The Nightmare (The Mist Book 2)

My eyelids were growing heavy, but my two companions had no interest whatsoever in calling it a night and going to bed. I couldn’t blame them. I, too, had wanted to stay right next to my Nightmare the minute I’d found out he was crossing over. We’d brought in a table and three chairs for Julia, Riley, and me to sit in front of the two holding cells where the Walkers were forming at an impressively fast pace.

It stroked my ego that they weren’t forming as quickly as my Zain had. My man had completed his transition in the record time of five hours and twenty-six minutes. We had passed that mark a little over ten minutes ago with these two. Nevertheless, Merax and Letho were definitely ahead of the curve according to the average total birth time of ten to twelve hours that Thomson had reported for Transients born in the wild. By my estimate, they should awaken in the next hour, tops two. A part of me wondered if being in a completely safe environment drove them to expend more energy to form faster. Normal Transients might have gambled with taking a longer time to save as much energy as possible to sustain them while looking for their creator.

Although sleeping quarters had been prepared for both Riley and Julia, the silly man had begged and pleaded to have a camp bed brought into the room so that he could sleep next to Merax’s cell. Riley was determined to be right there when his Nightmare first woke up. To my dismay, Agent Peters had managed to get two beds in here, one for each of my companions.

But where Riley awaited the birth of Merax with the eagerness of a lover impatient to be reunited with his partner after a long separation, Julia waited with the gentle patience of the devoted mother of a child with special needs. I had never even imagined the possibility of such a scenario. It was my hope that with time, a genuine affection would develop between them instead of this relationship based on guilt, duty, and dependence.