Page 73 of Take You Home (Redwater Demons #3)

T ell me about your life in Tamaros.

Free. Fast. Beautiful. We do not exist in these fleshy bodies, you see. We exist as color and light and sound. Energy. Vibration.

Chester has heard those words from neophyte demons dozens of times, but somehow, he never thought about what they actually meant until he was in the domain of the demons itself.

He gets it now. He stumbles and falls hard as the ground?—if he can even call it “the ground”—shifts underneath him, swirling and undulating and disappearing at random.

It’s like being thrown headfirst into a psychedelic kaleidoscope, directions like up and down and left and right ceasing to have any meaning as the world narrows into a tunnel of racing colors and pulsing lights and blurring sounds around him??—

This is Tamaros.

This is Obie’s home world.

Gasping in a shaky breath, Chester scrambles back to his feet, trying to wobble forward.

Pockets of color fly past underneath his feet like a rapid-fire conveyor belt, constantly moving and shifting and changing, and it’s not long before his foot goes through a particularly dark shade of pink, swallowing his leg up past his knee and sending him sprawling.

He can’t see the Fount of Blessings anymore. When he looks over his shoulder, he can barely even see the rift anymore, his one connection back to Earth farther away than it should logically be based on the distance he’s managed to stumble so far.

The rules of spacetime don’t apply here.

He’s officially flying blind.

With a grunt, Chester yanks his leg out of the pink death trap, clambering onto his hands and knees.

Fine. If he can’t walk in Tamaros, if his “fleshy body” wasn’t made to walk in Tamaros, then he’ll crawl.

He’ll crawl on his hands and knees until he finds the Fount of Blessings, and then he’ll crawl on his hands and knees until he finds the rift again.

Whatever it takes to save Obie.

Gritting his teeth, he inches forward, craning his neck to find the glimmer of crimson that Ez pointed out through the rift.

Occasionally, he could swear that he catches a glimpse of it, but it always shifts into a different color as it sails past him, blending and twisting and morphing in a dizzying choreography that he can’t even begin to comprehend.

Another swirl of pink speeds towards him. Is that the translucent pink, the one that nearly took off his leg before? Cautiously, he reaches out to touch it as it zooms past, but to his bewilderment, this shade of pink seems even more solid than the other colors.

How is he supposed to navigate here? How is he supposed to survive here?

What if his entire body falls through a color and he gets transported across the dimension, never able to find his way back? What if??—??

“Locke!” The voice is familiar and startlingly out of place behind him, and Chester whirls around with wide eyes.

To his utter disbelief, Bryant is sprinting across the shifting landscape towards him, looking for all the world like she’s running on solid ground.

She drops to her knees next to Chester, her eyebrows furrowing with concern. “Locke, are you hurt? Chester??—?”

“How?—??” Chester gapes as Bryant drags him upright. “What are you doing here?”

“Saving your dumb ass, obviously,” Bryant says, not even flinching as the world zips by below her feet. “Couldn’t let you have all the fun with interdimensional travel opportunities.”

Tears sting behind Chester’s eyes. Just as cavalier and blasé as Bryant always is when she’s trying to deny that she cares about someone. Cares about Chester.

The very person who got her branded as a dissident and tortured less than three hours ago.

“Bryant, I’m so sorry,” he says, pitching backwards and nearly toppling over when a particularly translucent shade of mauve catches under his right foot.

“You were never supposed to get connected back to any of this, okay? You were never supposed to get hurt, and??—?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Bryant says impatiently, pulling Chester back up when he fails to dodge another streak of mauve. “We’ll deal with all that garbage later, Locke. For now, I’m more concerned about why you apparently can’t stand like a normal person.”

“Why can you?” Chester fires back, admitting defeat and just hanging onto Bryant’s arm for dear life. “I think it’s the colors. Different colors are different degrees of tangible, and??—?”

“Well, yes, it’s obviously the colors,” Bryant says. “But you just have to adjust your footing based on density and keep heading in the direction of the solid colors. It’s really not that hard.”

Chester stops dead, staring at her. “Keep… heading in the direction of the solid colors?” he repeats. “Bryant, you?—you do realize that we’re standing still, right?”

“Well…” Bryant wrinkles her nose down at the swirling shades and lights beneath her feet.

“Yes and no. It’s the illusion of standing still, but we’re still moving right now?—almost like a moving walkway in an airport.

And you?—?” She points at a cluster of colors that looks indistinguishable from every other cluster of colors.

“You just have to aim yourself at the solid colors, see?”

The gears in Chester’s head slowly grind together.

“You have a demon’s instincts,” he says, and abruptly, Bryant stiffens.

“You have half of Maggie’s soul now, right?

You’re half-demon. So I guess you have all of the strengths and none of the weaknesses.

” He curses as his foot skids through yet another patch of unsolid ground. “In Tamaros, at least.”

Even as he says the words, they set off a strange pinging in the back of his brain. Not like déjà vu, not like an instinct firing, but like??—

Like he’s hovering on the verge of answering a question he didn’t even realize he was asking.

Bryant’s jaw works. “I mean, maybe,” she says tightly, and without waiting for a response, she starts to haul him forward. “But let’s table that discussion until after we’re back on Earth, shall we? For now, just keep walking at my speed, and we’ll head towards the Fount.”

Chester gapes at her. “You can see the Fount from here?”

Bryant stares back. “It’s right there, Chester,” she says, jabbing a finger ahead of them. Predictably enough, Chester doesn’t see anything but undulating colors. “It’s literally right there. How can you not see it? ”

“I can’t,” Chester says faintly, tightening his grip on Bryant. “Thank Nostringvadha you followed me. I probably would’ve died here.”

“Well, Nostringvadha is the reason we’re even in this mess,” Bryant says breezily, guiding Chester forward, “so let’s maybe not thank him just yet. On a related note?—dude. Dude. I need to know. Are you banging a god?”

A startled laugh jumps out of Chester’s throat. “Um, yeah. I guess I am.”

“That’s insane, man. Like, how does that even happen?”

“I wish I could tell you. It was sort of an accident.”

“No kidding?”

“Yeah.”

“And, like.” Bryant raises her eyebrows meaningfully. “How is it?”

“He has tentacles.”

“Tentacles?” Bryant repeats.

“Tentacles.”

“I am so very disturbed and so very intrigued at the same time,” Bryant says. “So how exactly does he use these??—??”

“Chester! Bryant!” The voice rings out from behind Chester, but unexpectedly, JJ and Roma appear in front of him and Bryant, jogging in their direction.

Or JJ is jogging, at least. He’s more or less dragging Roma along behind him, and Roma looks just about as terrified and nauseous as Chester feels, nearly tripping on every other step.

“What are you guys doing here?” Bryant asks, surprised.

“Giving my fiancé a heart condition, I think,” JJ says.

Bryant’s eyes widen. “Your what, now?”

“Oh, yeah! That’s actually a recent development?—he proposed last night,” JJ says cheerfully, like they’re just hanging out by Lakeside instead of meeting in an entirely different dimension. “He gave me a pocket watch. It’s really beautiful. I’ll show you when we get back, yeah?”

JJ’s grin could light up a blackout. With a pang, Chester remembers that it’s been seven months since JJ last spoke to Bryant outside of a conflict zone, seven months since he’s been able to talk with someone who’s always been like a sister to him, and Bryant??—

Bryant looks just as reserved and skeptical as Chester figures she should be after those same seven months. “Sure. Yeah,” she says, giving JJ a tight smile back.

JJ’s smile wavers. Chester’s heart hurts for him.

“In the meantime,” Roma says, grabbing JJ’s arm for balance when a particularly deep shade of green roils beneath her feet, “can we get a move on, please? This is really no fun at all.”

“You kidding? I love this place,” Bryant says, pulling Chester more firmly against her side as she starts walking again. “I might look into buying some real estate and settling down. Hey, do you think they have real estate here? Or property taxes?”

“We are on an interdimensional rescue mission,” Roma says, “and you want to know if Tamaros has property taxes?”

“It’s a valid question!” Bryant argues, matching JJ’s pace as they half-drag their respective humans forward. “I’m technically homeless right now, and I know enough about civilian economics to understand that the housing market is currently a travesty, so…”

Chester decisively tunes out their bickering, letting his gaze drift around.

Now that he doesn’t have to concentrate on keeping his footing, he’s able to notice the other details of Obie’s home world: how the different colors make different sounds as they whizz past him, how they speed up and slow down and expand and contract, how some of them glow with an ethereal light and others are dark and muted??—

He doesn’t know if there’s any rhyme or reason to them. Hell, he doesn’t even know if there’s any rhyme or reason to this entire dimension, and right now, he can’t afford to distract Bryant or JJ by peppering them with questions.