Where Sleeping Dragons Lie (Skeleton Key) (7 page)

Smiling to keep her
sudden turmoil from showing, Briana nodded. “Okay. Let’s try it.”

The fact that Taron chose
to guide her by hand down the spiral staircase to the room below made Briana
feel their impending separation more keenly. She was beginning to wish that she
had never gotten to know the man within the scary dragon, though she couldn’t really
regret the hour they spent just chatting like friends while he flew her to
England gripped within a dragon’s hand.

The flickering shadows
cast by the flames from the wall sconces made the whole scene surreal and
dreamlike. Once back home, how long would it be before she started to believe
that the entire day’s adventure never happened at all? At the very least, she
could never tell anyone that Taron was really a dragon-shifter prince from
another world, not if she didn’t want everyone to wonder about her mental
health for the rest of her life. Not even Carol.

Briana would’ve liked to
have a more private goodbye with Taron, but once Taron had spoken with the
guard captain about their intentions, Rizall had immediately barked a few
commands to the nearest guardsmen, four of which proceeded to follow them out
of the room.

She really couldn’t
blame them. The prince they had thought captured and lost forever had suddenly,
miraculously, appeared safe and sound right before their eyes at a time when
they needed him the most. Like hell they were going to let anything else happen
to them while under their watch.

“What if I unlock the door
and some weird alien landscape is on the other side?” Briana fretted as they
stopped in front of the targeted door. A couple of the guards moved silently
past them to take up positions a few steps down while the other two remained on
the steps above them. “If the key disappears once I open the door? Do you think
there’s a single
Ansi
left on this world that would be willing to help
me get back home?”

Taron released her hand
and then reached up to gently cup her face with both. His hands always felt
warmer than a human’s, and they felt very soothing despite the “sunburn.” His
eyes were so beautiful, bright even in the gloom and seemingly swirling with
real flames as he stared down at her so intently.

That his hair and parts
of his face were still dusted with pulverized debris from his crumbling castle
only made that moment seem more real. She wanted to seal it forever in her
memory.

“Whatever happens, I’ll
do right by you. I promise.”

As she offered him a
tremulous smile, Taron’s head suddenly swooped down, and Briana gasped when she
felt the press of a pair of firm lips against her own that were searing in more
ways than temperature. An equally scorching tongue lapped at her bottom lip
teasingly before plunging aggressively into her mouth. A moan of surprise burst
from her throat as she felt his slick tongue slide sensually against her own
once, twice, and again. However, before she could get over her shock enough to
really reciprocate, he pulled away.

Taron licked his lips,
which then stretched into a grin of pure satisfaction. “I have wanted to taste
those plump lips from the moment I first saw them lift up into a smile, and I
was right. Your smile does taste incredibly sweet.”

“You
had
to do
that,” Briana scolded, her voice sounding embarrassingly breathless. “You’ve
just made it harder for me to leave.”

Although the grin never
left his lips, his tone was utterly serious as Taron replied, “I know, and I’m
sorry. But I would have deeply regretted it if I hadn’t kissed you at least one.”

Briana couldn’t help it.
Even though they had an audience, she surged up onto her tiptoes and planted a
brief, but hard kiss onto that grin. Then she lowered her heels to the ground
and wrapped her arms tightly around his waist in a tight hug.

“I’m really going to
miss you, you big lizard,” she mumbled against his sweater.

He chuckled as he hugged
her just as tightly. “And I’m going to miss hearing you call me that almost as
much as I’m going to miss you. Thank you for bringing me home. Now, let’s get
you back to yours.”

Reluctantly, Briana
pulled away from his warmth. She forced herself to smile up at him, wanting to
leave him with at least that much even though she knew that the rest of her
likely looked a mess.

“Thanks for the
adventure.”

Afraid that she would
break down in tears if she said anything else, she turned towards the door and
reached into her pocket for the skeleton key. Although not as cold as it had
been right after she had pulled it from the last keyhole, it was still chilly
enough to make her fingers ache. Appearing as brittle as thin glass, she was
surprised that the two teeth hadn’t broken off after being shoved into her
pocket a few times. Maybe it really was indestructible.

Before she could change
her mind, Briana started to thrust the key into the lock when a blast from
below knocked her onto her knees, the key slipping from her fingers and
bouncing precariously down a few of the steps. A split-second later, a flash of
cobalt blue light rose up the stairwell from below, and one of the royal guardsmen
flew past them at a neck-breaking speed and crashed into the wall at the curve
up ahead.

Briana didn’t need to be
told to know that what she had just witnessed was a magical offensive spell in
action. The whole air seemed charged with energy as she instantly scrambled after
the fallen key on her hands and knees down the stairs past Taron’s legs, her
hand barely having enough time to close around it before she was yanked up by
the back of her sweater.

For the second time that
day, Briana found herself hanging over Taron’s shoulder as he raced up the
stairs and around the fallen guardsman that was surprisingly struggling back
onto his feet while the two guards above stayed behind to likely stand their ground
against the threat coming from below.

More guards were coming
out of Dagon’s room by the time Taron reached the landing. It was almost
comical the way they shoved him into the room with Briana, herself, swinging
precariously on his shoulder as he was jostled around like a pinball. Then
Briana heard Captain Rizall shouting a bunch of incomprehensible words followed
by Taron’s slightly deeper voice. The only word she understood was
Ansi
,
but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that at least one of those weak spots
in the magical barrier around the tower Taron had told her about had finally
been breached by the witches.

Then Briana suddenly found
herself on her feet again.

“Looks as though you
won’t be rid of me just yet,” Taron said apologetically. “The tower has fallen.
It’s only a matter of time before the
Ansi
breach the barrier around
this room. While the rest of the royal army runs interference and provides
cover, I’m going to attempt to fly Dagon and you out of here. With any luck,
we’ll make it to one of the towns near the palace still under firedrake
control. It’s going to take a bit more cunning and effort to get Dagon back
into the palace past the stone dragon’s blockade currently barring the way.”

“What can I do to help?”
Briana asked as she followed him to the bed while stuffing the skeleton key
back into the front pocket of her jeans for the umpteenth time.

“After we break through
that boarded up window, I need you to sit on that window sill and hold Dagon’s
body against you while I jump through and shift into my dragon form outside. The
Fates willing, I’ll then grab both of you in one fell swoop.”

She nodded calmly even
though her heart was beginning to race with rising fear and made her way over
to the window to stand beside several of the guards. To find herself held
within the talons of a dragon in the middle of what would probably be a dragon
aerial battle full of fire, boulders, claw-to-claw combat, and God-only-knew
what else would be beyond terrifying. Never mind falling to her death, she
could end her life gruesomely in the jaws of an enemy dragon.

Taron picked up his
sleeping brother as easily as though he were no heavier than a feather and
carried him over to her. He nodded to the guardsmen and the two closest to the
window instantly kicked at the boards covering it until they splintered. Then
one by one, the guards stepped onto the wide sill and jumped out until only
Taron and Briana remained in the room amidst a soundtrack of shouts, crashes,
and growls down below and the roars of both dragons and shooting streams of fire
outside the tower.

“Climb onto the sill and
sit with your legs dangling over the edge,” Taron instructed. “Once I arrange
Dagon beside you, I need you to wrap your arms around his chest tightly and
wait for m—”

The door behind them
abruptly exploded, cutting him off mid-word as they were bombarded by the
flying remains of the door. Briana instinctually raised her arms to protect her
face.

What the hell,
again
?

Through the cloud of
dust in front of the gaping hole where the door used to be, she saw three
figures standing, their hands glowing with blue fire. Briana was suddenly
standing in front of the two brothers before she realized that she was going to
move. She had only a split-second to wonder what the hell she was doing before
the blast of blue power hit her squarely in the chest.

For the space of a
heartbeat, the entire world turned blue as the force of the
Ansi
’s
attack shoved Briana back a couple of steps, effectively knocking the breath
from her, but through sheer force of will, she remained standing as the blue
power dissipated around her.

I’m alive…

“Briana!” Taron shouted
anxiously behind her.

She could only shake her
head as she gasped for the breath she had lost, confused about what had just
happened. She had expected to see a huge, gaping hole similar to what used to
be this room’s doorway in her chest, but not even her sweater was damaged. Had
that witch only fired the magical equivalent to a warning shot?

Her question was immediately
answered by the second ball of blue power that struck her almost in the same
area as the first. However, just like the first hit, the power appeared to
dissipate on contact as she toppled backward against both Taron and Dagon.

A flurry of words were shouted
at them from the
Ansi
in what sounded like a surprised tone, and this
time, Briana saw the blue ball of power form in the hands of the man to the
right of the woman who had cast the other two attacks at her. However, as she
stiffened in preparation of the blast, Briana suddenly found her arms full of
an unconscious, super-heavy dragon-shifter that caused them both to crumble to
the ground. The
Ansi
then found themselves at the mercy of a snarling,
slightly transformed Taron in full rage mode as the firedrake charged them, a
stream of fire shooting from his mouth.

Unprepared for the
sudden onslaught, only one of the
Ansi
managed to cast a protective shield
around themselves as the fire roared over them. The other two screamed when their
bodies lit up like a torch with orange-red flames. Taron slammed into the magical
shield of the unscathed woman and bounced off hard, landing in an awkward crouch
only a foot in front of Dagon and her.

Briana could see the
nearly invisible ripples in the air like a heat wave shimmering over the
asphalt of a street in the distance as the magical barrier extended to cover
the witch’s comrades while the witch frantically began blasting them with power
in an effort to put out the flames. The smell of burning flesh reached Briana’s
nostril, making her gag.

“Now! While they’re
distracted!” Taron hissed urgently, pushing Briana towards the window with a
clawed hand as he started to drag his brother to the window, as well.

Briana managed to get on
her feet in record time and stumbled towards the window. She climbed onto the
sill and sat along the edge. Taron set Dagon down next to her and allowed his
brother to sag into her waiting arms before diving out of the window.

Knowing he would be all
right, Briana turned her head to keep an eye on the
Ansi
. The uninjured
one had managed to put out the fire on the other two and was currently on her
knees frantically casting a spell over the still-writhing and smoking bodies,
the witch’s hands glowing a blinding white.

Two more probable
Ansi
appeared through the ruined door just as the scene was cut off by a large, red-scaled
hand that closed around both her and Dagon. Briana found herself once again uncomfortably
squeezed within the fist of a dragon as well as pressed closely against the body
of a virtual stranger.

Then the sight of two
monstrously huge dragons filled her vision, one red and the other blue and as
different as night and day in body types and the structures of their wings, and
the discomfort of being pressed up so intimately against Dagon suddenly didn’t
matter at all. The dragons were in a death-hold, jaws clamped onto each other’s
neck and feet with curved, wicked-looking talons clawing at the scales of
exposed bellies.

It was both a relief and
a cause for anxiety when Taron cupped his other hand over their heads for
protection, plunging her into darkness. The next thirty or so minutes were a
terror-fueled nightmare of roars, Taron spitting fire at enemies that made
Briana feel as though she was being roasted, and a chaotic pattern of
stomach-wrenching drops, rolls, and rapid rises until her head was a pounding,
dizzy mess.

Through it all, Briana
kept expecting one of the stone dragons to break through the dragons protecting
Taron and ram into them hard, worried that her fragile human body couldn’t
survive that kind of blunt force impact even if it wasn’t a direct hit, but
that brutal hit never came. It made her paranoid. She couldn’t believe that
they were actually going to escape this madness relatively unscathed.

In a way, what helped
keep her calm was Dagon’s steady breaths that rippled across her hair on the
top of her head where his chin rested while he slept. She found if she focused
on those soft breaths and not on the cacophony of madness around them, it helped
keep her thoughts from spiraling into a panic.

A few minutes later,
Taron’s flight pattern became more stable, and the sounds of the dragon battle
began to sound more distant. She hadn’t dared tried to speak to Taron earlier
for fear of distracting him at a crucial moment and wasn’t sure if she should
try to now even though she was dying to know what was going on.

Luckily, Taron took the
decision from her by suddenly announcing, “We’re finally clear.”

Briana closed her eyes
and heaved a huge sigh of relief. “Where are we now?”

“Taking the long way
around again, unfortunately,” he replied gruffly. “I had hoped at least one of
the royal guardsmen would have been able to break away along with us. However,
with the unexpected addition of the
Ansi
into the fray, it was all that
our forces could do to create a hole within the stone dragon’s attack formation
and keep all of them from giving chase for the few minutes I needed to
disappear from their line-of-sight. At least the
Ansi
cannot give us any
trouble while we’re in flight and hidden behind the clouds, but no doubt they
will be ready for us at any number of places on the ground.”

“Does that mean our
original destination is a no-go?”

“Yes, but the secondary
site will work just as well for our plans.”

“So why do you sound so
hesitant?” she demanded, hoping he wouldn’t try to weasel his way out of
telling her if it was something bad.

“It’s for no reason as
dire as I’m sure you’re imaging.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “We
cannot fly directly to the secondary site. As it’s a covert camp where a small
battalion has been silently spying on the movements of the stone dragon’s
blockade of the royal palace, it’s too near the enemy to fly in safely. It will
require a considerable hike through a forest to reach it—at least the rest of
the day. Naturally, I can’t be in my dragon form.”

“I can make it if that’s
what you’re worried about,” she said firmly. “I’ve run a couple of marathons
within the last year, so as long as there aren’t any mountains to scale and you
don’t plan to sprint the whole way, my stamina shouldn’t be a problem at all.”

“I was more concerned
about the time being on foot will unavoidably waste, never mind any
discrepancies in our stamina. I can easily carry both Dagon and you if I must.
No, the problem lies with the fact that both the
Ansi
and the stone
dragons will have the time to scour the globe for us via both flight and
portal. We could very likely run into a dozen of either group within the
forest, or if they are feeling desperate enough, they could choose to unleash
their end game. If the royal palace falls, then the only way to reclaim it is
through my brother fighting the usurper-king in a fight to the death. It’s a
position I never wish my brother to find himself in, no matter his strength.”

“I just wish there was
more I could do to help,” Briana lamented in frustration.

“You have helped me more
than you realize, I think,” he chided. “Isn’t it enough that you stopped that
Ansi
’s
magical attack not once, but
twice
?”

“Those were just warning
shots, weren’t they?” Briana asked in confusion. “I didn’t do anything at all.”

“That first attack had
enough power to easily knock me unconscious,” Taron said. “The fact that your
body absorbed the magic on impact just proves the truth of your heritage even
if my nose didn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“
Ansi
magic is
useless when used against another of the blood. Their bodies naturally absorb
it, and it seems even someone whose
Ansi
blood has been thinned considerably
over several generations retains that one ability, even if you can’t cast any
spells.”

“Great. My super power
is ‘super absorption,’” Briana said dryly. “It figures I would end up with one
of the lame ones.”

Taron’s laugh
reverberated pleasantly over her skin. “I think ‘Absorption Girl’ sounds kind
of endearing.”

Briana snorted. “Yeah,
as endearing as a tampon.”

She swore he laughed for
a good ten minutes.

It was a happy memory
she held in her mind like an anchor after they had been hiking through what
Briana was beginning to believe was an endless forest for a little over six
hours. It was sweltering and humid, and it hadn’t been long before she was
sweating so badly that the streams of sweat running down her face had long ago
washed off most of the remaining dust from various building collapses and
explosions from her face. She had even removed her sweater and had tied it
around her waist, thankful for the thin tee she had worn underneath, but at
this point, walking around in just her underwear was beginning to look more and
more attractive.

Taron, that bastard, was
dry as a bone, of course. Briana suspected he even felt invigorated from the
heat, but she kept her snark to herself, determined not to complain once. She
was, after all, from Texas and had endured much worse heat and humidity.

At least her misery kept
her mind away from obsessing about the possibility of ambush, though with
Taron’s keen hearing, at least no one could sneak up on him from behind. Still,
she found herself peering up at the sky worriedly more times than was really
necessary, half-expecting something to spring down on them from the treetops or
to dive-bomb them from the sky. They also talked very little, wanting to remain
as quiet as possible.

When she wasn’t watching
for hidden enemies or a stream to quench their thirst, Briana passed the long
hours as she quietly followed after the two dragon-shifters by studying all the
flora and fauna. Taron’s world had way too many humongous flying bugs larger
than her hand for her peace of mind, but their “birds” were absolutely
beautiful. Many bore feathers in dozens of shades of green, purple, and brown
along with elaborate, leaf-like patterns that made them practically invisible
once they had landed on a tree branch.

The trees, themselves,
were more familiar, similar to her world’s oak trees in both color and form, if
not the height. The trees in this forest would have given Redwoods a run for
their money in the height department.

As she was squinting at
a patch of white flowers growing at the base of a tree they were passing on the
right, Briana nearly jumped clear out of her skin when her left hand was
suddenly grabbed.

“Stay close to me,”
Taron murmured, his eyes narrowed and staring ahead into the distance. I can’t
smell him, but I saw someone wearing a uniform of our army. “I don’t want them to
mistake you for the enemy.”

Briana gripped his hand
more tightly and nodded.

Taron slowed their pace
to a more casual stroll, walking straight ahead as the path around the trees
allowed. Her shoulders tensed as she started to see shadows emerge from within
the trees ahead, ten in total. They stood silently and merely watched them as
their strange trio approached. It was only when they were about a hundred yards
away that they finally realized who it was that was approaching so boldly
because the firedrakes, to a man, sudden rushed them like a determined line of
linebackers and tackles.

Before Briana could take
a step back in alarm, every soldier dropped to their knees and bowed their
heads in prostration.

The centermost soldier,
a woman with shortly cropped hair that curled up around her ears, was the first
to raise her head, a grin threatening to split her face in half. She then began
talking very animatedly in Taron’s language while every eye in the vicinity
tried to stare a hole into the center of her forehead. Their expressions
weren’t exactly hostile, but nor were they anything that could be called
friendly. Briana tried to ignore her growing discomfort by focusing on the
conversation going on no matter that she had no hope of understanding any of it.

Two men approached
Taron, but he shook his head. He said a few words, and the soldiers bowed
before backing off. She guessed that they probably tried to take Dagon from
Taron’s hands. She could understand why he wouldn’t want his brother to leave
his sight just yet.

Then Taron abruptly
squeezed her hand, and she looked at him questionably.

“Their camp is only
about a mile up ahead,” he said. “Dagon will likely not awaken until morning,
at the very least, so it will give me a chance to learn what I can to better
advise him, as well as us to eat and rest.

Briana sighed
internally. Another mile…

“Come to think of it, I
haven’t eaten since breakfast,” she replied. She saw some of the soldiers still
staring at her from the corner of her eye. Even though she knew they couldn’t
understand English, Briana still lowered her voice as she asked, “Are they
worried about you bringing someone who smells like an
Ansi
into their
super-secret camp?”

Taron looked at her
sideways. “I explained about the nature of our relationship. They won’t give
you any trouble.”