The third search was a gold mine. A demon with many names around the world, including mara, mare, alp, maere; according to legend, these sleep paralysis demons inspired the termnightmare.They rode their victim’s chest in their sleep, rendering the person unable to move, breathe, or cry out, and sometimes crushing them to death. They took pleasure in locating the smallest hole to infiltrate a sleeping human’s bedroom, licked their hair, and ate the fear from the nightmares they fed their victims.
This explained her recent bout of sleep paralysis. She’d called Dr. Ellis for nothing. Great! Just what she needed—demons feuding over who got to give her the worst dreams.
Reading further, she found a handful of accounts where people trapped the mara in its human form. Apparently, these demons were usually female. Not surprisingly, some medieval douchebags trapped the thing and then married it. A free wife. Addison scoffed and rolled her eyes.
This one had definitelynotbeen female. A weird thrill ran up her spine as she recalled his male…equipmenton her chest.
The website went on to provide ways to repel a mara. They all sounded ridiculous, like something they might’ve told children back in the olden days to get them to go to sleep. Put your shoes next to the bed facing the door as you sleep. Place your thumb in your hand. Cross your arms and legs before you fall asleep. Something about severed horse heads.
Fresh out of horse heads, Addison came up with a hodgepodge plan based on far-fetched legends. She would wait until she felt his presence on her chest and then call out to the demon, claiming he could borrow something from her in the morning. According to the tales, it would be spellbound to leave and return in the light of dawn to collect.
Then what? I ask it nicely to leave me the hell alone?
Knowing her track record with confrontations, she reread the whole article for a solution that didn’t require her to stare down a demon with a confidence she didn’t possess. Perhaps she could cross her limbs and try to fall asleep that way. It didn’t sound very comfortable, though, and what about the night hag? Would it return?
Last time she’d seen the furry demon, she’d had semi-decent nightmares, despite waking unable to move. In fact, she’d even noticed the shadow-cloaked butterfly the night before that, the first night her usual terrors had been sporadically replaced with lesser ones.
It became increasingly apparent that his presence was not the problem, which rose another question in her mind. Was he the source of her arousal? It couldn’t be ironic that the term wasridden by a mareand she was waking up slick with desire. The term was innately sexual.
Oh, god. He must have been the little shadow wisp that watched her masturbate.
She should feel violated right now. So why did she have the urge to go rub one out?
Her alarm blared from the nightstand.Shit!She had to get ready for work and deal with all of this nonsense later.
Chapter 8
Traeyr
After the close call with the night hag, Traeyr ceded to the possessive half of himself, which he’d been trying and failing to ignore. He spent the day strategizing a way to alert the dreamer to her condition. If he could get her to see the situation for what it was and seek help, perhaps he could wash his hands of her and leave this land as he’d originally planned.
A door slammed and Traeyr hid amongst the shadows under her bed. He peered up at the peculiar woman who’d captured his interest and wondered why she looked as conflicted as he felt. He nearly blew his cover and ran to her to influence her body to lie down so he could fuel himself with her liquid and suck on her dreams, to bring her a sense of comfort and ease the strain blatant on her forehead.
Was it possible she remembered him from the night before? Did she think he’d caused her harm and searched for the knowledge to cast him out? It would be better if she did, he decided, for he realized he would never again be able to keep himself from her chest. Not with the tantalizing scent wafting from every crack and hole in her home and not with all the creatures that scent attracted.
His wild streak of selfishness surprised him. He had never felt so possessive of a dreamer before.
Patience was another trait he was not accustomed to. The only thing that kept him from using his influence on her was the fragment of fear that she would recognize his butterfly. He grew weaker as time passed to the beat of deafening music, but he remained hidden until finally she silenced the room, shed her trousers, and climbed into bed.
An intoxicating thrill rippled through him as he waited for her sleeping mind to call to him. Distantly, he realized he was already addicted to her.
It took a little while before her fragrant mind drifted through the air, and when it did, it was barely a whisper. Even that tiny hint of the delicious aroma sent shivers through Traeyr and he greedily rose from his hiding place to hover above her chest.
He’d barely settled onto her breast when her eyes snapped open.
“Mara, return in the morning and I will lend you something!”
The air turned into a vacuum. Traeyr’s disembodied shadows whipped and swirled painfully as he was sucked through the crack of her window in disorganized gusts. Ancient magic forcefully banished him from the room, leaving his mind reeling from the sting of betrayal.
Witch!
The ungrateful mortal! Tendrils of shadows lagged behind the rest of him and he called to them with fierce anger. With an acrid lump in his chest, he denounced the rising tide of emotions he’d attached to his one-sided companionship with the thankless human.
It was always fated to be this way.
The thought did not reassure him, but he stomped to the beat of it anyway. This was what happened when humans got the best of his kind. They took advantage, used his gifts, and discarded the rest of him like garbage. He knew he had no right to feel so betrayed, but her duplicity stung in a way he couldn’t have imagined. He hardened the unwanted emotion to ice and coated himself in a protective shield.
How did she find that trick? Humans had long forgotten the ways of his kind, hidden under false messages and distracted by their fancy tools and technologies. Had she found a fae folk to tell of his secrets?
