Page 52 of The Blood we Crave: Part Two

“You’re going to kill me? Right here?” He grinds his teeth together. “You’ll be caught before you even leave campus. These walls may be soundproof, but you won’t be able to get rid of my body.”

“How bold of you to assume there would be anything left.” My tongue drags across the front of my teeth.

I’m consciously aware that I’m breaking one of my father’s cherished rules, killing out of emotion. For the second time, I’ve drawn blood from a man for Lyra. The second time I’ve been pushed to this.

My father never had anyone worth killing for. He murdered with no purpose. Henry had never been driven out of his mind with madness. Had not been absorbed entirely by another person, that just the thought of anyone breathing near them was too much.Too close.

“Thatcher, please,” he begs, jerking in the chair. “You are not your father. Don’t be this man.”

I pull the knife back from his skin, twirling it between my fingers, rotating the blade along my palm absent-mindedly.

“You’re right, I’m not.” I nod in agreement. “I’m much worse.”

With a sigh of boredom, I stand up straight, turning to look at Lyra. Little Miss Death, quietly hiding in the corner. As if she could disappear from my eyes. Like she’s not the only thing I see in a room.

“Darling phantom,” I purr, flipping the knife in my palm. “Pick a finger.”

Her eyebrows rush to her hairline.

“What?” she murmurs, panicked, eyes bouncing between Conner’s shaky hand and my face.

“You’re welcome to pick more than one.”

She visibly swallows, shaking her head, those loose curls falling in front of her face. It throws a match on the gasoline-covered wrath inside of me. An inferno cracks through my icy exterior, and I no longer have the upper hand against my control.

Is she afraid for him? Does shecarefor him?

My chest burns at the question, molten heat searing my nerves.

“I can’t—”

“Pick a finger, or I take the fucking hand, Lyra,” I snap, my tone a feral growl.

“Wait, wait,” Conner yells behind me, but I can’t hear him over the roaring inside my head.

“Pinky!” Lyra shouts, clamping her hand over her mouth.

“Good girl,” I praise, grabbing my bottom lip with my teeth. “But not nearly good enough.”

With unbridled anger as my sole motivation, I look at Conner. He shakes his head, begging me not to. But I hear nothing as I grab at his mouth. My fingers shove behind his bottom teeth and jerk him forward so his back arches from the chair.

I rejoice in the way he tries to grapple.

With his jaw hinged open, I coil my fist around my knife, feeling the weight of it in my palm before making my move. My hand comes down in one fell swoop, striking the blade through the tender muscle of his tongue.

Stabbing is much easier than slicing. The human body is a difficult medium when you’re carving through dense flesh, but stabbing? It’s as easy as stabbing a fork through raw chicken.

Plush, slimy, easily cut.

Blood splatters onto my shirt, painting me with slashes of red. Conner screams, tears rolling down as I plunge through the floor of his mouth. I don’t stop until the hilt of my knife meets his tongue. The slicing of flesh and the squelch of torn tissue echo in the room.

He rears back in agony when I release my grip on the handle, tilting his head back just enough that I can see the end of the blade protruding from under his chin. I smirk just as he chokes, spurting blood onto the front of his clothes. It flows from his lips, coating his chin in a glossy red. His neck is corded with crimson liquid, drowning the collar of his dress shirt.

That creature inside of me feasts on his pain, starved for it. It’s been far too long since it fed.I pull my fingers from his mouth, shaking my hand and watching the blood splatter across the floor. Conner withers, then howls in the back of his throat.

The tongue is the only muscle in the entire human body that never stops moving. Which is normally a good thing, but for him? It’s misery. Every time it twitches or tries to move, it’s shredded.

More nerves sever, exposed to the open air. He feels every ounce of that pain, grumbling, strangling on words, unable to speak.

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