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.