"Then get this bunch moving into the kitchen!" he shouted right back, even as the gunfire continued -- they were suppressing anything that moved upright and tried to return fire, even despite a few return spells flung at them. Volume of fire? Well, at least three belt-fed machineguns going, along with tandem charge rockets, designed to penetrate into a hard target, such as a vehicle or structure and then explode once inside, past the barrier. Bunkers, tanks...Parael's house. Once they went off, ball bearings and shrapnel filled the area. That would be bad if one landed while they were still in there.

He managed to move through the room, thoroughly wrecked in something less than five minutes of combat. The bullets left pockmarks in the walls that children had finger painted, the shrapnel from the rocket propelled grenades left holes and the secondaries left scorch marks in places. The furniture was similarly shredded, and the room's decor was well on its way to debris, but there was at least enough of a couch to crouch behind and the walls were intact enough to provide some cover as he moved low. 

He was tempted to shift to his man-beast form then and there, but he had the feeling that there might well be silver in the rounds -- if these shooters were clued in, they might have loaded up for lycanthropes, in which case the immunity to regular bullets might well be offset by the gunners reloading with silver. Those weren't assault rifles or something light; these were full-sized rounds fired from a general purpose machinegun. They hit hard and they ripped through walls.

His feet crunched broken glass and pieces of wood underneath as he picked his way through the kitchen, itself not nearly as bad as the living/play room that was being savaged with more weapons fire. Tony opened the door and carefully looked around the area to the rear of the house; luckily, the lines of sight weren't real good, because there were other homes nearby, and it provided a bit of cover...best of all, the shooters were still shooting, but bullets weren't landing in their direction anymore.

That didn't mean the way was clear, the guys hitting the house may well have a force keeping the back area watched. He wasn't sure, but he did know that they had to get the fuck out of here. It was loud, dark and the smoke and gunpowder smells were filling his nostrils, but he could see like, well, a cat in the dark. 

All the same, there were enemies there, about to kick open the door and grenande the kitchen; three men that smelled...off. Like mortal thralls of vampires or something. It made some sense -- the leeches always had hangerons looking to join the club and the vampires used these errand boys for all they were worth. Feed them back some blood and they got to be like junkies looking for a fix. It was said to be like speed and PCP, making the typical human stronger, faster, more aggressive. 

But they were not sufficiently clued in; they didn't know that one of the worst possible beings to meet in the dark was a lycanthrope -- there were less of them than vampires, because it was a matter of heredity, but they were immensely fast and strong, resistant to damage, and had a predator's senses fused to a human mind. It wasn't to say they couldn't be taken-- prepared hunters could do quite a thorough job of it, but these three thought they were turning their guns on the first man out the door, and what they got was a halfway point between man and African lion, standing on two feet but hunched over with over-long arms whose hands ended in overlong claws. The shreds of his clothing were hanging off this apparition.

The three simply didn't last that long, not against a headlong rush. Lions had an incredible upper-body strength and were designed for the ambush hunt -- they did not lope long distances after prey, and Tony did the same thing here; a sudden springing forward and a man fountained blood. Another then was ripped into with claws on his way to the third, vaulting forward and getting the fellow before he could flee or fire or let off a grenade. 

Three down, very quickly. Tony was shifted back into his human form, breathing heavily from a heady mix of hormones that weren't entirely the human variety; there was a degree of satisfaction that flowed through him that came from the kill, a sense of enjoyment that Lycans felt involuntarily in the throes of their fight or flight. It was why so many of them reveled in violence. Even Tony had to get out of town and hunt animals to get it out of his system; it was hardwired into them, and modern life, with the emphasis on self-control, even self-denial, was especially rough on lycanthropes. The shift back to humanity was like coming down from a really good high, complete with an afterglow that made him want to smile, even as it caused a sense of self-loathing, deep within the human parts of his psyche, where sentience and biochemistry waged their eternal war.

He was drenched in blood and wearing shreds of clothing, but seemed to regard that as normal, or at least as something he couldn't help. The bodies were limp mounds in the darkness, splayed out on Parael's back lawn with their eyes sightlessly watching the night sky, heedless of how maimed they were in the last moments of their lives.

"Stay low, don't get seen," he called back to the door, even as he grabbed one of the guns off the men; vampire thralls, with AK's. That wasn't entirely surprising, vamps tended to have their fingers in all kinds of pies, and weapons dealing was one of the ways they made ends meet. But it meant he had a gun and some magazines if he needed them.