Where Sleeping Dragons Lie (Skeleton Key) (5 page)

“A key had appeared out
of seemingly thin air, one that had opened up ‘a door to paradise.’ At least
one woman had disappeared across its threshold, never to be seen again. With an
actual object to seek, I started to quickly discover snippets of the same story
all across the British Isles. It was only through piecing together these small
anecdotes of lore that I finally heard the story of a woman named Beatrice
Hildebrand who had allegedly entered a ‘doorway to heaven’ after a glass-like
skeleton key appeared in her hands one night. What made her story so intriguing
was that she allegedly returned back home.”

Briana sucked in a sharp
breath, and her gaze immediately fell to the book still resting on her lap.
“Now I see why you wanted this book so badly.”

“It was said that her
accounts of her time in the other world were bound into a leather volume that
had been passed down as an heirloom until the early eighteen hundreds when it
inexplicably disappeared from all records. One thing those accounts told me was
the skeleton key unlocks the door on both sides. My hope was to verify that
point though Beatrice’s own words when I found her book.”

Suddenly Taron’s grin
was full of teeth. “Not to mention, Beatrice Hildebrand was a descendant of an
Ansi
—the
same
Ansi
as you.”

“That can’t be right,”
Briana protested instantly, her pulse racing with something like fear. “Granny
Ruth and I have traced our family tree back to the 1700s, and there wasn’t a
single Hildebrand among our ancestors!”

“Given how weak that
particular bloodline has become in you, I’m not surprised,” Taron replied,
sounding unconcerned. “I’ve occasionally run across others of that bloodline
all across the world during my endless search, and I doubt their familial ties
could have been easily linked without an extensive DNA analysis. Your original
Ansi
ancestor could have arrived here during the reign of the pharaoh, Khufu, for
all we know. As I said before, the
Ansi
blood I smell within you is
ancient. Imagine how widespread her progeny must be after thousands of years.”

“Even so, I still don’t
understand why my having witch blood from another world is important to you. If
you’re hoping that I can somehow cast the same spell that witch used to banish
you here, then I’m afraid you’re just going to be disappointed.”

Briana opened the book
to a random page, a little surprised to see the picture of the skeleton key.
Taron’s gaze lowered to the now opened book in her lap.

He raised a hand and
carefully poked at the drawing with the tip of one, black talon. “What I need
from you isn’t a spell. What I need, what I’m hoping with all my soul that you
can give me, is this key, a key that once opened a door to my world.”

Feeling her heart sink,
Briana reached a hand to that enormous talon and carefully laid her palm onto
its shiny surface. She was a bit surprised that it was warm. She had expected
it to feel rough like bone, but instead, it was as though she was touching a
talon carved from pure obsidian.

“So that’s it,” she said
softly, looking up at him with sympathy despite what she was about to say. “You
were just toying with me when you hinted that you had the skeleton key from the
drawing because you’ve believed since the first day you met me that not only
did I have Beatrice’s book, but also the key.”

Briana raised an eyebrow
when he shook his head. “I’m pretty confident you don’t.”

She frowned, now feeling
utterly confused. “Why?”

“Because you’re
currently here with me,” Taron replied simply, “and looking at that picture
should have incited a stronger emotion than just the curiosity you’ve shown.”

Her frown deepened. “I
don’t follow.”

Taron stared down at the
place where her hand rested against his talon for a long, uncomfortable moment.
Finally, with a heavy sigh, he abruptly pulled his hand back, startling her.
The expression in his eyes was suddenly unreadable.

“Taron, what—”

And then she felt it,
something hard, cool, and smooth beneath her left hand that still rested where
it had fallen against the vellum page when Taron had pulled his hand away so
unexpectedly. Briana yanked her hand away with an oath, the book nearly falling
off her lap with the sudden movement.

Without warning, a
humongous dragon’s snout flooded her vision, his T. rex-looking teeth mere
inches away from her face. She flinched so hard that she nearly fell backward.
The smell of ashes inundated her senses as gust after gust of almost too hot to
bear dragon’s breath washed over her as he seemed to be hyperventilating.

“It’s here! It’s here!”
Taron roared, making Briana wince and cover her ears in pain in response to the
extra decibels. “You did it! You
did it
!”

Did what?
she
thought dazedly, sure that everyone in the whole state had heard his shouting.

“Quickly! Pick it up. I
dare not touch it.”

“Pick what up?”

“The key of course! The
skeleton key.”

The giant dragon head
disappeared from her field of vision, and only then did Briana slowly remove
her hands from her ears. They still rang from taking the full brunt of his
booming voice.

“Forgive me,” Taron
said, his voice back down to an infinitely more tolerable volume. “I didn’t
mean—in my excitement—but the key—”

Briana automatically
followed his gaze back down to the book in her lap, and her eyes widened when
she saw a semi-opaque key about four inches long with a skeleton head and two delicate-looking
teeth wedged into the crease of the book, a key that looked impossibly like the
drawing beside it.

A key that had
not
been there moments ago.

“What in the world…” she
said weakly, unsure if anything would ever make sense again.

“Please take it,” Taron
pleaded. “Take it before it disappears. Quickly!”

It was the look of
absolute desperation in his eyes that had Briana scooping up the key despite
not wanting to touch it at all. Once it was in her hand, Taron all but
collapsed onto his belly and closed his eyes, looking so exhausted that it made
her throat tighten with emotion.

“I thought this day
would never,
never
come,” he admitted roughly.

“I don’t understand.
What the hell just happened?” she asked, eying the key in her hand as though
she was holding a sleeping viper.

It was more substantive
than she had expected, perhaps weighing around a pound.

“The key only appears to
the one that’s meant to use it,” Taron said, “That is its lore. Now I can go
home. Now I can save Dagon and restore order to my kingdom once again.”

“Um—I hate to be a wet
blanket, but how do you know that it’ll unlock the door that leads to your
world? You said the stories about the key talked about various people opening a
door to paradise or heaven. That could mean anything and anywhere.”

Taron opened his eyes
and slowly grinned. “Because
I
found you, and the key appeared.”

“That’s it?” Briana
asked incredulously. “
That’s
your logic?”

“There’s also the fact
that Beatrice wrote the book in the language and alphabet of my people.”

She had completely
forgotten that Taron had been able to easily read the strange writing.

“Okay…so what now? I
stick this key in the nearest lock and the door will just open up to your
world?” she asked skeptically. “Just like that?”

“It was my thought to
use it on the door whose threshold I initially fell across two hundred years
ago to enter this world. My gut tells me that is the correct path.”

“Your ‘gut’ tells you,
huh? Maybe you should read this book some more before we do anything,” Briana
suggested wryly. “For all you know, this might be a one-shot deal.”

“We?”

Briana snorted as she
stuffed the key into the right front pocket of her jeans. Magic key or not,
just touching the thing made her extremely uneasy.

“Of course I’m going to help
you, you big lizard.”

Flashing her a
chastising look, Taron pulled himself back up onto his haunches. “Then this
‘big lizard’ will fly us directly to England right now. The castle I appeared
in is currently empty as well as owned by me. I needed to make certain that the
door and its lock were preserved. We can study the contents of the book there
while that bugger, Cabak—”

A rapid narrowing of his
eyes was her only warning before Briana was suddenly snatched up roughly by one
red hand, followed by a deafening crash behind her that sounded as if the
building was cracking open. She looked over her shoulder in enough time to see
a large boulder hurtling towards them, a dark mass of blue a shade lighter than
the surrounding sky blotting out the sun behind it. A split-second later, the
world became a jumbled mess of blues, reds, tans, and grays as she was jerked
around in several different directions until she felt as though her neck would
snap, Taron’s hand also squeezing her just a bit too hard and making it
difficult to breathe.

Then the world just as
abruptly became upright again, and though dizzy, Briana was at least able to
breathe more easily—for about two seconds. A stream of orange-red fire a
million times more powerful and impressive than his earlier demonstration shot
out from Taron’s maw, instantly heating the surrounding air. Her lungs felt as
though they were being scorched when she involuntarily gasped.

Her arms trapped once
again within Taron’s fist, Briana tried to protect her face from the heat by
pressing it closer against the smooth scales of a large index finger. Then the
brutal heat was suddenly gone, and another huge hand formed a cover over her
head, plunging her into darkness.

“Speak of the Devil and
of course he comes,” Taron snarled. The sound of vigorously flapping wings reached
her ears even through the insulation of the hands around her, followed by a
violent jerk upwards that made her teeth snap together painfully. “Looks as
though that trip to England will be a tad bumpy, after all.”

With both the skin on
her face and the lining of her lungs feeling tight and burning with pain,
Briana could only lay the side of her head against a few of his scales, squeeze
her eyes shut, and groan miserably, wondering if her face now resembled a boiled
lobster. She was also keenly aware of the skeleton key in her pocket digging
sharply into her upper thigh, reminding her mockingly of her agreement to help
Taron get back to his home world.

Considering she had just
been in the middle of a freaking fight between two monstrously enormous
dragons
,
she had come out of it relatively unscathed. How close had she come to becoming
a wet, chunky stain in the concrete by the huge boulder that other blue dragon
had thrown at her? She was damned lucky that she had come out at the other end
of a battle that included literal rivers of fire and rocks the size of a house
with nothing worse than what would probably amount to the equivalent of a
sunburn.

Now would be a good
time for me to wake up
, she thought with a choked laugh.

Too bad the pain in her
body pretty much guaranteed she wasn’t asleep.

For the first hour of the
flight, Briana endured sudden, stomach-churning drops and lightning fast
ascensions that made her nearly pass out with the added g’s of force. She even
thought she heard the crackling roar of Taron shooting fire from his mouth a
couple of times, which meant that they had yet to shake the blue dragon from
their tail.

Then after a long while
of steady flying, Taron carefully maneuvered her a bit higher until she could
see a portion of one fiery-colored eye through a small gap between a couple of
the fingers he had cupped over her head for protection.

“Are you all right?” he
rumbled over the sound of his wings flapping and the whistling of the wind as
they sliced through the air.

“I am now that the horribly
bumpy rollercoaster ride seems to be over,” she shouted, unsure if he could
even hear her puny voice. How keen was a dragon’s hearing, anyway? “Was the
dragon that attacked us what’s-his-name that came looking for you in the bookshop?”

“Cabak,” Taron growled,
the utter loathing in his voice practically tangible.

Yep, he could hear her
just fine, which was a relief. At least if they could talk, it would take her
mind off her discomfort and the surge of claustrophobia she was beginning to
feel at being unable to move her arms and legs with very little light shining
through between his fingers.

“I’ve managed to lose
him for now,” he said, “but that means we’ll have to take the long way around
to the castle.”

“Won’t that be the first
place he goes looking for us?”

“Only the Hildebrands know
that I own it. I used a fictitious name when I purchased it and haven’t stepped
foot in it since Cabak entered this world two years ago.”

“Should we expect more
dragon-shifters to come after us?” Briana asked worriedly.

“No—at least for the
moment. Until Cabak appeared before me, there were no other dragons present in
this world.”

“That you know of,” she
said. “Just look at how many old myths about dragons we have all over the
world. Now that I’ve met a real honest-to-God dragon, I don’t think that’s a
coincidence. Either dragons have been coming here from your world for ages, or
they came long ago and stayed long enough for stories of them to be passed on.”

“Only the
Ansi
have the power to open portals to different realms,” Taron said, sounding
troubled. “If dragon-shifters have been coming to your world, then they are
doing so with their aid in absolute secrecy.”

“If I were you, I would
keep a closer eye on the
Ansi
when you get back to your world,” Briana
said dryly. “It seems they may be up to a lot of sketchy things besides
stabbing the firedrakes in the back. I wouldn’t think a group powerful enough
to travel to different worlds would be satisfied being ruled by anyone, even
someone as powerful as a fifty-foot-tall fire-breathing dragon. Maybe they
really haven’t sided with the stone dragons in your civil war. Their actual
reason for helping to incite the war could’ve been to weaken both sides enough
to stage a coup of their own.”

Taron fell silent for a
long moment. Briana almost regretted her words. Having a potential second
usurper come into the picture had likely never entered his mind, and now that
she had pointed it out, she had just added something else for him to worry
about along with his mountain of other worries.

“Perhaps the Fates have
heard my pleas after all,” he said finally, an odd note in his tone. Then he
asked a bit more sharply, “You
do
still have the skeleton key?”

Yeah, it’s giving my
thigh a new bruise as we speak.

Briana frowned. Although
she hadn’t had the time or the desire to study it more carefully before she had
banished it into her pocket, at first glance and feel, the key had appeared to
be made from a glass-like substance. Should they be worried that it could crack
given how firmly it was being pressed between Taron’s scaly hands and her body?

“I didn’t drop it if that’s
what you’re worried about,” she retorted, “but you might want to ease up on the
squeezing if you want the key to make it to England in one piece.”

“I’m more worried about
it disappearing. I ran across more than one story that claimed the key was
indestructible—at least by fire, sword, or blunt force.”

Although he probably
couldn’t see her face properly through the crack of his fingers, she scowled at
his eye, nonetheless. “After all the trouble you went through to get the damned
thing, do you
really
want to test that theory? Besides, I think my legs
have gone numb.”

She was relieved to feel
the pressure around her body lessen slightly. “Better?” he asked, amusement
coloring his tone.

“Not really, but I just
realized that we’re probably somewhere close to orbit right now, and I’d rather
not risk literally slipping through your fingers and falling to my death.”

He chuckled. “We aren’t
quite that high up. Although traveling at a higher altitude would shave a few
hours off our journey, a human like you would both freeze to death—despite the
extra warmth radiating off my hands—or suffocate at those kinds of elevations.”

“Oh, right…” Briana
replied with a grimace. “But—aren’t you worried about showing up on someone’s
radar?”

“My scales prevent
that.”

When it became apparent
that he wasn’t going to elaborate, she decided to let it go in favor of a more
pressing concern. “So, where are we right now?”

“We’re nearly clearing Antarctica.”

“What the hell are we
doing in Antarctica?”

Somehow, she had thought
“taking the long way” meant going across the Pacific rather than the Atlantic
Ocean.

“I managed to ground
Cabak in the Caribbean. I saw a storm brewing towards the south, and the added
ozone in the air was just the thing I needed to disrupt my scent trail. I’m
hoping he believes that I’m trying to get you back to my penthouse in New York,
or at the very least, not even consider the possibility of me flying this far
south. With any luck, we’ll be in England in about an hour.”

“An
hour
? Just
how fast can you fly?”

“Not quite as fast as
Superman,” he replied cheekily.

A surprised laugh burst
from her lips. “Hearing a
dragon
talk so casually about a comic book
character is just plain weird.”

“I’ll have you know that
I
adore
reading comics,” Taron said in a particularly posh accent.
“Although, Batman has always been my favorite.”

“Me too!”

It was in this vein,
finding out that Taron was very much serious about loving to read comics—a
hobby she also shared—and pretty much nerding out about various comic
storylines that they passed the time during the rest of their flight. Not once
did they bring up the skeleton key, Cabak, or even Beatrice’s book. When he
abruptly announced that they were coming up to his castle, Briana was genuinely
shocked at how quickly the time had passed and how easily he had made her
forget the throbbing in her slightly-singed face and her discomfort of not being
able to move anything other than her neck.

“If it’s safe, can you remove
your top-most hand so I can see it?” Briana asked.

“Of course. Just let me
descend a bit more, first.”

A few seconds later, she
felt her stomach drop as Taron rapidly descended and then was momentarily
blinded as he removed the hand that had formed a protective dome over her head.
It was probably around four in the afternoon, London time.

Briana hissed and
blinked rapidly as her eyes started to water. She struggled against the massive
dragon hand curled around her body for a long, frustrating moment until she
managed to pull her left arm free to rub the tears from her eyes vigorously.

Sitting in the center of
a sprawling estate with lots of trees and surrounded on all sides by farmland,
Taron’s castle looked, to her immense delight, just as she expected it to. It
was a weathered, medieval fortress of a light gray stone with five square
towers of various widths and heights and around a six or seven-foot perimeter
wall surrounding the entire structure.

“Wow. It’s gorgeous! I
supposed it fits that it’s owned by a prince.”

Taron snorted. “You
should see my kingdom’s royal palace. Most of it is a fortress carved into the
side of a mountain. One of the ballrooms, alone, would dwarf the whole of this
structure.”

Briana rolled her eyes
as Taron flew over the perimeter fence and landed on the front lawn only a few
feet away from the entrance. “Yep, definitely a spoiled prince,” she teased.

Another snort as Taron
carefully set her down onto the cobblestone driveway in front of a short, stone
staircase leading up to the front door. “Dragons are not spoiled.”

Luckily for him, she was
too busy trying to keep her numbed legs from collapsing from under her to retort.
They were already starting to hurt something fierce with that pins and needles
sensation she hated.

Then she did fall over
onto her rump in surprise as the huge, red firedrake began to contort and
shrink in front of her. Within seconds, a black-haired man covered from head to
toe in shiny, red scales stood before her—a very
naked
, very
well-endowed
man with the muscular body of an athlete. Briana froze, so completely caught
off-guard that a gear in her brain seemed to have gotten stuck in mid-thought.

The scales seemed to
rapidly sink directly into his skin until only his tanned, human skin remained.
Even the pupils of his eyes had rounded until she was staring with wide eyes
into the same sunset-colored eyes she had first seen in Carol’s bookshop.

A slow, cat-like smile
stretched his lips. “Like what you see?”

Shaking her head and
laughing, Briana accepted the hand up he offered, careful to keep her eyes
above the waist. However, she couldn’t resist ogling his chest muscles just a
little bit.

“You’re awful!” she
scolded. “I hope you have at least a pair of pants stashed away here.”

His wicked grin widened.
“We’ll just have to see, won’t we?”

It was strange to hear
him speak with his human voice. She had gotten so used to the dragon in the
past couple of hours that it was almost just as weird to see the gorgeous man
of before that had intimidated her so much. It made some of her early shyness
return with a vengeance, and she couldn’t quite keep from blushing just a
little bit. He had absolutely no shame at all.

He barked a laugh. “Come
on,” he said as he absently threaded their fingers together without a moment’s
hesitation and led her up the stairs. “It’s much too cold out for us to be
standing in the driveway any longer when a large hearth awaits us inside.”

She doubted very much
that a firedrake, whether in his human form or not, ever got cold. This had to
be the first time in history a conversation about comic books had led to a man
as drool-worthy as Taron to feel comfortable enough with a woman he had just
met—one that he had kidnapped, no less—to treat her as though they had been
friends for years just as he was now.

“Um, I hope you have a
spare key lying around here,” Briana said in an effort to distract herself from
the heat of his hand around her own.

Who was she kidding? It
was to distract
her
from the naughty voice inside that was urging her to
sneak a peek at his naked ass. She was a butt girl, through and through.

I can’t believe I’m
lusting after a guy that’s technically a dragon!

Taron gave her a thumb’s
up with his free hand. “This is my key.”

Belatedly, she noticed
that in place of a deadbolt lock was a small, black touchscreen just large
enough for him to press his thumb against. The history buff in her was a bit
outraged that he had added such a modern piece of tech like a thumbprint
scanner on a centuries-old castle instead of just using the original lock and
key.

Just thinking about keys
made her once again acutely aware of the skeleton key hidden away in her
pocket. If the castle had indeed required a key that Taron obviously didn’t
have, being as naked as he was, would he have suggested she use the key then?
Just the thought of using it made her stomach sink with dread. Suddenly, a
biometric lock didn’t seem so sacrilegious anymore.