Page 57 of The Blood we Crave

“Until I started wanting people to hurt others. I’d hope they would do something bad, just to excuse the urge to harm them. I needed them to justify my need to see them bleed.”

I’m rarely rendered speechless. I seem to always have some quick quip or statement, but her talking about this has me grasping for words. She’s talking about something that I can almost taste. The intense tang of metallic that surges up into your mouth when the appetite overtakes you. Every single base instinct is engulfed by the urge to kill. To cut. To hurt.

Never in my life have I spoken to anyone who has experienced it the way I do. Not my father or my grandparents. No one.

The guys, they know darkness. They know corruption and mayhem that are bred from neglect. How abuse can forge boys into soulless men. They know what it feels like to be cast out and damned for things you have no control over—your birth order, a car accident, the crimes of a parent, or a mental illness.

But they don’t know this.

The yearning that feels like it might consume you, body, mind, and soul, every second of the day. Something takes over like a virus, coating every molecule in your being, and doesn’t leave until you’ve drained all the life from someone’s body.

“Do you—” She bites the inside of her cheek, twirling the ring on her pointer finger, something I’ve noticed she does often. “Do you kill children or women?”

What does this question say about her? That she has never known the answer to this question and yet has still followed me around. My little shadow allowed herself to become this obsessed with me and still isn’t sure if I harm those labeled innocent.

Would my answer change how she felt? Would that sparkle that lights her eyes every time she looks at me dwindle away? Or is her fixation strong enough to withstand something this harrowing?

Had Lyra done exactly as her mother had?

Fallen in love with a monster?

I think it’s a trait all the Abbott women carry, a gene that Phoebe Abbott had passed down to her daughter that makes her attracted to men like me—soulless, emotionless, and every inch a psychopath that enjoys hurting others.

“No children. Preying on children is a cowardly thing to do. What does tricking the innocent mind prove? Nothing,” I say simply, walking past the tombstones of my great-great-grandparents. “I usually hunt those who make kids their victims.”

“And women?”

A cruel smile hitches on my face as I look over at her, watching the way she readjusts her grip on the shovel, reminding me of when I was just a small child doing this same thing once.

One lone, dark curl blows in front of her face, and only because my hands are wrapped in leather gloves do I reach out. My fingers tuck the frizzy hair behind her ear.

“There is only one woman I’ve ever wanted to kill, so terribly bad that I can almost taste how sweet her blood would be on my tongue. How pretty she would be, twisted up in anguish on my table.”

Jade eyes search my face as I stroke the backs of my fingers against her cheek, a stark contrast between my black gloves and her pale skin. Her mouth opens slightly as she waits for my answer, hanging on my every word.

“And that’s you, pet.”

My hand lightly taps her cheek, dismissing her without a second thought, before I continue strolling through the cemetery. I don’t need to look in order to see I’ve left her speechless, mouth slightly open as she stares at the back of my head.

Lyra would die beautifully. It almost makes me jealous that Death himself would have time to take her before I did.

“Asshole,” she mutters softly, but I hear the smile in her voice.

Our walk ends when we get to the plot of land I’d been looking for. The large patch of grass is several inches away from any relative already buried here.

“Aren’t you going about this a little backward? I mean, shouldn’t digging a grave be the bottom of the how to get away with murder list? I need to learn how to kill someone before I even think about what to do with their body. What if I don’t even wanna bury them? There are other methods of disposal—pigs, dismemberment, acid—”

“Please stop talking.” I interrupt that disaster of a spiral before it spins any further. “I’ve told you this before. You already know how to kill someone, Lyra. I watched you.”

Something intense burns in my gut. Glimpses of Lyra covered in blood, clutching the knife in her right hand so tightly her knuckles were blinding white. The sparkle in her eyes as she peered down at the body that had lain dead between us. Once again, death had been the bridge that linked our souls. I’d started to wonder why it was always her at the other end.

“You sliced a man’s throat, right in front of me. You did that all on your own. Accept that you already are what you so desperately want to become, or it will drain you. Do you understand?”

“I know that. I just—”

“Say it,” I snap, my hands sliding into the pockets of my overcoat.

“I thought you wanted me to stop talking.”

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