The dark-haired, blue-eyed Dragon shifter turned and walked towards Flick, who remained frozen, her fingers digging into her thighs. As he approached, Dex raised a hand, his palm facing forward, then slammed his fingers into a hard fist. An explosion of light shot through the Underground Club, a flash of lightning turning the world white for an instant.

When her eyes had adjusted, Flick looked around in wonder at the club’s patrons. The shifters had all frozen, wide-eyed, for a few seconds, before starting up conversations with one another as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred in the last few minutes. The music resumed, and the Underground returned to its former, blissfully ignorant self.

Flick turned and slipped into the stairwell. Dex followed her through the doorway before shutting the door behind them.

“What was that?” she asked. “What did you just do?”

“I turned into a Dragon,” Dex replied, a cheeky smile on his face.

“You know what I mean. After that. The flash.”

“Oh, that. I made them forget what they’d seen. It was for their own good; I’d rather not have rumours circulating about what went on here tonight.”

“For their own good? I’m not so sure about that,” Flick said before a thought struck her. “Wait—why haven’t I forgotten?”

“Because I didn’t want you to. Come, let’s get out of here.”

When Flick began to climb the stairs, Dex shook his head. “Not that way,” he said, his voice echoing through the empty stairwell.

She looked around at the bare stone walls. “Which way then? Aside from the stairs, there’s nothing here.”

“To your eyes there’s nothing here,” he replied. “To most eyes, in fact.” She thought she spotted another small, sly smile on that gorgeous face of his before he stepped around the stairs into the small alcove next to them.

A large stone wall stood in his way, but rather than stop, he simply walked…through it.

“What the…?” Flick asked, marvelling at Dex’s disappearance. A second later his hand reappeared, seemingly coming through the wall, beckoning her. She took it and waited as he pulled gently. “Look,” she said, “if you’re a ghost as well as a Dragon, this isn’t going to work very well, because I’m very much ali—”

Before she could finish the word, he’d yanked her through to the other side as easily as if he’d guided her through open air.

She found herself in a long, dark hallway of ancient stone and moss. The club’s noise had faded to nothingness, the only sound greeting her ears the sporadic dripping of water on stone. On either side, a row of torches was fixed to the wall by iron rings, each one illuminated with a bright, warm flame of red-orange.

“Where are we?” Flick asked, spinning around to look for the opening they’d come through. All she could see was solid stone wall. She pressed her palms to its surface, pushing hard as a soft chuckle erupted from somewhere behind her.

“We’re in one of the many passageways that my kind use,” he said. “One of London’s hidden corners.”

“You said your kind,” she replied, pivoting to look up into his eyes. “Your kind is what, exactly? I mean, aside from a gigantic sodding lizard.”

“I’m one of the Kindred. One of the ancient lines of Dragon shifters.”

“Dragon shifters in and of themselves are a rather stunning revelation,” said Flick. “But you’re not just a shifter.”

“No,” Dex said softly. “My kind are magic users as well. Dragon blood flows through our veins, of course, but there are those among the shifter population who’ve long considered us something closer to witches and warlocks.”

“I thought witches and warlocks didn’t exist. Then again, I also thought Dragons didn’t exist, so I might very well be going absolutely mad.”

“There was a time when you thought Wolf shifters didn’t exist, too, Flicka. You’d best keep thinking that there’s no such thing as a Dragon, if you know what’s good for you,” Dex replied. He was looking at her again with that same strange expression he’d had earlier. As though he was making his way inside her, reading her very cells just as he seemed to read her eyes.

“Oh? Why is that?”

He turned away and a second later he was moving again, striding down the tunnel. She followed, jogging to keep up with his long legs. “Because you’re very beautiful, Flick,” he said, “and I don’t want to have to clean up your lovely corpse. Even less do I want to have to kill you myself.”

She halted. “I beg your pardon?” she called out to his back.

He turned to face her. God, he was huge. His head almost touched the top of the arched tunnel, and when he reached his arms out to press his palms into the walls, he had no trouble doing so. “You heard me,” he said. “I know that I’m not the only one with a secret. I know who you are. What you are. You’re a reporter, and an inquisitive one at that. I probably would have been wise to make you forget what you saw back there, just like the others.”

“But I’m not a…” she began. She bit her lip, cutting off her own lie. There was no denying it, but how did he know what she did for a living? Had he somehow read her mind? “Yes, I am. But I don’t write about shifters. I never have, in all the years I’ve known of your existence.”

“No?” he asked, leaning forward. Those eyes of his were hypnotic. For a moment she froze, her breath paralyzed, caught somewhere in her chest. “No,” he repeated. “You wouldn’t. Still, there are some out there who would use my identity as a weapon against me and anyone affiliated with me. If you’re one of them, you should tell me now.”

“Given that no one would ever believe me, I’m not sure how I could use my knowledge, or anything else for that matter, as a weapon.”

“No? And here I thought you liked weapons. You seem all too happy to wield your blade.” He edged towards her once again, pointing at the hilt of her knife. “Tell me, what exactly were you doing in the club, if it wasn’t research for a story?”

Flick slammed her lips shut, backing up a few steps. Instinct told her to reach for the blade again, but it would only prove his point. She was no killer, and something told her that she needn’t fear him.

“I was…unwinding,” she said.

“Unwinding?” Dex laughed again. “You hang about with sexually repressed, aggressive shifters to relax, do you? Most women would refer to that as a very difficult night.”

She shrugged. “I like shifters,” she protested. “Well, for the most part. I can’t really explain it. I feel at home among them. In the club I feel like I’m in the real world. I prefer it to the one above ground where humans walk about ignoring the amazing things around them while they moan about their lives, or worse, kill each other with abandon as they did a few years back. The shifter world is layered and mysterious.”

“Layered? Like an onion?” Dex chuckled.

“No. Like something far more exquisite.” Flick allowed herself a smile at last.

“Tell me then, if you feel so at home in the club, why the knife?”

“Because as you said, there are sexually eager male creatures about. Some, like your friend back there, think I’m fair game to throw over their shoulders and take me to bed.”

Dex’s eyes were glowing bright blue as he took another step towards her. “You weren’t there to get picked up, nor were you there as a spy,” he said. “So what are you?”

“Lost, I suppose,” she replied, making a concerted effort to hold her chin high and to look him directly in the eye.

“A lost little girl,” he said, slipping his index finger under her jawbone and pulling her chin even higher as his eyes moved down her curvaceous form. “No. A lost woman.” The way his lips formed the word sent a shiver of pleasure through her body, his scent twining its tendrils about her in an erotic embrace.

“I suppose that’s what I am, yes,” she replied, her voice threatening to tremble.

“Well, you’d best stay lost.” He pulled his hand away and spun around to stride down the passageway. “Trouble is going to start soon, Flick, and I don’t want to see the likes of you tangled up in it.”