in comparison, but this… This time, it was for real, and it was so much worse than he had ever imagined.
Chapter 28
Ronnie
Ronnie sat up in bed with a sharp gasp, his skin clammy with cold sweat. It had been the same nightmare every night since he had met Peter. There was no Andrew or Colt or Jason. Even the changeling was gone. There was only Vaughn and Ronnie, and the machete.
Each time Ronnie lopped off the other ghoul’s head, it seemed to make a different sound when it finally fell to the floor, as if his mind couldn’t quite remember it accurately. He really wished it would stop trying.
The heavy thump of the head hitting the floor. The sickly sound of its severed throat peeling off the hardwood. Cold, dead eyes staring back at him from sunken sockets.
Sometimes the head rotted right before his eyes. Others, it spoke and told him he was a monster now; worse even than the monster he’d always feared he would become.
Sometimes it whispered to him in the darkness, after his brain had given up on conjuring ghostly images. The voice was still there, though. Always there, always calm, always whispering.
You’re a killer now, and it won’t end with me. You’ll kill them all, every last person you love. Your mother, your father, Colt…
Ronnie always woke up before he could get any further in the nightmare, but those words were enough to linger with him the entire day.
He tried not sleeping. He tried guzzling coffee and energy drinks, watching mind-numbing TV in the den to keep his mind off the exhaustion his body longed to succumb to.
It never worked for more than a day. Just past the twenty-four-hour mark, he would lose the ability to stay awake, and the dreams that followed would be even more vivid.
That night, he had gotten to sleep at a decent time, but the dream nonetheless felt more real than it ever had.
In fact, it felt so real that when he woke up, he was surprised to be in his own bed.
It was getting worse. He knew it, and yet, he couldn’t tell anyone. Sure, there were ghoul shrinks, but he couldn’t admit that he had killed a Plague Doctor and was now being haunted in his own mind.
Ronnie had lived his entire life knowing he had to keep his world a secret from society, but now, he felt like he had so many secrets within that world that they had him up against the wall with no escape. Sometimes he lost track of what he was keeping from who, so it was just safer not to talk to anyone about any of it.
Sometimes he thought about telling Colt. Colt was the only one who might understand, but he had enough on his plate, and he’d been more distracted than usual. Ronnie couldn’t be sure, because Colt rarely told him anything these days either, but he could almost guarantee it had something to do with Jason.
It was always Jason. Now that they were supposedly no longer talking, he seemed to occupy more of Colt’s heart and mind than he ever had.
If there was anything that weighed on Ronnie’s conscience more heavily than having killed a man, it was the fact that his best friend—his only friend—was grieving the love of his life, and he was jealous. It didn’t get much more selfish and petty than that.
And yet, being disgusted with himself didn’t stop him from feeling that way. It didn’t stop him from envying the human who seemed to have no idea what he had, and who hadn’t even wanted it until Colt was out of his reach.
All Ronnie’s thoughts and memories and guilt were converging, forming a black cloud that left him barely able to think, let alone breathe. He pulled on a robe and left his room, padding quietly past the common area he shared with his parents. He could hear his father’s snores down the hall.
To his relief, the greater hallway outside their wing was empty. Colt had been stricter about who was allowed in the estate lately, keeping it to essential personnel only. That was just fine in Ronnie’s book. The less Evelyn’s cronies were skulking about, the better. He already felt watched.
Ronnie walked out onto the balcony, taking a deep breath of the crisp night air. It immediately cleared his thoughts, even though he knew the relief was only temporary. He was sure he hadn’t slept more than a few hours, but he felt awake,