Hope
I was hallucinating.
I had to be.
There was no possible way this was happening.
No other logical reason for this…for him…for all of this to be happening.
Or maybe I was dreaming?
Maybe I had dreamt this whole night up.
"Hey, Sweetheart," his hoarse voice filled my ears.
His voice.
He limped into the kitchen, gun cocked in his hand, still aimed at David who was groaning in agony on the floor.
"This isn’t real," I strangled out, shaking my head.
Staggering backwards, I clutched my swollen stomach and heaved as another contraction battered through my body.
"This isn’t real," I continued to say, groaning in agony, shaking my head, refuting this torturous hallucination. "Wake up."
His long blond hair was gone, shaved tight, but growing out a little, and the unruly beard disguised how gaunt his face had become.
But it was him.
He was here.
He was really here.
Was he?
The circles under his eyes were so dark they were almost black.
He was emaciated.
He looked like the walking dead.
But he was here.
How was he here?
"How is this happening?" I was screaming. I could hear my own voice, though it sure as hell didn’t sound like my voice. "You're here."
My voice was rising higher and higher with every word that spilled from my lips.
"Wake me up, Mom," I cried, clutching my mother like she was the last thread I had to reality. "Please, Mom, wake me up. This hurts too badly."
Mom looked absolutely dumbfounded as she stared at the man like he was a walking miracle.
"Lucky," she choked out, wide-eyed and stunned. "You were dead."
"Been there a few times lately, Lee," he replied, tone hoarse. "Have no plans on going back."
"Hu-hunter?" I strangled out, barely trusting my own mind right now. "Hunter?"
His blue eyes landed on my face then, so full of heat and life that I felt faint.
"Been through hell to get back to you, sweetheart," he said, tone gruff. "Literally."
"Lucky!" Mom shook her head in wonder. "But how…I don’t… but you're… how are you –"
"How am I here?" he croaked out. "It's a very long, very drawn out and bloody story." He rolled his shoulders and gestured to the doorway before adding, "This asshole here can fill you in."
And then in walked a grizzly looking man with greasy black hair and a matching beard.
Gonzalez?
"Aye, aye, aye, Bolillo," Gonzalez said in a thick Spanish accent. "You still calling me an asshole?"
"You killed me," Hunter shot back without missing a beat. "Anyone who kills me is an asshole in my book, G."
"Only a little," he chuckled.
"A little?" Hunter arched a brow at the man. "You shot me. Three fucking times. How 'bout I kill you a little and see how you like it?"
"You asked for my help, Bolillo, and that is what I have given you."
"Exactly," Hunter grumbled. "I asked for your help, G. Not half a dozen holes in my body."
"Three holes," Gonzalez corrected. "And I brought you back, didn’t I?"
"Hell fucking no, you didn’t bring me back, asshole," Hunter retorted. "Your doctor on demand brought me back. And then you rigged me up to a bag of blood, stuck me in the back of a goddamn cargo truck, and shipped me over the border to some shitty degenerate hospital in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. You left me in Mexico, friend. In a fucking coma for months. Where my goddamn organs were almost harvested! I'm lucky to have gotten out of that place with only a spleen missing."
"Don’t be so dramatic, Bolillo," Gonzalez laughed. "You were safe."
"Safe? You call being starved, beaten, and thrown into fighting rings when I could barely hold a blade, safe?" Hunter countered hotly. "You have a funny fucking understanding of the word safe, G."
"And yet, here you are," he countered, grinning widely. "Your enemies think you are dead. This piece of shit is close to death because he thought you were dead – because he let his guard down. And your woman is alive and well with a belly full of Bolillo." Shrugging, Gonzalez threw his hands up and said, "I see that as a glorious success, and a debt paid in full."
The sound of gurgling distracted him then, and Hunter turned his attention to David who was lying on his back as a steady stream of blood oozed from his body.
"Feel that, asshole?" Hunter hissed, standing over David, with the nozzle of his gun aimed at his forehead. "Yeah, I know you're feeling it." Hunter grinned darkly and said, "That's your body drowning itself. Doesn’t feel good, does it? That slow, aching pain? That desperate clawing need to drag air into your lungs? Won't help if you do. There's a hole in it."
He pressed his boot on David's chest and chuckled.
"Feel it, you sick son of a bitch." He pressed down harder, causing David to twitch violently. "The blood slowly leaving your body. Your pulse weakening. Feel how absolutely fucking horrifying the sensation of death is when you are in your full senses."
He crouched down beside David and shoved the barrel of the gun under his jaw. "Take it in. It could last minutes."
"You might want to step outside, ladies," Gonzalez announced with a chuckle as he leaned against the doorframe, watching on in gleeful amusement. "This is going to get bloody."
Neither one of us moved an inch.
"What was that, Davy-boy?" Hunter asked in a coaxing tone. "Did you try and say something?" He shook his head and tutted. "I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You're just gonna choke yourself quicker. Actually –" Pausing, he pulled his shirt over his head and then roughly forced the fabric into David's mouth. "You do just that."
I had to stifle a scream at the sight of Hunter's bare chest and back.
There wasn’t a slither of skin on his body unmarked
Welts, scars, bullet wounds, and huge, knife wounds dotted his body.
"Thought you killed me?" he continued to taunt, clearly reveling in the torture he was inflicting. "You did."
Crouching beside David's violently jerking body, he said, "But here's a tip – not that you're going to need it where you're going."
He tucked his gun into the back of his jeans before reaching into his boot and withdrawing a knife.
"The next time you kill a man?"
Hunter brought the knife down on.
"Make sure he stays dead."
And then he began to gut him from sternum to navel, ripping a gaping hole through his flesh, exposing intestines and blood.
With my mother's arms wrapped around me, I watched in a mixture of shock, fear, and gratitude as David Henderson closed his eyes for the final time, as death came for him in the most gruesome and unimaginably inhumane of ways.
"Always so bloody," Gonzalez groaned, scratching his jaw, as he looked down in amused despair. "Do you always have to make it so damn messy, Bolillo?"
Hunter shrugged nonchalantly. "Fucker got what he gave." He tossed the knife into the nearby sink and twisted his neck from side to side, clearly freeing out a knot of some sort. "We good, G?" Hunter extended his hand to the man. "We done?"
"Unfortunately, we are, Bolillo," Gonzalez grumbled, looking visible upset at the idea. He took Hunter's hand in his, then embraced him in a half-hug.
My body was shaking violently as I watched the exchange between them – as inconceivable pain attacked my cervix; the child in my womb demanding entry into a world that his or her father had just made a much safer place.
All the pain David had caused?
All the lives my paternal grandfather had taken?
All the other lives he had irrevocably altered with his poison?
He was dead.
He was truly gone.
It was finally over.
"You're here?" I sobbed, breaking away from my mother's arms.
I took a step forward and then quickly shuffled back like a skittish foal, unsure of whether I could trust my mind. "You're really here?"
"Yeah, baby." Standing slowly, Hunter turned to face me, blue eyes burning with intensity, he stopped just a few feet short of me and shrugged almost vulnerably. "Now, who does a guy need to kill around here to get a kiss?"
As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t kiss him.
I couldn’t throw myself into his arms.
I couldn’t do anything except try and survive the pain that was ricocheting through my body as another contraction wreaked played havoc on my cervix.