The Blood We Crave: Part Two (The Hollow Boys, #4)

by Monty Jay

To the morally grey and the villains we love within it.

🩶

“I have crossed oceans of time to find you.” — Bram Stroker “Dracula”

The ache of losing him is brutal. I don’t miss him, the way you miss a pair of shoes that you grew out of, a memory of a glowing summer, or even a pet you’d lost. I do not miss him. He is missing from me. A vital organ torn from my gut. A severed limb.

My heart and soul were never mine. They had always been his, and now they belong to no one. They are lost, forgotten, alone.

I warned them what I would become if they took him from me. Now there is no need to fear the reaper. They should fear the woman who loves him.

I am not her death-crossed lover. I’m the root of all evil, the seed of immorality.

Her anger doesn’t take away her desire for me. It’s embedded in her, and nothing I do will change that. I know because it works the same way for me. Our connection is a major inconvenience.

He’s not allowed to have her either. No one is. Because even though I can’t have her, she’s still my ghost. She still haunts me. And every single murderous inch belongs to me.

“The night can be cold, cloaked in bitter darkness, and even then, you can still have your fairy-tale ending.”

“You fuel more than my ego, knowing how far you’d go for me. You’d give me anything. You and that pretty, dark heart.”

I’ve felt his heart beneath my hands, committed the steady rhythm to memory, and I know it matches my own. It’s a pair, his and mine, created from the same flesh and muscle, cleaved into two separate bodies.

“Maybe I’d die for you, Thatcher Pierson,” I mumble. “But death is inevitable for us all. It’s what you’d do for me that matters.”

Lyra, sweet Scarlett, she is life that spins through graveyards. A face that echoes across the dead. Beauty so divine death can’t bring himself to touch her.

“No tears, Scarlett. Not for me,” I say. “Save those for someone who deserves them.”

No one had noticed her, that was correct. But I had. I’d noticed her long before she started following me around.

I remember that day because I heard music when she walked in. Music I’d created after the night we met. The unfinished piece, my very first.

Lyra had been my very first muse.

“My dislike never had anything to do with you, darling phantom. You were a reminder of what my father wanted me to become,” I tell her candidly. “Until one day, you weren’t.” “And now? What am I a reminder of now?” “All the things I can never have.”

She forces me to be someone I don’t know just to prevent her pain.

I never thought there would be anything stronger than the urge to kill. Until I tasted her.

I know who I am. What I am capable of. Yet my mind is always left spiraling when I leave Lyra. She does this to me and always leaves me with the same question. Who am I when I’m with her?

“There is no fear without a little hope.”

“He looks at you like he wants to be beneath your skin.”

Thatcher was perfectly made, but I was made perfect for him.

He’s marble made, sculpted, and carved with brutal strokes but still somehow carrying the soft tenderness of a human.

“Darling.” He traces the front of his white teeth with his tongue, a starved animal ready to feast. “I’d rid the world of men who breathe the same air as you.”

“You taste like my favorite nightmare.”

“I own you, Lyra Abbott. Your body, your soul, your heart. Even if I can’t have it, I own you.”

There is no real beginning for us, and there will never truly be an end. Not when the threads of fate have woven us in a never-ending loop. A love that travels lifetimes. We are a divine connection that can never be touched. Not even by the hands of death.

“I wish you’d stop me from hurting you, darling phantom,” he whispers, “because I cannot stop myself.”

I am, in fact, weak for one dark-haired girl with eyes that tell stories of the dead.

Lyra likes to believe she is nothing but death and darkness, but inside her is a soul made to love people.

Her smile is a glimpse of her love. Of her affection. Her happiness towards others.

Just as I’d told her last night, even though I can’t have her, I own her. It’s selfish and the worst kind of toxic, but I can’t bring myself to care. She’s mine.

Snow is still sprinkled throughout the curls of her ebony hair. Winter’s favorite rose.

My face heats as I lift my arm, rubbing the back of my neck, still staring at the box she’s struggling to hold up.

AWWWW HE'S SHY AND BLUSHY

“I just—I think I broke you.” Yeah, I think you broke me too.

she definitely broke him LOL

I’m trying, to no avail, to keep her at a distance so I don’t have to admit that she scares me. A man who fears nothing is afraid of all she is. All she makes me want. All she makes me feel.

“Your gift,” I state, that fluttering from earlier coming back, and I pause before I continue. “You’re sunlight.”

She presses her lips to my forehead, “YA tak lyublyu tebya, moy milyy mal’chik. No matter what, okay? No matter what.” I giggle as she rubs her nose against mine.

Translation (Russian): “I love you so much, my sweet boy.” this flashback proves thatcher's mother actually loved him even though he has no recollection of his childhood memories thanks to his father's brainwashing... like lyra, my heart aches for little thatcher.

“I crave you,” I exhale, the admission slicing my throat on its way out. “My body wants you every second of the day and twice as much at night. I want you in the most unhinged ways, ways that would scare you.”

“I was touch starved, and now you’ve fed me.” I tighten my grip on her hair, our noses rubbing against one another. “Of course I’m fucking hungry for you.”

“Then take me. Have me, Thatcher. Let me give myself to you.”

It’s the only thing I want. It keeps me up at night. The way I yearn for her haunts me.

Nothing will be the same after this; no matter how tragically we end, I will never be the same.

“You don’t need to protect me, not even from you.” She holds me tighter, as if her touch will make the words soak into my skin. “I’ll take what you can give me, don’t you see that? I would rather have you like this than live without you. There is no one else out there for me. I was made for you.”

I wish I could say that I don’t believe in fate, but if it was real, I think I would’ve been made for her too.

“You deserve more than I can ever give you. I’m incapable of holding your heart, of taking care of it. Stop giving it to me. Stop before I kill it for good.”

“I don’t want to leave you empty, Scarlett. Don’t make me leave you empty.”

“Oh, darling,” he purrs, swallowing my tears, “you’re worth it. Bloodshed and all.”