doors behind her. Seconds later, the room was pitched in darkness aside from the glow of the lamp on my nightstand. I waved my hand in front of it to turn it off and settled comfortably to let sleep claim me.
No sooner did I close my eyes than the portal into the dream world that lay in the human consciousness shone like a glowing star in my mind's eye. I let myself float towards it, the call of the Mist growing stronger as I allowed myself to fall into its arms. The strange feeling of weightlessness followed by the impression of free falling was both unnerving and exhilarating. Halfway through, I found myself once more in my natural ethereal form. How I had missed the sense of freedom it gave me—no boundaries, no limitations.
I glided around the no man's land I had landed in situated just outside my domain. In the future, I would have to make sure that I returned into the Mist within the safety of my territory. No potential enemies or Beasts were currently lurking in its vicinity, but it wouldn't have been ideal to appear right in front of the gaping maw of a hungry behemoth.
My woman would take at least twenty to thirty minutes to fall asleep, between returning to her quarters, completing her hygiene ritual, and doing whatever other things humans—and in particular females—did before bed. That gave me a bit of time to hunt.
That Darryl was no joke. As exciting as the videos had been, they were also a major wake up call. He was powerful, probably way more than I had been before I crossed over, and definitely way more than I was now. Thomson promised I could feed off of the Beasts and Sparks they had gathered so far in their holding facility, but I doubted it would suffice. If humans had managed to lure them, then they were likely on the weaker spectrum. While any energy was welcomed, for the first time, I wasn't certain to be able to defeat a foe. In truth, I did not think I could. That messed with me in too many ways to count.
Failure was not an option.
If Darryl defeated me, I would have an extremely narrow window to escape back into the Mist before he could syphon my lifeforce. If I failed, it would mean permanent death. However, even if I succeeded to escape, I would be so weak that it would take me months, maybe even years to regain sufficient strength to return to the Mortal Plane. Time was not an issue. As long as we had the drive and will to live, Mist Beings could live for eternity in this realm. But the way the Nightmare had escalated his attacks and the boldness with which he had entered the premises filled with armed policemen only proved the extent of his power. Darryl believed himself nearly unstoppable.
Soon, he would go on a rampage and no longer hide as he gorged on everything and anything in his path. I still didn't give a damn about humans. In his shoes, I would have done the same—assuming my creator had permitted it. But his relentless pursuit of self-gratification represented a direct threat to my mate and all that she cared about. For that alone, he needed to be stopped. Beyond potential harm to my Naima, fanatic creatures like Darryl would never stop unless someone put an end to their reign of terror. Once there were no more humans or living creatures for him to hunt in the Mortal Plane, he would come back to the Mist and obliterate whatever remained of our people. By then, no amount of joint efforts would suffice to destroy him.
That made Darryl a direct threat to me.
Roaming the no man's land at my highest speed without starting to burn energy, I fed on everything I could find. Well, on almost everything. It was stupid of me not to feed on the weak Wishes freshly awakened to self-awareness. They weren't humans, and yet my mate would consider them as such now that they had become sentient. It was all the more stupid that she would never know unless I told her. And yet, the mere attempt to do something I knew would displease her sufficed to give me that nauseous feeling I'd grown to associate with Naima’s disapproval. Still, I relished their fear and gorged on their distressed emotions as I glided past them.
A tingle at the back of my head