Traeyr sneered at the leaf and crushed it in his palm.
An unforgettable scent wafted past him. His eyes drifted closed and he allowed the scent that had dominated his thoughts all day to wash over him. At the tail end of its syrupy sweetness came a musky, earthy smell, like the malodor of an old swamp. The noxious scent invaded his airspace and brought his whole being to attention. He recognized that smell.
Without hesitation, Traeyr condensed his shadows and hastened through the alleys and over the trees. He cursed himself for straying too far, for pretending he could leave her alone and defenseless for any length of time.
A hag lay prostrate upon his dreamer’s stomach, its brown, decaying, ossified hands wrapped tightly around the woman’s neck. It cackled with glee and whispered archaic words, attempting to convince the sleeper to surrender to her deepest fears and concede to the hag’s influence. If the dreamer gave in, the hag would possess her body and walk amongst mortals until the unnatural possession caused the dreamer’s body to rapidly decompose. The creature didn’t notice Traeyr’s arrival and continued to cackle, certain their plan to corrupt the mortal and steal her body and soul was indisputable.
Traeyr forced his way through a slit in the wall and sent a potent wave of shadows to knock the vile hag off balance. She fell to the ground in a clattering pile of bones. The blast was not enough to rid them of her, though, and her skeletal remains picked themselves up one by one until she stood and paced the room, dragging a long, crooked fingernail against the wall.
The sleeping form opened her dark eyes as Traeyr stood above her defensively. He had to stand his ground or the hag would use dark magic to steal her from his grasp. He cast a woeful glance down at the woman and rushed a force of sleep magic into her through the soles of his feet upon her chest.
“You dare challenge me? I was here before your kind drew upon the shadows!”
The hag’s voice was jarring, her words harsh like the sound of rough stones scraping against each other. Traeyr ignored her and siphoned the shadows from every corner and crevice of the home, drawing on the deepest stores of power within himself until a great tsunami wave of blackness rose behind the hag. It crashed over her and flooded the room. Traeyr sank to the bed and grasped the sheets around the sleeping woman’s form protectively.
He vaguely felt the woman clawing at the edge of his induced sleep. When the last of the shade dribbled out the window, he glanced down to check on her wellbeing.
Tears glistened in the V-shaped lines on her temples. Sweat beaded at her widow’s peak. Traeyr focused his waning power into the tip of one claw so that it held steady, then traced the heart-shaped line of her face and brought the claw to his lips. The moisture tasted ambrosial, but a faint trace of vinegar alerted him to the human’s worsening condition. The hag had left her mark on the woman’s already darkening dreams.
Another lick of her wet cheek had his form nearly substantial again already, and this time the dreamer’s fluids gave him an unexpected taste of her determination, her resilience through unimaginable pain.
The dreamer’s eyelids peeled apart heavily and locked onto him.
For a brief moment, Traeyr stared back. He wondered if she thought he was the cause of her suffering. Wondered if she would believe that he wasn’t. Wondered if her liquid tasted differently when offered to him freely.
Chapter 7
Addison
Her plea for a good night’s sleep went unanswered for a long time as all-consuming nightmares dragged her into the depths of the blackest corners of her mind. The walls rising in her nightmare were full of demonic faces. Everywhere she looked was blight and evil. The piece of her that remained lucid through her tumultuous sleep curled itself into a ball and waited with calculated patience for the night to end.
At some point, she woke up, unable to move. A thin, dirty woman with eyes glowing bright red and matted hair falling in patches from her scalp scraped a long fingernail across Addison’s skin. The hallucination let out a shrill laugh, the strident sound cutting through the fraught safety of sleep and painfully scratched against her eardrums.
The creature crawled onto the end of the bed and crept up on spindly, spider-like limbs until its weight held her down and her eyes darted around the room helplessly. She begged for it to end but couldn’t use her voice.
The realm of sleep beckoned her again and the sound of fuzzy white noise like a forgotten television set invaded her senses. The final thing she saw before falling under was a pair of yellow-orange eyes set against soft black fur.
The dream she returned to was not a pleasant one, but she settled into a long pace, attempting to outrun whatever was chasing her. It wasn’t the chase that scared her, but some nagging part of her mind was determined to check on her bodily safety in the waking world. She tried to claw her way free of the dream’s steadfast hold to confront the monsters in her bedroom.
After many failed attempts, she breached the veneer of sleep and opened her eyes. Unable to move under the overbearing weight on her chest, she tried to scream but choked. Yellow-orange eyes glowed as they regarded her, a multitude of emotions wavering over black features.
Then it was over. As soon as she awoke, the sleep paralysis fiend vanished in a wave of shadows and her voice returned, her own scream startling her.
Her hands flew to her mouth as she scrambled to the top of her bed. The demon’s receding form took the shape of a butterfly, and then he was gone.
What the hell was that?!
Addison had no doubt what she’d seen was real. A shadow in the shape of a fur-covered man with two swirling horns and bright glowing eyes perched on her chest, preventing her from moving.
The only light seeping through the uncovered window was from the streetlight. Addison snatched her phone from the bedside table. Four-thirty. There was no way she could fall back asleep now. She threw off the covers and shivered, pulled on the gray sweatpants she’d hastily discarded at the foot of the bed, and slunk into the computer chair.
Maybe some obscure online forum would know what the ghostly form had been. Heart racing, she tried to recall more details, conjuring to mind the look of deep curiosity she’d woken to. He had stared down at her in wonder with an expression that almost seemed affectionate.That can’t be right. I’m losing my mind.
Her trembling fingers fumbled at the keyboard. The first search brought up information on incubus, but he hadn’t been doing something naughty with her sleeping body—right? No, he’d looked protective and even contrite.
Her next keywords served her with pages about night hags. Wait a moment. An image of a painting depicting a night hag jarred her memory. There had been a woman of this description in her room, too. A gross, dirty skeleton with mangy hair covered in dirt. A shiver chased up her spine as she recalled the feel of a long fingernail against her skin.
Could the furry demon have been protecting her against the night hag?
