Page 17 of The Blood we Crave

It’s better than Bach. Better than Mozart and Brahms.

This is my favorite form of music.

“Keep screaming.” I speak loudly. “You’re only doing it for my benefit. It’s only cheering me on, making me want to carve you deeper.”

I finish flaying his entire index finger, moving to the next, admiring the way his ligaments match the tile on my floor. Tightly wound cords of tough elastic tissue glisten underneath the harsh light above us.

This is much different than studying books and diagrams. Nothing compares to seeing the human anatomy with your own eyes. To feel sticky blood streaming across your hands and the smell of iron in the air. Knowing you are the wielder of pain and death.

I submerge myself into the process, in the beautiful gore and carnage. This is what I was made for. My nimble, long fingers were fabricated for inflicting torture. I was designed to kill.

I admire my work. His entire hand is completely skinned and raw, the skin flapped over and under his wrist. I chuckle thinking about how it reminds me of the banana I’d peeled this morning for breakfast. It always amazes me what the human body looks like in its natural state.

“Hey, none of that,” I say, slapping the side of Walters’s face to pull him back down to reality, his eyes fighting the urge to close. “I want you to stay awake. Talk to me. I asked you a question earlier—do you kill girls because of your love for your daughter? Or is it because you secretly have one of those disgusting fetishes for your own kin?”

Tears leak from the corners of his eyes, and his body shakes. Paleness has taken over his skin tone, and I know it’s because he’s going into shock. The blood loss is taking its toll. However, he should last till at least the shoulder before he bleeds out. Maybe if I’m lucky, he’ll still be conscious when I start the other hand.

“I—” He chokes on a sob. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it. I can’t control it. I’m sorry.”

I hate this part. It happens every single time.

The apologizing for their actions. The excuses.

I’m sick

I need help.

I can’t control it.

They all die atoning for their crimes, hoping that some god will forgive them in their final minutes so they don’t spend eternity in some everlasting hell.

It’s pathetic.

“You disgust me,” I say absent-mindedly, digging a little too deep into his forearm with the blade. I swiftly swap the scalpel for a thicker knife, something hunters call a gut hook, a special type of blade in which the spine has a sharpened semicircle ground into it. I catch a piece of exposed skin, burrowing beneath the last layer right above the muscles, and begin to peel his flesh back from the bone.

Crimson clouds my vision.

“You should be sorry,” I grind out, “not for what you’ve done but for calling yourself a killer. You are not a killer, Walter. Not a good one. Not even close. You’re a coward with mommy issues.”

Although my words become more vicious, my hand remains consistent. It would be easy to slice and dice him like he did to all those girls. That would require zero skill and effort.

It takes years of discipline and practice to remain in control. To stay steady and refuse to let the bloodthirsty urge to end him take over. That takes mastery.

And I’d conquered the art of killing from a very young age. How could I not? When your father is a serial killer, one who is determined to never let his name die out, you become what you know.

Raised by a monster. Become a monster.

My father killed because he was angry at women. He had no impulse control. I kill other murderers, not because of some morality complex or that I feel the need to save people, to make the world a better place.

No, I am not the morally gray vigilante.

I kill other serial killers because I live for the thrill of outsmarting them. All of them. Of proving over and over again that I’m the best. No one is better at bringing death than I am.

He wanted to own my legacy. Wanted to own the fact he’d created thisthinginside of me. Because that’s what Henry Pierson did—he owned people. And now that he is in prison, I’m his last hope of notoriety and fame.

But I refuse to allow someone who is not my equal to own anything of mine. Not anymore.

“But tonight,” I breathe, watching him hemorrhage before my very eyes. He won’t be in the land of the living for much longer. “Tonight, Walter, you get to be taken out by the best one. An excellent one. And that is a privilege that should bring you comfort.”