32)

The Sheriff couldn’t have gotten here this fast, so maybe it the Deputy firing a warning shot?

I looked over at the security monitors on the desk and in the area lit up by the motion activated flood lights a big dark wolf was veering away from the three men now standing on the driveway that went up to my front door, one holding a hand gun and trying to line up a shot on a smaller lighter colored wolf circling them.

“Why?” Why would they show up as wolves? They knew these guys were prepared to fight wolves right?

This was the county deputy, she could have showed up with a badge and a gun and just faced off with them until the Sheriff got there. What the hell were they thinking?

And she had a little girl...”Stay inside, no matter what, no arguing!” Ami flinched, but didn’t go off magically, while Sara just looked pissed but stood aside, I noticed Aran was now bleary eyed awake as I strapped on my old duty belt, checked the safety on my service pistol, holstered it along with two clips and then checked that my shotgun was on safety as well before shouldering it and locking the gun cabinet.

Everything was still loaded up from the night before, I had ultimately decided not to have a armed confrontation with the then unknown sheriff, but that hadn’t meant that one might have been coming to me.

I headed out of the safe room and turned to Sara. “Lock it behind me, and don’t open it for anyone but me or your parents. She nodded, still mad.

Was she mad because I wasn’t taking her, or that I was going at all...or because I yelled? We could talk later, no time for her hurt feeling right now.

The door slammed behind me as I headed out the library door, leaving it unlocked behind me. No one locked a door unless they had something to protect behind it, so let them wander into the library, find no one and wander back out.

By the time I got to the front door there had been another two gunshots and I could see through the bullet resistant glass panel next the front door that the three men had been backed up almost to right in front of my house, and that both wolves were still alive and mobile, just hanging back at the edges of the area lit up by the floor lights while making some threatening growls.

The best plan for the intruders was to get into the house to get away from the wolves and maybe find a hostage.

My house...

I wasn’t going to let them into my house, with my grandkids...no way in hell, this isn’t smart, they can’t get pass the door, they don’t have the tools, but my house, no... the children… a little girl, screaming, crying in pain and fear...bleeding…

Without really deciding to do so, my hand was pulling the door open silently and rising up to brace the shotgun as a I aimed at the back of the head of a young man with a head full of dark hair rising up in spikes, and my finger tightened up on the trigger.

I felt a need to end him, and in my bones I felt the need to change...and tear into him with my hands and teeth.

This is not me, this isn’t even a young man’s feeling of rage and anger, this is something else, something that I would not let control me. The figure eight, no, the twisted ribbon.

It spins, it loops, the outside in, the inside out.

I decide what I do, not my anger, not some magical curse, I choose.

I took a half step behind the steel lines door for cover and racked another round into the chamber, not to load it since I was already loaded, but the sound of a shotgun being cocked from behind you tends to get people attention.

“You have a shotgun loaded up with a solid slug aimed at the back of your head, and this close I ain’t gonna miss. Drop the gun and I'll call off my dogs, don’t and I will drop you.”

Spiky had froze for a moment then slowly turned as I spoke, his hands held out to the side and his automatic held carefully pointed away from me, he had a nervous calculating look in his eyes as he considered the odds.

There was a offended sounding “urf” sound off in the darkness. Guess werewolves didn’t like being called dogs, but at least they stopped growling.

The gun hit the ground and spikey put his hands up, as his two friends glanced back and forth for any signs of furry death immediately lunging out of the darkness out at them. Then the tattooed guy dropped his bat and the nondescript man threw the catch pole to the ground.

Spiky looked me in the eye. “We are under orders to say nothing about the person who sent us after you.”

I stared at him blankly.

He gave me a encouraging nod. “The person who had the ability to command us against our will, to make us do this for them...”

I still wasn’t getting it until a voice called out from the darkness, “I think he’s trying to tell you they’re under the control of a vampire and can’t say anything directly about them, but they can hint at it.”

Oh...I would have gotten it a minute or two.

At least I didn’t have to shoot anyone tonight, but then it was still early, anything could still happen.

Then a naked guy came walking out of the darkness.

Yeah. Maybe a little too early.