SOLVED. YA? Horror Fantasy series. Main character comes home to find his family killed by a demon, and the goes to live with his grandfather who may know more about it then he thought he would. Read around 2016-2018. Spoilers ahead. [s]

[Archer]

Okay, so I read this series in high school around 2016 - 2018 I believe it’s a horror fantasy but could be Young adult. The series takes place in this reality but has magic but under very specific rules, you can only use magic around tears in reality made by demons ripping into this dimension from theirs, but there are some humans that have the ability to use magic outside the demon’s dimension.(I didn’t get far enough to learn why some people can still use magic outside of the demons dimension ) I remember the third book I believe may have been fourth had a demonic baby roaring at the reader with burning eyes like red and yellow, and sharp teeth and maggots crawling out of it’s mouth or eye’s I believe (the baby is one of the demon’s minions) now the plot of the first one is the main character(MC) comes home, and tries to find his parents and sister. He ends up going up stairs to find them and sees a room with strange sounds coming out of it. When he opens it he finds his parents mutilated and tied to the walls and a humanoid being with cracked skin with blood oozing out of the cracks as he holds his sisters corpse (she may actually be tied up and dead with the parents bodies) he also sees the baby which I mentioned earlier and I think like a wolf dog monster can’t really recalll. After that he’s sent to an asylum because everyone thinks he’s suffering a psychological breach after finding his family like that, then his grandfather brought him to his cabin in a small town far away from were he use to live, he ends up meeting another young boy who is close with his grandfather. But after a while he starts to suspect his grandfather is a werewolf (can’t remember how he comes to that conclusion) so him and his new friend start to investigate, learning that his new friend was actually a werewolf but his friend didn’t actually know his grandfather was actually trying to cure him that’s why he was keeping the kid close by. The MC learns that that’s actually why the demon killed his family because to cure lycanthropy you need a demon to take the curse but they decide how you pay them and the specific demon that is always summoned about werewolves (for some reason) is the demon that killed his family, his family having decided to summon the demon with out the grandfather to cure the sister sooner but failed so he just killed them all. The demon usually makes you play chess while you also have to fight his minions which while magic is around are near unkillable but you also have to win the chess match but you can bring a partner but the minions aren’t stupid and may go after the chess player over the other partner so you have to keep their attention and the chess player has to trust you to protect them. So the grandfather and the MC start the ritual with the grandfather as the chess player and MC as the fighter/protector cause he’s not great at chess, also up to this point the grandfather teaches the grandson so small basics of magic in this world magic is all thought based so you think it it happens it all depends on how much you believe it will work. The MC gets beat bad so the grandfather swaps and the MC has to play chess but he’s able to win by pretending that he’s gonna win to psy out the demon. This works and the friend is saved but for it to be complete the grandfather has to stay with the demon for a while in the other realm but just his soul and could return after a while but his body would remain with the grandson who would have to maintain it so it didn’t die with out the grandfather , sadly there’s no way to know when the grandfather may return if ever but the MC still take care of his body and on day his grandfather’s eye light up with intelligence and they hug and that’s around where the first book ends hope that helps I’ve been trying to find this book for years because I’ve wanted to finish it and also I really like it XD so yeah if some one could find it I would really appreciate it!

[Becca]

I'm pretty sure this is The Demonata series by Darren Shan. The first book is Lord Loss.

[Archer]

Becca wrote: "I'm pretty sure this is The Demonata series by Darren Shan. The first book is Lord Loss."

Thank you! That is the book! And the series! I so glade to have found it again! Thank you so much again!