“Okay?” I was more than a little confused. It didn't look anything like a bomb, it looked like an engine part to me.

“Yeah.” Clay agreed, tossing the object that seconds ago he was worried would explode into his toolkit with all the care and attention one would toss away an empty pop can. Maybe dealing with this kind of stuff numbs you to it. “Right.” Clay clapped his hands and rubbed them together.

“Time to hunt through this place properly.”

“What exactly are we looking for?” Flint's demeanour had suddenly flipped back to casual again.

“Something that would tell us why a man rigs his house to explode?” I offered.

“Naaaaamley?” Flint pushed, making a rolling gesture with his hands and nodding slowly.

“Just search the place.” Clay went over to a degrading and over-filled bookcase and started checking its contents. Flint shrugged and went back to the kitchen. I decided to try upstairs to see if there was a bedroom.

Sure enough, it was just as disgusting as the rest of the place. Unwashed clothes and snack wrappers formed the carpet. By some small miracle, the bed was at least in usable condition. I wouldn't have dared sleep on it for fear of what mutant bedbugs lurked within...

What I was interested in, was the desk at the far corner. Not that anything useful was on top of the desk unless you felt like reading 20-year-old copies of the Daily Mail. No, the fact that the desk was sitting far too neatly against the wall made me interested. On closer inspection, the floor around the desk was suspiciously clean, aside from a light dusting of paint flakes near the wall.

It didn't take a CSI genius (though I admit I used to watch those shows religiously) to figure out the desk had been moved. Behind it was a hole in the dividing space, between layers of plasterboard, just about bit enough for a backpack. There wasn't a backpack, but there was a key, a modern one with a small plastic fob. On the fob was a series of numbers and letters. The first few were a postcode, that was easy enough to tell. But there were three more digits on the end that didn't seem to mean anything.

One quick internet search on my phone cleared that up. The postcode pointed to a rent-a-storage place on an industrial estate near the edge of town. So those extra numbers were a locker code, perhaps?

Either way, we had a lead.

“Got something!” I called downstairs, twirling the key fob around my index finger. The other two joined me at the bottom of the stairs. “Looks like Absher had an emergency pack set up, but he left this behind. Storage locker key.”

“Great stuff!” Flint almost bounced in excitement. “You got things here?” The question was directed at Clay.

“Yup, you guys go and I'll see what I can salvage from here.”

“C'mon.” Flint gestured for me to follow and seemed to skip out towards his car.

Flint's car was a more of a modest affair compared to Clay's. Where Clay's car had been a gracefully ageing BMW, Flint's was a more modern white Fiat hatchback. It was spotlessly clean, not a hair out of place besides a large chiller box on the back-seat.

“Where to, guv?” Flint did his best south London cabbie impression.

“Big Fat Storage, Northside Industrial Estate.” Flint got the car into gear and peeled expertly away. The ride wasn't silent, Flint had left some music running on the radio and was bobbing his head along to some instrumental drum-and-bass played through his phone.

“How do you take this all so easily?” I had to ask. It had been the better part of a week now and I had barely a moment to stop and catch my breath.

“Hm?” Flint didn't take his eyes off the road.

“Well I mean, my world-view has been pretty shaken. How did you handle the change?” I had the feeling Flint wasn't born into this life.

Flint shrugged, sighing through his nose. “I chose this. I knew what I was getting into. Took the plunge when I turned 19. So I guess...Practice?” Flint shrugged again. “Sorry, probably not helpful. But y'know, you've got the backup if you need it.”

I wasn't really sure how to respond to that. I appreciated the sentiment but he hadn't really answered my question.

“I mean...Ugh.” I scratched my cheek to try and bring the words around, hesitating when my gaze fell on the scales of my fingers.

“Y'know that quote about fighting monsters? How do you not become a monster yourself?”

“Focus on what you know you are. If you ever feel like you're losing control, just take some long, deep breaths.”

Flint suddenly pulled over to the side, checking over his shoulder and killing the engine. “Speaking of becoming a monster.” Flint had a glint in his eye that I wasn't sure I liked. He got out and pulled off his jacket, tossing it on the back seat of the car and starting to unbutton the wrinkled dress-shirt he wore. “Pop the boot for us, there's a harness and a radio headset.” Needless to say, I was a little taken aback by the fact that Flint now seemed to be stripping in front of me at the side of the road.

I went around the back, trying not to stare and pulled up the boot of the car. The harness was strange, it looked kind of like a combination between a police vest and those sets of climbing equipment but it definitely wasn't a professional setup. It was a huge belt and thigh straps connected together, but along with two large loops and a flat square of material where a radio pack had been stuck on.

“This it?” I held it out to the side.

“Yup, perfect.” I shut the boot and made it two steps before stopping again. Flint was now completely stark naked and was making his way up the embankment, stopping about halfway to the top. The man was pale, lean but muscular and covered in scars. Considering everything I had seen so far each one no doubt had a story behind it. Flint took the harness and stepped into the two leg straps. The harness was far too large for him, he had to hold the belt with one hand the whole time or else it slipped out of position.

“Okay. I'm going to do a holding pattern around the top.” He pulled a part of the radio pack off and handed it to me. It was a black plastic transceiver handset. “Keep me updated on anything that's going on in there. I won't be able to talk but I'll try and warn you if I see anything.”

“Got it.” I said automatically, stuffing the handset into my coat pocket.

Flint turned to face the slowly darkening skyline and seemed to forget about the world, just staring listlessly ahead. A sudden twinge made his head jolt to one side and the sound of meat and bone grinding together began.

What I saw next isn't something I can easily describe. Flint's fingers stretched out to almost double their length, the skin of his arms tore open from shoulder to wrist, revealing massive black feathers that grew out into full wings. Limbs elongated and warped, his legs gaining an extra joint halfway down his shin with a crunch that made my stomach sink. Somehow he gained two extra feet in height and ten stone of muscle. All of this done in under twenty seconds. And somehow, if you looked at him, you could easily recognise him as Flint. It was still his face, beak notwithstanding.

After a few seconds of blank silence, I suddenly became very aware of the look of horror I had been sporting the whole time. Flint chuckled. As far as it is possible for a giant bird-man to laugh. With one massive jump, he shot upwards and vanished into the slowly thickening clouds.

That just left me alone with the kind of feeling in your stomach that you only get when you just saw something from straight out of a horror movie happen right in front of your face.

I decided to take a moment to swear off ever eating poultry again before trudging back down the hill and back to the road.

The storage place wasn't far away. A huge imposing metal block painted in stark, flat colours with a massive logo hanging over the door. The lights were on inside and the door was half-open. I was in luck, the place was still open.

Of course, that idea went away in a real hurry when my foot crunched on fragments of broken glass and shredded metal. Above me, the destroyed husk of a CCTV camera hung from its bracket at the corner of the building, smouldering gently.

I half jogged to the door, sure enough, there were clear signs of a break-in. The paint was scraped off the frame where somebody had forced it open with a crowbar. Inside there was no sign of a secretary or guard.

“Flint.” The radio made a scratching sound as the connection was made. “Somebody's broken in. The camera's been smashed and there's no sign of any staff. Gonna take a closer look.” There was a rasping squawk on the other side of the line. I took that as my go-ahead.

Break-in or not, I still had a job to do here. I pulled up my hood and dipped my head a little to make sure I couldn't be easily identified and headed inside.

No sign of any staff. At all. The only sound was the faint hum of the cooling fan from the desk computer. A thin plume of steam turned in circles over an abandoned cup of coffee by the computer monitor. Whatever had happened to the staff, happened in a hurry.

Sure enough, the last few numbers on the key fob was a storage locker number. All helpfully signposted so it didn't take long to get myself on the right track. Every camera in the place was in bits and no sign of a single member of staff.

What I had expected was some kind of super-professional criminal. A guy with a black ski mask, two-piece suit and all that other kind of stuff you see in heist movies. But what I saw when I came around the final corner was an overweight man wearing a threadbare t-shirt covered in stains covered with a faded denim biker jacket.

Connecting the dots was easy enough. This guy looked about as appealing as his house did. Smelled roughly the same, too. Again I had to wonder how this guy was supposed to be a 'local expert' on anything.

“Paul Absher?” The second I said that the Wizard sprung to his feet with impressive speed for a man of his size. He looked at me with a look of horrified surprise. He was somewhere in his forties, sagging jowls and huge dark bags under his eyes. His hair was black and plastered to his head from grease.

“I'm-” I didn't get any further than that. Absher swept up his backpack, pulling a kitchen knife and came out swinging.

Time came to a grinding halt, the fat wizard in front of me replaced with that idiot thug that had ambushed me only days ago. But both holding the same knife. Just the sight of it made my stomach drop, like the feeling you get when you look over the edge of a tall building. Reflex caught up a second too late, I raised my left hand to block the blade. It passed through scale, skin, muscle and bone like they were nothing, the point jutting out the back of my hand.

The pain seared a lightning bolt into my brain that blinded me for a few seconds. I barely kept my balance, flailing wildly to grab at something so I wouldn't fall over.

I only managed to catch a small glimpse at Absher when my vision faded back in from the flash of white it had been. He looked as stunned as I was at the damage. How had he put a hole clean through my hand when a salvo of bullets had done nothing? The sudden, panicked laughter from the wizard implied he hadn't expected it to work either.

Absher bolted before I could get the answer out of him, sweeping up his backpack and running with all the grace of a bowling ball on a grease slick, knife in hand.

It took a few seconds before the blinding white faded away, before I could think properly. Somehow I managed to dig the radio out of my coat pocket and hit the button.  “FLINT.” I barked, not sure if it was working. my glove was starting to fill with the faint warmth of my own blood. “Absher's here.” I grit my teeth and tried to follow the sound of the overweight git lumbering away. “He's running. Stop him.”

The was no response on the other side of the line. I grit my teeth through the pain and forced myself to my feet. It took a few, lurching steps to start building up momentum but after that I was unstoppable. I hurled myself down the stairs at full-length strides, hitting the ground floor, through the lobby and out into the street. All in split seconds.

Absher's build was slowing him right down, he had barely made it to the corner when I body-checked through the front door.

Unfortunately, enemy backup had arrived in the form of a filth-encrusted Transit van with no licence plates. It screeched to a halt in Absher's path and the sliding side door flew open. A voice inside demanded Absher get in and hit the deck. Overweight wizard went in, a single deafening gunshot came out. I don't pretend to know anything about guns, but there was no mistaking the report of a sniper rifle. The full weight of the shot hit me square in the front, right at the base of my ribs. Same as the smaller 9mm rounds before, the bullet couldn't punch through my scales but the sheer force of the much larger sniper shot made me double over and drove the wind out of me. By the time I had forced my lungs to behave and let me breathe the driver of the van had convinced the thing to get into gear with a wince-inducing grinding noise. There was no way I could catch them on foot now.

I fumbled with the transceiver and almost dropped it. “Flint! White Transit! Absher's on board!”

There was a shocked squawk from Flint then a series of other non-word sounds that somehow translated in my head as frantic swearing as he tried to bank against the wind. I could almost feel the wind-shear when the huge creature buzzed the building in pursuit.