he whispered, just as Thomson and Tate were finally making their entrance.
I recoiled, startled that he should know me. I narrowed my eyes at him, obviously not familiar with his chosen human vessel. Extending my senses, I tasted his energy, and especially his fear. It was my turn to freeze as I recognized him.
“Little Weasel…” I said in a soft, almost whispered voice. “I thought you’d gotten your sorry ass siphoned at long last.”
“My name is Tobin,” the little vermin hissed. “You are a weak newborn on my territory. Here, you are no longer the apex predator. It is your turn to cower before me.”
Tobin was the typical, fanatically mindless Nightmare. His insatiable hunger and cruelty guided his every move. But he was also a coward. He only ever attacked those he knew to be significantly weaker than him, that he had an unfair advantage over, or that he could land a sneak attack on.
He launched his tendrils at me—which I had expected. But just as I raised my own to intercept it, he suddenly veered to each side of me to target my companions behind me. I barely managed to swat them down while Thomson and Tate rolled out of the way. I groaned inwardly when my shadowy tendrils struck his. It felt like punching a cement wall with my bare knuckles. While the men got back on their feet, I used my own shadowy tentacles to whip at Tobin’s human body only to meet the unbreakable wall of his ethereal shield. The way he laughed at my efforts proved I’d done more damage to myself than to him with those blows. And yet, they had weakened his armor.
Tate opened fire on the Nightmare, quickly imitated by Thomson. As much as I hated their intervention, Tobin was right. Despite all the gorging I had done, I was but a newbie Transient, still green in handling battle with this human body, and not yet powerful enough. Bullets were doing wonders breaking down the Nightmare’s shield. Replenishing it meant divesting more of his energy reserves towards it, which would weaken him to a level more manageable for me.
The attack naturally enraged the Weasel. He once more tried to strike the two males with two tendrils towards each of them, which I blocked again. This time, however, I hung on to them. Simultaneously, I summoned two more shadowy tentacles, which I shaped like giant fists and pummeled him with them. Tobin roared in anger and, for the first time, in pain as the men resumed shooting. His armor was cracking, but I needed him weaker still.
The Nightmare tried to yank me to him, both to use me as a meat shield and to have me within striking range with his own fists. I resisted while he increased the force with which he was trying to pull back his tendrils that I still held. Then, I suddenly released him, immediately following through with an uppercut from my free tendrils. Tobin flew backwards, crashing against the wall.
The female, who had cowered into a corner, dashed towards us. Tobin tried to catch her with one of his tentacles. Before I could intervene, the woman summoned a wisp of a tendril, so thin it looked like a metal wire. Without slowing down, she swiped it in an upward movement, and the damn thing sliced clean through Tobin’s shadowy limb. The severed section flopped onto the floor with a small thud, then turned into ashes within seconds.
He screeched in pain, quickly retracting his wounded tendril. I bitchslapped him with one of my own, resorbing into me the two extra ones I had previously summoned to punch him. Four tendrils were our default and didn’t drain our energy. But each additional one we summoned put a strain on our reserves—a luxury I didn’t have right now.
“You just got spanked by your newborn victim,” I taunted, while the female scurried past the men to take cover behind us. “And I had to slap you like the little bitch you are to stop your crying. You were pathetic in the Mist. You’re just as sad in the Mortal Plane. All these months feeding on humans, and this is all the power you garnered? You’re a disgrace.”
Right on cue, Tobin jumped back to his feet and made a show of displaying his power with a dozen tendrils waving around his back like a shadowy peacock’s tail.
Yes! Burn away your energy!
But even as my companions resumed shooting, the Nightmare rushed me, forcing