Chapter 19

I’d never thought the day would come when hunting would feel so lackluster. With too few high-level Beasts in the vicinity, I easily mowed through the Sparks and other creatures roaming around. To think that, just a month ago, some of the ones I’d defeated today would have required some effort and strategy.

I was buzzing with an insane amount of power. A single blow with my tendrils could all but split one of my prey in two. Between the convicts, the Transient Nightmares, and feeding daily from my woman’s emotions, especially during our lovemaking, my power had grown by leaps and bounds.

Naima had been right to fear I’d grow addicted to hunting humans—or at least highly sentient beings. These helpless Mist Creatures presented no challenge. That didn’t stop me from gulping down everything I could get my claws on. Despite the boredom of the chore, I felt happy: an emotion I’d never thought would ever be associated with me.

Throughout the years spent preparing myself to cross over, I’d imagined a million ways my physical reunion with my creator would go down. After their unexpected offer of joining the Fourth Division, I’d been uncertain if I’d managed to adapt to their world, their rules, and their expectations. In truth, after the battle with Tobin, I’d fallen into a terribly dark place unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. The certainty that I’d soon lose my mate had been eating me from the inside out. I’d even started thinking of ways to convince Naima to leave the Mortal Plane and just come live with me in the Mist. But she never would have agreed.

And yet, here I was today, part of a team and the leader of my own Squad. I had high hopes for Merax. As long as he didn’t develop unrealistic ambitions, he could make a solid right hand. Letho was a train wreck. However, if he could be trained as an attack dog, in my hands, he could become a formidable weapon. I had seen two more Nightmares stalking their creators in the Observatory tonight that might make a good addition to my team.

Only a few weeks ago, the agents of the Fourth Division had been terrified of me. While they still feared my power and my ability to annihilate them without breaking a sweat—as they should—they now admired and respected me. I had never expected to derive greater pleasure from their idolizing awe than from their fear. My pet, Agent Peters, certainly knew how to stroke my ego without even trying. It was the sincerity of his admiration and appreciation of me that affected me so deeply. It disturbed me to want to provoke more such reactions from others. Being liked didn’t mesh with the persona of an apex predator.

In the end, however confusing this concept of teamwork felt at times for a solo hunter like me, it made me feel stronger. It gave me confidence that we could overcome any challenge, even Darryl. And that made me very happy. Although nothing would ever make me as happy as my woman. In many ways, Naima had changed me. Yet, for all that, they were small and superficial changes that, combined, had a powerful impact, allowing me to function in her world. But at the core, she had accepted me and learned to love me the way I was.

I couldn’t wait for her to finally go to sleep. Although she had tried to keep it a secret, Naima had planned a special evening for us tonight. That fucking bastard Darryl had ruined it. However, I, too, had planned a special evening here in the Mist for just the two of us. I intended to push her boundaries, test her limits, and make her shed the last of the inhibitions she still held on to in the name of those silly human principles.

Why the fuck was she taking so long, anyway?

Just as that thought crossed my mind, I finally felt my female’s consciousness poking at the portal of the realm of dreams. Excitement surged within me, and I almost drew her to me before remembering that this no man’s land wasn’t an ideal location. Granted, I’d pretty much cleaned the place out of anything that could even remotely present a threat, but still… I cursed under my breath when I realized how far I’d wandered from my domain.

As I began to race back towards my territory, a sense of unease took root deep within me. Something felt off. Naima was attempting to fall asleep with such frantic impatience—almost desperation—that it instead caused her consciousness to bash against the portal, making it resist the assault. She needed to ease herself in for the Veil to yield.

This was unlike her. I reached for my mate through my brand on her chest. The wave of fear, panic, and urgency that smashed into me left me reeling. Something terrible had happened. Stopping dead in my tracks, I erected a protective wall over a small radius around me. It burned some of my energy, but finding out the source of my mate’s distress was more important. As soon as it formed, I pulled Naima’s consciousness to me. For the first time, I hated the slow transfer of her soul into my world, manifested by the fall of her ethereal body towards me. Her shape and features became more defined as she neared the ground.

My woman’s eyes snapped open right before she landed. They immediately searched for me.

“Zain!” Naima exclaimed, throwing herself into my arms the instant her feet touched the ground. “You must come back! Darryl is inside the base. He has let the Mist and the Beasts inside.”

“WHAT?!” I shouted, my hands tightening on her upper arms. “Tell me everything.”

She gave me a quick rundown of what had transpired. Her quick thinking and Peters’ foresight had helped avert a tragedy. But knowing he was there, with a simple wall between him and my mate had me on the verge of panic. Even though he couldn’t breach the walls without sustaining extreme pain and energy loss now that he had been banished, there were workarounds. I only hoped he wouldn’t think of it.

“Stay put,” I ordered, my mind racing. “I’m coming,”

“Okay,” Naima said in a shaky voice. “Please, hurry. I’m scared.”

“I will not let anything happen to you, Naima. You are my life. I love you,” I said before crushing her lips in a desperate but brief kiss. “I’m sending you back now. I’ll be there soon.”

“Okay. I love you, Zain,” my mate said, her eyes blinking furiously to stem the tears that threatened to rise.

I sent her consciousness back to her body then allowed my own to flow back into my vessel. Naima’s words should have elated me. She had never actually said those three words before. Despite the fear crippling her, my mate had meant them just now. However, she had spoken them thinking that this could be her last chance to do so. My woman didn’t think she would survive the night.

I felt my consciousness heavily fall back into my naked corporeal vessel, which I had put in stasis while hunting in the Mist. I jerked up into a seating position, but a wave of dizziness forced me to lie back down. It always took a few seconds for my soul to mesh again with my human body.

I grabbed some clothes, not bothering with underwear, and threw them on while accessing the camera feed of the base through Naima’s computer. The agents had done a good job locking down the living quarters section, the observatory, the offices, the cafeteria, and the gym. The Mist flooded the hallways along the cells where Naima and the others were trapped, the armory, the garage, and the four holding areas where the Beasts and Sparks had been detained for me to feed.

Darryl, wearing Tate’s appearance, was near the holding area, luring Beasts towards the cells. My blood turned to acid in my veins as I knew exactly what he intended to do.

I called Peters’ phone.

“Peters,” he answered.

“Darryl is going to try and break into the room,” I said without preamble. “I will try to slow him down, but you can’t stay there. Take my woman and the others into the tunnels leading to the exit. You know the maze, right?”

“Yes,” Peters responded.

“Good. Take them to one of the other holding cells, as far as possible from this one. Repeat as needed if he chases you. He won’t be able to take the pain of breaking through multiple doors.”

“The Nightmares?” the agent asked.

“Leave them. Moving them during the crossover might kill them,” I said, cursing inwardly that they hadn’t completed their birth.

Maybe if I could delay Darryl long enough, they might awaken in time.

But they will be too clumsy to control their new human vessels and deal with gravity.

My heart sank further at that depressing thought. I couldn’t say how effective Darryl was combatting in his ethereal form. But he had certainly mastered combat in a human vessel. Whereas it was the opposite for me.

I froze, struck by a sudden realization.

“Can you see the camera feeds?” I asked Peters.

“Yes, we have a laptop here,” he replied, thankfully keeping to the strict information of importance.

“I am in my room. I will come out in my ethereal form. As soon as I’m in front of the confinement wall, open it just long enough for me to get to the other side, then shut it down,” I ordered. “Open the path to the training room. That’s where I intend to fight Darryl. Once I get him there, send backup.”

“Understood.”

“Peters… Do not let any harm come to her,” I said with a barely veiled threat.

“I’ll protect her with my life.”

I didn’t answer and hung up before returning to lie down on my bed. I allowed my ethereal form to come out, leaving my human vessel behind. As a Transient that had not yet been bound to the Mortal Plane, it was an easy task. Remaining contained was normally the challenge. I glided to the door, opened it, and slipped into the hallway. Without the Mist to facilitate my movements, it felt a little like walking with heavy weights attached to my ankle—if I’d had any in this form.

As I closed the distance with the reinforced walls that blocked off access to the rest of the base, Peters activated it. It no sooner started rising up than the Mist greedily rushed in to invade this section of the hallway. I swiftly slid under the partially opened confinement wall, my speed aided by the fog. The moment I cleared it, the agent lowered it. The handful of Sparks and the Beast that I had spotted on the camera feed, greeted me on the other side. While the Beast had a sliver of awareness, it wouldn’t attack unless it felt threatened. Right now, I had no intention of stirring that pot.

Gliding at maximum speed, I raced down the hallway towards the holding cells. The pained and enraged roar of a Beast spurred me on. The powerful aura of energy that struck me when I turned the corner into the main hallway nearly made my innards liquefy.

Darryl was beyond powerful.

How the fuck could he still have so much power after two rebirths in the past thirty days? He had just performed one last night after stalking my woman at her house. I would never be able to defeat him on my own. Even with the agents shooting him, I wouldn’t survive the encounter long enough for them to finish him. He would slaughter us all. Our only chance was to delay enough until Merax and Letho awakened and joined the battle in their ethereal forms.

Darryl had made one huge miscalculation. He hadn’t realized that I’d figured out the identity of his creator, and that the domino effect of this revelation would result in Peters detecting his intrusion and shutting down the base. My mate banishing him before Peters arrived only ensured the agent could enact the security protocols in a timely fashion. Without that, Darryl would have been able to open every door and every room, letting the Mist and its Beasts in while we all slept, unaware.

He would have slaughtered us the coward’s way.

But now, unlike me, Darryl would have to remain in his human form to battle, with all its gravitational restrictions and the huge energy cost required to shield it from damage. Should he be so foolish as to exit it in order to leverage the benefits of his ethereal form, a single bullet through the head of his discarded human form would end him.

With a dozen tendrils swirling around him, Darryl was battling a creature that resembled a giant gorilla covered in scales instead of fur. It possessed a rhinoceros’ head and sharp spikes along its spine. A blind fury descended over me as I watched the Nightmare swipe his tendrils at the Beast, three grouped together at a time, to send the creature crashing against the wall. The Beast roared again in pain, both from the tendrils’ blow and from the trespass backlash of damaging the wall. Its spikes were beginning to pierce through the thick walls, while its mass had already severely dented it.

Despite its massive size and long arms, the creature couldn’t move fast enough to strike at the Nightmare. Darryl was quick, far more than a regular human, and chain-swiping his tendrils at his prey before it could recover enough to counterattack.

I shifted into stealth mode, rendering myself invisible as I had done that first night I’d brought Naima into the Mist. It cost next to nothing if I remained motionless but consumed a great deal of energy to maintain the faster we moved while cloaked.

I darted towards Darryl while he was pummeling the Beast. He sensed my presence moments before I was upon him. His head jerked right. Eyes wide, he raised two tentacles in my general direction to block the attack he knew was incoming. Without slowing down, I whipped two of my tendrils with all my strength right below his. They both met their mark, colliding with his right side and thigh. The impact made me flash into existence for half a second before I vanished again.

The force of the blows sent Darryl flying sideways. He crashed onto the floor, half-stunned, then roared in agony. The arrogant fool hadn’t surrounded his vessel with a thick enough shield, thinking himself invulnerable. I hadn’t inflicted any fractures, but that pain would torment him. He’d had such an easy ride for so long, his tolerance to pain would be low. I just needed to get in as many licks as possible while avoiding his blows.

I flipped around to strike at him before he could get back up. Anticipating that move, Darryl swiped his tendrils forward in the area I’d be coming from. I veered hard left, barely avoiding getting clipped. The Nightmare jumped back to his feet, holding his injured side only to get backhanded by the gorilla. It knocked him a couple of meters away. Darryl landed hard on his ass before banging the back of his head on the hard floor. To my chagrin, although the blows had certainly caused him some level of discomfort, the bastard had cranked up his shield after I’d first gotten him.

Nevertheless, I swooped in and whipped him twice more in a fly by. Even as he shouted in pain, Darryl retaliated with a swipe of his own. Knowing I’d never get out of its path, I dissolved into a vaporous form, letting his tendril pass right through me, leaving me unscathed. Once again, that made me visible for a split second before I vanished from view.

Enraged, my nemesis got up and flapped his tendrils in every direction, waving them like a madman in the hope of landing a lucky blow.

“Show yourself, and fight me as a human, you coward!” he shouted, hitting the gorilla a few times instead.

I grinned, pleased to see him exert so much energy in vain—not that it made a significant dent in his insane reserves. But every bit he lost was a step closer to a potential victory for us. More importantly, it bought me time.

Drawn by the ruckus, a couple more Beasts came looking for prey. I glided away, at a safe enough distance not to get caught by a blow intended for another. One of the two creatures could have been the offspring of a peacock and a pterodactyl. When the freaky bird started spitting on him something that looked like acid, it almost gave me a hard on.

Such poetic justice.

The acid was doing a number on the Nightmare’s shield, forcing him to burn more and more energy to reinforce it. The other creature looked like a carnivorous plant hydra mounted on the body of a giant porcupine. It nipped at Darryl with its nine heads, forcing him to juggle parrying it and the gorilla, leaving the acid bird to safely fuck with him.

For a moment, I considered luring more creatures his way so that they could keep him tied up, then thought better of it. I needed to preserve my energy, and this hallway was too narrow for the Beasts to give him a real run for his money.

That decision was reinforced by the fact that the Nightmare expressed no fear, only anger to have his plan turned against him. Fury also emanated from him that I should have gotten a few hits in while he still had yet to score a single one against me. It was inconceivable to Darryl that a being so inferior to him could have the upper hand.

Unfortunately, the battle didn’t last long. The wretched Nightmare was too powerful and the creatures too weak in comparison. In his rage, Darryl killed the gorilla, regretting it immediately.

He stood there for a moment, fuming. His gaze flicked back and forth between the pile of ashes from his victims, and the damaged wall. I couldn’t believe the fool was actually considering finishing breaking the wall himself. He had the energy reserves to do it and survive the cost. The agony he would endure though would overwhelm him.

I was hoping he would do it.

While he’d been battling the gorilla near the cells, I’d felt my mate leave, the strength of our connection dimming as Peters led her and the others through the tunnel. Merax and Letho were protected by the double, reinforced glass walls. Breaking through those would require even more power and inflict significantly more damage than this first wall. It would wreck him.

Seeming to come to the same conclusion, Darryl snarled with rage, his gaze blindly looking for me in the corridor, empty but for the Mist and the ashes of his victims.

However, as much as Darryl wanted to kill me and harm my woman, his creator had not spawned a mindless idiot. Smart leaders like Thomson never did. Their monsters were usually the cold and calculated types, which made them even more dangerous. And this specific Nightmare was coming to the conclusion that his perfect plan had encountered too many hiccups to justify pushing through.

He had thought that by the time the agents would have realized what was happening, half of them would have already been dead, and that the remaining ones would have rushed him in a desperate effort to retake the base. Instead, we had trapped him in a limited set of narrow corridors with me in stealth form preventing him from cheating his way into breaking into the locked rooms. But I couldn’t let him leave. While I had not expected our confrontation to go down this way, our current situation was actually stacking the cards in my favor. I needed to lure him inside the gym before he decided to bail.

I carefully glided past him towards the high security area before turning around. I dashed forward swiping at him with three of my tendrils, hoping to catch him in the face with at least one. It was always the least protected part. However, just as I initiated the blow, Darryl sensed my approach. He didn’t try to parry the hit he knew was coming but swung six of his twelve tendrils at me. Two of mine connected solidly with his left arm and shoulder, and the third landed like I had hoped on the side of his face.

Repeating my earlier tactics, I switched to an intangible form, but not fast enough to avoid getting struck by his first tendrils. It caught the tail end of my ethereal form, sending an excruciating wave of agony through me. It felt as if someone had swung a spiked mace at my ankle with all his strength. I clenched my teeth through the pain and continued gliding at high speed towards the training room. Turning this setback to my advantage, I flickered in and out of stealth as I flew away. Hopefully, my nemesis would assume he’d inflicted a grievous enough injury that the debilitating pain was keeping me from properly going back into stealth mode.

Darryl’s triumphant laughter as he gave chase confirmed he had taken the bait.

“Running away, you little coward?” Darryl taunted, the sound of his footsteps pounding the floor as he ran after me filling the hallway. “Not so ballsy when you can’t hide to strike from the shadows. And you are the Fourth Division’s champion? You pathetic little worm, I’m going to enjoy syphoning your lifeforce. And when I’m done, I’m going to destroy your human pets, one by one, but not your bitch. Her, I will keep as my sex toy and my energy battery. Every month, maybe even every week, I will fuck her cunt, her ass, and her face with a new body. By the time I’m done with my Naima, she will have had more cocks than the Mortal Plane’s greatest whore.”

A red haze descended before my eyes. While Darryl’s primary intention was to taunt me into losing my head to anger, I also knew his words to be truthful. He would use her this way, feeding on her pain and terror, and leeching her lifeforce. He would leave her with just enough so that she couldn’t fight his abuse while remaining fully conscious and aware of the torture he subjected her to. In due time, I would make him pay for having even entertained that thought.

I reached the door of the training room, stopping just long enough to turn the handle and yank it open. To my shock, Darryl was already upon me. Before I could try to fly inside the room or dissolve into my intangible state, one of his tendrils hit me square in the chest, sending me flying down the corridor leading to the personal quarters. I collapsed to the floor, the wind knocked out of me. For a split second, I feared losing consciousness. If I did, all would be lost. Beyond the agony radiating around the point of impact, I couldn’t feel the bottom half of my ethereal body. Although I could see the rest of me, it felt as if I’d been split in two.

Darryl rushed me. Fighting through the pain, I flew towards the creatures I had passed on my way out of the personal quarters area. Once behind them, I turned back into stealth mode. This time, I was genuinely struggling to maintain it. The Nightmare charged right through the creatures, tendrils flaying. The Sparks collapsed into ashes at the first blow. The Beast reared and attempted to fight back but it, too, was defeated in a handful of powerful strikes from Darryl.

I curled into a small ball at the bottom left corner of the corridor, my back pressed against the confinement wall. Shifting into my intangible form while remaining in stealth mode through this level of agony took all of my willpower. I would not be able to fly past him and through the door without at least one of my two abilities collapsing. And at the rate keeping them up was eating through my energy reserves, I could only last so long. I only needed for him to keep flailing at the ceiling long enough for me to recover and make a dash for it.

“DARRYL, YOU PIECE OF SHIT, GET THE FUCK OUT OF OUR BASE!”

Hearing my woman’s voice shouting from the connecting hallway felt like a bucket of acid had been poured over me.

No, my love! No!

Why the fuck did Peters let her out? With a malicious grin on his face, Darryl turned on his heels and ran to the training room door directly in front of the T intersection that led on the right to the cafeteria and on the left to the holding cells. Abandoning my intangible form, I rushed in stealth mode towards him. As soon as Darryl reached the intersection, shock replaced the evil glee on his features. A barrage of bullets greeted him, stopping me dead in my tracks.

The Nightmare roared with rage and started racing towards the shooters. I glided toward the intersection, peering from the top corner of the wall by the ceiling to avoid eating a stray bullet. My jaw dropped at the sight of Tate—the real one—Peters, and Director Thomson standing in front. Naima, Riley, and Julia, standing behind them, had also been shooting. But they were now rushing back inside the room, quickly followed by the agents. They slammed the door shut with time to spare before Darryl could reach them.

Seething with fury, my nemesis struck violently at the wall next to the door with both his fists and one of his tendrils, making an impressive dent in it. He immediately hissed, his knees nearly buckling from the backlash of trespass. Thankfully, the wall held as it had been undamaged prior to this assault. This was a different room than the one the Nightmares were forming in and that Darryl had attempted to breach earlier.

I wanted to strangle the agents that had put my woman in even a sliver of danger—although I didn’t doubt for a minute that she had insisted on helping. After all, we had both begun weapon’s training over the past month. At the same time, I could have kissed them for creating the distraction I needed to get out of that tough spot.

“Apex,”Merax’ voice suddenly said in my mind, startling the living daylights out of me. “I have awakened. What is this sound? Why is my outer wall damaged?”

“Leave your vessel behind,” I ordered, my heart soaring. “Darryl is in the hallway, about twenty meters from your room. Letho?”

“Waking. He should be conscious any minute now.”

“Hang on,”I replied.

I glided to the training room and opened the door.

“You’ll have to learn to move faster, you piece of shit, like my woman so eloquently labeled you,”I telepathically taunted Darryl, while holding the door open.

In our ethereal form, we didn’t have a physical voice in the Mortal Plane. And our speech range with humans was fairly limited, although much greater with our anchor or another Walker.

Darryl hesitated. His situation had become even more precarious. This time, his survival instincts were starting to take over his bloodlust. If he returned to the Beasts holding area, he could escape. I needed him to walk into my trap. Then again, the Mist had thinned. I repressed the grin, realizing Thomson and Tate would have closed the external access and activated the venting system to purge the Mist inside the base.

“Naima, ask Thomson to get a group of agents to the armory to block off Darryl’s path if he attempts to flee,” I mind-spoke to my mate. “Merax has awakened, he will provide support.”

I couldn’t hear her answer. She would have needed to verbally speak it back to me. But the connection had been clear enough for me to know she’d at least received it.

“Is the high and mighty Darryl too terrified by a handful of humans to finish what he started?”I telepathically mocked my enemy.

“You can’t goad me with your taunting, Zain,” Darryl replied out loud with contempt. “You’re the one that hid and fled rather than stand and face me.”

“All right, then. Run off like a little bitch, you pussy. We’ll finish spanking you another time,” I said with disdain. “We’ll see just how smart you truly are now that you won’t be able to leech insider information from your creator. Thomson doesn’t like spies.”

Darryl blanched with both fury and shock that I knew his creator’s identity, and what that would mean for him moving forward.

“Apex, Letho is awake and in his ethereal form,” Merax mentally said to me.

“Excellent. I grant you permission to freely roam within the base, but wait for my order to move. You do not harm the humans. Only the Transient Nightmare Darryl,”I ordered him, before repeating the same to Letho.

“Understood, Apex,”Merax said.

“I obey,”Letho replied with the feral glee of the hunter.

Darryl glanced once more at the door keeping him from the humans inside, before looking back at me. An air of determination descending upon his features. He stomped towards me, his pace accelerating with each step until he broke into a full run. It was clear that the Nightmare had no intention of entering the training room. He was too smart to fall for that. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t be coerced into it.

“Come out now!”I ordered my Nightmare Squad.

I waited until the very last second before rushing inside the room, giving Darryl the illusion that he had stood a chance of yanking me out. He shouted in pain when his tendril missed me and struck the door instead. As soon as I was out of the way, a volley of bullets showered him. Darryl turned towards his attackers. His eyes widened in shock, and the first glimmer of fear crossed his features. My Nightmares had come into play.

He had known they would likely form this weekend. I believed this had prompted his attack on the base to nip the potential Squad in the bud. But he hadn’t expected them to finish forming so quickly, let alone to face them in their ethereal forms instead of their weakened, new human bodies.

Darryl couldn’t run to the right side of the T intersection which was a dead-end leading to the closed off cafeteria. Not knowing the full power of the two Nightmares supported by the agents shooting, attempting to bowl through them to flee could prove too risky. But when the confinement wall leading to the personal quarters opened in front of us, revealing a dozen agents also firing at him, Darryl had no choice but to seek refuge inside the training room. He knew he would never manage to cross the fifty meters between him and this new team of shooters before the wall closed again.

I flew further back inside the room. Understanding that this was do or die, Darryl threw all caution to the wind and raced after me. Knowing it would hurt like a motherfucker, I transferred a maximum of energy to my ethereal shield and allowed him to catch up. To my shock, instead of simply whipping at me with his tendrils while I lured him farther to the back, Darryl wrapped his tentacles around my body and yanked me to him. While every single one of his tentacles were attempting to crush me, Darryl’s hands were clawing at the back of my head. If he managed to break through my shield and inflict a bleeding wound, he’d be able to suck my lifeforce right out of me.

Teeth clenched, I forced myself to keep advancing forward to the back of the room where the Mist trickling in from the corridor hadn’t reached yet. When he finally realized what I was doing, Darryl attempted to reverse course, which slightly loosened his hold. Merax and Letho flew inside the room, tendrils swirling, ready to strike. The delicious scent of Darryl’s blossoming fear tickled my nose. He released four of his tendrils surrounding me—further reducing the pressure on me—to parry the oncoming attacks from my Squad, while attacking my neck in a frenzy.

“Whip him towards the back,”I ordered my minions.

With all my might, I dragged him forward, clearing the thinning plumes of Mist. Darryl shouted in agony. Before I could make myself intangible to break free of his hold, my nemesis released me to attempt a mad dash towards the exit. Carried by my momentum, I flew up and did an aerial backflip to bring down all four of my tendrils on his back. He would have face planted but, just as he was falling forward, Merax’ and Letho’s tentacles whipped him back with enough force to send him crashing against the back wall.

Darryl shrieked in agony and scrambled to his feet only to be showered by bullets from the agents who had invaded the room. Having understood my plan, Thomson closed the door of the training room to prevent any more Mist from entering. He tapped a few instructions on his phone, the blaring of the breach alarm stopped, revealing the rushing sound of the ventilation system sucking the Mist out. Sure, it made it harder for us to fly and glide in our ethereal forms, but Darryl was as good as dead.

With my minions following my lead, we swooped down on the Nightmare like birds of prey, whipping him back before flying back out of range. Where Merax struck powerful and well calculated blows, Letho moved like a snake, striking and retreating at lightning-speed, leaving his target reeling. Shifting my vision to seek the weaknesses in his armor, I made my tendrils razor thin and their tips sharp. Fighting the urge to target the big fracture on his chest that would guarantee instant death, I stabbed at the ones in his legs, crippling him.

Darryl fell to his knees, throwing his hands in front of him to avoid smacking his face on the floor. Raising a palm towards the agents, I gestured for them to hold their fire.

“Feed,”I told my minions.

“Gladly, Apex,”Merax said with greed.

“Thank you, Apex,”Letho replied with a childish excitement that was almost cute.

They swooped down, hovering long enough over an open wound to leech some of Darryl’s lifeforce, moving away before he could swat them. But the fight was bleeding out of our prey, drowning in a world of agony. The Mist had receded from the room. I couldn’t begin to imagine the extent of the excruciating pain of trespassing he was currently experiencing. Not that I particularly cared. I gorged on his terror as he vainly tried to crawl towards an exit he would never reach. I stabbed him some more, this time in his arms to put an end to his efforts to flee.

Gliding down in front of him, I fisted his hair and yanked his head back to make him look at me.

“Nightmares controlled by their bloodlust and their ego never last long,”I mind-spoke to him tauntingly. “You were too greedy in your feeding, too arrogant in your killing and, ultimately, too stupid in your overconfidence. Never hunt on enemy territory without at least two exit plans. But thank you for contributing to making me the most powerful hunter in this realm.”

Darryl opened his mouth to say something, likely to plead for mercy, but I didn’t give him a chance. I sucked the lifeforce from him with feral avidity. A glowing electric light flowed into me like a tsunami. For all the damage he had sustained, Darryl still possessed three times the amount of the combined power between Merax, Letho, and me.

The Nightmare’s groans faded into a gurgling sound and then silence only disturbed by the electric sizzle of his lifeforce leaving him from three places, and the thumping sound of his limbs’ dying spasms.

My gaze never strayed from his to make sure he didn’t die or lose consciousness before he was too weak to flee. But even then, I continued deriving great pleasure from watching the light fade from them. With his last breath, his hair turned to ashes in my hand, making me lose my grip. But his face never struck the floor, also crumbling into a fine grey dust before it landed.

Only then did I feel a presence behind me. Turning around, I found Thomson staring at the remains of his Nightmare with a savage, almost cruel smile.

I liked that.

He turned to look at me with the strangest expression. The emotions emanating from him towards me held a depth of affection that unnerved me.

He placed his hand on my shoulder, my shadowy aura swallowing it while he gave it a gentle squeeze.

“Thank you, son… for everything.” He turned to my minions and slightly bowed his head. “Thank you as well, and welcome to the Fourth Division.”

Without another word, he turned around and slowly walked out of the room. Following in his wake, the Walkers of the Fourth Division exited the room under the cheers and applause of the agents… our new people.