Home for Horny Monsters Ch. 144

Hi, all! Annabelle Hawthorne coming in hot with the next installment of "Where the fuck do we even go after the fan-service beach episode?" (which, honestly, is the only type of filler that anime should have).

New reader? Welcome! Much like a Ticky-tock or your Insta-reels, the quick synopsis is that I wrote a whole bunch of chapters about dick sucking, butt fucking, relationship building, and soul-altering creampies that all starts with a dude jerking it in his tub and discovering Chekhov's butthole. You should probably pop back to Ch. 001 and see how this whole mess got started.

Returning reader? Welcome back! I wanted to get this chapter uploaded before my annual re-watch of Hocus Pocus. Every year, I light the black candle in the hopes that I'll get that deleted scene where Sarah Sanderson lets the Halloween Dance attendees run a massive train on her after they get spell-bound, but I'm not a virgin and I'm starting to think that somebody lied to me.

I would like to take the chance to thank you all again for all your love and support. Shout-out to whoever emailed me last month(ish) with "You still alive?" No joke, I got so busy, I plain forgot to update or post anything here, and that guy/gal/secret android is the reason we're back on track. With so many thousands of you (yes, thousands) reading these chapters right after they pop, I really do appreciate those of you remembering to look out for me.

I also appreciate those of you who remember to leave stars! Though it's still less than ten percent of you (they haven't started charging you per star, have they?), it really does help offset whoever is trying to bomb me out of the rankings, and lets me know you all still appreciate the hard work I put into this.

A huge shoutout to my beta-readers, including Lit's own TJ Skywind. Massive thanks to my personal assistant, for helping me keep up on everything while life gets busy. No thanks go to my personal chef, cause I don't have one. I'm the chef. It's super fucking lame. Yes, we are having chicken nuggets again (the dinosaur ones).

Don't forget to check my bio for news, updates, and release schedule. And to answer the question I asked at the beginning, where do we go after the beach chapter? It's time for the plot to

Enter Night

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."

Now Dr. Lopez looked dubious. "You're telling me sleep paralysis is rooted in the supernatural."

"I am."

"But science has documented--"

"Oh, we know what's been documented." He stood from the bed and moved closer to her. "Sometimes, it really is just a misfiring of neurons along with a sense of creeping dread. Other times? It's an actual paranormal entity, one we work very hard to get rid of and then erase the evidence afterward."

"I..." Her jaw opened and shut as if chewing a piece of phantom gum. "They kill people?"

Alexandros frowned. "No," he replied. "Not this kind. It's never been documented, but they technically could. Killing their prey would be like throwing out the contents of their fridge. These things latch on like a parasite. Not all humans are a good fit, you see. Some have been known to stick with their prey their entire lives. We haven't quite figured out why this one would kill, and it's the only reason we doubt what it could be."

The woman stared at him for several long seconds. "Maybe somebody told the Amma... Ammut..."

"Ammuntadori."

"Yes, that. Maybe somebody told it to kill him."

He shrugged. "Anything is possible at this point. However, manifesting like that would take a tremendous amount of energy. It would be a huge risk to its own survival."

Dr. Lopez swept her arms toward the floor. "Our waiting room is currently packed with people suffering from exhaustion. These people are having waking nightmares at times. It's pretty much a feast down there for your dream eaters."

Now it was Alexandros' turn to think. There had been an unusual amount of paranormal activity here, dream eaters of all kinds. They didn't usually hunt together, at least never on record.

A disturbing thought occurred to him, and it sent a shiver down his spine. Could the Black Prince be organizing these other beings? If so, what had he promised them? And why would he want to kill one of his sleepers?

"Oh. Oh gods." He was suddenly dizzy.

"What is it?" asked Dr. Lopez. She put a hand to his forehead. "You're suddenly pale. Please don't tell me you're getting sleepy."

Alexandros put an arm against the wall to steady himself, his gaze largely unfocused while his thoughts whirred. "It's not that. We have to identify the heaviest sleepers right away," he said. "Find somewhere safe to quarantine them all together, a place that can be better warded. We can't leave them alone, even for a minute."

"Why? What's wrong?"

He locked eyes with the doctor. "The entity doing this is feeding off their souls. The one thing it can't do is devour them entirely, unless..."

"Unless what?"

"Unless the body dies while the soul is weak enough." Early reports already indicated that the Black Prince had a far greater reach than ever before. People, Americans in particular, were chronically tired and overworked to begin with. They were easy prey. Already, his team was tracking over a hundred deep sleepers across the US alone, with several thousand progressing toward that point.

"What happens to those souls?" Dr. Lopez whispered.

"We don't know for sure," he admitted. "Maybe they survive in some sort of purgatory, or maybe it's like Hell. Or perhaps they're destroyed. Whatever the case, this entity will become far more powerful as a result. What we are dealing with now? It'll look like a weekend cold compared to what might come next."

He needed to speak with the council. Whatever came next, the Order needed to drop everything and tackle it together.

Dr. Lopez's eyes went wide. Tears formed in the corners, one of them finally breaking free to roll down her cheek.

Alexandros was surprised by the sudden urge to wipe that tear away.

"Then I'm going with you," she said. "Where the patients go, I mean."

"That..." He cleared his throat and tried to compose himself. "That would be preferable. You've demonstrated both the strength and aptitude for such an endeavor."

You're actually capable and I trust you, was what he wanted to say, but that felt insufficient for the moment.

"If you promise not to leave without me, I'll go home and pack," she said.

He nodded. "Do that. Identify members of your staff that you think can handle this and ask if they'll come, too. It's going to be an absolute shitshow and we'll need everybody we can find."

Dr. Lopez nodded and left the room. Alexandros moved to stand where she had been, his gaze out on the night sky. Unlike the good doctor, he had no faith to cling to.

????????????

It was nearly an hour before Lily arrived. To pass the time, Mike and Kisa did a detailed examination of Racquel's apartment while Ingrid and Death helped Racquel. They stripped her clothes off and put medicine on some sores that had already developed. Death remade the bed, and tossed the soiled clothes and sheets into the laundry afterward.

Mike also spent some time looking at Racquel's poetry book. He had no desire to read the woman's poetry, but Death had informed him that her last few entries saw a huge shift in prose.

Death had been vastly underselling it.

"I can hear him growl before the fall," Mike read. "Beckoning me into the dark, his voice a seduction. He whispers promises of pleasure with a cruel mouth."

"Why do all the hotties have cruel mouths?" Kisa asked. She was sitting in his lap while he read.

Mike frowned. "Is my mouth cruel?"

"I mean book hotties."

"We read very different books." Mike turned his attention back to the poem. Racquel's handwriting was shaky, and she had started sketching a shadow figure along the boundaries of the book. He looked over the next few pages. The poetry continued, but the words were less frequent and the imagery intensified. Near the end, she had used ink to paint the whole page black, save for a white smile and crimson eyes she had colored in with what may have been lipstick.

Based on what he saw, she had struggled to stay awake during the day. Poems of fatigue were followed by descriptions of the dark stranger. Her room was being haunted by his growls prior to the final entry.

There was a crackling sound from Raquel's coat closet, followed by heavy chewing. Mike opened the door and scooted coats out of the way to reveal a portal being chewed open by rats.

"Hey there, Romeo." Lily stood on the other side of the portal dressed as a sexy nurse. She picked up an IV stand and turned it horizontal so that she could step through. Her tail was holding an IV bag like a purse.

"What are those for?" Mike asked.

Lily snorted. "If this girl has been out cold for a couple of days, she needs to get rehydrated." She slapped him playfully on the chest, then looked down at Kisa. "Hey, kittycat."

Kisa took the IV bag from her, then asked, "Would it have been too much to ask for you to bring my sexy nurse outfit?"

"I didn't come from home," Lily countered. "And if I had, it would mean sneaking your shit out of the same room Tink is sleeping in. Suddenly, we'd have three hot nurses here, which means we'd unionize." She handed the IV stand to Mike. "Hold this for me."

He obliged, and the three of them walked to Racquel's room together. The stink had subsided a bit, and Racquel looked far more peaceful in a pair of pajamas. Ingrid sat in a reading chair nearby, playing a game on her phone.

"There you are." Ingrid rose to get out of the way. "She's been mumbling in her sleep."

Lily's jocularity died as she stared at the slumbering woman. She studied her for several seconds, then gestured by the bed. "Set up the bag."

Mike set up the IV stand. Kisa hopped onto the bed to hang the bag. Lily knelt at Racquel's side and pulled out a needle kit, which she promptly slid into one of Racquel's veins.

"Will she be okay?" Death asked. He was standing in the corner of the room, a forgotten cup of tea on a bookshelf nearby.

"I... don't know," Lily admitted. "What exactly did you see in this girl's head?"

"We never got there." Mike described the experience, stopping on occasion for Kisa to add details. Once they were done, Lily's face had become very serious.

"Sounds like some sort of incubus," she said. "But if this fucker isn't hiding under her bed, we're looking at some form of possession."

"Which I figured. I was gonna--"

Lily slapped a hand over Mike's mouth. "Don't," she said. "From this point forward, assume anything you say is being overheard. She may be asleep, but her body is here, listening and whatever. He hears what she does."

"Fuck," Mike muttered, then switched to sign language. What is the plan?

We tag-team this fucker, Lily replied.

She and Ingrid worked together to finish installing the IV, the room now silent as they worked. The succubus used her phone to text something to Ingrid, who gave her a thumbs up. Death wandered over, his flickering eyelights swirling as he looked down at Racquel.

Lily communicated something silently to Kisa, who nodded along. Mike tried to ask what that was about, but Lily cut him off.

"Ready?" she asked out loud.

"Yep."

"I love it when we share a girl." Smirking, she climbed onto the bed and hovered over Racquel. Her tail landed in the palm of Mike's hand, which he held as he sat in the reading chair and closed his eyes.

He felt a minor sting in his palm as Lily injected him. This time, it was the two of them in the dark tunnel. Lily gave him a hard kiss that bruised his lips, then stuck a thumb in her mouth and blew into it. Her breasts started expanding.

"A bold strategy," Mike muttered as her breasts surrounded him and shoved away the clinging darkness.

"I just need some wiggle room," Lily replied. Her breasts ballooned outward to an obscene size, and instead of the clinging dark, Mike was now caught in a tunnel of cleavage.

In all honesty, it was not the worst place to be.

Lily's tail encircled his waist, and then she rapidly shrank down. The pressing darkness tried to close in, but she had created enough room that the two of them were now rocketing downward.

"Think hard thoughts!" she shouted, her arms pressed together to turn her body into an arrow.

"I always am!" he shouted back. The darkness tried to slow their descent, but they were moving too fast to be caught. Without any warning, they impacted the ground, shattering stone and sending it flying outward as they fell through the ceiling of a teenager's bedroom. They landed on the bed, shattering it into several pieces.

"Fuck me," Lily said, rubbing her head. She looked up at the ceiling. "That was way harder than it should have been."

"Ugh," Mike groaned. If not for the venom in his blood, he definitely would have woken up. "I take it you were expecting this to be easy?"

"Yes." Lily sniffed the air. "We're in her Dreamscape, but it's all wrong. Can you feel it?"

In fact, Mike could. It wasn't something he could directly put a finger on, but it was comparable to getting ready to sip water that had something nasty growing inside. Just being in this place gave him the heebie jeebies.

"You still think it's an incubus?" he asked.

She sniffed the air, then raised an eyebrow at him. Mike repeated the gesture, then let out a sigh.

"Smells like pussy," he admitted.

Together, Mike and Lily navigated the house. The first bedroom clearly belonged to a teenager, but just barely. In the corner, a bunch of My Little Pony toys were haphazardly stuffed behind a couple of fantasy books to make room for a collection of CDs. On the wall, a boyband poster could be seen, but the text and faces were all blurry.

"Weird." Mike moved to the poster and studied it. "Usually I can make it come into focus."

"We're in someone's head right now," Lily replied. "And she's not in a good way."

"What do you mean?"

Lily shoved open the window to reveal a generic suburban neighborhood. Mike moved next to her and saw that the edges of the neighborhood had gone dim, as if twilight had come early. However, the sun was directly above them.

"Her Dreamscape is crumbling," Lily said.

"What does that mean?"

"Soul decay." Lily sat on the windowsill to face him. "Theoretically, an incubus functions much like a succubus does. We go in, seduce our victim, and then devour their soul when they nut."

Mike frowned. "I'm familiar with the process."

"But let's talk a bit more about what happens after." Lily put a hand to her belly. "You see, souls are kind of like the rumor about gum. But instead of lasting seven years, they just sit in there and wither for all eternity. Well, theoretically. Forever hasn't happened yet.

"Anyway, once the soul is devoured, a process like this happens, only much, much faster. When I kill, my victim's dreams become pure nightmare fuel. I drain every last drop of energy from them until all that's left is a shriveled husk of a shell." She pointed out to the horizon. "We are watching the soul digest right now, but it hasn't been devoured."

"Meaning?"

"We aren't dealing with an incubus." She slid free of the shelf. "That shell out there is meant to condense everything down for easier consumption. Whatever is possessing her can't extract the soul like I can, so it's gobbling it up instead."

"So if we give this fucker the boot, she'll be fine?"

"Eventually," she said. "But now the problem is finding him and punching him in the nuts."

They walked out into the hall. The home was suddenly far larger than it used to be, and Mike realized that they were seeing it from the perspective of a child. The simple home felt like a palace.

"Okay, so this thing can't kill you, but can eat your soul."

"I love it when you're--" Lily turned toward Mike and let out a high-pitched squeal. "You are so fucking adorable right now!"

"Huh?" Mike looked at himself and realized he was a little kid. He tried to concentrate on returning to his adult body, but couldn't. "What the hell?"

Lily grabbed Mike by the hair and yanked.

"Ow!"

"Shit. I can't even change you back." Lily's proportions shifted until she looked like a little kid. "We may as well match."

"But why? Not the proportions questions, why this?" Mike gestured at himself. "Oh, sweet, are those Pumps?" he knelt down to push the basketball on the tongue of his shoe and pump it up.

"Okay, so a dream entity capable of altering reality for all but the hardiest of bitches," Lily said in a child's voice. "Is your head still on straight?"

"Huh?" Mike looked up at Lily. She was wearing a simple red dress with a black waistband. She had tiny wings behind her back and a headband with horns on it. "Yeah. Feel a little like a kid again, but I'm still good up here."

"That's a relief." Lily took Mike by the hand and they navigated the house. After several wrong turns, they were back at the bedroom where they had started. The look of concern on her face grew more serious with every passing second.

"Are we okay in here?"

"No," Lily replied. "This fucker is strong, way stronger than someone should be after nibbling on a soul for a couple of days."

"Racquel!" A man's voice rumbled through the house like thunder. "Where are you?"

"What the fuck is that?" Mike asked.

"Daddy issues," Lily replied. She yanked him back into the bedroom and shut the door. "This girl's soul has been concentrated enough that we aren't really in Dreamscape territory. This is just her Soulscape, the place where her memories are."

The doorknob rattled, and Lily casually locked it. The man outside started banging on the door.

"Racquel, I know you're in there," he shouted. "Open up the door, I just want to talk to you!"

"I don't like how that sounds at all," Mike said.

"He's drunk," Lily replied. "His team just lost again, so he's gonna yell at his daughter for being too much like her mother or whatever."

"Sounds good." Mike unlocked the door and yanked it open to reveal a large belly covered in a white tank top. He looked up to see a balding man who had broken out into a sweat, the veins on his forehead sticking out.

"What are you doing?" Lily shrieked.

Mike took a step toward the giant looming in Racquel's mind and punched him right in the balls. The man, who seemed ten feet tall, turned purple and immediately fell into a ball on the floor.

"Racquel!" he blurted, his eyes rolling back in his head.

"She's not home," Mike replied, using his child-sized hands to grab the man by the ankle and drag him toward the window. "I'm afraid it's just me today."

"What are you doing?" Lily asked.

"Spring cleaning." Mike grunted as he pulled. "You gonna watch or help?"

The two of them dragged the manifestation of Racquel's father to the window. The man had effectively become a moaning ragdoll as the two of them lifted his legs over the window ledge and then tried to push him up and out. After several minutes of huffing and puffing, enough of the guy was through the window that gravity did the rest of the work and he fell onto the front lawn with a thud.

"You just saved this girl so many years of therapy," Lily said.

"Maybe." Mike stepped onto the window ledge and looked down at the man on the lawn. He aimed for his stomach and jumped.

"Cannonball!" he shouted, then smashed into the groaning figure on the ground. The man exploded into chunks of stuffing that were scooped up in a breeze and carried away by a dust devil.

Lily cackled from above, then jumped down. Her tiny wings fluttered, somehow holding her aloft as she floated down.

"I can't believe you did that," she said.

"It was way faster than navigating Racquel's troubled childhood," Mike replied. He looked back at the home, which was fairly small from the outside. "I get the feeling we could have been stuck in there for a while."

The two wandered along the road for a bit. The edge of the neighborhood became a college campus first, then a community swimming pool, followed by the city. The smell of arousal filled the air, strengthening the further they walked.

"So is this guy just edging her?" Mike asked.

"Certainly smells that way." Lily shook her head. "I feel like I'm missing something here. Unless..."

"Unless what?"

The succubus raised her eyebrows. "Unless he's not a real incubus."

"What does that mean?"

She shrugged. "It's a big world, and I know I haven't seen every part of it. Yeah, I've been around the block a few million times, but there are still some surprises to be had." Lily paused and gave him a wry look. "You were one of those surprises."

"Are you getting sentimental?"

"Maybe. Just watched one of my best friends get engaged, and it made me start thinking about..." Lily trailed off, her eyes going wide.

"You okay?"

"Yeah." A small smile tugged at the corner of her lips. "Just realized something is all. Not important."

Mike grabbed his shirt and tugged on it. "How much longer do you think we're going to be little kids?"

"Oh, you could have fixed that yourself a while ago," Lily replied. "Whatever dream rules were laid down sort of ended when you punched big daddy in the nuts."

Scowling, Mike commanded his body to shift and grow until he was back to adult height. Lily immediately hopped into his arms and kicked her feet.

"Carry me, Daddy." She gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

"Now who has daddy issues?" he asked.

The succubus snorted, then demanded a piggy back ride. Knowing better than to argue, he allowed her to sit on his shoulders as their investigation continued. The city block was beneath a permanent twilight not unlike Avalon's had been, only the stars were out and it didn't feel nearly as oppressive.

Lily continued to guide Mike to the outside of what looked to be a bar. The word Racquel's hung above the entrance in bright, neon pink letters. Mike looked up at Lily.

"No kids allowed," he told her.

"You're no fun." She kicked and shifted until she had returned to adult form. Her tail swatted him on the ass. "Mush."

"I'm not a sled dog," he muttered. "And won't you hit your head on the door? Isn't it a bit ridiculous to walk into a potential confrontation this way?"

"No and yes." She swatted him again with her tail. "Move that fine ass."

Rolling his eyes, Mike pushed open the door to the bar and made no effort to duck down. Lily had to practically lay flat against his head to fit through, causing her breasts to slide around his head like earmuffs.

Once they were through, Lily sat back up. The interior of the bar was much like an open warehouse, and the place was packed with people wearing differing leather bondage gear. The entire front room had men and women in various stages of intimacy, and the place reeked of sweat.

"What the fuck is this?" Mike asked.

"My kind of party. Go that way." Lily pointed toward the bar.

Mike obeyed. The bar was packed with men and women doing shots off of each others' bodies. The counter was covered in burning candles, some of which were being used to drip hot wax on bare flesh.

"Yo! Barkeep!" Lily slapped the counter with her tail. "An Old Fashioned for my friend and a Sex on the Beach for me!"

The bartender pulled his dick out of a woman's mouth and mixed their drinks. He set them down on the counter without a single word and stopped a serving girl who was dropping off empties. She was promptly bent over the bar while he fucked her from behind.

"I'm not drinking that," Mike said.

"Good. You shouldn't." Lily slid down off his shoulders and picked up the beverages. She stuck her tongue in one of the drinks and spat it out. "That's what I thought. These manifestations are from her sub-conscious, but they aren't being powered by her. This would have knocked you on your ass."

"Which means we're being watched."

Lily nodded. "I'm sure he noticed our entrance." She leaned against the bar and surveyed the room, then pointed. "There's our little sleepy head."

Up on the stage was a woman with a black hood on her head, strapped to a St. Andrew's Cross. She was panting heavily as a pair of women with riding crops lightly smacked at her nipples and her exposed clitoris.

"This is a hell of a way to meet somebody," Mike muttered.

The lights in the club briefly dimmed, then came back on. Up on the stage was the stranger from earlier. However, with the stage lights, he at least had some definition to his facial features.

"You came," he said flatly. "And you brought a guest."

"Should have charged at the entrance, pal." Lily sauntered forward with one hand on her hip. "Care to explain yourself before I tear you apart?"

The man grinned. "Oh, you are fun. Well, let's start with the basics." The man sat on a stool next to Racquel's body and held out a hand. One of the women put the crop into it. He swatted Racquel with the crop on her belly, then moved it up and down as if teasing her. "This is my food."

"Maybe it's time to go on a diet," Mike replied.

"Or consider ethically sourcing your food." Lily stopped at the edge of the stage. "If you want a list of shitty people to eat, I can rent you a place in DC. You'll get fatter than the fuckers there in no time."

The man snorted. "Poor ethics spoil the flavor." He teased Racquel's pussy with the crop, causing her to moan through her hood.

"I gotta say, this is some real amateur work." Lily kicked a couple that was fucking nearby, causing them to fall apart. "I did a deep dive already. Her hottest fantasies are way better than this surface level shit."

"I'm not here for her lust." The man bent the crop experimentally in his hand and swished it through the air. "I simply arranged this scenario based off of an old dream of hers and she wandered in of her own free will. Her pain would taste just as sweet to me."

With that, he reached over and dragged his fingernails over Racquel's belly. She screamed through her hood as blood ran down her stomach and onto her thighs.

Lily leapt forward, grabbing a chair on the way. She brought it down on the man's head, causing the wood to splinter as if she had struck stone.

The stranger's hand grabbed Lily by the neck. She gasped and kicked, her tail whipping against him without any effect.

"Allow me to clarify," he said as the people in the room all stopped to look. A growl entered his voice. "This is my domain. It'll take a lot more than a demon to--"

His head whipped around, allowing him to lock eyes with Mike who was now only a couple of feet away. Mike's body locked up, keeping his outstretched hand from touching the stranger.

"I let my curiosity get the better of me." The stranger smashed Lily into the stage, then tossed her away. She let out a groan as she tried to get to her feet. "Tell me, Caretaker, would it anger you if I hurt her?"

Mike grunted, trying to force himself forward through the dream.

"I know I couldn't kill her," the man continued. "After all, she can't be truly harmed in this place. And for reasons it displeases me to admit, you are untouchable." The stranger grinned and turned his attention back to Racquel. "But that wouldn't stop me from devouring your dread while I peel the flesh from her bones as you watch."

Tiny lights appeared along Mike's skin as his magic tried to obey and fight the force holding him in place, to allow him to move forward. He knew if he could just grab hold of the stranger, it would be over.

"What a delicious stalemate." The man licked his lips as he scratched Racquel again. The woman cried out. "You see, this one is already on the verge of death. Her poor heart has very little energy left, and that fluid you pump into her body isn't enough to save her. If she dies while you're in here, well... how exciting would that be!"

Lily roared and lost control, her skin on fire as she charged into the stranger. The man's whole body warped, preventing her from knocking him into Mike's outstretched hand. Once she was on the other side of him, the man took the crop and smacked her on the back, which sent her flying away.

"I am a god here," he declared. "My strength grows exponentially with every day."

The succubus summoned a pair of swords into her hand and threw them. They turned to dry spaghetti and crumbled on impact. The stranger ignored her.

"I will bring about a new era," he continued as his body hovered off the ground, his toes dangling. "In a world without magic, who will be there to stop me? Certainly not a man and his pet succubus!"

Golden light crackled along Mike's body as he took another step forward. The man's crimson eyes widened in surprise and he took a step back.

"Keep... monologuing," Mike grumbled. "It's about to get good."

"Oh, I don't think you'll be staying very long." The stranger raised his crop as if to strike Mike in the face.

Kisa slid free of the shadows and leapt onto the man's back, her claws digging into what Mike assumed was his flesh.

"Now!" she screamed as the man stumbled forward. Mike reached out and grabbed the man by the hand, his magic wrapping around the entity's wrist.

A high-pitch scream filled the room. Mike was shoved back violently enough that his palm slipped free of the entity's wrist.

The dream burst. Back in Racquel's bedroom, Mike, Lily, and Kisa were flung off the bed as the scream manifested in the real world along with a wave of dark magic that shook the furniture. Ingrid leapt to her feet, looking for the threat. Death had pulled his scythe, but had no target.

On the ground, Mike groaned. He sat up and winced, then looked over at Kisa. "So close," he told her.

"Yeah," she replied, rubbing at her butt. "Lily had me sneak in behind you two, figured he wouldn't notice me. Think I fell on my tail."

Lily sat up on the other side of the bed, flames curling around her horns. "That fucker!" she screamed. Everybody sat and listened for a minute as Lily ranted in several different languages, the temperature of the room steadily climbing.

Mike shook the cobweb feeling from his head as Lily rambled. Kisa pushed herself against him, but for security, not for intimacy. The catgirl was shaking.

"You okay?"

She shook her head. "No. It's weird, but I'm really freaked out. It's almost... instinctual. The moment he realized I was there, it just... I couldn't..."

Kisa shivered. Mike held her close.

"Um, guys?" Ingrid was looking at Racquel. The young woman had gone pale and was taking ragged breaths. "We need to get her to a hospital."

Mike thought back to what the spirit had said about Racquel. "He said her heart is weak," Mike said. "And that it would give out soon."

"Oh." Death moved toward the end of the bed. "Ms. Racquel told me that she was born with a condition called arrhythmia. It only becomes a problem if she exerts herself too hard--"

"Or is asleep for two days without food or water," Ingrid grumbled, then pulled out her phone. She dialed 911 and held the phone to her ear.

In the silence of the room, Mike felt like the phone rang for an awfully long time before somebody picked up.

"Yes, hello, I need an ambulance," she said. "I just found my neighbor unresponsive in her bedroom."

The dispatcher started asking questions. Mike noticed Ingrid answered everything but her own name, and kept repeating the address.

"When I say unresponsive, I mean we can't wake her up," Ingrid continued. "She's breathing... no, it's not an overdose... yes, I know how to take her pulse... she has a known heart condition so..." Ingrid frowned. "Hold on."

The mage muted the phone and looked at Mike. "There aren't any ambulances."

"What?"

"Apparently they're all being used right now." Ingrid looked over at Racquel. "We're in line."

"Was there a mass casualty event or something?" Mike had the urge to take the phone from Ingrid and demand answers, but resisted. "We can take her ourselves, then."

Ingrid went back to the call. "Yeah, we'll just bring her in ourselves... what? What do you mean... okay, well then what's the next closest hospital with room... sleeping sickness?"

Mike was already on the phone to Eulalie, who answered on the third ring.

"You're ruining girls' night," she giggled. "What's up?"

"We need to find a hospital with an open bed right now," Mike said. Technically, he could take Racquel to either Naia or Zel, but with that entity floating around inside of the woman, he was afraid to bring it home. "It's an emergency."

"On it. Let me get to my laptop." In the background, Mike could hear Tasia and Dana chatting, followed by something breaking. "Where are you?"

"Abandoned bowling alley in Washington," Eulalie replied. "The machines are down, so the rats are resetting the pins for us. Well, the ones that survive anyway. Pins that is. We're not bowling for rats right now." She chuckled at her own joke. "Hold on, I'm getting logged in to my mainframe from here, will take another minute."

Mike tapped his fingers impatiently. Eulalie muttered to herself as she worked, then went silent.

"Everything okay?" he asked.

"I'm not sure. I just started a workflow that should have given me what I asked for, but... what the fuck?" Mike heard the clicking of keys. "What do you mean my credentials are revoked?"

"Eulalie?"

The Arachne muttered swear words under her breath. "Guess I'm pulling up the dark web account. I'm a black spider, bitches, and... holy crap."

"What?"

"There's some big shit going down, some sort of super sleeping virus. My usual backdoors won't work. I can't just casually look up hospital vacancies, but you need to know that emergency rooms are packed right now. Bunch of people with some type of flu that presents as exhaustion."

He looked at Racquel. "Exhaustion? As in, they can't wake up?"

"Some can't, most are sort of... think of it like the reverse of insomnia. Not narcolepsy, but... what?" More keys clacked, followed by a grunt. "Shit. Someone found me digging and... they booted me?!? That's not good. Like, really not good. It means they're monitoring for people doing this. I can't help you, Mike, not from here. I need to get back to the Library. I've got way more juice there."

Racquel groaned in her sleep and her breathing became unsteady.

"Mike Radley, please," Death begged. "I can sense her end coming."

"What do I do?" Mike asked.

"I don't know." Eulalie's voice was quiet. "Maybe the best you can do is take her to a hospital and demand they help. I'll send Lily the address."

Mike moved to Racquel's side, his arms sliding beneath her. He was surprised at how light she felt. "Ingrid, go get the car."

"On it." The mage sprinted out of the room. By the time Mike was out in the hallway, he heard the stairwell door slam shut.

"C'mon, c'mon." He waited while Kisa summoned the elevator. When it arrived, there was a pair of men inside who looked like they were half-drunk. They just stared at the group as one of the men tried to push the Close Door button.

Lily grabbed them by their shirts and yanked them out, making enough room for the others to get in. The men tried to protest, but ended up face to face with Death. The Reaper's eyes blazed with white fire.

"HAVE A NICE DAY," he told them in a voice that boomed as the door shut around his now-incorporeal torso. Mike heard the men scream in terror as the elevator car descended to the lobby.

Tires screeched when Ingrid pulled the car around. Mike carefully slid Racquel into the back seat. Kisa sat next to her and held her in place. The woman's breaths were coming in short bursts now.

"I'll fly ahead, scout a route," Lily said, her wings unfurling as she leapt into the sky.

Mike got in the passenger seat, then looked at Death. "You could probably fit in the trunk," he said.

"No need." Death hopped onto the roof of the car, his bony fingers tapping at the windows until Ingrid rolled them down. He clutched the roof tightly with his hands as the Fae Guard shifted out of the way to hover behind the car. It didn't have to hold on at all. "NOW DRIVE."

Tires squealed on asphalt and the car leapt forward. Ingrid's phone was mounted to the dash, she was already on a voice call with Lily.

"Alleyway to the right is a shortcut," Lily said. "Car should fit."

By fit, Lily meant that the car would lose both side mirrors and quite a bit of paint. They turned left onto the next road, now driving the wrong way on a one-way street. However, there were no cars on the road at this time of night.

"I can't see the light!" Ingrid shouted at the next intersection. "We're going the wrong way!'

"Nobody is on the road," Lily replied. They shot through as approaching headlights blazed through the side windows.

"That wasn't nobody!" Ingrid glared through her windshield, trying to spot the succubus.

"She's not breathing!" Kisa screamed.

"There was no time to explain," the succubus replied. "We're a block out from the hospital. There's a cop car out front, but it's empty, don't stress it."

They slid up to the emergency room doors and Kisa shoved the backdoor open. Mike got out and Death helped him pull Racquel from the car. Dark things skittered away from the door as they entered the building.

"What the hell? Here, too?" Mike watched a shadowy figure squeeze into a nearby air vent to get away.

"I don't like this, Romeo." Lily sniffed the air. "They're everywhere."

They were halfway into the lobby when Mike felt a sharp pulling sensation against his guts. He looked down to see that Racquel's soul had taken on a sparkly quality and was starting to detach from her body.

"NOOOO!" Death put a hand to his chest where his heart would be. "IT IS NOT YOUR TIME, MS. RACQUEL! NOT YET!"

They set the woman down on the floor of the lobby. There were several people in the seats who stood, but made no move to approach. Phones came out to film, instead. Death was holding his skull in both hands now and making a high-pitched keening sound that was causing the lights above to flicker.

"Mike." Lily's voice was soft as her hand touched his shoulder. "She's going."

Wiping a tear from his own eye at the sound of his friend's grief, he sang the banshee's song. People in the waiting room were now in full chaos mode as many of them spotted the Reaper in the flickering lights. Mike sang over the dying woman. It was a song of both grief and peace, intended to guide her to the afterlife.

Her soul, a sparkling orb, floated out of her chest, but those dark tendrils clung like vines. Though Mike sang, her soul was slowly being returned to her body.

"What the fuck?" Lily's hand tightened on Mike's shoulder. "Oh, fuck, Mike! Grab it!"

Confused, he stopped singing. Kisa, who understood right away, reached out and physically grabbed hold of Racquel's soul. It slid and slithered through her fingers, her abilities only a fraction of Mike's own.

Mike's fingers clutched at the orb and he felt something else yank against him. His hand was pulled toward Racquel's chest so violently that it looked like he was punching her. Grunting, he shifted his body into a squat. He, Kisa, and also Lily were now trying to pull on Racquel's soul.

"He's trying to swallow her!" Lily's hands couldn't quite touch the soul like Mike could, so her hands were on his arms and wrist, stabilizing him. "Don't let him eat her!"

"Mike Radley!" Death pulled out his scythe. "If you pull, I shall do the rest!"

At the sight of the scythe, several people in the room bolted. Others could only look on in confusion. A nurse came out to see what the disturbance was and screamed at the sight of the Grim Reaper holding his weapon aloft. She fled, and a police officer came running down the hallway, a hand on his sidearm already.

"Freeze!" he shouted as he aimed his gun.

At the sight of the gun, Mike locked eyes with the man just as one of the Fae Guard moved to strike him. "DROP IT."

The cop simply let go of his gun and put up his hands. The Fae Guard put away its blade and hovered back toward Mike as the rest of the lobby devolved into a panic. People tried to get away, but did not know which way to go. Confusion reigned as Mike and Kisa stretched those tendrils tight with Lily's help.

Death brought his scythe down on them. There was a shrieking sound, followed by the lights above them bursting, throwing them into darkness. Glass fell like rain throughout the lobby as Kisa grabbed Mike's hand and pulled.

"This way," she whispered. He followed, trusting her night vision as she led him toward the front door. In the dark, he heard the officer trying his best to restore order.

He noticed shapes slumped in their chairs, too tired to flee. In each of them, a soul could be seen, crushed down by shadow fingers.

"Mike!" Ingrid called to him from just outside the door. "Where are you?"

"Here!" Lily called back. They emerged out into the parking lot together. Ingrid led them a short distance away to where she had parked the car, and they all piled in.

They were almost a block away when Mike felt his hand tingle. Looking down, he found himself still holding Racquel's soul. It pulsed softly against his skin.

"Oh," was all he could say. After a long moment, he turned to face Death and handed over the soul. "I'm really sorry about your friend."

"Don't be," Death whispered. "It is a natural thing, after all. I was blinded by my own selfishness, and worried that perhaps I would become unfinished business for her. I..." He cradled the soul in his bony hands and went silent.

"What were all of those things?" Kisa asked. "They're like the ones from her apartment, right?"

Mike nodded. "Most definitely. Something super massive is going down right now. We had no idea. Eulalie said it's like this everywhere."

"So there are more people like her?" Kisa asked.

"Absolutely. I saw a few in the lobby, but not as bad as she was before..." He looked at Death, then Lily. "What do you think about all of this? This is all Dreamscape stuff--you have to know something."

Lily was busy staring at her phone and scrolling through messages. The succubus bit her lip in frustration, clearly distracted. She sent a quick text to somebody, then looked at the others.

"I think it's a major fuck up," she replied. "I don't know what that creature was, but he was absolutely planning to eat her soul for dinner."

"That is against the natural order of things," Death whispered. Everyone but Ingrid turned to face him.

"What can we do for you?" Mike asked.

"We just left her body in the lobby of a hospital," Death replied. "That feels... wrong."

Mike felt bad for the Reaper, for all of them. Right now, he was running high on adrenaline and What The Fuck. "Should we go back for her body? Surely we can do better."

"Cops will be on their way," Ingrid said. "You guys were not subtle at all, and stealing a corpse will not make that any better with law enforcement arriving. What even happened in there?"

Mike made eye contact with Ingrid in the rear-view mirror and just shook his head. At his side, Death was slumped in his seat, holding onto Racquel's soul. Now wasn't the time to go over it.

"No," Lily whispered in horror. The phone fell from her fingertips to bounce around in the footwell.

"What's wrong?" Mike tried to get her attention as tiny flames crawled along her arms and gathered into a crown around her head. "Lily? Hey, Li--"

The succubus threw herself against the door of the car so hard that she ripped it off the hinges. Lily rolled onto the street then leapt into the air, her wings flaring wide as she shot over the nearest buildings and disappeared into the night.

"LILY!" Mike leaned out the door and screamed for her, but she failed to return. Trembling, he picked up her phone and saw that the last text Lily got was from Eulalie.

All it said was "She's been admitted" followed by the address of a children's hospital.

"Shit!" Mike almost threw the phone in anger, but took a deep breath to regain control. His magic was like fire inside his belly, desperately trying to escape. He took two more breaths and used Lily's phone to call Eulalie back.

The Arachne answered right away. "Lily, I'm so--"

"It's me. I need a portal ready to go wherever she's headed the moment I get home." It's not like they could follow her in the car. It would be way faster this way.

Eulalie sighed. "Shit. Did she run?"

Mike looked out the missing door. "You could say that."

"I'll have something ready," was all she said, and then she hung up. Mike looked over at Kisa, who had her hands wrapped around Death's waist. With a loud sigh, he sat back in his seat and looked out the missing door.

How had his night suddenly gone so wrong?

????????????

Oh yeah, it's go time! Buckle up, bitches, cause things are about to get wild!

Thanks again for all your support, please click some stars on the way out, and then go do something nice for yourself (I hope more than ten percent of you do this, at least). Call an old friend, go for a walk, or sit outside in the rain and just connect with the world. Just make sure you stay out of mushroom rings!

Happy Halloween, monster-lovers!

~Annabelle Hawthorne