Page 70 of Take You Home (Redwater Demons #3)

C hester wakes up to the sound of Obie screaming.

“Obie? Obie!” Chester jerks upright on the bed, the sudden motion making his head spin and his stomach turn over. “Obie??—?”

Cass and Ez are already on either side of Obie, trying to hold him down as he seizes in pain. “What?—??” Cass begins, his accusing eyes snapping to Chester. “What did you do to him?”

“Me?” Chester sputters, aghast. “I didn’t do anything! I didn’t??—?”

Obie should be fine. Chester asked if it would hurt him, and Obie said no, and they can’t lie to each other telepathically, they can’t??—

What the hell is happening?

Ez presses her hand to Obie’s forehead, squeezing her eyes shut. “It’s?—it’s a curse. I can feel it just underneath his skin. It?—?” Her eyes cinch tighter. “It was put on a very long time ago, but it didn’t take effect until now?—why wouldn’t it??—??”

All at once, Chester’s stomach plummets.

They laid a curse upon him that would’ve destroyed a lesser demon on the spot .

Don’t worry, puppy. Like I said, it’s been attached to me for millennia?—and my god powers keep it from doing any damage.

Obie wasn’t lying. It wasn’t him giving Chester his god powers that hurt him.

It was everything that happened afterward.

The bedroom door bangs open. “What the hell is going on in here?” Maggie demands, freezing when she sees Obie struggling to breathe on the mattress. “Obie? ? —?”

Gregorio and Micah are across the room in a flash. “What happened?” Gregorio demands, hovering a hand just above Obie’s shoulder like he’s not sure whether to touch him or not. “Is he hurt?”

“It’s a curse, apparently.” JJ’s hands are trembling. “It?—it just activated.”

“Can we break it?” Naomi’s face is pale. “Roma, Ez, can you break it?”

Ez growls with frustration, snatching her hand away from Obie’s forehead. “I don’t know this one. No frame of reference for it. Roma?”

“I?—?” Roma’s glowing palm is already poised over Obie’s chest, but she lets it drop back down, swearing. “I’ve got nothing, either. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before, but it’s powerful, and??—?”

Chester swallows down the panic screaming up his throat. “It’s the curse from the gods.”

Cass and Ez stop dead. “It’s… what?” Cass asks, but the way his face goes ashen says that he knows exactly what Chester means.

“From… the gods?” Micah repeats, squinting at him. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, right,” Bryant says, blunt as ever. “Turns out that Obadiah Smith is your old god Nostringvadha. That was the big secret he didn’t want you to hear.”

“Nehemiah!” Roma snaps, glaring at her.

“What? Not like it’s going to be a secret for much longer, Gutierrez!” Bryant bites out. “I might be new around here, but this kind of seems like an all-hands-on-deck situation!”

“That…” Sawyer looks more dumbstruck than Chester has ever seen her. “For real?”

“But that?—?” Maggie’s eyes narrow. “That can’t be. I would know?— all of us would know. Obie’s powers are similar to Nostringvadha’s, but they have limitations that Nostringvadha’s didn’t, and??—?”

“Okay, but like,” Bryant says, “this is one of those times when you just need to accept the new information and move on, Khan.”

Maggie’s jaw twitches. Her eyes flicker to Cass.

Cass nods jerkily. “She’s telling the truth.”

Maggie lets out her breath in a hiss. “Fine,” she says neutrally, and with a jolt, Chester realizes that this might just be the first time Bryant and Maggie have addressed each other directly since their souls were ripped apart and mixed together.

“So how do we break a fifteen-thousand-year-old curse that was put in place by thirteen of the most powerful beings in any dimension?”

Ez bolts to her feet and starts to pace, her shoulders tense. “Okay. From the top again. Can we brute-force it off?”

“For a curse this powerful? Doubtful,” Roma says. “Can we mitigate it, maybe? Use healing spells to treat the symptoms and buy us time to break the curse itself?”

Ez gestures sharply at Obie’s trembling form on the mattress. “We can’t mitigate that, Roma. We need to rip it out by the roots if??—??” Her voice hitches. “If we want Obie to survive.”

“There has to be something.” Cass’s voice is strained. “Ez, there has to be??—?”

“I don’t know, Cass! There’s no handbook on what to do when your best friend turns out to be a god!”

“How much time do we have?” Chester demands, unabashedly hauling Obie into his arms and letting Obie’s cheek rest against Chester’s chest. Obie shudders hard, burying his face in Chester’s shirt. “How much time until it’s?—until it’s irreversible?”

Maggie’s eyes are fixed on Obie. “Not enough. With how quickly his soul energy is draining, I’ll be impressed if he lasts another hour.”

“No.” Chester tightens his grip on Obie, horror roiling through him. “No, he can’t? ? —?”

Can’t leave Chester like this. Can’t leave his friends?—his family? —like this.

Can’t die like this.

“What about?—??” Everyone turns to face Micah. His face is scrunched up, like he’s trying to remember something. “Okay, hear me out. Can anyone here summon a demon from Tamaros? Not just open an interdimensional rift, but actually summon and?—and compel one?”

The entire atmosphere in the room shifts. “Yes,” Bryant says slowly, her eyebrows pulling together. “But how would that help?”

“And?—?” Micah presses his lips together. “Is there a way to compel the demon before it gets to Earth? To command it to do something in Tamaros?”

Gregorio’s eyes sharpen. “What are you getting at?”

“The Fount of Blessings,” Micah says, and the familiar name rocks through Chester. “It can heal all wounds and break all curses, right? So that means??—?”

“?—?that means it can probably break this curse, too,” JJ breathes, his eyes snapping to Cass. “Well? Can we?”

Cass looks like he’s about to be sick. “I hate the thought of condemning another demon to be stuck here for eternity,” he says, “but?—but if the alternative is losing Obie, then I think we have to try. ”

“But can we?” Naomi’s jaw works. “I thought demons had to be in this dimension before they could be compelled.”

“Same,” Sawyer says quietly. “But maybe that’s just because no one’s ever tried?”

“One way to find out.” Ez’s eyes cut to Roma. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Me, neither,” Roma says, already zipping through the spellcasting resources on her cell phone. “But we can do it, hypothetically. The only question is??—?”

“?—?whether we can compel a demon before it arrives on Earth.” Ez takes a deep breath. “But we should be able to stop the summoning if we realize that we can’t. We won’t be trapping a poor demon here if this doesn’t work.”

Roma passes her phone to Ez, letting her skim over the spell. “Dry run?”

“Dry run,” Ez agrees curtly, straightening her spine. “From the depths??—?”

“?—?to the sky??—?”

As the two of them race through the incantation, Chester pulls Obie closer against him. Obie? Baby, can you hear me?

It takes a long few seconds for a weak voice to twine through Chester’s head. Puppy.

Chester’s eyes sting. Yeah, Obie, it’s me, it’s?—it’s your puppy. I’ve got you, okay? I? ? —

Chester, this… really hurts. Obie’s voice is strained, and the fact that he’s admitting the words makes Chester’s chest clench. I?—I don’t think I’m making it out of this.

Chester buries his face in Obie’s hair, squeezing his eyes shut. No. No, you’re going to stay with me, understand? We’ll figure out how to save you. All your friends, everyone who loves you?—we’ll figure out how to save you. Please, just?—just hang on, okay ?

I don’t regret it. Obie’s fingers twitch when they’re fisted in Chester’s shirt. Okay? I don’t regret saving you. It was worth it.

“Stop trying to say goodbye, you jackass,” Chester whispers into Obie’s hair.

Obie’s whimper of pain sounds just a little like a laugh. Futilely, Chester hopes that means he can hang on a little longer.

“All right,” Ez says, setting her feet and lifting her hands. “For real this time. From the depths??—?”

Roma matches her stance. “?—?to the sky??—?”

The two of them flow seamlessly through the spell, their months of dual spellcasting turning the incantation into a dance. Within seconds, the familiar purple-gold of a rift to Tamaros swirls to life in the middle of the room.

Ez scowls at it, craning her neck. “I can?—I can see it. I can see the Fount from here. If we can just get a demon?— any demon?—Roma?”

Roma is whispering what sounds like an interdimensional tracking spell under her breath. Abruptly, she stills. “Found one. Help me try to compel her.”

Nausea licks up Chester’s throat. He knows how difficult this must be for Ez especially, knows that tearing a demon away from their home is something that she would never wish upon her brethren, but??—

But, right now, it’s their only option. Everyone waits with bated breath, watching as Roma and Ez try to summon the demon, until??—

“Shut it down,” Ez says suddenly, and Chester’s heart plummets. “We can’t compel her until she’s in this dimension?—no interdimensional communication method. Let her go.”

With a hiss, Roma drops her arms. The rift evaporates into nothing. “So what now?”

No one answers. For a long moment, tense silence reigns.

And then Ez lets out a sharp breath. “Okay, screw it,” she says, and with a snap, she reopens the rift?—a self-sustaining one, this time. “The Fount of Blessings is right there. I can literally see it. If I can just reach through, just for a second??—?”

She extends a hand towards the rift. In a flash, Cass bolts to her side and grabs her arm, yanking her back. “Ez? —Ez, what are you doing? We can’t go back there! Demons can’t go back to Tamaros once they’ve been on Earth?—that’s the entire point!”

Ez’s eyes gleam. “Yeah, but what if that’s just because no one’s ever tried?” she asks, and without waiting for a response, she reaches forward, slips her hand through the rift??—