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Becca couldn’t tell what was happening, exactly. All she saw was twisting bodies and intertwined limbs. At one point, Mal got Griz onto his back, straddling on top of his chest, pummeling down onto Griz with both hands like an enraged gorilla.
Griz covered up his head with his hands, but every slamming strike from Mal seemed to batter down his defenses more and more. Becca took a step forward, hand over her mouth, terrified for him, but Wyatt stopped her from going any further forward with a gentle arm.
She looked at him, but he simply shook his head. This was Griz’s fight to win or lose.
When she turned back, Mal was starting to bellow with each blow he landed, and now it seemed like Griz wasn’t going to be able to hold off his attack any longer.
“Gonna… fucking… kill you… motherfucker!” Mal shouted as he rained blows down on Griz, still sitting on his chest, pinning him to the ground.
Behind Mal’s back, Griz’s legs came up and then wrapped around Mal’s neck. Mal’s eyes got wide as he realized he’d been outmaneuvered, and he grabbed at Griz’s legs as they criss-crossed around his neck, but it was too late.
Griz pulled down hard with his legs and pulled Mal right off of him, trapping him inside of his criss-crossed thighs. Mal pulled and tore desperately at Griz’s legs, but Griz just clamped down even tighter, squeezing Mal’s neck like a boa constrictor.
Every bulging vein in Mal’s body bulged out even further as the life was getting choked out of him. His face turned a deep purple as he gasped uselessly for air, and then, in desperation, he bit down on Griz’s leg as hard as he could.
Griz let out a yell and rolled off of Mal and clear. Mal dragged himself to his feet, moving almost drunkenly as he grabbed a nearby axe handle off of the ground and swung it clumsily behind him.
The slow swing was easy for Griz to side-step, and then he stepped in with a heavy punch to Mal’s face. Becca could hear something crunch, and Mal doubled over, holding at his bloody mouth with one hand as he swiped the axe handle blindly with the other to keep Griz away.
Broken teeth fell from Mal’s mouth to clatter across the floor. Griz kept his distance, watched how Mal was swinging the axe handle, and then stepped in at just the right moment to catch it mid-swing.
Mal let go of his bloody mouth to try to keep his grip on the axe handle, but Griz wrenched it out of his hands easily, and before Mal could do a thing, Griz swung low and connected hard with Mal’s knee.
Mal screamed and dropped down to both knees. Griz grabbed him by the hair, and, standing over him, pulled his head back until his broken and bloody mouth was pointed straight up at the ceiling.
“Time to shut you up for good,” he said, and jammed the butt end of the axe handle down into Mal’s mouth like a stake.
More teeth broke in the process; Becca could hear them crunch even as Mal’s eyes bulged out and his beefy hands scrabbled desperately at the axe handle that Griz jammed down into his throat. But Griz didn’t stop there; leaning into it with all of his weight and strength, he continued shoving the axe handle down, down, down, like he was trying to dig a post hole.
Becca recoiled from the sight of it. Even killers like Death’s Head had trouble watching it. Most of them let out little groans or cries, cringing as they watched Griz ram the axe handle further and further down Mal’s throat until it looked like half its length had disappeared into Mal’s body.
Mal jerked and spasmed and flailed, blood spewing out of his mouth, and then finally, his thick body tilted over and he fell to the ground, dead.
Griz stood over top of him, breathing heavily, bleeding from a number of cuts on his face where Mal’s pummeling strikes had found their mark. He looked up at the rest of Death’s Head, and for a second, Becca was worried that the truce wouldn’t hold, that watching their man get killed so gruesomely would kick Death’s Head into a desire for revenge.
“Now it’s over,” Griz said, still huffing out heavy breaths.
Victor looked at him, down at Mal’s body, then at his men. Slowly, he nodded.
“It’s over,” he said.
Thank God, Becca thought.
35
It was almost a week later when the call came.
Becca was actually feeling a little off, a little woozy even, and not sure why she was feeling that way, when her cell phone buzzed. The caller ID told her it was Kate, and when she answered it, she could hear the emotion in Kate’s voice.
“You’d better get over here,” she said. “To the hospital.”
“What is it?” Becca said.
“It’s Boomer.”
Becca’s heart leapt into her throat. Not now. Not now that everything had finally worked out. Griz’s dad couldn’t be gone.
“Is he… is he dead?” she asked breathlessly.
