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“What the fuckity, fuck, fuck was that?” They landed in Giorgio’s living room, Mitchell angrily slapping at a few embers on his pants and boots. “A fucking bomb? Someone was trying to kill us? And now… now we’re here in your damn apartment a hundred miles away? What the fuck, G? Seriously, what the fuck?”

“That’s six pounds you owe Sarah for the swear jar so far. Give her a call. I’ll bet you a tenner she’s going to get a call in the next thirty minutes from the team who were half an hour hike away from our location, telling her you’re dead. Don’t tell her anything else, just tell her to text you when she gets that call and for her to say nothing. Not a damn word.”

Giorgio blew out a long breath. “Then help yourself to a drink. You know where the bar is. You have my word, I’ll explain in a minute. Just…you know…” Giorgio looked down at the young man he’d saved. “I promise I’m one of the good guys,” he said softly. “What can I get you? What do you need?”

“Enda.”

Giorgio frowned, and then he remembered that people said he looked intimidating when he did that. “Your name is Enda? Little bird?”

The man could barely nod, but he managed. Giorgio noticed that his eyes, which had been so bright before, were now drooping. “Are you hurt? Any injuries?”

“Injure?”

“Not English?” Giorgio was guessing. Enda had an elfin face and large almond eyes. He was so pale it was difficult to assume what his typical skin tone would be. Even his lips were almost white. “Just speak.”

“You can’t force a guy to speak if he can’t understand what you’re saying.” Mitchell came over carrying a large glass full of brandy.

“Hellhounds can understand any language,” Giorgio said, still distracted by wondering what Enda’s first language was.

There was a thud on the floor, followed by a clink of glass as it emptied all over Giorgio’s rug and rolled onto the wooden floor. Mitchell had fainted. Giorgio sighed. “And that is why we’re not supposed to tell anyone. But you’re special, too, aren’t you, Enda?”

“Bird.” Enda put his hands together and waved them like wings. For some reason, it put Giorgio in mind of a Japanese crane, and he quickly said in Japanese, “Do you need anything?”

Enda’s eyes, which were almost closed before, flew open. “Water please. Clean, please. So tired. Not hurt.” His phrasing was disjointed, but Giorgio put that down to Enda being totally overwhelmed. He had so many questions and so many things they needed to talk about, but making Enda comfortable was the first and highest priority.

“I’m going to clean you,” he said as gently as he could, clicking up a bottle of water, opening it, and handing it over. “My magic can put you in clean clothes, and then you can sleep.”

“You have a magical beast,” Enda said in Japanese. “Don’t let them get me again.”

“I’ll keep you safe, little bird. You have my promise. Let me get you comfortable.”

/~/~/~/~/

Giorgio thought he was better than most of his packmates at understanding human emotion – he spent most of his time dealing with very hairy situations. But as Mitchell hadn’t said anything in the past five minutes except “I can’t believe it,” he was struggling to know what Mitchell was having issues believing.

“You did faint. You dropped your booze on my floor. There’s still a wet spot on the rug.”

“Delayed reaction.” Mitchell pouted. “I can’t believe it.”

“I’m a hellhound, paranormals are real, they live and work among the human population and no one knows about it – it’s life, get over it.”

That got him a glare. “I don’t care if you get furry, so long as you don’t take a chunk out of my ass. Someone tried to kill us. Does your furry brain understand that? You and me. Both of us.”

Ah, now Giorgio understood. He’d been around long enough to know that humans feared death. Although he couldn’t be killed, he imagined Lord Hades wouldn’t be happy if he turned up in the Underworld looking messed up, though, so, there was that. But Mitchell hadn’t finished.

“I just can’t believe they wanted to kill us. They would’ve succeeded, too, if it hadn’t been for you. Dead! There’s no coming back from that. Sarah just sent me the text.” He held up his phone. “She’s worried sick, not knowing what to believe. The bastards told her there was nobody left to retrieve and that she’d be notified when they have arranged a memorial service for us. She wants to know why they think we’re dead when we’re not. What the fuck!”

Giorgio rubbed his chin. The lack of sleep wasn’t a worry, but he was really concerned about Enda, who was sleeping on the couch. Giorgio’s hound hadn’t wanted to let the man out of their sight, and without knowing what was going on, Giorgio agreed. He’d made the man as comfortable as possible, finding him a pillow, covering him in a blanket, but there was still that nagging worry about who, what, and why there were so many bodies for him and Mitchell to find.

“Our sole survivor isn’t human, either.” He nodded in Enda’s direction. “That’s possibly why he survived when all those other victims didn’t. Until he wakes up and we can talk to him…”

“Yes, yes, find out why there was a pile of dead bodies for us to find, I agree. We need to find out who those poor souls were, what they had in common - apart from being piled into a heap for us to find - and who the hell is responsible. I know that’s important, but can we focus on our more pressing problem for a moment? Why were we chosen for this job? Who did you piss off? Why were we meant to be blown to bits along with all the others?”

“I don’t know.” Think, damn it, think. Giorgio tore his eyes off Enda’s sleeping form and looked at his friend. They’d done a lot of jobs together. “Excusing the fact we found someone alive, what would we normally do if we’re confronted with a mass of bodies?”

“It’s not something that’s happened very often, thank fuck.” But Mitchell was thinking, too. “Typical procedure would be to contact the team, and while we were waiting for them to arrive, we would normally take photographs and then lay the bodies out to make them easier to identify, and…”

“Right, so, we would’ve moved them before the team arrived. I think that’s a key part of this.”

Mitchell slammed the arm of his chair with his fist, and Giorgio immediately checked on Enda, something Mitchell noted. “Sorry. I am battling a truckload of fucking emotions about this and it’s not easy to think straight. But yes, we would have moved them, the whole place blows up and the guys sitting safely a half an hour’s hike away would just add our body bits to a jar along with everyone else’s, because that’s all that would be fucking left. Why us?”

“I have no idea. I mean, you and I have both had our run-ins with Duncan before, but so has everyone else. It could just be bad luck, and it was our turn to do the job…”

“You don’t believe that any more than I do.”

Mitchell was right, but Giorgio had a bigger concern. “I need to send you back to the scene,” he said slowly, knowing Mitchell wouldn’t be happy about it. “Think logically about this,” he added quickly as Mitchell opened his mouth to protest. “One, we need someone on the inside to work out what the hell is going on, and you absolutely can’t tell anyone about how we got out, so going back makes sense.

“Two, I have our survivor to look after – they won’t miss him among the bodies because, as you pointed out, there will only be body parts left. And I…” He hesitated not sure how much more about his true life he should tell his friend, but shit – in for a penny in for a pound. “I can disappear. I’ve done it before. I’m…very, very old and incapable of dying – it’s just part of how I was made. But you have a life with Sarah, a home and a mortgage, things like that. You can’t be dead and then just turn up home one day unscathed – imagine what that would do to Sarah.”

“All right…all right, I hear what you’re saying.” Mitchell nodded. “But I’m not sure how safe that would be for me or Sarah. If we were targeted deliberately…”

Giorgio blew out a long breath. That was a good point. If someone deliberately wanted him and Mitchell dead for whatever reason, then Mitchell wouldn’t be safe the next time he went out on a job, whether Giorgio was there or not.

“Okay, all right. We’ll both have to play dead for a while. I think the best thing to do, considering how badly she’s freaking out, is to tell Sarah to pack a couple of changes of clothes and then come here. Then tell her to double delete her phone messages, or better yet, completely get rid of her phone. I have an extra one here she can use.”

“We should probably get rid of our own as well.” Mitchell winced at his phone that was still in his hand. “I’m still paying this thing off.”

“If you’re dead, no one will be coming after you for payments.” Giorgio huffed. His phone was part of the Zeus network, and he knew it couldn’t be tracked. “Text Sarah, keep it brief. Hopefully whoever’s responsible for this is still busy with the scene, making sure their asses are covered. In the meantime, our bosses will expect Sarah to be grieving, so, her leaving to visit family or friends wouldn’t be unusual. This address isn’t on their radar, so, they won’t know who she’s actually visiting, and frankly, it’s none of their business.”

“Are you going to tell her how you saved me?” Mitchell’s eyes widened. “Furry ass, magical powers, and all that?”

“I’d rather not. Secrecy is vitally important in the paranormal world, but I don’t think I have any choice. At least this way, I’ll be the hero for a change, and she’ll stop shooting daggers at me every time I see her, thanks to that last shooting incident.”

Giorgio had a sudden thought. That incident was only two months before. Looking up and meeting Mitchell’s eyes, he realized his friend had been thinking the same thing. “We might have been targets for a while,” Mitchell murmured. “The question is, why?”