Kat shook her head. "Sorry. She's occupied at the moment and honestly couldn't care less if the world did end. If I disturb her over this, she'll have a raging tantrum."
"All right then," Wulf said. "I suggest everyone get their heaviest clothes on and be prepared to jump ship as soon as possible."
Stryker watched the security cameras closely. He knew the heiress and her guards wouldn't stay inside much longer. His men had already blown up the entire garage and were now slowly shooting into the house, section by section. There was a lot of exterior damage, but he couldn't really tell how much was being done internally.
Not that it mattered. If this didn't work, they'd burn it down. He already had the flamethrowers on standby. Anyone worth his salt would have exit tunnels. And Wulf was certainly worth his salt. Urian had found several exits so far.
His son just had to make sure they had found them all before their prey left the premises. "Urian?" he asked his son telepathically. "Are you in position?"
"Yes. We have all of the exits covered."
"Where are you?"
"The back lawn. Why? Is something going wrong?"
"No, I just want to make sure we can get to them."
"They're ours, Father. Relax."
"I will after she's dead."
Wulf took one last inspection of his charges. They were bundled up and ready. He, on the other hand, was scantily clad. He needed to be able to move freely in case he had to fight more.
"Okay, children," he said in warning. "Remember, we have to move silently. They can see better at night than…" He paused as he realized who he was talking to. "Well, better than Chris can anyway. I'll lead the way. Kat, you pull up the rear and, if anything happens, shout and don't vanish on us."
"You got it."
Wulf offered Cassandra an encouraging smile. He took her hand into his and kissed her knit glove, wishing he could feel her skin under there. She smiled back, then covered her face with her muffler. Reluctantly dropping her hand, he led them to his bedroom. There were more explosions upstairs. Wulf growled at the sound of things shattering. "I swear I'm going to take all this out of Stryker's hide."
"I just want to know where the cops are," Cassandra said. "Surely someone has heard all that."
"I don't know," Chris added. "We're pretty far out. No one probably knows." Another blast shook the house.
"Someone has to hear that," Cassandra said. "They've turned it into a war zone."
"Well, let's hope the cops don't come," Kat added from behind her.
Cassandra looked at her from over her shoulder. "Why?"
"Because if they do, all they'll be is another midnight snack for the Daimons."
Cassandra curled her lip at the thought. "Oh, God, Kat, that's awful!"
"But all too true," Wulf said as he led them past his bed, into his closet, which was the size of most people's bedrooms. "In spite of what you think, Cassandra, Daimons are nothing more than rabid animals in need of a mercy killing."
She stiffened, but for once didn't argue with him. Cassandra cocked a brow at his wardrobe as they walked through the closet. Everything from the hanging items to every pair of shoes lacked color. It looked like a great black hole. "Like black, do you?"
One corner of his mouth quirked up. "It serves its purpose. It's hard to look intimidating in pastels."
She laughed at that and started to make a comment about how he looked best naked, but then refrained. It wasn't like Chris and Kat didn't know they were lovers, but it still didn't feel right to say that out loud around them.
Wulf pressed a series of codes into the keypad and opened a secret door in the back that led into his own private catacombs he had had built under the house and grounds in case of emergency.
Though to be honest, Daimons bombing his home hadn't been one of the things that had entered his mind when he'd had this built. He'd been thinking more along the lines of a house fire during daylight or maybe a home invasion by more normal, non-fanged terrorists.
Who knew? Following true medieval fashion, the corridor was long and narrow in order to keep more than one person from going through it at a time and to make it easy to block it should anyone be chasing after them.
Sometimes it paid to be paranoid. Wulf grabbed a flashlight and led them single file into it. They walked for several minutes before they came to a five-way split.
"Wow," Chris said as he peeped around Cassandra and Wulf. "Where do all of these go?"
Wulf indicated the one on the far right with the light. "That one goes to the garage, the next one over goes to the field just beyond the south gate, the middle one is for a bomb shelter farther underground. The next one leads to the street outside the main gate and this one"—He indicated the one on his left—"leads to the boathouse."
"Man, I wish I'd known about this when I was a kid, I could have had a ton of fun down here."
"Yeah, and you could have gotten lost or hurt and no one would know."