Kurt Watford looked up at the skyscrapers surrounding him and felt more than a little lost. He’d been sent to Chicago to take care of a disturbance in the shifter-wizard world since, out of all the dragon shifters in Torch Lake, he had the most recent experience with living in a human town. But the human town he’d lived in had been much smaller than this.

Chicago was huge, and Kurt had no idea where to start with his assignment. Downtown had seemed the most logical place, but now that he was here in the Chicago Loop, he wasn’t so sure. He was surrounded by people, buildings, elevated trains, and swirling snowflakes, but he didn’t see anything that would indicate a disturbance of the magical sort.

“This is bullshit,” he whispered under his breath. He decided to just pick a direction and walk. Maybe he’d come across something interesting. Probably not, but at least he could say he’d tried. And the physical activity of walking might clear his head.

He started off at a brisk pace, but he couldn’t have told you whether he was heading north, south, east, or west. The cloudy sky prevented him from determining his direction by the sun, and none of the street signs here were very clear to him. He was not a city guy in the least.

He stepped over a homeless man who had sprawled himself out for a nap on the middle of the busy sidewalk, and wondered if he should head back to his hotel and call the Torch Lake High Council, demanding better instructions.

This mission was the most disorganized thing Kurt had ever done, and that was making him grumpy. He liked for things to be planned out and certain. But the High Council had sent him to Chicago with nothing more than a credit card and the vague instructions to “figure out whether the disturbances lately were caused by the Dark Warriors.”

Chicago, along with many other major cities, had been seeing some strange things lately. All across America, people were disappearing randomly, cars were exploding without warning, and buildings were collapsing without a reason. In the human world, the chaos was being attributed to terrorists, but anyone who knew anything about shifters and wizards knew better. These disturbances all smacked of dark magic. The Dark Warriors were on the rise, and another war was brewing. The shifter-wizard world had barely recovered from the last war, but it seemed they would get no break.

Chicago had been hit worse than most places, probably due to the fact that it was one of the most popular cities for shifters and wizards to hide out in when they wanted to blend in with the human world. The Dark Warriors knew there would be a lot of easy targets here, and they weren’t shy about going after them.

How Kurt was supposed to get one step ahead of the Dark Warriors was beyond him. The High Council told him to find the Dark Warriors’ Chicago headquarters, but he didn’t have the faintest idea of how to do that. He couldn’t even get his bearings in a city this large, let alone find a secret hiding place.

And yet, Kurt wanted to prove himself. He wanted to show the High Council that he was one of the best dragon shifters they had. Seven months ago, after he himself was rescued from the hands of the Dark Warriors, he’d agreed to a six month job in Torch Lake. At first, he’d been resistant to the idea of joining a shifter-wizard clan. He’d thought hiding out in a human town would be much safer. But it hadn’t taken him long to see that Torch Lake was different. In Torch Lake, shifters and wizards lived together in harmony, and they actually enjoyed it. The High Council always acted in a moral, upright way, and truly took the interests of its citizens to heart. And besides, a great group of dragon shifters lived there, and Kurt had become close friends with all of them. The place wasn’t perfect, but Kurt couldn’t imagine living anywhere else now.

So even though he hadn’t been thrilled about the idea of taking on the mission to Chicago, he had agreed out of a sense of duty. He owed Torch Lake, and its High Council, quite a bit. Taking care of the problems in Chicago had seemed like a good way to do his part to help out Torch Lake, and to push back the forces of darkness.

But he’d been here two days now, and each day he felt more lost than the day before. He’d asked the High Council this morning for a bit more direction, and they’d simply told him that he could handle it.

He had the distinct feeling that he was not, in fact, handling it.

Still, what could he do other than press on? He was not going to quit. That wasn’t in his nature. So his only option was to move forward, one step at a time, and hope that he would somehow figure out a way to track down the Dark Warriors who were hiding out in this large city.

He’d been told that there was an underground network of shifters and wizards here. Supposedly, the network was extensive, and they all took care of each other and helped keep each other safe against dark magic attacks. But for obvious reasons, the network wasn’t easy to find. It had to be kept hidden from the Dark Warriors, or it would be useless. If Kurt could somehow find the network, though, he might get some help in locating the Dark Warriors here and shutting them down.

Kurt sighed as he exited the crowded streets of downtown. Lake Michigan loomed not far in front of him, and, rather than turn to walk back through the crowded downtown area, he decided to continue walking down by the lake. Maybe a stroll by the water would clear his head.

The lake had giant chunks of ice floating in it, and the wind whipping off of it felt frigid enough to make even a dragon shiver. Not too many people were crazy enough to walk on the shoreline right now. As Kurt made his way down the lakefront walking and biking path, he was passed by a few bundled up joggers, but that was it. He felt almost serene, even though he was in such a large city. He kept walking, his mind wandering from things as serious as what his next move should be in his search for the Dark Warriors, to things as mundane as what he should have for dinner that night. He was so lost in thought, pondering a nice juicy steak, that he was taken completely off guard when the explosion happened.

As he walked along the lakefront path past Chicago Avenue, he was knocked to the ground by what felt like an earthquake. His senses were instantly on high alert, and he sat up quickly and started scanning the area. A small car had gone up in flames on the nearby street, and pedestrians were already screaming and running away. The distant wail of sirens had begun almost instantaneously, and Kurt wondered whether the sirens were responding to this or to some other emergency. The sirens seemed to be a constant backdrop to life in this city.

Kurt scanned the frightened faces, and the area beyond the burning car. He was looking for someone who didn’t look quite as scared as everyone else. Someone who might have set this explosion off with a magic spell. No one looked suspicious, though. People were screaming and running, and the braver among them still looked shell-shocked. There were no Dark Warriors in this crowd.

Still, the explosion had been caused by magic. Kurt could easily tell that much by the unnatural greenish tinge of the flames. He looked around, trying to see where a wizard might be hiding. There were a thousand places around here to blend into the crowd or the buildings. The wizard responsible could be anywhere.

Just when he thought there was no possible way he could find the dark wizard who had done this, a flash of movement caught his eye to his right. He turned, and saw two men running straight toward the lake at full speed, their faces both full of glee. Behind them, an angry woman ran, yelling. At least, Kurt thought it was a woman. She was so bundled up that it was hard to say for certain. No one else seemed to be paying much attention to them, but Kurt immediately knew that this group was somehow related to the explosion. He couldn’t see the magic rings on their fingers under their heavy gloves, but he was sure they were there. He took off running as well, his long legs carrying him quickly across the snowy, icy ground. He worried that he would slip and the fleeing men would get away, but he managed to keep his balance relatively well despite the slippery ground.

The men ran straight toward the edge of the concrete path. At this point of the lakeshore, the concrete ended abruptly at a deep point in the lake. There was no shoreline, and Kurt blinked in confusion, slowing slightly as he watched them. Were they going to jump straight into the water? That was crazy, even for a wizard. They’d freeze to death. Of course, they could perform thermal spells to keep themselves warm, but that would require all of their magical energy. Jumping in the lake would make them sitting ducks, easy to catch.

Kurt knew he must be missing something. There’s no way these men were going to make themselves that easy to capture. He kept running, but slower. He was wary now. Was he running into a trap? And what about the woman? Was she with the men, or was she chasing after them too? It was hard to tell. She was obviously angry, but whether she was angry at them directly or for some other reason, Kurt had no idea.

Kurt slowed his pace to barely a jog as the men approached the edge of the concrete. His eyes widened as he saw them leap straight into the air, suspended above the icy water.

“What the…” he was sure he was about to see them plunge into an icy death trap. None of this made sense. What the heck were they doing?

And then, in the next instant, the woman jumped as well. Kurt held his breath, waiting for a trio of splashes. But the splashes never came. Instead, the men landed in midair. They were on some sort of invisible surface. The woman, too, landed on some invisible surface, raising her magic ring in the air as she did, already yelling out some sort of attack spell. That answered one of Kurt’s questions—this woman was definitely angry at the two men, and was not on their side. But what else was going on? How were they suspended in midair, and weren’t they worried that the hundreds of humans gathered around were going to see them performing magical spells in the middle of the afternoon in the busy city of Chicago?

Without thinking too much about it, Kurt leaped after them. He half-expected to go splashing down into the water, and was relieved when his feet, too, met solid ground in midair. The men were still so intent on attacking the woman that they didn’t seem to notice Kurt. He raised a hand to punch one of them, thinking he’d take them out the old fashioned way if he had to. He didn’t want to switch into dragon form in front of so many humans. There was already going to be enough fallout from the fact that these wizards had been doing magic in front of everyone. Kurt only hoped that most people had been too busy gawking at the burning car to notice the group of wizards suspended above the lake.

A split-second later, the whole group started moving away from land at blinding speed. As they moved, a boat suddenly came into view beneath their feet.

Of course, Kurt thought. I should have known.

The wizards had had a boat at the ready, hidden by invisibility spells. But invisibility spells were difficult to maintain at high speeds, and these wizards were too busy fighting off the woman on the boat to worry too much about the invisibility spells. In fact, as the boat picked up speed, other wizards suddenly appeared, their invisibility spells dropping away as they began to focus instead on fighting against the woman, and fighting against Kurt.

Kurt wasn’t sure whether he could fight all of these wizards off without shifting, but he was going to hold off as long as he could. They were heading away from shore out toward the middle of the lake, at least, so in a few minutes it might be safer to shift without worrying about any humans seeing him. He swung his fists, trying to punch the wizards, and he did catch a few off guard. But it only took a few moments for them to begin anticipating his punches and ducking. They were easily avoiding him, and, although they were mostly focused on attacking the woman, Kurt saw one of them raising his magic ring and pointing it in Kurt’s direction. Kurt knew this meant the wizard was about to launch a magic attack at him, which meant it was time to shift. He couldn’t hold off any longer, or these wizards were going to kill him. He needed his dragon hide, which provided good protection against magical attacks.

With a roar, Kurt began to shift. His clothing tore away as his body began to grow and expand. His hands and feet morphed into the sharply clawed hands and feet of a dragon, and his head transformed into a mighty dragon head. His skin thickened into iridescent green dragon hide, and he sprouted wings and a tail, all covered with spikes. The whole group of wizards on the boat paused for a moment, gaping at him as he flapped his wings to rise above the boat. Apparently no one had realized that the shifter in their midst was a dragon.

Kurt took advantage of their momentary confusion. Quick as lightning, he drew in a breath and let it out as a giant burst of flames. The wizards screamed in agony, a few of them falling off the side of the boat into the icy cold water. The ones who hadn’t been caught up in Kurt’s fiery fury attempted to throw magical attacks in his direction, but it was useless. His dragon hide protected him from their magical blasts, but his dragon fire broke through their magical shields. They were toast. Literally toast.

In a matter of minutes, the last of the wizards had been taken care of. Only the woman remained, and she scrambled to take control of the boat and bring it to a stop in the middle of icy Lake Michigan. Then she pointed her magic ring at the flames that were rapidly burning part of the boat.

“Magicae aqua,” she yelled, causing water to spurt from her magic ring like a hose. The flames stopped, and suddenly everything was oddly quiet and still. Kurt flew so that he was directly above the boat, then shifted back to human form. The icy air hit his bare skin, and he rushed to find some clothes, peeling a jacket, pants, and boots off of one of the dead wizards who had been killed by a magic attack from the woman rather than by dragon fire. Most of the clothes the wizards had been wearing were ruined by the flames that had come from Kurt’s dragon mouth. He was thankful that a few remained usable, because it was beyond frigid out here.

As he dressed, the female wizard rushed about using her magical abilities to make repairs to the boat. It felt a bit strange to be here on a boat with a woman he didn’t know, hurriedly getting dressed and cleaning up after they’d both just fought together in a life-or-death battle.

Guess I should introduce myself, Kurt thought wryly as he turned to face the wizard. She seemed to be fighting for the side of good, and he hoped that meant she could give him some direction on how to start handling the disturbances that the Torch Lake High Council was so worried about. But when he met her eyes, his own eyes widened. He would have known those dove gray eyes anywhere.

“Natalie?!?” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

She raised an eyebrow as she started unwinding the scarf that had covered most of her face until now. “I could ask you the same thing, Kurt.”