Ms. Connors. Zain needs your support, not your condemnation or guilt. For now, I suggest you go enjoy the company of the other two handlers before the night is over. Chances are, you won’t get to see them before their departure tomorrow. And they will not return here for another month.”
“A month!?” I exclaimed.
He nodded. “Grab some food and hop on upstairs. I’m sure they will be happy to see you.”
With a final nod, the agent went to talk to a few of his colleagues.
Chapter 14
Zain
My human vessel thrummed with an insane amount of energy that it was struggling to contain. No wonder Darryl had grown so addicted to feeding off mortals. The Warden had been a sadist. Instead of letting me simply syphon the inmates within their cells, he had released them one by one into the Mist for me to chase, while also dealing with the prowling Beasts.
It had suited me just fine.
Their terror as they fled through what I quickly recognized as a deliberately plotted maze had been beyond delicious. The exquisite taste of their lifeforce had given me such a hard-on, I believed I had leaked a little. While Warden Pritchett had taken Thomson to their watch tower so that he could observe us from a safe vantage point, I doubted the Director had realized there was more to this than met the eye.
The network of cameras along the maze, and the intense greed and excitement that had swirled around the Warden as he led me and the prisoners to the exit, convinced me some shady operation was ongoing. My gut said he had some kind of ‘death race’ betting going on, with customers watching the camera feed in real time.
I considered informing Thomson but thought better of it. I was having too much fun and gathering too much energy to risk some stupid moral rule ruining it for me—not to mention, I needed the power.
However, with the Warden releasing only one or two of the twenty-three condemned per round, the whole process lasted forever. By the time we were finally done, I could have eaten even Pritchett’s ugly face to silence the ferocious hunger that gnawed at my human body. I devoured my long overdue meal, frustrated to share it with these wretched humans and their inane conversations instead of with my woman because we’d been here so long. According to Thomson, I’d benefited from an unusually high number of prey. Normally, each state only held one or two executions a month. However, after his unexpected request to the Warden, Pritchett had reached out to the other penitentiaries to have them transfer their dead men walking to his institution.
I’d welcomed the bounty. Good on him if he’d made some illicit profit from it. I’d play along and keep mum as long as he continued to feed me the power I craved—and in this instance, needed.
The return to the base seemed to drag on even more than our trip to the penitentiary. Thomson attempted to make conversation a couple of times before giving up. He was a nice enough sort. Principled, honest, loyal, devoted to the cause, to his men, and to his people as a whole, Director Thomson was everything I wasn’t and would hate to be. He observed too many self-imposed, intangible boundaries. He was a smart man, but unless he wanted to discuss ways to make me more powerful or to get the upper hand on my enemy, I simply didn’t care to socialize or make small talk.
The only voice I would never tire of belonged to my mate. My blood boiled with lust and anger just at the thought of my Naima. I’d had such plans for us tonight, now that she’d consciously surrendered herself to me. But, by the time we landed, it was already past midnight, and my woman had turned in for the night.
My own vessel was struggling to keep its eyes open. Still, after Thomson locked me in my holding cell, I honored my woman’s wishes of hygiene ritual with the shower, the wretched floss and brushing, and the antiperspirant.
Before I yielded to my own need for sleep, I let my consciousness flow through my mind’s doorway into the Mist and immediately sought my woman. An angry snarl rose from my throat at the sight of the darkness surrounding the sliver of her consciousness that had crossed over. My mate was spawning a new Nightmare. A faceless evil that was stalking me this time, instead of her. Trapped