Chapter Nineteen. Malachi
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Malachi
The steady beep and hiss of the machines monitoring Eshe’s vitals and keeping her alive fill the air in the large, private hospital room.
It’s been three days since she was rushed into surgery for the devastating gunshot wound to her back.
If that rifle shot had been just a centimeter off, it would have penetrated her heart.
But it ended up piercing her right side and nicking her lung.
Thank God, Doc was able to stabilize the wound before the ambulance got there.
And yeah, I said thank God. Because in that span of seventy-two hours, God and I have come to an understanding where we’re at least on speaking terms again.
Especially since the doctors said those minutes and that care had made the difference between Eshe being alive long enough to make it to that OR and ending up with a sheet pulled over her head and a tag on her toe.
Shit.
I can’t even think about that option.
Can’t …
My breath catches in my throat, and I grind the heels of my palms against my burning eyes. I’ve slept maybe a total of twelve hours in the last three days. And I haven’t moved my ass from this chair except to take a piss. None of us have.
Hospital rules mandate only one person should be in here at a time, given the severity of Eshe’s injuries.
But after the first time the doctors tried telling us that, no one attempted to again.
Not one of us has budged: Tera, Nef, Doc, Kenya, Maura, Sienna, me—even Jamari.
We’re all crowded on the couches, chairs, floors.
They refuse to leave their new oba.
I refuse to leave my new … everything.
I grind harder until green sparks flare behind my lids and a low ache makes its presence known, joining the others all over my body.
At least I was able to have the cuts inflicted by Abena tended to by one of the residents here.
They also cleaned and dressed the amputation of my finger.
I’ve been so consumed with Eshe, I haven’t given much thought to that.
Now I brush a touch over the bandage, and then my gaze drifts to Eshe’s hand and her missing pinkie.
Abena could take the entire fucking hand if it means Eshe pulls out of this whole and fully healed.
“I just talked to Penn,” Sienna says, standing from the couch and setting her phone on the arm.
She lifts her arms, stretching. “She said she’s feeling much better and is on her way here to be with us.
Her parents aren’t happy about it, but she’s already pissed about missing out on everything else, so not much they can do. ” She snorts.
“I’m sure Eshe’ll like seeing her when she eventually wakes up.
” Maura walks to the side of the bed I’m not posted on.
She brushes her fingertips over the back of Eshe’s hand.
“Where’s that damn doctor? He hasn’t been in here this morning to see her.
He said she should be waking up by now,” she snaps.
I prop my elbows on my thighs, leaning forward and studying Eshe’s face.
The dense fringe of her lashes. The tilted slopes of her cheekbones.
The plump fullness of her mouth. The thick mass of her curls splayed around her head.
The steady rise and fall of her chest. The tube inside her mouth, running down into her chest, helping her breathe.
In some ways, she appears to be just sleeping.
But it’s more than that. She’s not conscious. She’s beyond me. Separated from me.
Away from me.
“I’ll go find him.” Tera stands from the recliner and heads toward the door.
Just as she reaches for the handle, the door swings open, and the hooded woman who joined them in that last battle enters.
The face mask is gone, but with her head bent, I can’t see her features.
This is her first time visiting the room in the days since Eshe’s been here, and I surge to my feet, stalking across the room toward her.
“Who the hell are you?” I growl.
For a moment, she doesn’t move, doesn’t answer me. Just as I’m ready to drag a reply out of her by any means necessary, she lifts her head and tugs her hood off.
My chest tightens, my lungs stuttering.
I can’t breathe. I can’t fucking breathe.
It’s an impossibility as I meet gray-blue eyes identical to mine.
As I look into the light brown face of my sister.
Miriam.
I stumble backward, a dull, deafening roar filling my head, roaring in my ears. The floor sways, rises to meet me. My back slams into the wall, the impact jarring.
And none of it penetrates, none of it, because I’m staring at a ghost.
“Miriam,” I rasp.
After a brief hesitation, she nods.
I shake my head as if trying to cast off this surreal reality that feels like a dream.
“Miriam,” I repeat. “It can’t be … How…?” I can’t complete my sentences. Can’t get my words together to form a coherent thought. Not when the baby sister I believed was dead is standing in front of me. Alive. Not covered in blood and bruises.
From the depths of my battered and dirty soul, a hoarse cry barrels up my chest, claws its way into my throat, and escapes me before I can trap it.
In two strides, I’m across the room and wrapping my arms tight around my little sister. She stiffens against me, and I almost back away, let her go. I, more than anyone, understand space, avoidance of touch. But I can’t. I can’t let her go.
Because a part of me is terrified that if I do, she will disappear.
After several long moments, her body gradually relaxes, and she lifts her arms, sliding them around my waist. And clinging hard to me.
A shudder ripples through me, and I draw her closer, pressing my cheek to the top of her head.
How long we stand there, I don’t know. We have an audience in the room, but when I finally lift my head, I look around and am surprised to see it’s empty except for Eshe still sleeping in her hospital bed.
“Miriam.” I say her name again because, shit, I can. “How are you here? And not just in this room, but here? Alive? Where have you been? Last time I saw you…”
I can’t finish that thought, don’t even want the image in my brain.
“Can we sit down? This might take a while.”
“Yeah.”
We get seated on the couch, and I just stare at her. She’s a replica of Sharon Bowden, our mother. And except for the eyes, little remains of the girl I remember.
I take in the hood. The formfitting black jacket and cargo pants. The combat boots. Remember the mask from three days ago.
And it clicks.
“You’re Poison.”
“And you’re the Huntsman.”
Silence settles between us, and the heavy knowledge of what we have become echoes in that quiet.
“Tell me everything,” I murmur, though part of me is afraid to hear her truth.
She inhales, then slowly releases a low yet audible breath.
“I don’t remember much about … that night.
Maybe I blocked most of it out? I just know what the nurses and social worker told me when I woke up in the hospital.
I had been badly beaten, with a broken arm, fractured ribs, head trauma, and a brain bleed.
They thought I’d been shaken, that’s how bad the injuries were.
The doctors called me a miracle of science because I recovered with almost no lasting damage. ”
The familiar rage leaps to life inside me, and I want to dig up our foster father and bludgeon him to death again. The list of injuries she described? They’re horrific for a child. Little more than a baby.
“When they took you out of the house, though, I thought you were dead. They said you were gone.”
“I coded a couple of times from what I understand. So yeah, I guess I did die. And I was in the hospital for weeks. They wouldn’t let me call you or bring you to see me.
I cried for you, begged them to get you, but they said seeing you would retraumatize me.
By the time I could leave the hospital and they placed me in a new foster home, the social worker said you had run off and they couldn’t locate you.
It wasn’t until years later that I found out you’d run after killing our foster father. ”
“How did you discover that?”
“’Cause I went to kill him,” she says, so simply that if I weren’t who I am, the unbothered tone might concern me. But I am who I am. And pride flickers in my chest, not worry.
“How did you become Poison?”
“I was recruited. Creed came looking for me when I was twelve.”
“So you know about our father?” I ask.
“Yes.” She leans forward, propping her elbows on her knees.
“I don’t know how they found me, but they did.
When they told me about Dad’s history, I wanted what they could teach me.
I don’t know if I woke up in that hospital changed or if this …
darkness was inherited. Either way, I welcomed being a part of Creed.
It gave me structure. Gave me purpose. Revenge.
And eventually, it gave me a way back to you. ”
I clench my jaw at that, swallowing the accusatory words that singe my tongue. But she smiles, cocking her head, those identical blue eyes roaming my face.
“You’re wondering why I didn’t reach out to you sooner.
The short answer is Creed wouldn’t allow it.
They believe family, relationships, they make you weak.
And they constantly used Dad as an example to beat that point home.
If I had contacted you, tried to form a relationship with you, it would have put a target on your back.
One thing I do remember from that night and ones before it?
You fought for me. Protected me. And I had to do the same for you.
I owed that to you. So I settled for watching over you from a distance.
It’s all I could allow myself. Until Abena took you. ”
I rub a hand over my head, drag it down my face.
It’s a lot to take in. Not only is my little sister alive but she’s one of the most feared assassins the world knows.
She’s been watching over me like a dark angel, and I never knew it.
The shock still clings to me like cobwebs, but I let myself start to believe that this isn’t a cruel fever dream.
That I won’t wake up and find my sister has disappeared.
“I thought I lost you twenty-four years ago,” I say, my voice rough, serrated.
“I’ve relived that night over and over again.
Sometimes I’ve dreamed where I saved you, put my body between yours and Frank’s, and fought him off until the cops got there.
But most times, I fail. Fail you, fail me.
Fail Mom and Dad. I’m sorry, baby girl. That’s what I’ve always wanted to tell you if I ever had the chance.
I’m sorry I wasn’t able to keep Frank away from you.
I loved you. You were my baby sister, my last family.
You are my last family. I know what you’ve told me, but that’s probably only the sanitized version of what you’ve been through these last two decades, where you’ve been, what you’ve had to do to survive.
Probably the same I’ve had to do, if not worse.
And I don’t care. I’m glad you did it all, baby girl.
I’m glad you did every fucking thing because you’re still living and I get to see you again, get to have you in my life again. ”
She blinks, and there’s surprise in her gaze. Surprise and something more. Uncertainty, maybe. Longing. Fear. I’m well acquainted with it all.
“I don’t know what repercussions you’re facing from Creed.
But I’m warning you right now, I’m willing to go to war with the whole fucking organization to have you back in my life.
I want to get to know you again. To find out if your favorite food is still apples.
If you still get cranky when you’re tired.
If you still need the TV on to sleep.” I huff out a laugh.
“I’ve missed out on too many years to lose you again. ”
Miriam glances away from me, and her jaw works, a vein at her temple throbbing.
“Yes, yes, and no. Music now,” she whispers. After a moment, she turns back to me. “I can handle Creed. You don’t fuck with the person who knows where the bodies are buried.”
I reach for her, and she stretches an arm out for me at the same time. We pull each other close and embrace again.
Thankful for us. For who we were, who we’ve become.
Letting go of what we had, what we lost.
Finally grieving my family.
My sister may not be a ghost, but in this moment, I’ve exorcised mine.
“That better be your sister you’re hugged up on.”
My head jerks up at the thin, pained, but audible words coming from the hospital bed.
Surging to my feet, I rush across the room and stare down into the beautiful eyes I’ve been begging God to open for the last three days.
Those eyes that were the first to see right through me and uncover what I tried so hard to deny and hide in my heart have opened once again.
She licks her lips and swallows.
“Mine, huh?” she whispers.
I go to speak, but nothing emerges. I had all those words for Miriam, but for Eshe, they’re lodged in my suddenly too-tight throat, trapped by the thick tangle of emotion there. I manage a nod and lean over her, my fists pushing into the pillow on either side of her head.
“Yeah,” I rasp, close my eyes, then press my forehead to hers. “Yeah.”