Monty Jay

The Blood We Crave

Sophia

To everyone else, he is their worst nightmare.

raia – inactive

She sits there, staring at me until her lips begin to move, mouthing to me silently.

“I love you, Scar. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

She repeats it over and over again. A quiet promise. A reassurance. Hoping she can say it enough that I’ll never forget what it feels like to be loved by her. Hoping she can say it enough times that it will last a lifetime. So that even though I’ll be without her, I’ll never be without her love.

I'm so delusional I'm convinced he doesn't want her to jump to keep her alive when in reality he only wants to be the one to kill her💀😂

I’m about to die, but I don’t care. I don’t care.

“Don’t underestimate the girl willing to do anything for what she wants.”

I lean back into the empty air behind me, feeling my stomach drop as I descend towards the crashing waves below. My watery eyes make out Thatcher’s form at the cliff’s edge, peering down at

Since he never had feelings he wouldn't know but he's so jealous😂

All amusement retires from my body and is replaced with irritation so severe my skin feels like it’s on fire.

’s not because of the clothes or her worn-down shoes that still have mud on them. No. It’s the smile on her face.

Wide, blinding, pristine, and intended for Silas Hawthorne. It takes up her entire face, lifting her entire body into a state of euphoria. Lyra radiates sunshine in the doorway, sunshine that peeks through a canopy of dark green pines and stabs the forest floor.

’s a smile that falls once she sets eyes on us.

“Do not ever wipe my blood off your body without my permission again.”

Lol at least he wants her somewhat safe I guess?😂

“Did someone touch you while you were in there?”

My eyes dare her to lie or withhold information. I did not let her live just so another person could abuse her.

Lyra might be a pest, a stubborn thorn burrowed into my skin, but she is mine. Mine to deal with, mine to end. No one else.

“You better hope you’re right, Alistair. If anything happens to her.”

I grip it in my palm, pulling it out and flipping it absentmindedly over my shoulder towards him.

“Not even our friendship can protect you from me.”

The breath shoots from his lungs as I slam him with as much force as I can gather into the asphalt beneath us. His back smacks with a bang, a groan rippling from his lips as I stand over him.

I’m not asking questions or begging for an answer. I would kill him, and I would make it hurt. Sit him down in front of his mother and remove each of his ribs one by one. Pull his goddamn spine from his throat and choke him with it.

Lyra was my beacon of emotion. All these feelings I’d never once experienced were happening to me because of her.

Being close to her was making me more and more human.

“No,” my lips twitch at the corners, just enough for me to notice.

I don’t remember ever seeing him smile, not even in the halls with Rosemary.

 could always see it, though. His love lived there in those deep brown irises.

And now, well. Now, she’s dead, and so are his eyes.

“What a pair we make,” he mutters. “We love people that will never love us back.”

I let out a breathy laugh, shaking my head. “Rosemary loved you. You know that.”

“Not anymore,” he says, his jaw tightening at the admission.

 eyebrows furrow, and on instinct, my hand moves forward, resting on top of his across the board. “That love still exists, Silas.” My words carry a sense of urgency. “It doesn’t just disappear. It has to go somewhere. It is still real.”

He stares hard at my hand, allowing a beat of silence to pass between us before looking up again.

He was beneath me. A nobody in comparison to me.

This is what I wake up for every single morning.

I just happen to be in the perfect position to give her a reason to act on it.

Malnourished hearts will feast on anything that resembles love.

And I think a part of me hates them for that.

Those who have blended into oblivion and whose memory no longer exists unless to frighten people. They all feel like home to me rather than a place of mourning or sadness.

I can’t imagine the difficulty of still loving the child you bore but regretting the man you’d created.

Lyra is THE definition of down BAD (me too girl)

Essence

omfg thatcher and lyra are my new fav i fear🤭 so so insane i loved it

jenna

i never knew i would so invested over thatcher and lyra i love it i love it i love it 

camie⁷ 𓂃⊹ ˚ ༘`✦

i inhaled this book, literally read it in less than a day. all i have to say is thatcherlyra consumed me they are one of my favs they are just wow, their soulmatismthe plot of this book, omg. im obsessed with thatcherlyra their connection from that night they met until the present, i was eating it uppp i need to go read the 2nd part now yall but IM OBSESSED HOLY FUCK

- "If I become a ghost, how will you see me?"

- "What I feel for Thatcher Alexander Pierson isn't bad. It's lovely and unique, something invulnerable that regular people could never appreciate. The emotion he evokes inside of me is the only pure thing I have left.

The night his father, Henry, came into my home and shredded my entire world to pieces, he tainted all the good in me. He tore and tore every ounce of good from my soul with every stab into my mother's body. Henry Pierson gave me both my worst nightmare and the sweetest gift. The impulse to kill and a deep admiration for his son."

"Don't underestimate the girl willing to do anything for what she wants."

- "As much as it pains me to say, even inside my head, Scarlett Lyra Abbott is beautiful. Terrible dresser, nasty habits, and feral hair, but beautiful in all her obscurity.

I find classical music beautiful, foie gras striking, and the occasional scenery pleasing. But I do not find human beings attractive. They are bones, skin, and flesh. A pliable machine running on blood. I'm certainly fascinated by how much pain it can take but not pulled in by it. Yet every moment I'm forced to see her face, I'm disgusted. Not due to how she looks but because I'm required to admit the truth of her proportionate fea-tures, and that, that makes me sick. She's so exquisite it makes me palpably ill."

- "Get out of here. Be a ghost, Lyra, and go hide. Find the quiet,""You wait for me, and then you break. Only then."

"If I become a ghost,""how will you see me?"

- "More than that, I know Lyra Abbott. As much as I don't want to, as much as I want her flushed from my mind, I know her. And this is exactly how she wants to be touched. This little killer doesn't want soft kisses and sweet nothings whispered into her ear. No, she wants to be craved. For someone to ache for her in the depths of their being, to be driven mad by the desire to breathe the same air as she does, have every single molecule of their being consumed with only her. She does not want love. She needs her obsession to be fed, an unhinged addiction that seeks no cure. Devotion that the gods would kill for. There is no soft, flowery poetry that could explain what it is she needs. It requires dark, obsidian words written in blood at altars and prayed upon until your knees are bruised. And right now, I'm eager to feed that obsession inside her, to show her just how overwhelming being fixated on someone like me is."

- "I didn't want to die without kissing you first. It felt too cruel to die before I knew what it was like."

"My darling phantom,""You're not dying, not until I'm done with you."

"No," "You're my ghost, Lyra Abbott. Mine and only mine. You watch me, you exist for me."

"I'm the man you haunt." "Your scent, your smile, your touch. You have haunted me every single day since the moment I looked at you."

- "If something happens to you, I will not weep at your grave and beg for someone to bring you back." "I won't seek vengeance." "I will wage a war with no end." "If you die, it won't just ruin me, Thatcher. It will be the reason behind the slaughter of this entire town."

- "Death will have to wait for you. You're mine now."

Lyra belongs to me. She is my sickening desire, filled with morbid, grim hope and everything I should have avoided. But she belongs to no one else in this life."

- "If the Halo comes for me, like they promised, I'll take it as a compliment. But her? If they figure out what she is to me. If they come for her? I'll paint the town red.", everything about them feels just right agh i love this   - "I want her, I won't deny that to myself. She's the only person I've had any form of physical pull to, but that is all it is a physical, biological response. That's all it can be. Eyes are on my back, all with different questions, but none of them will get an answer. 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."  - "No one had noticed her, that was correct. But I had. I'd noticed her long before she started following me around. We were maybe ten when she came back to Ponderosa Springs. It was everyone's first day back to school, and I remembered her the moment she stepped into class. And 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 is the reason I make concertos for my victims. She's the initial inspiration for my uncommon trophy. She's why every murder I'd ever committed was inscribed into notes on sheet paper. Why every kill has three forms. The Selection, The Hunt, The Kill. Scelta, Caccia, L'uccisione. Music is the only way I can remember in vivid colors, with no black spots or blurry images. A way to relive those horrifyingly beautiful, powerful moments. And Lyra had been my very first muse. Yet she is the only one who doesn't have a final piece, whose file has empty sheets for the L'uccisione."  - "What are you protecting me from, Thatcher? Just tell me!" "Me!" "Me, you stubborn fucking girl. I'm protecting you from me.  - "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. Far before we stood in these bodies, someone had decided she would be the keeper of my soul, knowing I would have done far too much damage to it."  - "My firsts. I saved them for you." "I think...""I think I saved all my firsts for you too."  - "I'm an impatient gift-giver,"  "I didn't know you made it a habit to give gifts." "I don't.""But." "Valentine's Day is your favorite holiday. So, consider this a thank you." "What do you have to thank me for?" "More than I'm capable of understanding."  - "I'd always been content knowing Lyra was mine, this secret voyeur who belonged to me in the shadows of the night. I never expected that I'd want to be hers though. That I wanted to belong to her just as much as she belonged to me. If this copycat killer wasn't intent on ruining my life, I would've already made it more than clear that we were it for each other."  - "Nothing about you could ever scare me, Lyra Abbott," "All your darkness is my own. We're the same."  - "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."  - "I liked that one,"  "I'll buy you a million more." Whatever she wants, she will have it. I'd give her the world if she asked me for it."  - "I think I knew you in a past life. Do you think that's crazy?" "No." "But me wanting to know you in every life after this one might be."  - "It wouldn't matter to me if Lyra could love me or not. I would take her obsession. I would take it and feed it every day of our lives. And if she is the reason for my downfall? So be it. I'd let her do it. Hand her the knife myself and let her finish this legacy. The Pierson line could die with me. It could only ever be her that gave me my ending, because it had been me that gave Lyra her beginning."  - "I was done cleaning up after everyone except Lyra. She is the exception in every capacity. Everything I knew myself to be does not apply to who I am with her."  - "Her worries about me forgetting who I am with her are void. Not when I know that I'll always come back to her. That the me I was always meant to become is who I am with her. We are two halves of a broken hole. Two mangled people trying to find solace in all the darkness we'd been given. For years, I wished I'd never met her. That the night we met could be erased and forgotten. But now, all that matters is the girl inside the closet and the woman who came out of it alive. I wish I could've done more to save her mother, if only so I could thank her. For creating the only person on Earth I can't bear to live without. I wish I would've stopped my father, if only so I could tell Phoebe Abbott that her daughter would never be alone again. That no matter what end we meet, she will always have me. In life and in death."  - "Are you sure?"  "I want a constant reminder of who my home is. "I want to look at your mark every day so that I never forget the parts of me that have always belonged to you, darling phantom."  - "The sting of this blade. I feel this when I touch you. When I'm around you, it's like fresh cuts. Painful in a way I crave," "What is that one?" "Tell me," "What is it for you?" "Love." "That's what love feels like for me. It stings, it hurts, because it's real and you're afraid of losing it. But it stays with you. It scars."  - "I wanted it to sound like mourning because a part of you died the night we met." "Thank you for loving me with what remained." "Thank you for letting me be your ghost. For seeing me," "I can't wait to haunt you for the rest of our lives and the ones after that."  - "Do you wanna leave?" "I'm content where you are. Location is only semantics." "What about if I said to the grave?" My darling phantom. How does she not realize yet that I would follow her anywhere? That she will never be alone again. My ghost. All of those grim fairy tales had only prepared her to love me. To accept the love I give her. She is made of nightmares and crimson kisses. If she wanted my heart, I'd give it to her. She could keep it on a shelf in one of her jars it was never mine to begin with. Not when it's always been hers. "Death is trivial. He can't keep you from me. I'll follow you to the grave every time and find you in each life after."

Renata

i inhaled this book, literally read it in less than a day. all i have to say is thatcherlyra consumed me they are one of my favs they are just wow, their soulmatismthe plot of this book, omg. im obsessed with thatcherlyra their connection from that night they met until the present, i was eating it uppp i need to go read the 2nd part now yall but IM OBSESSED HOLY FUCK

- "If I become a ghost, how will you see me?"

"I won't."

- "What I feel for Thatcher Alexander Pierson isn't bad. It's lovely and unique, something invulnerable that regular people could never appreciate. The emotion he evokes inside of me is the only pure thing I have left.

The night his father, Henry, came into my home and shredded my entire world to pieces, he tainted all the good in me. He tore and tore every ounce of good from my soul with every stab into my mother's body. Henry Pierson gave me both my worst nightmare and the sweetest gift. The impulse to kill and a deep admiration for his son."

- "Lyra, don't you dare."

"Don't underestimate the girl willing to do anything for what she wants."

- "As much as it pains me to say, even inside my head, Scarlett Lyra Abbott is beautiful. Terrible dresser, nasty habits, and feral hair, but beautiful in all her obscurity.

I find classical music beautiful, foie gras striking, and the occasional scenery pleasing. But I do not find human beings attractive. They are bones, skin, and flesh. A pliable machine running on blood. I'm certainly fascinated by how much pain it can take but not pulled in by it. Yet every moment I'm forced to see her face, I'm disgusted. Not due to how she looks but because I'm required to admit the truth of her proportionate fea-tures, and that, that makes me sick. She's so exquisite it makes me palpably ill."

- "Get out of here. Be a ghost, Lyra, and go hide. Find the quiet,""You wait for me, and then you break. Only then."

"If I become a ghost,""how will you see me?"

"Pet," "I have always seen you."

- "More than that, I know Lyra Abbott. As much as I don't want to, as much as I want her flushed from my mind, I know her. And this is exactly how she wants to be touched. This little killer doesn't want soft kisses and sweet nothings whispered into her ear. No, she wants to be craved. For someone to ache for her in the depths of their being, to be driven mad by the desire to breathe the same air as she does, have every single molecule of their being consumed with only her. She does not want love. She needs her obsession to be fed, an unhinged addiction that seeks no cure. Devotion that the gods would kill for. There is no soft, flowery poetry that could explain what it is she needs. It requires dark, obsidian words written in blood at altars and prayed upon until your knees are bruised. And right now, I'm eager to feed that obsession inside her, to show her just how overwhelming being fixated on someone like me is."

- "I didn't want to die without kissing you first. It felt too cruel to die before I knew what it was like."

"My darling phantom,""You're not dying, not until I'm done with you."

- "I'm your rose." "You're my thorns."

"No," "You're my ghost, Lyra Abbott. Mine and only mine. You watch me, you exist for me."

"What does that make you?" 

"I'm the man you haunt." "Your scent, your smile, your touch. You have haunted me every single day since the moment I looked at you."

- "If something happens to you, I will not weep at your grave and beg for someone to bring you back." "I won't seek vengeance." "I will wage a war with no end." "If you die, it won't just ruin me, Thatcher. It will be the reason behind the slaughter of this entire town."

- "Death will have to wait for you. You're mine now."

"He can't have either of us," 

Lyra belongs to me. She is my sickening desire, filled with morbid, grim hope and everything I should have avoided. But she belongs to no one else in this life."

- "If the Halo comes for me, like they promised, I'll take it as a compliment. But her? If they figure out what she is to me. If they come for her? I'll paint the town red.", everything about them feels just right agh i love this   - "I want her, I won't deny that to myself. She's the only person I've had any form of physical pull to, but that is all it is a physical, biological response. That's all it can be. Eyes are on my back, all with different questions, but none of them will get an answer. 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."  - "No one had noticed her, that was correct. But I had. I'd noticed her long before she started following me around. We were maybe ten when she came back to Ponderosa Springs. It was everyone's first day back to school, and I remembered her the moment she stepped into class. And 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 is the reason I make concertos for my victims. She's the initial inspiration for my uncommon trophy. She's why every murder I'd ever committed was inscribed into notes on sheet paper. Why every kill has three forms. The Selection, The Hunt, The Kill. Scelta, Caccia, L'uccisione. Music is the only way I can remember in vivid colors, with no black spots or blurry images. A way to relive those horrifyingly beautiful, powerful moments. And Lyra had been my very first muse. Yet she is the only one who doesn't have a final piece, whose file has empty sheets for the L'uccisione."  - "What are you protecting me from, Thatcher? Just tell me!" "Me!" "Me, you stubborn fucking girl. I'm protecting you from me.  - "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. Far before we stood in these bodies, someone had decided she would be the keeper of my soul, knowing I would have done far too much damage to it."  - "My firsts. I saved them for you." "I think...""I think I saved all my firsts for you too."  - "I'm an impatient gift-giver,"  "I didn't know you made it a habit to give gifts." "I don't.""But." "Valentine's Day is your favorite holiday. So, consider this a thank you." "What do you have to thank me for?" "More than I'm capable of understanding."  - "I'd always been content knowing Lyra was mine, this secret voyeur who belonged to me in the shadows of the night. I never expected that I'd want to be hers though. That I wanted to belong to her just as much as she belonged to me. If this copycat killer wasn't intent on ruining my life, I would've already made it more than clear that we were it for each other."  - "Nothing about you could ever scare me, Lyra Abbott," "All your darkness is my own. We're the same."  - "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."  - "I liked that one,"  "I'll buy you a million more." Whatever she wants, she will have it. I'd give her the world if she asked me for it."  - "I think I knew you in a past life. Do you think that's crazy?" "No." "But me wanting to know you in every life after this one might be."  - "It wouldn't matter to me if Lyra could love me or not. I would take her obsession. I would take it and feed it every day of our lives. And if she is the reason for my downfall? So be it. I'd let her do it. Hand her the knife myself and let her finish this legacy. The Pierson line could die with me. It could only ever be her that gave me my ending, because it had been me that gave Lyra her beginning."  - "I was done cleaning up after everyone except Lyra. She is the exception in every capacity. Everything I knew myself to be does not apply to who I am with her."  - "Her worries about me forgetting who I am with her are void. Not when I know that I'll always come back to her. That the me I was always meant to become is who I am with her. We are two halves of a broken hole. Two mangled people trying to find solace in all the darkness we'd been given. For years, I wished I'd never met her. That the night we met could be erased and forgotten. But now, all that matters is the girl inside the closet and the woman who came out of it alive. I wish I could've done more to save her mother, if only so I could thank her. For creating the only person on Earth I can't bear to live without. I wish I would've stopped my father, if only so I could tell Phoebe Abbott that her daughter would never be alone again. That no matter what end we meet, she will always have me. In life and in death."  - "Are you sure?"  "I want a constant reminder of who my home is. "I want to look at your mark every day so that I never forget the parts of me that have always belonged to you, darling phantom."  - "The sting of this blade. I feel this when I touch you. When I'm around you, it's like fresh cuts. Painful in a way I crave," "What is that one?" "Tell me," "What is it for you?" "Love." "That's what love feels like for me. It stings, it hurts, because it's real and you're afraid of losing it. But it stays with you. It scars."  - "I wanted it to sound like mourning because a part of you died the night we met." "Thank you for loving me with what remained." "Thank you for letting me be your ghost. For seeing me," "I can't wait to haunt you for the rest of our lives and the ones after that."  - "Do you wanna leave?" "I'm content where you are. Location is only semantics." "What about if I said to the grave?" My darling phantom. How does she not realize yet that I would follow her anywhere? That she will never be alone again. My ghost. All of those grim fairy tales had only prepared her to love me. To accept the love I give her. She is made of nightmares and crimson kisses. If she wanted my heart, I'd give it to her. She could keep it on a shelf in one of her jars it was never mine to begin with. Not when it's always been hers. "Death is trivial. He can't keep you from me. I'll follow you to the grave every time and find you in each life after."

The ending was so shocking. It came out of nowhere and I had no time to process it because the next page was just empty💀

Lyra and Thatcher reminded me so much of Aaron and Juliette (if you ignore the stalking and psychopathy lol) Thatcher was 1st book Aaron/Aaron during the machete scene and Lyra was 3rd/4th book Juliette. Some things in paticular were so Aaron Juliette coded it was insane. I loved them.

The fact that Thatcher is a psychopath - they never used the correct medical term tho so idk if he was diagnosed as well - and feels nothing for people was so interesting. He's loyal to a fault but he wouldn't mourn a single one of them which is so fascinating. I keep thinking deep down he feels for them because I just can't understand it but every time he reminds Lyra that he feels nothing he reminds me as well haha I'm too delusional to accept his personality.

The ending was so shocking. It came out of nowhere and I had no time to process it because the next page was just empty💀

Lyra and Thatcher reminded me so much of Aaron and Juliette (if you ignore the stalking and psychopathy lol) Thatcher was 1st book Aaron/Aaron during the machete scene and Lyra was 3rd/4th book Juliette. Some things in paticular were so Aaron Juliette coded it was insane. I loved them.

The fact that Thatcher is a psychopath - they never used the correct medical term tho so idk if he was diagnosed as well - and feels nothing for people was so interesting. He's loyal to a fault but he wouldn't mourn a single one of them which is so fascinating. I keep thinking deep down he feels for them because I just can't understand it but every time he reminds Lyra that he feels nothing he reminds me as well haha I'm too delusional to accept his personality.

Before reading check trigger warnings and understand this book contains murder, sociopathy and psychopathy, intense obsession, stalking, and many other potentially triggering topics.

This was one of my most anticipated books this year, and it did not disappoint. 

The character development of my favorite sociopath and psychopath was everything I needed from them. The depth to which they are connected is unrivaled and the build up of their relationship was one of the most well done stories I have read this year. I needed more of them than I needed my next breath. The romance aspect between the two is so well thought out in regards to who the characters are I can’t help but be rendered speechless. 

This book had me hooked from page one. Please be informed this is part one and ends in a cliffhanger.

Gabriella Lanouette

Before reading check trigger warnings and understand this book contains murder, sociopathy and psychopathy, intense obsession, stalking, and many other potentially triggering topics.

That being said:

This was one of my most anticipated books this year, and it did not disappoint. 

The character development of my favorite sociopath and psychopath was everything I needed from them. The depth to which they are connected is unrivaled and the build up of their relationship was one of the most well done stories I have read this year. I needed more of them than I needed my next breath. The romance aspect between the two is so well thought out in regards to who the characters are I can’t help but be rendered speechless. 

This book had me hooked from page one. Please be informed this is part one and ends in a cliffhanger.

The Blood We Crave

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