Home for Horny Monsters - Book 9
Copyright© 2026 by Annabelle Hawthorne
Chapter 8: Enter Night
Action/Adventure Sex Story: Chapter 8: Enter Night - When a mysterious sleeping sickness begins to spread across the country, Mike and the household get caught in the middle. Yet turning to magic might rouse worse entities than the slumbering victims...Will Mike and the powerful women by his side only awaken more nocturnal terrors than they can conquer? Welcome to your worst nightmare. Expect the Unexpected.
Caution: This Action/Adventure Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Mult Consensual Romantic BiSexual Heterosexual Fiction Fairy Tale Horror Humor Paranormal Ghost Magic Vampires Demons Harem Polygamy/Polyamory Anal Sex Cream Pie Exhibitionism Masturbation Oral Sex Sex Toys Size Violence
Mike had been relaxing in his bathtub when Death’s text message had come in. Naia playfully washed his hair while also slowly riding him, her vaginal canal sucking on his cock just like a mouth would. It was Kisa who brought him his phone, a look of concern on her face.
Upon reading the text itself, Mike had informed Naia that he needed to go. The nymph nodded her understanding, then promptly used her magic to force him to come. Large globules of magical semen floated up through her translucent belly, making her look like a magical lava lamp.
“I would hate to have to tackle a problem with blue balls,” she declared with a mischievous grin.
“I should have taken a bath with you,” Kisa muttered under her breath.
“Water is still warm,” Naia offered. She patted the surface of the water as if it were a couch cushion. “I’d be happy to accommodate your needs.”
“Hmm.” Kisa took Mike’s phone from him as he got out of the tub on still shaking legs. “Tempting, but I should probably go along and see what Death’s problem is.”
“I’m here if you need me,” Naia declared. She shifted to one side as Tink sprinted between Kisa and Mike, then unceremoniously cannonballed into the tub.
“Tink has needs!” she declared, stripping off her nightgown in the water. “Baby booger keep Tink busy all day, and now husband leaving.”
Naia giggled, leaning out of the tub to touch Mike’s bare chest. “Be safe.”
“Of course,” he replied, then followed Kisa into the bedroom. He could hear the water churning as Naia opened with what would inevitably become a very dirty massage for Tink. He threw on some clothes, which included a lightweight hoodie.
Kisa was in dark leggings and an equally inconspicuous hoodie. Mike sent a quick text to Ingrid, who was waiting for him in just a few minutes with a car in his driveway. He hopped in the passenger seat as Kisa got in the back.
“Just to clarify, today it’s Death who is in trouble?”
Mike nodded. “Apparently. But he isn’t reading my texts, so I have no idea what is happening.”
Ingrid grimaced. She was wearing her magical coat over a simple black tanktop. “I guess let’s scope out this potential shitstorm and see what’s what.”
They were headed in the general direction of the nightclub he had taken Quetzalli and Leilani to, so he suspected this was Racquel related. Up above the car, a member of the Fae Guard hovered along, its toes occasionally clipping through the roof like a game glitch.
“Missed you at the party,” Mike said.
“I was there,” Ingrid replied. “Showed up during the volleyball game, came with Aurora. Beth said you wandered off.”
“Ah.”
“We had seats at the edge of the luau. With Sofia and Eulalie both in attendance, Aurora was technically the super backup Head Librarian,” she continued. “So once the dinner was over, we bailed to make sure nothing too serious happened while we were gone.”
“And did it?”
Ingrid snorted. “Yes, actually. Did you know that the Library has book wyrms?”
Mike looked over at the mage. “I feel like you’re fucking with me.”
“Wyrm with a Y. The rats have been working on cleaning up this massive mountain of books for several months now. Ratu even built us some golems. It turns out the entire mountain wasn’t just books, there was a giant fucking bookwyrm living inside of it like Smaug under the treasures of Erebor. We had shifted enough of the pile that it woke up and had a proper freak out. Sofia and Eulalie are handling it now.”
“Why didn’t they tell me?”
Ingrid laughed. “Because the Caretaker doesn’t need to solve everybody’s problems for them. I have it on very good authority that this creature lacked any sort of breasts, so it’s not like you could have seduced it.”
He narrowed his eyes and snorted. “Speaking of seduction, how did things go with Bradley?”
Now it was Ingrid’s turn to look disgruntled. “Yeah, that didn’t last long. We had a couple of hot hook-ups, but then he ghosted me.”
“Oh. Sorry to hear that.”
Ingrid shrugged. “The Caretaker isn’t responsible for my love life,” she replied. “That’s solely on me. However, if you have any male friends who aren’t already banging Beth, send them my way.”
“Do they need to be human?” he asked.
Ingrid’s cheeks burned a scarlet that could only be seen beneath the passing streetlights. She chewed at her lip in thought, then finally spoke. “Reasonably proportioned,” she said.
“So no Coke-can dicks?” Kisa asked from the backseat.
“Jesus fuck!” Ingrid briefly jerked the wheel in surprise at Kisa’s presence. The car barely swayed as the Fae Guard grabbed it by the edges to keep it on course. “I thought you were gonna start wearing a bell or something!”
Kisa cackled from the backseat. “If I’m gonna start wearing a bell, you’d better attach it to something really nice,” she said.
“Like an engagement ring?” Ingrid jabbed Mike in the leg. “All these hotties around, why are you only marrying a couple?”
“Gods, you too?”
The mage nodded. “I only get so many opportunities, and it’s been the topic of discussion in the group chat.”
“What group chat?”
“We’re here.” Ingrid pulled the car over next to an apartment complex. “Want me to find somewhere and follow you up, or circle the block?”
“Come on up when you can,” he replied, then got out of the car. He opened the back door and held it for Kisa.
“Such a gentleman,” she told him.
The sidewalks were empty. It was almost eleven at night.
The apartment building was one of those mid-range complexes that tried hard to look upscale without the budget to pull it off. A glass-fronted lobby with clean tile floors, a fake plant that had seen better days, and a front desk that was currently unmanned. Someone had taped a handwritten sign next to the elevator that read “Please don’t prop open the stairwell doors — Management,” which told Mike everything he needed to know about the tenants.
He hit the call button and the elevator arrived with a cheerful ding that felt out of place given the circumstances. The inside smelled faintly of someone’s takeout dinner and the fluorescent light buzzed overhead with a flicker that couldn’t quite commit to being a problem.
Kisa slipped in behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, her fingers sliding beneath the hem of his hoodie to trace along his stomach.
“Really?” he asked. “Now?”
“Stress response,” she murmured against his back, her claws doing that thing where they extended just enough to prickle. Her hands drifted lower beneath the band of his shorts. As the elevator came to a stop, he caught those hands and pulled them free.
“Saved by the bell,” he said.
“Delayed,” she corrected. “Not saved.”
They got off the elevator and Mike adjusted the front of his pants before heading for the address.
“This has to be about the girl he’s dating, right?”
“They’re not dating,” Mike corrected.
“That we know of,” Kisa replied. “For all we know, she thinks they’re about to celebrate their two-week anniversary. I’m half expecting we find that she’s strapped herself to the bed thinking he was coming over for a proper dicking and is having a panic–” The cat girl stopped and grabbed Mike by the back of his shorts. “Hold on.”
The sudden shift in her voice made him stop. “What’s wrong?”
“Did you see that?” Kisa stepped past him and frowned at one of the hallway lights. “No shit, it looked like a person’s shadow ran by.”
Mike looked down the hallway but didn’t see anything. He looked back at the Fae Guard, who just floated ominously behind them, invisible to others. “I must have missed it.”
The cat girl narrowed her eyes. “I’ve got an icky feeling,” she said, then let go of his shorts. “Be careful.”
“Always.”
They continued down the hall, ending up outside what was likely a corner unit. Mike knocked on the door, then jiggled the handle.
“Hold on, Mike Radley.” Death’s voice came through the door, followed by the sound of locks being undone. When the door opened, it was to reveal Death standing there with his hood pulled all the way back and his scythe in hand.
“Please. She is this way.”
As the Reaper walked off, Kisa mouthed the word ‘Handcuffs’ at Mike, who gave her a playful shove. They walked into the apartment and Mike stopped just past the threshold.
Something was off. It wasn’t triggering his precognition–it was more like that eerie feeling people got when turning off the lights in their basement and resisting the urge to run up the stairs.
“Brrr.” Kisa shivered and rubbed her arms. “It’s cold in here.”
“No, it’s really not.” Mike could see the digital thermostat nearby. “Death, what’s going on?”
“It’s Ms. Racquel. I am unable to wake her,” he said.
“Why didn’t you just call 911?” he asked.
The Grim Reaper held up a bony palm to keep Mike from walking further. “You will see soon enough, but wait a few more seconds for them to come back.”
“Them who?” Mike looked past Death to see if anyone else was in the apartment.
The space was small but tidy in the way that suggested its occupant actually cared about her space despite not having much of it. A black futon served double duty as a couch, draped with a dark purple throw blanket. The kitchen counter was clean except for a French press and a mug with a bat printed on it. A couple of work uniforms hung from a hook near the door—one from what looked like a coffee shop, the other a plain black polo with a nametag still clipped to it. Bookshelves lined the far wall, packed tight with a mix of poetry collections and paperback horror novels, their spines cracked from actual reading. A few candles sat on the windowsill, all burned down to uneven stumps. The only art on the walls was a framed print of a cemetery in autumn that managed to look more peaceful than morbid.
Based on the decor, Mike was fairly positive this girl knew exactly who Death was.
“I don’t know.” Death cocked his head as if listening to something, then beckoned with his finger. “Come. They should be back by now.”
“Watch the front door,” Mike told Kisa, then followed the Reaper.
Death had Mike enter the bedroom first. Upon opening the door, Mike immediately saw them. At first, the movement registered as nothing more than moving shadows, but his magic immediately identified that there was more to them than that.
Twisted creatures looked up at Mike with eyes that reminded him of a car’s headlights in the dark. An immediate repulsion filled his gut and he let out an instinctual hiss between his teeth, as if chastising a cat.
The shadows scattered, slipping between floorboards and cracks in the wall. Mike shook his head and blinked a couple of times, unsure why he had done that.
“Did you see them?” Death asked.
“I did.” He moved toward the woman asleep on the bed and knelt by her side. She was breathing, but it was minimal. If he hadn’t seen the shadow figures lurking, his immediate conclusion would be that she was either blackout drunk or on some sort of drugs.
“Do you know what they are?”
“I don’t.” Mike took the girl’s pulse, then realized he had no way of knowing if it was good or bad. He put a hand on her forehead, and she felt cool to the touch. “How long has she been like this?”
“I don’t know,” Death replied. “She was like this when I got here, and she missed work yesterday and today. They will probably fire her.”
“Losing her job is the least of her problems right now, buddy.” He brushed a lock of hair out of her face, then pushed one of her eyelids back and used the light on his phone to see if her pupils would dilate. When they did, he let out a sigh of relief. His medical knowledge only went so far, but pupils that couldn’t dilate were pretty much always a bad indicator.
Still, there were other things he could do that the medical profession could not. He did a cursory examination of her soul and was stunned to see that it wasn’t positioned correctly.
Typically, a human soul looked like a large cloud that sort of drifted around their body. People who could barely see it would say it was an aura.
Right now, Racquel’s soul was condensed down to the size of a marble. Dark tendrils had compressed it into a ball. Mike leaned in to inspect the tendrils and reeled back in horror upon realizing they were long fingers.
“What the fuck?” He stood and looked at Death, who was pacing Racquel’s bedroom. The Grim Reaper was holding a book in his hands. “What are you doing?”
“Reading her poetry,” the Grim Reaper replied.
Even Mike had his limits. “Why?”
“She told me that she writes a poem every day,” Death said. “Usually one upon waking and one before sleep, if she can. Some of it is ... well ... not very good. But based on the dates here, she hasn’t written a poem for three days as of tomorrow morning.”
“So she’s been bedridden for three days.” Mike stared at those dark fingers clutching Racquel’s soul. “One way or another, she definitely needs medical attention for her body. She’s probably dehydrated.” He pulled out his phone and texted Ingrid to let her know there was indeed a situation.
A few minutes later, the mage arrived. Kisa let her in, and the two of them entered the room.
“It stinks,” Ingrid said as she moved to Racquel’s side.
“I believe she has wet herself,” said Death, his eyes still locked on Racquel’s poetry book. “I was hesitant to call the authorities on account of the entities.”
“Entities?” Ingrid looked at Mike. He did his best to describe the strange creatures lurking around Racquel when he arrived, and she nodded in recognition.
“Ah, okay. Sounds like a category of dream eaters. They don’t usually hunt in numbers like that.” She turned back to Racquel and placed her ear against the woman’s chest. Frowning, she took the girl’s wrist in her hand and felt for a pulse. “Heart is beating, but her vitals are shit. Almost like she’s in a coma. Can’t wake her up?”
“I haven’t tried. Her soul is all bound up. Whatever it is goes beyond a normal sickness.”
“Damn.” Ingrid pulled out her phone. “I’ll text Eulalie the situation, but she’s probably out with the girls, celebrating Dana and Tasia’s engagement.”
Mike really hated to break up their celebration, but this was urgent. “If you all can watch my back, I’m gonna see if I can wake her from the inside.”
“Um, Mike Radley?” Death lowered his book. “I would like to point out that she cannot consent to such a thing, and I must really oppose the idea.”
“Huh?” Mike raised an eyebrow. “Even if it might save her life?”
“I feel like we’re treading on a very thin moral ground at best.” The Reaper looked very uncomfortable. “Frankly, I am a little surprised you would even suggest a thing?”
“Why, though? I know what I’m doing.”
Death’s eye lights shifted from blue to red. His voice took on an ominous growl. “Excuse me?”
Kisa, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, blinked in disbelief at the Reaper. “What’s gotten into you?”
Death’s presence suddenly became unexpectedly heavy. Even though his body remained the same size, it now felt like he occupied the whole room. “This woman has done nothing to you or your family, Mike Radley. The fact that you would even suggest subjecting her to your unique brand of magic without her consent is vile at best, and I will do everything in my power to stop you.”
“What?” Mike just stared at the Reaper, and then the pieces clicked into place. “Oh, buddy, no. I meant that I’m going to go inside her Dreamscape and see what’s keeping her from waking up.”
Death seemed to shrivel on the spot. The angry red fires in his eyes turned blue first, and then became a very pale yellow. “Oh,” was all he said. It was clear he was shaken.
Mike stood and put a hand on Death’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said. “This is a stressful situation and she’s your friend. I think it’s great that you’re just looking out for her.”
“Yes, but—” Death dropped his head in shame. “I shouldn’t have doubted you.”
“Good people do bad things, sometimes, even when you trust them.” Mike patted Death on the back and turned toward Racquel, trying not to let Death see the hurt on his face. The fact that Death had jumped to such an insidious conclusion bothered him. Coupled with all the sex cult nonsense on social media right now, he was definitely more sensitive to it. “You were just looking out for a friend.”
“Nearly at the cost of another,” Death whispered.
Mike waved him off. “Kisa? A little assistance?”
The cat girl crawled up next to him, her face wrinkling at the smell. Mike put his hands on Racquel’s temples, and Kisa put hers over his. They sat that way for several seconds until his concentration was broken by the sound of crunching. He looked up to see Ingrid eating from a small bag of chips she had found.
“Really?”
Ingrid rolled her eyes and left the room. Mike went back to concentrating on Racquel and felt his consciousness slip into darkness.
Typically, entering sleep came in a couple of flavors. A sensation of falling until entering a foreign world, at which time Mike would either bellyflop spectacularly onto the ground or spread wings and glide to safety. Then there was the teleportation option. One moment, he was awake, the next, someplace else.
This was different. He was in the dark, and it felt like he was being squeezed down a long tube. Kisa was pressed against his side, her arms wrapped around his waist.
“I don’t like this at all,” she said.
“Ditto.”
They eventually made it to the bottom of the tube. The pressure holding them together released, allowing them to walk through a void of darkness. Mike summoned a ball of light into his hand and Kisa did the same.
“Wish I was this cool in real life,” Kisa muttered.
“Are you sure you aren’t?” Mike asked. “I can do magic. As my familiar, maybe you can do it as well.”
Kisa shrugged. “I guess I never really thought of it that way. Oh. Look.” She held up her hand and illuminated a brick wall through the dark mist. The cat girl knocked on it. “What the heck is this?”
“A wall.” Mike took two steps forward and lifted his foot to kick the wall in. The bricks exploded away from him, creating a hole for the two of them to step through. “After you.”
“Such a gentleman.” Kisa stepped through, her tail swishing from side-to-side. Mike followed, and they found themselves on the other side of whatever wall they had just breached.
“Now what?” Kisa asked.
“Let’s follow this wall,” he replied.
The two of them walked along the wall for several minutes, running their hands along the brickwork to make sure they didn’t stray away. Out in the dark, Mike thought he heard the occasional whisper, but could never discern the voice.
Eventually, they found themselves standing at a very familiar hole.
“Did we just walk in a big circle?” Kisa asked.
“Seems that way. The wall didn’t seem curved.” He stepped through the hole again. “Maybe we ended up on the outside. Let’s try this again.”
They traversed the darkness once more. Eventually, they found themselves back at the same hole. Mike frowned down at the bricks, then kicked one out of frustration.
“What now?” Kisa asked.
“I don’t feel like the wall itself curved,” Mike said. “Yes, I know dreams don’t have to follow any sort of logic, but they typically gain a bit more solidity when you’re inside of them. It’s dark, so we can’t see the lay of the land, which means the easiest alternative is that we’re outside of the actual barrier.”
“Huh?”
Mike stomped his foot. “It’s the ground that’s curved. The wall is just a ring imposed over a sphere like ... like...” He thought of the soul being compressed into a ball by dark fingers. “We need to dig down. The ground is the real barrier.”
“On it.” Kisa gave him a salute, then pulled a shovel out from behind her back.
“Hold on.” Mike conjured a hardhat into his hand and put it on Kisa’s head. Her ears protruded through holes in the top.
“I don’t really need this,” she muttered.
“Sure you do.” He took the light in his hand and shoved it into the lantern on her hat. “See?”
“Oh. That actually makes sense.” Kisa looked at the ground and stabbed her shovel into it. It was like trying to dig into concrete. “Shit.”
“It might just be the top layer,” he said, then pulled out a pickaxe. A similar hardhat was placed on his head and they worked together to breach the ground. After several hard whacks, he was able to knock out a chunk, which Kisa scooped up with the shovel and tossed.
“I’m so glad my muscles won’t get tired in here,” she said.
The two of them worked at the hole for several minutes. Unconstrained by the laws of physics, Mike was able to casually shatter the stone which Kisa took away. Now up past his waist, Mike heard the soft clip of feet approaching.
He looked out of the hole to see a dark figure in crimson robes standing just beyond the edge. The man was black, and not in terms of race. It was like someone had ripped down a piece of the night sky and slapped some eyes and the whitest teeth he had ever seen right on it.
“Hey,” Mike said, acknowledging the entity.
The eyes were bloodshot. They surveilled the hole Mike and Kisa were digging, then stood up on their tiptoes to look inside where the cat girl was crouched.
“So this is the mysterious Mike Radley,” the figure said. His voice was like smoked silk, both smooth and raspy at the same time. He crouched down so that he and Mike were eye level.
“And you are?” Mike stretched out a hand, recognizing that the man he was speaking with was directly responsible for Racquel’s condition. Based on what he could see, it was clearly some form of possession. If he could make direct contact with the man, he could either disrupt the signal or even rip the entity right out of Racquel’s head.
Death would probably take care of the rest.
The man clucked his tongue and took a step back. “I thought you would be taller.”
“Well, I am in this hole. Pull me out and we can measure dicks.” Mike moved to stand between the stranger and Kisa, just in case something happened. There shouldn’t be a way for him to hurt either of them, but Mike was getting a really strange vibe from the man. He held out his hand and watched as the stranger reached for it.
Just as Mike was about to grab the guy, the stranger yanked his hand back and slid away from the hole. “They weren’t kidding,” he muttered to himself. “I really shouldn’t touch you at all.”
“Who, me? I’m just a dude in a hole.”
“They are right to fear you, Mike Radley.” The man stomped his foot and the ground rippled. Kisa cried out as the stone around her caved in to crush her. Mike gave her a mental shove, causing her to immediately wake up safely outside the Dreamscape.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Mike growled, then tried to leave the hole. However, the stone had solidified around his body, trapping him.
“I will do a great many things, Caretaker.” The figure gave Mike a wide berth, his feet not quite touching the ground. “While I have sworn an oath to avoid you and yours, this one belongs to me.”
“We’ll just see about—” Mike’s precognition triggered, but he was unable to dodge as the man took two steps forward and kicked him straight in the face.
Mike tumbled backward off the bed onto the floor, landing on his chest. Groaning, he pushed himself up as his nose bled on the floor. Death and Kisa moved to help him, and he stumbled over toward a box of tissues on the night stand.
“Fuck,” he muttered. Ingrid came in the room, her wand and a pistol already drawn.
“What happened?” she asked, her eyes scanning the room for threats.
“Dickhead,” Mike replied. “A major one.” He touched his nose and stared at the blood. Had he hurt himself falling off the bed, or had the guy in Racquel’s head somehow done this?
“So what’s the next step?” Ingrid asked. “You going back in?”
“Not without backup.” He pulled out his phone, his eyes on Racquel’s soul. Even now, he could hear strange whispers coming from it that sounded very much like the man who had booted him out.
The phone rang several times before Lily answered. “You’d better be offering to eat ass if you’re calling me at this hour.”
“You wanna help me kill a man?” Mike asked.
“Fuck, you’ve got me so hard already!” Lily laughed. “When and where, Romeo?”
Alexandros found Dr. Lopez sitting in an empty room overlooking the parking lot. The woman was clutching the cross around her neck and whispering to herself. She had clearly left the lights off on purpose, most likely to hide from her staff. Probably to hide from Alexandros, too.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
The woman jumped, then stood to face him. “How did you find me?” she asked.
He said nothing. It would bother her to know that every camera in this place was being monitored, and he had asked Basil to see where she had gone.
In fact, the Order was utilizing Department of Defense resources along with a military-grade artificial intelligence to not only monitor the interior of every hospital with a security system, but also to squash any potential media leaks. Alexandros didn’t pretend to understand how any of that worked. The government was strongly opposed to allowing the public to know that this sleeping sickness was already far worse than they had expected. Hospital staff members were even having their texts and social media monitored in true police-state style, unaware that their comments on the matter were being subtly altered or deleted.
Many people were getting better on their own after a week or so. Others like Isaac Rodriguez were in a coma-like state, held there by the Black Prince.
Just an hour ago, the man had been smothered with his own pillow in a locked room. Video surveillance of the event revealed a shadow-like entity creeping free from beneath the man’s bed to do the job, then vanishing moments before help could arrive.
There was no mistaking the paranormal nature of the event. Dr. Lopez watched the footage three times in a row without saying anything, then had promptly thrown up in a trash can and stormed out.
Alexandros had waited twenty minutes before going after her. At first, he worried that she had fled the hospital. Instead, she had gone immediately to check on the other comatose patients. There were six now, all of them younger than thirty.
“Are you okay?” he asked again.
The woman’s eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. “Do I look okay?” she asked. He couldn’t help but notice that she was still holding her cross pinched between her fingers.
“I’ve seen worse,” he admitted. “Okay isn’t always what’s visible from the outside.”
Dr. Lopez scowled. “Of course, I’m not okay. I just watched a patient killed by ... by ... a demon!”
“Not a demon,” he corrected.
“How do you know?” she snapped.
“Because I’ve seen demons,” he answered. “They can be far scarier than that.”
The woman paled. “Demons are real?”
He pointed at the cross around her neck. “I’m not sure how you believe in that, but not demons.” He sat on the bed nearby. “To clarify, demon is sort of a general term. It doesn’t always mean a fallen angel. It can be any number of things. We typically categorize them by their malevolence.”
“Fallen ... angels...” The woman’s eyes went distant for a moment, then focused back on him. “From Hell.”
He nodded. “Our records on them are quite extensive. When the Vatican goes to exorcise a demon and finds they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, they call us. Most of the time, they’re dealing with low-grade entities, minor demons who talk big and go down after a few squirts of holy water.”
“Blasphemy.” When Dr. Lopez spoke, he could see the conflict in her eyes. He was essentially rewriting her belief system in real time.
Alexandro raised both hands in surrender. “Honestly, it’s true. You have to remember that the kind of demons you’re thinking of are just fallen angels. Extremely powerful beings that hold massive grudges against the human race and love to make an entrance. They would have burned that man alive just to make a point, turning him into a fiery pyre to speak through in a bastardization of the burning bush.”
Dr. Lopez made a sound between a gasp and a hiccup in the back of her throat. “So ... if not them, then what?”
Alexandros took a deep breath and let it out. “That ... is a really good question. We’ve spent so much time and energy putting up magical wards to keep some of these smaller grade entities out that we didn’t account for something stronger. We are fairly certain it was an Ammuntadori.”
“A what?”
“An entity that brings nightmares and bouts of sleep paralysis.” He thought back to the video of Isaac’s death. The creature had sat on the man’s chest while smothering him. That was pretty much the defining hallmark of an Ammuntadori, though they almost never killed. “That’s our best guess.”