The motel sat just off the side of the road, and inside one of its rooms a pale, thin-faced man was asking a woman for an update.
She barely lifted her shoulders. Her ward was still active, she told him. If anyone came into the motel, she would know about it.
She never finished the sentence. A bright purple portal tore itself open in the middle of the room, a vivid energy pouring off its edges, and in the next moment there was a gunshot. The woman dropped to the floor.
The whole room filled with confusion and fear. The pale man crouched over her slumped body and shouted when he saw what had happened to her. "What is happening?"
The one standing next to him was just as terrified. "I don't know."
Then a man in armour stepped through the light. There was an attitude written plainly across his face, the look of somebody who had already decided what he was. He had come there as the enemy of the most powerful wizards in the world, and he did not seem to mind saying so.
A young man sat handcuffed to a table, wrists bound to the metal, and across from him a man in a formal suit took a seat. Everything about him said agent.
"I don't know what people want from me," the handcuffed man said. "Somebody explain what's going on."
The agent settled into the chair opposite. He turned one wrist over and showed a symbol worked into the skin there. "Arken. Agent of the Arcane Regulation Guild." He let that sit for a moment. "You are a suspect in the attack on the Shah Fitness Center."
"Is this somebody's idea of a joke?"
"Not at all." The agent's voice was cold. He explained that a son of a dragon was loose, and that the man across the table had been the only person found conscious at the scene. Then he dropped the rest of it. "Magic is real. And whether you realise it or not, you are a wizard."
Callum Wells froze.
"Let's start from the beginning," the agent said.
At his mother's funeral, Callum remembered seeing a man standing at the edge of the gathering. There was a strange, otherworldly aura around him, a presence nobody else in the crowd seemed able to see. It was not the first time for Callum. He had seen people like that before.
A sharp pain rose behind his eyes. He thought it might be a headache coming on. The man with the blue aura moved off through the crowd and was gone.
Callum did not think it was imagination. That had stopped being a reasonable explanation a long time ago. It happened too often.
Later, when he walked into his neighbourhood gym, he remembered that the owner was one of those people too.
Mr. Shah waved a hand at him from across the floor. "Long time."
And with him, wrapped in red, was a dragon. It moved its hand exactly the way the man moved his. During the handshake Callum watched Mr. Shah's hand and the dragon's claw travelling through the same motion at almost the same instant.
He tried his best to ignore it. In the life of a man like Callum, the concept of normal basically did not exist.
Mr. Shah was a good man. There was no clause attached to that. Callum spent a lot of his time in the gym there, more than he probably should have. Then the dragon put a foot on Callum's shoulder and pointed a wing toward a woman on the other side of the room. Go help her.
Callum gave a smile. No problem.
He knew Mr. Shah was not human. He also knew Mr. Shah was kind, and that ever since Callum's wife had left, the man had never once stopped trying to introduce him to somebody. Classic gym-uncle behaviour. It just happened to come with wings.
Callum went over to the girl. "The owner said you needed a hand."
She blushed a little. "Yes. I should."
Her name was Mari.
Then Mari started stuttering. The words came apart in her mouth. Callum was confused, and in the next moment she collapsed onto the ground.
Callum shouted and ran to her.
Mari was still on the floor when three armed men came through the doors of the gym.
Callum's first thought was robbery.
Mr. Shah shouted through the smoke that was already gathering. "Get down!"
Callum crouched immediately, putting his body between the door and the unconscious woman, shielding her with his own back.
All three attackers opened fire on Mr. Shah, heavy and continuous, filling the room with noise.
Mr. Shah answered them.
His eyes turned completely red. A powerful rage began radiating off him, thick enough to feel from across the floor. Smoke came out of his mouth.