dreamt by Vicki/Nylessa
Involved: Ranger Stormwing (seeing a trend yet?), Rio deJeneiro, and a demon.
Ranger was about 7 or 8 years old when Nylessa bought him a lullaby CD because he was having trouble sleeping. Turns out that the CD -- or rather, the music itself -- was inhabited by a demon. That demon started to manifest itself as an 'invisible friend', and began subtly controlling Ranger's actions. For some reason, it was Rio, not his parents, who decided that the music was to blame (knew nothing of the demon, but "Max"'s picture was on the cover of the CD) and took the CD away, putting it on a high shelf.
Skip forward about ten years...
Ranger was cleaning out his room (which looked suspiciously like mine, I should add, and did not seem to be part of the Lair, but you can't expect a dream to make complete sense) and found the CD again, old and dust-covered. He tossed it into the "junk" pile and thought nothing more of it.
Then, that night, he dreamed... yes, I dreamed of someone dreaming. "Max" came up to him in a park scene, looking older and more scarred than before, and confronted Ranger. Said he wants to be Ranger's friend again, and reminded him of how Ranger used to confide everything with him, etc. Ranger tried to push him away, but Max kept appearing again, until finally he played a snatch of the music. Then he was able to persuade Ranger to at least listen to the tune one more time...
And so when Rio came in that morning (I don't know why) she found Ranger sitting in a trance on his bed, listening to the music and talking to someone who isn't there. She recognized the music (which did not affect her, I think, because she was an adult; Ranger was 17, not quite 18 when, I got the impression, Max would have lost his hold on him). She also recognized the name Max. I remember clearly her saying, "I thought ya were stronger than this, Range."
She tried to get the CD away, but Max has all the influence over Ranger again, and got him to fight her. She was still able to grab the CD though, and got the brilliant idea of going back to the store where Nylessa bought it.
Ranger and Max came after her, but she was 'saved' (read: dragged into a car) by a couple of little old ladies in yellow floral dresses (!!!), who turned out to be demon hunters who have been searching for this demon (Lomax) for about ten thousand years. Apparently the tune started off in a music box until the invention of the record, the tape, then the CD.
Anyway, Rio just wanted to smash the record, but they told her not to -- apparently doing so would set Lomax free, which would be a Bad Thing. She could smash the record only if the "haunted one" (read: Ranger) first gave it to her of his own free will.
And about here, annoyingly enough, it all went really fast. Somehow Rio got the CD to Ranger and managed to plead/persuade him to give it back to her. Lomax, in a panic, tried to kill Ranger, but Rio snapped the CD into tiny pieces. Ranger, freed now, snatched up a piece of the CD and stabbed Lomax in the head, and he sort of... exploded in a ball of flame...