer than he has in a very long time.
The band is finally back together.
Chester isn’t getting better.
“Why isn’t he getting better?” Obie mumbles, his eyes darting up to Ez. “Why isn’t he??—??”
“They tore apart his soul even worse than Cass’s.” Ez’s voice is tight. “I don’t?—I don’t know where we go from here, Obie. ”
Fear claws at Obie’s insides. Swallowing hard, he looks down at where Chester is lying across the bed with his head in Obie’s lap, gently smoothing his hair back.
Right now, they’re in one of Obie’s many safe houses?—the largest one, in fact, one that he’s been gradually outfitting for a gathering like this since June.
Honestly, the number of people in this bedroom alone is nearly overwhelming: Cass, Ez, JJ, Roma, Micah, Gregorio, Sawyer, Naomi, Maggie, Bryant? ? —
So many demons and humans from so many different backgrounds, and yet none of them know how to save Chester.
“Okay, let’s take it from the top,” Roma says. She’s standing right next to the mattress with her hand half-extended like she wants to rest it on Chester’s shoulder, but her eyes are fixed on Ez. “Soul bond. It worked with Cass and JJ, right?”
Ez shakes her head. “JJ only survived by chance. If Desi hadn’t gone in to reset the memory, we would’ve lost him.
And that was Cass’s soul that was damaged, remember?
Even ripped apart, his soul was more powerful than JJ’s.
Pairing up an injured human soul with a healthy demonic one would be a death sentence. ”
Obie swallows hard. “And?—and how about a soul exchange? Like Cass did with JJ?”
He doesn’t think about the headaches and the nausea and the other symptoms Cass and JJ have slowly started developing. Right now, those don’t matter.
As long as Chester makes it through today, they can figure out the rest tomorrow.
“It’s… unlikely,” Cass says quietly. “I almost drained JJ’s soul dry, remember? And I’m still not sure how I reversed the connection, so I couldn’t walk you through it. You’d run the risk of swallowing Chester whole. ”
Chester’s voice, weak but solid, floats through Obie’s head. Sounds sexy.
Obie is almost startled into laughing. You have the worst comedic timing, puppy.
Lies and slander. Someone needs to lighten the mood while I’m dying dramatically in your arms.
Obie’s chest tightens. You’re not dying, he pushes back through the link, and he pointedly doesn’t wait to see whether the words transmitted to Chester or not.
Instead, he looks up at Maggie and Bryant?—the last two pieces to a puzzle that still doesn’t quite fit together.
“What about you two? Didn’t the Sanctum force a soul exchange between you? ”
It hasn’t escaped his notice that the two women are standing as far apart from each other as physically possible.
Whatever happened in their interrogation room, it clearly didn’t go well for them.
“Yes,” Maggie says curtly, “but they tore apart both of our souls first?—mine worse than Nehemiah’s.
It was almost like they were trying to match their strengths, so there wasn’t as much of a power imbalance. ”
Bryant’s shoulders hunch. She looks like she can feel something deeply unpleasant crawling around behind her sternum.
“And they did something to my soul beforehand, too?—something to make it stronger, allegedly. I?—I think the Sanctum has been doing this for a long time. Khan and I were just the latest lab rats.”
Roma reaches out and grabs her hand, squeezing lightly. “They didn’t get to keep you, though. For now, that’s all that matters.”
“But it might be another idea,” Micah says, glancing at Ez. “If we can’t do a soul bond between a human and a demon, then can we try one between two humans? JJ and Bryant are both… weird now, but how about Roma or Sawyer or Naomi?”
Ez shakes her head. “It would carry the same risks. The power imbalance wouldn’t be quite as large as with a demon, but it would still be extraordinarily dangerous with an incredibly low probability of success.”
Obie. Chester’s voice ghosts through Obie’s head again, and dread coils in Obie’s stomach when he realizes that it sounds even weaker than before. It’s okay. You can let me go, I promise. It’s okay.
Obie’s heart feels raw. No, it’s not.
You were the best thing that ever happened to me. I need you to know that, okay? I? ? —