Page 2 of Guardian's Dilemma

It was galling to have to report to Leonard before I left but I did it.

“I’ll keep you updated on my findings,” I said.

Leonard smirked. “Don’t take yourself so seriously, King-y-boy. My team is already preparing everything they need.”

“You don’t even know what kind of dragon is it.”

That smirk was a permanent fixture on his face and I had hated it my entire life. We had been through training together, Leonard and I, and I didn’t like to admit it but we were well matched. What bothered me most, was that I didn’t know what it was that Douglas saw in Leonard and not in me. Why Leonard got to slay the dragons and I was stuck tracking them.

“We know it’s acuraidh,” he said.

“We don’t even know there’s a dragonthere.”

“That’s what you’re going to find out for me isn’t it, King-y-boy.”

I gritted my teeth and turned away, gathering everything I would need for my mission. I never left the training ground without my armour on, obviously, but I put on a generic black suit over the top. Then I checked out one of the cars, loaded in my weapons and tried to find out where I was going.

The dragon was meant to be in a small village called Lower Dipton and it was such a small, inconsequential little village that even Google Maps wasn’t entirely sure where it was.

It took me fifty minutes to find it on the map. There were no road signs to it on the way, which meant I got lost twice and had to double back.

I wasn’t in a great mood by the time I arrived, tense and tired.

The thing was, every difficulty I had in finding the village only confirmed that there was a dragon residing there. They had spent hundreds of years learning how to conceal themselves, learning the magic that would misdirect humans and keep theridireaway. I would need to be careful, and assume from the start that the dragon sighting was real.

When I arrived at the village – finally – I drove up and down it a few times. It was ridiculously small. I was surprised that a dragon had managed to hide itself in such a small place for very long. Surely people would notice? In a city there were enough people around that one or two missing wouldn’t be noticed. In the mountains or along the coast, a few people disappearing every year could be put down to the dangers of the terrain. How had a dragon managed to live in a small village for weeks?

I was trying to work out whether it simply hadn’t killed anyone yet and that was why it had managed to hide or whether the deaths had been written off as random events.

Whatever it was, it made me wary as I finally climbed out of my car and straightened my suit.

I found it was the best thing to wear when I was working in the field. It was easily replaceable when it got damaged, I could modify it with a few little tricks, and – most importantly – it meant nobody looked twice at me as I walked around. If they glanced at me at all, they saw a man in a suit and assumed generic businessman. I could pass myself off as a banker, a lawyer, an estate agent or a surveyor.

The village was so quiet around me that I didn’t think I’d need to pass myself off as anything. Nobody was around to ask.

The first problem I encountered – though it was minor and not exactly unexpected – was that there was no bakery in the village. The informant clearly wasn’t exactly reliable.

I walked up the high street. There was a laundrette, an accountants’ office, a woodcraft shop, a butcher’s, a greengrocer and a café. Apart from the fact that the café was the nearest thing to a bakery in the place, something was drawing me to it. I’d learned a long time ago – before I could even remember, really – to listen to my instincts.

My instincts were magic.

I’d spent years learning how to use spells like antennae, sending them out and touching everything within the vicinity with them, learning what was around me as much through the way it interacted with my magic as through physical touch.

That’s what made me such a good tracker, better than anyone else in our coven.

Yes, there was definitely something magic in that café. It wasn’t something I could define from this far away but it was there, nonetheless.

I drew another defensive symbol on my chest as I walked and then opened the door. There were spells on it, small ones. They were harmless little spells – barely strands thicker than a spider’s web – but the fact that they were there at all was noteworthy. I tried to identify the spells as I entered, cataloguing them. They felt human-made. I’d have felt a dragon’s magic from metres away.

As I stepped inside, though, my skin prickled with the same sensation I always got when I could feel a dragon’s presence. It was a cold, deathly kind of sensation and it always warned me to layer up my protections. I wished I’d drawn a few more over my head and throat, even though I had my usual ones on. I never left the training ground without them.

There were three people inside the café and, as I stood there, adjusting to the presence of the spells and the feeling that a dragon was nearby, one of them jumped up and went behind the counter. He was a short, plump man and I automatically catalogued any awareness I had of him. He was human. In fact, he didn’t have even a drop of magic in him. Yet I had the cold, deadly feeling skittering across my skin. There was definitely a dragon nearby.

“Good afternoon, welcome to the Honey Pot! How can I help you?”

I moved further into the room, trying to get any idea of where that feeling came from. There were no other sounds in the whole café.

The plump man rested one hand on the counter; the other was in a cast. Had he encountered the dragon?

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