My entire body felt numb as a quiet rage roared to life inside me. I usually only felt this brutal when storms rolled in, when I got caught inside trying to hide from the red rain.
I was vicious then, angry and wanting to tear things apart.
And I felt that same level of violence now as I picked up one of the long machetes from the fallen raiders and charged forward into the group that was swarming Phoenix.
I think it was the snarl that tore from my throat more than anything that caught their attention, and I was honestly lucky that they’d only let four of them loose. It was easy with the long reach of my new weapon to take off two of their heads before they touched me. Even though I felt angry nails digging into my arm, I still turned on the third, cutting into it with enough strength to detach the limb before it could tear me open.
It gave me room to shove the rabid together, and the fury that spiked across their features as they started to tear into one another left me room to finish them off.
It wasn’t really the rabid I was looking for anyway.
Phoenix had fallen behind the stage, and my eyes were all for the three men left above us.
The bastards who’dhurthim.
I took off at a run toward the stairs, and ignored the sensation of a bullet grazing my arm. My own gun was likean extension of my hand when I dropped the blade I’d been carrying and pulled it.
One shot, and the man shooting at me went to the ground.
Another and the one trying to run followed him.
They were clean shots.
They were meant to kill.
But the last one…
The one who was scrambling in their supplies. The one who’d thrown the fucking explosive…
I didn’t want it to be clean.
I didn’t want…
I could stillseethem.
I could see thembothlying there on the ground.
Phoenix and Bishop swirling together like ghosts.
Still because of me.
Still and hurt and…
“Fuck,” I snarled, and this time my shot took him in the hand—the same one that had thrown the explosive to begin with. The center of his palm exploded in a wash of blood and bone, and the scream that tore from his throat was pitiful. A whining, high-pitched thing that told me he was too fucking pathetic to be the kind of man who hurt someone like Phoenix.
Phoenix didn’t get hurt.
Phoenix was all strength and power, raw and real and too fucking strong for the world to touch him.
Too strong to be taken away from me, and I…
I didn’t realize I’d grabbed the man by his ruined handand pinned him beneath me until the sound of his pleading rose above the roaring in my ears.
I did realize it didn’t matter when I flipped my gun in my hand and started smashing his face in with the back of it.
Once, and his nose exploded in a wash of fluid.
Twice, and the skin above his brow split wide as he started to scream.
