Billy was only too happy to gear up, and he had a lot to choose from. There were enough semiautomatics, shot guns, and sharp blades to outfit an army unit.
As he picked up a six-inch hunting knife, he turned and looked at her.
Her palms, clammy before, ran wet with sweat.
He took a step forward.
Beth frowned, looking to the right just as the other two did. What was that sound?
Some kind of rumble. Thunder? A train?
Whatever it was, it was getting louder.
And then she heard an odd tinkling noise, like wind chimes. She glanced across the barn. On the table where the ammunition was laid out, loose bullets were jumping around, knocking into one another.
Billy stared at his leader. "What the hell is that?"
The man took a deep breath as the temperature dropped a good twenty or thirty degrees.
"Get ready, Billy."
By now, the sound was a roar. And the barn was shaking so violently, dust from the rafters was falling, a fine snow that clouded the air.
Billy reached up to cover his head.
The barn doors splintered apart, blown open by a cold blast of fury. The whole building swayed under the force of the impact, beams and boards shifting, groaning.
Wrath filled the doorway, the air around him warping with vengeance, with menace, with the promise of death. Beth felt his eyes on her, and then a booming battle roar came out of him, so loud it hurt her ears.
From then on, Wrath reigned.
In a movement so fast her eyes couldn't track it, he went at the blond, grabbing the man and hammering him into a stall door. The blond wasn't even stunned and nailed Wrath with a hard uppercut to the jaw. The two battered and rammed and hit each other, slamming into walls, knocking out windows, breaking tables. In spite of the weapons they carried, they stuck with hand-to-hand combat, their faces harsh, their lips peeled back, their tremendous bodies doing damage and being injured by turns.
She didn't want to watch, but she couldn't turn away.
Especially as Billy grabbed a knife and launched himself onto Wrath's back. With a vicious twist, Wrath peeled the guy off of him and pitched Billy into the air. Riddle's body flew across the space to the other end of the barn, landing in a pile of arms and legs.
Billy struggled to his feet, dazed. Blood streamed down his face.
Wrath took tremendous kicks to the body, but he didn't slow. And he was able to hold the blond off long enough to flip open one of the metal bands that held Beth's wrists in place. She went to work on the opposite side, freeing her other hand.
"The dogs! Let loose the dogs," the blond man cried out.
Billy staggered from the barn. A moment later, two pit bulls came shooting around the corner.
They went right for Wrath's ankles, just as the blond unsheathed a knife.
Beth freed both her feet and popped off the table.
"Run!" Wrath yelled to her, ripping one dog off his leg while blocking a blow to the face.
Screw that, she thought, picking up the first thing she found. It was a ball-peen hammer.
Beth went after the blond man just as Wrath lost his balance and went down. Lifting the hammer as high as she could, she threw every ounce of strength that she had into the damn thing. And brought it down square on the back of the blond's head.
There was a crack of bone and a burst of blood.
And then one of the dogs wheeled around and bit her in the thigh.
She screamed as its teeth tore through her skin and sank into her muscles.
Wrath tossed the lesser's body off him and leaped to his feet.
One of the dogs was on Beth, its mouth around her upper leg. The animal was trying to roll her on to the ground so it could go for her throat. Wrath lunged forward only to pause. If he pulled the dog free, the thing was liable to take a whole hunk of her thigh with him when it went.
Vishous's voice came to Wrath in a rush: Two guards tortured will fight each other.
Wrath tore the dog off his own ankle and threw it at the one that was attacking Beth. The other animal was knocked free. And the two pit bulls went after each other.
Wrath ran over as she fell. She was bleeding. "Beth - "
A shotgun went off.
Wrath heard a high whistle and felt his neck burn as though he'd