felt that thing with more intensity than Ronnie had felt anything in his entire existence.
Rage.
Ronnie could see it now, black tendrils forming on the edges of his existence, filling the void he left behind like smoke. It was formless and winding, surging wherever it pleased. The other ghoul seemed oblivious as he continued to feed, at least until Ronnie’s hand came up to grasp his wrist. Ronnie had stopped struggling and fallen into shock more than a minute earlier, but the movement wasn’t his own doing.
He watched in fascination as the other ghoul looked up, his eyes glazed with hunger and confusion. Ronnie’s blood was all over his face, a sight all too familiar. It seemed Miles wasn’t the only ghoul who found his blood enticing. He’d heard a rumor that even an unawakened ghoul’s flesh tasted different, inferior to a human’s. Now he knew that wasn’t true, because there was nothing in the other ghoul’s ravenous demeanor that suggested he was consuming inferior prey. Quite the opposite.
Before the man could do anything in response, Ronnie felt his hand leave the other ghoul’s wrist and press against his forehead. The strange motion only held the man in shock for an instant, before his lips curled back in a bloody snarl. Ronnie had no doubt his attacker would have delivered the finishing blow to his prey, if not for the black smoke pouring into his throat.
The ghoul threw his head back and let out a guttural scream reminiscent of an animal being slaughtered. The same scream Colt had let out when Vaughn was killing him, except that now, Ronnie could see what was happening. As the smoke flowed from his body and poured down the other man’s throat, it seemed to ravage its prey from the inside. Before long, the ghoul had collapsed on the ground to writhe like a coiling serpent. Tendrils of black smoke seemed to seep from his pores as if his flesh could no longer contain it.
It was consuming him. Ronnie stood, or rather, the thing piloting his body stood. It watched calmly and emotionlessly as the once fierce ghoul gave a helpless cry, gripping his head in agony.
The smoke felt nothing but the rage.
All Ronnie could do was stand there in the background of his own mind, watching as the smoke permeated every inch of the other ghoul until it was all he could see. The man’s body remained untouched on the outside.
Eventually, the screaming stopped and so did the thrashing. The smoke retreated into Ronnie’s throat, painless and silent, as the other ghoul’s body went still. It was pale and lifeless, but without so much as a visible scratch. Ronnie waited breathlessly for it to turn to dust.
It never did.
The numbness had returned, mercifully. Ronnie sank to his knees, not knowing if it was the smoke’s doing, or merely his own legs giving out on him.
He wasn’t sure how much time he passed that way, just kneeling in the grass and staring at the dead man in front of him. The man who had come so close to devouring him alive. It was only when he felt the drops of blood trickling down the back of his hand that he remembered his shoulder was still torn open.
The other ghoul hadn’t consumed quite as much flesh as Ronnie thought, but he was still bleeding profusely. If he didn’t get help soon, he would bleed out. It was hardly more than a passing thought and held no more meaning to him than the chill in the air. He could no longer feel the sting of either one.
What he did feel, however, was hunger. It wasn’t his own. It couldn’t be. He had never looked at another living creature, human or ghoul, and seen food. And yet, his insides were twisting into a knot of pain sharp enough to make him double over. It was so much worse than anything the other ghoul’s fangs had inflicted on him.
“Stop,” Ronnie pleaded. He wasn’t sure who he was pleading with, exactly. Or what.
Whatever it was, it ignored him. He could only watch in horror as they leaned down over the corpse, hunger roiling in their core.
Ronnie felt a wave of disgust as his own teeth tore into the man’s upper arm. Blood rushed into his mouth, still hot and fresh. For a moment, he was sure he’d grown fangs, but the other man’s flesh gave too much resistance for that to be the case. His teeth were still flat and