“How is that even a question?” Kian asked.

  “That’s what they are. Horse-sized wolves.” His mouth dropped. “You get a horse-sized wolf. I get a horse-sized wolf. Everyone gets a horse-sized wolf.”

  “Not the time for jokes,” Kian said as he looked out into the darkness.

  “Always time for a joke – you know that.” I looked out too. You could clearly see the wolves now, and I wasn’t joking when I said they were horse-sized. At least seven or eight. Maybe more. They couldn’t have been more than a hundred metres or so from the patio. I could just about make out Kaelyn’s shadow, fifteen to twenty metres ahead of the chasing pack. Surprisingly, she was outrunning them.

  “Close your door and lock it and head back,” I said to Kian. He did, then took his weapon and ammo bag – he grabbed mine too – and walked across the room to the kitchen entrance in the far-left opposite corner to us. He knelt down, took aim and held.

  “Kaelyn,” I screamed out, looking back to the shadows. We had a few seconds at most. “Get your arse inside asap!”

  She did, covering the sixty or so metres she had left in a split second, a blur of motion as she breezed past me and crashed right into the coffee table, knocking over the cups and teapot that we’d left there. She must have used an ability to cover that much ground, that fast.

  I slammed my side of the doors closed, bolted it, grabbed my gun and ran to her. I seized her by the bottom of her arm, helped her up and ran past Kian into the kitchen. The exit to the main hallway was on the opposite side, lit by the light the girls had turned on in the hallway, but we didn’t head towards it yet. We took cover, and watched from where we were, to see what the wolves would do.

  “They really are horse-sized,” Kian whispered, as the wolves came to a stop at the door, clearly visible in the motion-detecting light. A couple of them – grey-furred, and with golden eyes that reminded me of a character I’d read in a book once – snarled at the door, canines showing, drool dropping to the tiles beneath. First, they sniffed at the door, before they began to claw at it, every so often growling as they tried to find a way in but were frustrated in their efforts by the concrete.

  The other wolves had started to fan out around the perimeter of the house, sniffing and growling, prodding and prowling.

  “Let’s go,” I whispered. “They’ll move on once they realise they can’t get in.”

  “We’ll need to deal with them,” Kaelyn said. “Now they know there’s food here, they will find a way to us or wait for us to come out.”

  I nodded in the dark kitchen, not sure if she could see me, but she turned and began to tiptoe away. Kian and I followed, each carrying our own bags of ammo, making our way around the island in the middle as we headed for the lit hallway. I whispered, “Once we’re back with the others, let’s figure out how to deal with them,” as we slunk out of the kitchen, one behind the other.

  The hallway was large, rooms off to left and right and a good few metres from the front door to the wide stairs. The door stood between two large, frosted windows and as I turned the hallway light off, immediately, shadows became apparent through the glass in the light of the motion-detectors that ran around the perimeter of the house.

  A wolf was sniffing at the front door. We silently approached the stairs, but as Kaelyn took the first step, there was a loud thud. Then another. The wolf was testing the door for weaknesses. Then there were thuds from the conservatory. We tried to hurry up the stairs, but we only made it halfway when the front door behind us crashed open, splintered wood scattering across the hallway floor. The door slammed against the wall with a heavy ding, the lock mangled beyond recognition. It swung back the way it came but two wolves slinked halfway inside, baring teeth and growling, the floorboards creaking under their weight as they stood looking at us, their frames taking up the entire doorway.

  Kian and I opened fire immediately. He was stood on the step below me, to the left, against the wall. Instinctively, we each took the wolf closest to us. To hell with short bursts – I emptied the whole damn mag, my shoulder feeling like someone was taking a hammer drill to it, my ears screaming at being subjected to the sounds of the gunfire, but I ignored them both. I kept my eyes on the two wolves. The dumb things had blocked the entry and had nowhere to run. Once they could feel the impact of the bullets and realised they were in pain, they bumped into each other in their haste to get away.

  A mag each was enough as the gunfire stopped and the two beasts slumped to the floor, but immediately, another crash came from the conservatory, and I could see through the broken front door, and the frosted glass windows, more shadows slinking around out the front. Slowly though. Cautiously.

  I grabbed a magazine from my bag and reloaded. “Go,” I shouted, as Kian grabbed the ammo bags and moved up the stairs, taking a position at the top as he reloaded also. Kaelyn had already moved earlier. She was the trained fighter here, but she knew ranged weapons were best for this sort of work. She kept near to us though, there to jump in if the beasts got too close. I felt a bit like I was in one of those shoot-em-ups Kian and I played in our younger days. Except this shoot-em-up was real.

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  I was breathing carefully, trying to control it like you do when you don’t want anyone to hear you. The air struggling up my throat must have wondered why I kept stop-starting the breathing action. I slowly backed up the stairs, glancing towards the kitchen. I couldn’t see any of the wolves there, but I had no doubt they were coming towards us. They were in now. Their prey had nowhere to go. They just needed to approach us cautiously.

  Us humans think we’re so clever, but these natural predators had spent millennia perfecting the art of the kill. And my friends and I were hardly the SAS, although Kian and I were doing alright so far. We’d discussed certain things that just kind of made sense, and that we’d seen in movies – yeah, I knew movies weren’t realistic, but some of it seemed like it would work. Like right now. He’d cover me as I walked backwards, then I’d return the favour at the next corner.

  The top of the stairs opened out into a reasonably sized passageway, doors at either end, and another passageway next to where Kian squatted, leading to the front of the house, where another set of stairs went up. I took a final step backwards and took cover next to the wall on my left, as both of us kept our eyes on the door. Kaelyn was standing in the passageway next to Kian, eyes on the base of the stairs we’d just walked up.

  “How many were there in total?” I whispered across to Kaelyn.

  “Eight or nine at most,” she replied.

  So, two down, maybe seven to go.

  “I reckon we could probably take down another one or two,” I whispered over to Kian. “Let them think we’ve gone and as they come in, let’s empty another mag.”

  Kian nodded, eyes focused. Kaelyn motioned with her head to say she was headed towards the others and slowly started walking towards the next set of stairs. The quieter she was trying to be, the more the floorboards creaked under her steps.

  I was controlling my breathing, doing my best to allow the adrenaline to recede somewhat. The wolves outside hovered beyond the threshold, their shadows visible through the frosted glass but none in view of the open door. I kept an eye through the gaps in the banister to see if the ones from the conservatory were getting any closer, but no – it didn’t look like it. Were they that scared after seeing their brethren?

  “What d’you reckon?” Kian whispered over.

  “I don’t kn–”

  Kian put his hand up and I stopped talking immediately. Then he quietly shuffled towards the door at his end of the hallway. Above my head, I could hear the faint sounds of footsteps. It seemed Kaelyn had the others on the move. Maybe they thought it was safe? Maybe they thought they could help?

  Kian put an ear to the door, and sat there for a moment, before his eyes widened. He shuffled back, but then I saw a snout appear just beyond the gaps in the banisters and put a finger to my lips. He nodded and then signalled with his hands at the door behind him and was mouthing something. Did he think I had night vision? There was only the light from the motion detectors outside, that barely allowed me to see his silhouette.

  I gestured furiously at him, trying to make it clear I couldn’t understand at all, but then I pointed towards the stairs. The wolf’s head had passed the banister, its snout sniffing in the air with a low growl as it moved further in. It was about two-thirds the height of the ceiling. Outside, more wolves stirred.

  Kian gestured back, more frantically than I had been, still pointing at the door behind him, but this time he started using his thumb like he was hitchhiking, pointing towards the upstairs floor. I frowned, but the wolf on the bottom floor, walking alongside the stairs, was all the way through, and turned to look at me through the wooden spindles of the banister. Shit. Then one appeared near the open doorway.

  “I’ll take the one at the door,” Kian said, not caring that the wolves could hear him. It didn’t matter now. I aimed at the one on the stairs. “And I’m trying to tell you that I think they’re on the roof of the conservatory.”

  I nodded. “Well, as long as they don’t figure out how to open the door, we should be alright.”

  “Yeah, because they haven’t just smashed through stronger doors?”

  “They’re not through yet, and the door will hold until we deal with these two first. Wait for a clean shot.

  “Come on then, you fuckers,” I shouted at the wolf beyond the banister. The one near the front door was using the wall beneath the frosted glass to hide the bulk of its body. Smart. I wanted the one at the stairs to move ever so much more in, because I didn’t want to let it escape. But it stood there, looking at me, eyes glowing, a growl deep in its throat as it bared teeth.

  Fuck it. Plan and prep as much as you want, sometimes you just gotta go with instinct. I shot at the one through the banister, but as soon as I’d begun, the wolf did exactly what I didn’t want it to do and scrambled back. I think I’d hit it a couple of times at least. I hoped anyway. Kian didn’t get a chance to fire. The one at the door scrammed.

  “Well, that worked well,” Kian said.

  “Let’s regroup with the others,” I said, as I begun shuffling towards him. He grabbed the ammo bags, and stood to head down the passageway, but then we heard the crash on the other side of the door that Kian had checked earlier.

  “Go, go,” I shouted, but it was too late. Not from the room with the closed door. The wolf outside that I thought had scrammed had only repositioned for a better angle of attack, out of view. Suddenly, it flew through the door and started bounding up the stairs. I turned and crushed the trigger of my rifle. Kian dropped the bags, started shooting also. The wolf was down in seconds, lifeless a third of the way from me on the stairs.

  There was thudding at the door at the end of the hallway.

  I was sprawled on my back at the top of the stairs, having dived to the ground to take cover as I shot. I started to rise, but then I saw the one I had shot at earlier, teeth bared, staring at me from between the spindles of the banister. No fucking time. I lifted my gun, as it leapt and smashed through the wooden spindles, soaring through the air at me.

  Then I heard another crash. Fainter this time. Not on this floor. Not below.

  Upstairs.

  The girls screamed.