Out for Blood: 14 (Systema Paradoxa)

There are creatures lurking in our world. Obscure creatures long relegated to myth and legend. They have been sighted by a lucky-or unlucky-few, some have even been photographed, but their existence remains unproven and unrecognized by the scientific community.

These creatures, long thought gone, have somehow survived; creatures from our nightmares haunting the dark places. They swim in our lakes and bays, they soar the night skies, they hunt in the woods. Some are from our past, and some from other worlds, and others have always been with us-watching us, fearing us, hunting us.

These are the cryptids, and Systema Paradoxa tells their tales.

***

Prudence Ann Wells grew up believing the things that went bump in the night were just fairy tales. Until the night a slathering beast with all-to-intelligent eyes breaks down their door.

She freezes as the creature rushes her and her mother, convinced it can't be real, as she and her sister, Justice, had always been told.

Only they had been raised on lies.

Prue survives the attack; her mother does not.

Driven by guilt and revenge, she and Justice set out to stop the beast, but can Prue end the nightmare without becoming a monster herself?

Jorie Rao is a Professor of English at SCC and obtained an MA in creative writing from Rowan University, and was the recipient of the Toni Libro Excellence in Writing award. Her obsession with cryptids and all things that go bump in the night inspired Out for Blood-and if she can ever stop reading other amazing novels, she might write another one!

Although Jason Whitley has worn many creative hats, he is at heart a traditional illustrator and painter. With author James Chambers, Jason collaborates and illustrates the sometimes-prose, sometimes graphic novel, The Midnight Hour, which is being collected into one volume by eSpec Books. His and Scott Eckelaert's newspaper comic strip, Sea Urchins, has been collected into four volumes. Along with Box Mountain's Cryptid series, Jason is working on a crime noir graphic novel. His portrait of Charlotte Hawkins Brown is on display in the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum.