Wolf Song (Wolf Singer Prophecies Book 1)

Heck for all I knew this Enigma wasn’t part of the equation at all, and I was just being distracted by it.
I whittled the pencil and got to deciphering. I carefully flipped to the first clean sheet of paper in my parents’ notebook and transcribed the encoded letters there too, along with the dot-dash Morse code language. If I knew the date, I'd have added that, too, the same way my parents did with their meticulous note-taking. Unfortunately, not many people kept an accurate read of time now.
Now...well, now was the part I was dreading. Because now I needed the key. And that could literally be anything.
However, my parents weren't meticulous for nothing. I had a pretty good guess what that key might be. If I was wrong, then I was wrong.
I turned to my parents' favorite passages of scripture, the book of James, and started reading the passage to see what might pop out.
I was hoping that if I read through this enough, it would help to unlock the cipher.
It was well into the evening and the moon reigned supreme now. I was no longer making any progress. There were too many combinations to be able to get this randomly, and that was including only using the alphabet in its set order. If there were double letters or a random sequence order? I might never solve it.
I gave up for now. At this point I had gone through an entire pot of tea, and decided to upgrade to a dandelion blend.
I went back to the kitchen and froze. There was something there, outside my kitchen door. I could sense it. Standing here in the open wouldn’t help matters, though, so I told myself to move. Maybe the thing would just go away.
Of course, that was a dumb wish. Why would anything go away just because I moved??
It would test the doors, the wards. With each test, the wards would get weaker. How often did anyone or anything test these wards, though? No one was supposed to be able to breach the perimeter and yet those four men were able to the other night. And now this thing had.
Eyes glowed into the window. Yup, there was no blaming that on my imagination.
I ran silently on bare feet toward the living room. In front of that window was another dark figure whose eyes glowed. Pinpricks rushed over my skin.
I skittered to a stop at the sight. Though I wanted to figure out what was going on with my dad and why he felt the need to leave so suddenly, only to return with a mystery for me to solve, I rushed upstairs.
Survive.
That was the number one rule.

I made it to the top landing and to my room, where I was in my socks and boots in seconds. The raven from the other night was there, tapping away. I blinked; it was unexpected. Mist left its beak but I didn't wait for it to speak. I didn't think I wanted to hear anything it had to say anyway.
I grabbed the rifle, though, cursing myself for being lulled into a type of security. Maybe my dad's wards fell out of use after all. Maybe they wore down like all the things. Maybe I didn't know how to maintain the wards as well as I’d thought.
All these thoughts rushed through my head as I grabbed my pack and strapped it to my back. I wanted to be prepared, even though I didn't intend on leaving yet since this was most defensible place. Until they breached the wards completely, I was still safe.
Unless they planned on sending down Hellfire.
That was the thing with these Reapers. They played with the mind. What if there hadn't been people at the doors after all? What if it really was my imagination? Maybe it had all been mental projections they’d caused.
What if, what if, what if.
Too many ifs and not enough plan.
I changed course. Rather than go downstairs to the living room to wait for them to wear down the wards there or break the windows, I made up my mind to go to the attic.
I tiptoed there and climbed the final staircase up to the roof.
There was nothing up here except for the expanse of sky overhead and I was thrilled to indulge in the fresh night air a bit. It had been a long time since I'd been able to do this. But that didn't mean I would make it a habit of being out at night. Even with the protection of the roof.
I tiptoed over to the widow’s watch, where I had spotted that Reaper dressed as a boy. From here, any of the ones who had been at the front door or on the porch would be right below me.
Maybe I could get a good clean shot of one of them as they roamed the exterior, searching for a way in.
I tried looking for even a hint of flesh, but all I saw were bits of shadows moving. A scuffle here and there, but nothing that I could pinpoint.
They were there, though, all right. I wasn't just imagining things. I was able to see them through the blessed glass and I was able to see them with my own eyes. They hadn't bothered to shield themselves from me, and that was just fine. My rifle was blessed to hit my targets, they just needed to cross my scope.
Getting shot would immediately enrage—not kill—someone with the rave sickness, but it would still drain them. Sickness or no, the person still needed blood and blessed bullets did a great job of removing the blood from a person.
I hunkered down to the sniper position that I’d practiced for so long. Whoever crossed my scope, I'd get them. And perhaps that meant that they would leave me alone.
They could always grab reinforcements and come back later, of course. But they would be gone for the night and I'd be able to