Nothing except raw fury. “Wrong number. Looks like you’ll have to try your call again,” he sneers, stalking forward.
It’s fine if his magic doesn’t work. He can end this the old-fashioned way.
Eyes widening, Locke scrambles away, his escrima still held protectively in front of him. “What the—why didn’t it work?” he hisses, glaring down at his forearm. Obie sees spell work scrawled on Locke’s skin—the spell to make Obie his puppet—and bites back a fresh wave of anger. “Why didn’t it?—?”
“Sucks to suck, Locke,” Obie says, and he blocks Locke’s haphazard escrima strike with his arm before decking the hunter in the face.
Or he tries to, at least. Locke’s escrima stick shudders to a halt an inch before it connects with Obie’s skin, and Obie’s punch stalls out like he’s moving through molasses, torturously slow. By the time his knuckles touch Locke’s cheek, it’s more of a gentle pat than anything else.
Obie and Locke jerk away from each other at the same time. Obie’sheart is roaring in his chest, and Locke’s eyes are wild as he looks from the pre-cast spell to Obie and back again, andsomethingabout that spell prevents Obie from physically injuring Locke?—
But it somehow prevents Locke from physically injuring Obie, too. “What the hell kind of binding spell did you use?” he demands, keeping a healthy distance between them. “I’ve been bound before, lackey. This isn’t it, but you clearly didsomething.”
“It’s—” Locke looks down at his forearm again, his breathing sharp and shaky. “It’s just a binding spell, Smith. FromMagic-Weaver’s.”
Obie almost chokes. “FromMagic-Weaver’s?”he repeats, not sure whether to be aghast or impressed at Locke’s sheer stupidity. “You used that godforsaken spell bookagain?”
“The spells used different magic bases and were written by different authors,” Locke bites out. “Just because they were both in the same spell book doesn’t mean they’d both destabilize the Deep. And it was the same spell the first hunters used to bind you fifteen thousand years ago, so?—”
This time, an entirely different fear spikes through Obie. “Okay, first of all,” he snaps, taking a step forward, “how thefuckdid you figure out that I’m Nostringvadha?”
For a split second, Locke’s panic disappears. His smirk gleams under the flickering streetlights. “So you admit it?”
“There isn’t anything toadmit,lackey,” Obie fires back. “I don’t have anything to hide. I just don’t bring it up in polite company.”
Andthat’sa bald-faced lie, but Locke doesn’t need to know that. In reality, Obie goes out of his way to hide that he’s Nostringvadha, keeping his extensive powers hidden and his real true form carefully concealed and his stories meticulously edited for any incriminating details.
Especially from his friends. Generally speaking, gods don’t get to have friends. They have adherents, followers, worshippers.
And Obie doesn’t want anyone to pray to him or worship him. He never really wanted that, not even back in Tamaros. Not like the other gods did.
Sometimes, part of him thinks he pissed them off on purpose, just to get away from them.
Locke’s jaw twitches. “Like you said,Nostringvadha,you were in my head. If you were a regular demon, you wouldn’t have been able to do that—not without my consent, at least. After all, they don’t call you the Memory-Keeper for nothing.”
The words catch on a sticking point in Obie’s brain. “How did you even know that’s one of my names?”
Actually, how does he knowanyof what he’s deduced about Obie? His real name, his other titles, his powers?—
The fact that he’s vulnerable to binding spells.
Locke’s face is expressionless. “Research. And I talk to a lot of demons. They speak of you often.”
Fury boils behind Obie’s sternum. He takes a deep breath to force it down.
Right. Chester Locke is an interrogator, one of the hunters who tortures demons and dissidents down in the Sanctum’s basement prison. He’s probably cut open dozens of demons,hundredsof demons?—
Demons who probably spent their last breaths begging for Nostringvadha to save them. Nausea licks up Obie’s throat. He doesn’t hear prayers on Earth, but his heart still aches for all the demons who truly believed Obie would rescue them.
Not to mention that Locke tortured JJ, too—he saw that in JJ’s own memories. Honestly, the only reason Obie didn’t kill Locke a few months ago when they broke Cass out of the Sanctum’s prison isbecause he knew JJ would’ve been upset, and they didn’t have time to waste on distractions like that.
Just like he doesn’t have time to waste tonight. “Right,” Obie says, squaring his shoulders. “Well, good luck getting anyone else to believe you. In the meantime, I’m out of here. You’d better hope that anti-violence side effect is still active the next time I see you, Locke, because you just made yourself averydangerous enemy.”
Locke stiffens, but he doesn’t answer. Scowling, Obie snaps open a rift behind him and backs up towards it, keeping his eyes on the hunter. He’ll have to do some research to figure out what Locke’s botched spell actually did to them, but after that, Ez and Roma can probably help him break it, and?—
He’s just stepped through the rift to a neutral location across town when pain splinters through his skull. Gasping, he stumbles forward, the rift fizzling out as his legs give way beneath him. His knees hit the blacktop hard, the impact rattling all the way up to his pounding head.
He hears a retching sound and looks up, his eyes watering. Locke is on his hands and knees ten feet away, dry-heaving like his stomach is trying to force its way up his throat, and?—
