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

by Monty Jay

“I have crossed oceans of time to find you.”

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 tethered myself to him, and now he’s just…gone. He is gone, and his memory isn’t enough. Yet, it feels like all I have left.

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.

My only plan is that I’ll be breaking one of his most important rules. Do not kill out of emotion. Tonight, I am killing out of purely that.

“Remember me?” His voice is veiled in darkness. I feel his grip tighten around me, and I’m sure he feels consumed with power. I bet he feels like he’s in control; a strong, unstoppable man. And I’m just his prey. A loose end that needs to be tied up. I blink, tilting my head a bit to avoid the smell of his rank breath. “You should have killed me when you had the chance.” Confusion knits his brows together, and I take that as my opening. I press the button along the side of the knife, feeling the blade break from its hold, and before he can do more than blink, I slide the edge across the front of his throat.

I inhale the deep metallic scent, feeling his body go lax against mine. The dreaded realization that there is a dead body on top of mine starts to settle in. I wait for the guilt to follow. But it never comes. There is only a profound relief and my adrenaline slamming into my bloodstream.

Dragging him just a few more feet until he lies near the middle, I drop his feet and place my hands on my knees. I’m doing this all wrong, I know I am. Frustration eats at me, and all I want is for him to be here. Thatcher would know what to do. He would have shown me. He should fucking be here. Why isn’t he here?

“Remember that when you try to love me again.” I’d told myself for years that all I’d wanted was to shatter the light in her eyes. Smother it out with my hands around her throat. Who knew this was what would do the trick. It flutters away into the darkness, and I want to keep it. That last good piece in her, tucked away inside of a jar. But it’s gone before I have the chance to savor it. Even though this is exactly what I wanted, had been wanting, I don’t feel triumphant. Power doesn’t lace through my veins. I just feel damp. And I despise the look on her face, the one I’d purposely put there. Vacant, unmoving, hiding. But I was left with no other choice.

I can barely admit it inside my own mind that the reason I’d left, why I disappeared and why I came back, was because of her. All because of Lyra. To protect my bloody, cherry-flavored girl.

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.

Trying to ignore the way my heart is screaming. He’s so close. Touch him. Touch him. I wish she understood how hard he makes that for us. That she picked the most difficult man to love.

“If I asked, you’d die for me, darling phantom. Wouldn’t you?” I know they call him a psychopath. That he is the darkness that eats the light and nothing about him is remotely human. He can’t feel. But I’ve felt his heart beneath my hands, committed the steady rhythm to memory, and I know it matches my own.

“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.” His eyebrow arches in question. “You’d disappear again, just like you did when you were a little boy, just to keep me safe.” I push off the doorframe, turning to walk down the hallway with his eyes still on my back. “And I didn’t even ask you to.”

I place my wet shoes by the door and continue my new morning routine. Snooping around her things.

I lean against the entryway, biting my tongue as I catch a peek at the faded tattoo across the front of her ankle. Nevermore. The perfect wicked concoction of macabre and beautiful. It’s easy to stand out amongst the world of the living, but 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.

It’s a special kind of torture being this close and not touching her. If there was a way to go back and take back every touch, every kiss, every cut, I would do it. Because now, it’s all that lives in my brain when she’s around.

I walk to her coffee machine, needing to move before she does something stupid like touch me and I do something reckless like let her.

Beautiful. What a silly word to describe someone who has been quietly rotting inside for years.

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

“I don’t think finding you attractive is the problem for Thatcher,” Briar adds. “Huh?” I ask with a huff, passing the bottle in her direction. “He looks at you like he wants to be beneath your skin.” Too late for that. Far too late. He’s already there, even if he doesn’t want to be, buried deep within the cords of my veins and constantly moving through me. He’s always there.

“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.”

“Such a good fucking girl for me, pet,” he praises. “You taste like my favorite nightmare.”

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

“So, Whittaker provides the safe house to hide the girls before they’re sold overseas. Frank kept it quiet for the money, Greg was a pawn, and Stephen is pulling the strings.” I press my fingers into my eyes. “And we have nothing solid to prove any of it.” “Bingo.”

I smirk at the note next to the underlined passage. This is love. And just below her own handwriting is my own, the red pen bright against the old pages. No. It’s unwarranted devotion. His desire to love her is only because of her unwillingness to love him. You can just say Sebastian Valmont from Cruel Intentions is your type, darling. No need to go through the text that inspired the movie to prove it.

“Yeah, what were you saying?” “I asked where Conner Godfrey is in all of this.” The sound of his name makes me recoil. “In a casket.” My grip on the phone tightens.

Everything you ever need to know about a man lives in his eyes, and he desperately wants Lyra Abbott, using her kindness against her, pulling her closer for far more than just friendship. Anyone looking at her too long annoys me, but most of all, Conner. Because she smiles at him. That stupid smile.

I am not a man who deserves compassion. Especially from her. But here she stands, giving it to me regardless.

I stop abruptly because she looks like she’s about to laugh and everything I’m saying is stupid, her fingers resting over her mouth, which is curved in a humorous smile. My mouth snaps closed, and I glare, only to hear her giggle in response. My fingers release her, and I’m about to slam the door until it breaks loose from the hinges. But she reaches for me instead this time. “Wait, wait. I’m not laughing at you,” she breathes. “I just—I think I broke you.” Yeah, I think you broke me, too.

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

“Why!” she exclaims. “What are you protecting me from, Thatcher? Just tell me!” One last push and the dam inside of me falls. It shatters, exploding into small pieces and leaving no chance for rebuilding. “Me!” I yell, the sound echoing in my chest. I barely recognize my own voice. I grab the sides of her head, caging her between my palms as my fingers tangle into the hair at the back of her neck. “Me, you stubborn fucking girl. I’m protecting you from me.”

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

Had the heart of a killer been living in the boy who’d cried in third grade when he skinned his knee?

This could ruin everything, would ruin Thatcher if someone finds out. “Please,” I beg, my eyes burning. “I’m not worth this.” His finger swipes across my cheek, catching the drop of water before it falls any further. My breath catches, and I can do nothing but watch as he presses his thumb into his mouth, cleaning my tears from his skin. “Oh, darling,” he purrs, swallowing my tears, “you’re worth it. Bloodshed and all.”

“Yes, but try to make it quick. This supply closet is disgusting.” “Sorry,” Lyra mutters, standing up from the floor, the light glow of the candle highlighting the contours of her cheeks. “Next time you stab someone in broad daylight, I’ll be sure to book a room at the freaking Four Seasons.”

He lets out a heavy sigh. “Was he worth it?” I look at the girl in front of me. Waves of ebony curls frame her delicate face. She tugs off the chunky black sweater she’d been wearing, leaving her in an unholy tight T-shirt and brown pleated skirt that hangs off her waist. “No.” I press my fingers on the bridge of my nose as my eyes close. “But she was.” The line goes dead, and silence is all that’s left.

She drags her tongue across her lips, licking at the blood remaining there. I glimpse a few blood-soaked curls when she stands up. Crimson-soaked and celestial beauty. A gift wrapped in a quiet, forgotten package but within a brand of sunshine that exists only on days of mourning.

My lack of a soul wasn’t because of the evil that had infested my mother’s womb or my father’s corrupt DNA. No, I didn’t have one because it belonged to her. I think when we were created, instead of splitting our spirits in half, they gave both of them to her in order to keep them safe. To remind me, when the time was right, that all I am is hers to carry.

“I can’t stay away from you, even when I know I should. It would be the only good thing I could do for you, Scarlett.” Lyra rubs her nose against mine, nibbling at my bottom lip before breathing. “Don’t be good. Don’t stay away. Just be with me.”

“I’m fantastic with anything that requires a knife.” I snag a bottle of water, smirking. “Should I be worried about where the meat in this dish came from, Hannibal?” Thatcher rolls his eyes. “Human beings are disgusting. I don’t touch them with my bare hands, and you think I’m going to eat their flesh? Some stalker you are. Do you even know me?” My jaw drops. “You jerk!”

I expect this to shatter the vulnerable mood passing between us, but it does the opposite. It creates a memory. A core memory that I will never forget. Thatcher laughs. And it is not cold or sour. No, it’s rich and filled with passion. Like ripples in a still pond after a stone has been thrown across it, it radiates outward, pulls at the edges of his eyes, and quickly becomes my favorite sound. I don’t even realize it’s made me smile until he pecks my forehead with his lips, the remnants of his laughter tickling my skin. “Eat,” he murmurs, “before your stomach eats itself.”

“Have you tried telling him no? That you have zero interest in taking his place on the board or owning the town?” “Every chance I get. I’m super polite about it, too. I add a ‘go to hell’ after every conversation.”

“What do you have to thank me for?” I lift my eyebrow, dragging my fingers to the seam of the package, gently trying to open it. “More than I’m capable of understanding.”

“Have I ever told you that I hate when you wear your hair up?” I pull back, my eyebrows lifting to my hairline. “Sage specifically said this kind of dress was made for updos. How else was I supposed to show off the back?” His fingers work their way up my spine, touching the buttons along the way until he meets the nape of my neck. I feel him searching for all the pins holding my curls up, pulling them out one by one. “No dress is worth hiding these away.”

My heart jumps and skips in my chest, screaming over and over. You love him! You love him! Say you love him! This could’ve stayed only an obsession, but it had bloomed into something lovely and dark. A rosebush with twice as many thorns, but still breathtaking.

I try to remember a time when I wanted her dead because of how much I hated what she represented. How could I have ever wanted her anything but alive and mine?

“Do you know what I want, darling phantom?” “What?” I lean my head down so that my lips are a breath away from hers. I can savor being this close. Her heartbeat flutters against my fingertips, matching my own, and I’m not so sure we don’t share a heart. “I don’t want to be perfect if it means I have to live without you.”

Lyra’s hand moves, the tip of her finger drawing across my skin. When I glance down, I find her painting hearts with the blood that drips from her veins. Tiny, bloody hearts. They connect and leak down my chest, drying in messy strokes. She’s covering me in them. Marking my skin with the proof of her obsession. And I let her because I’m tipsy. Blood drunk on a girl intent on loving me until it kills her. Until the grave. That’s what we are, have always been. The kind of connection that began in death and would last far beyond it. Such a very grim, morbid declaration of love. So very Lyra.