Where Sleeping Dragons Lie (Skeleton Key) (6 page)

Briana watched in fascination
as a now mercifully fully-clothed Taron shot flames from his mouth onto the
stack of logs and paper kindling in a fireplace so huge that she, at five-foot-five,
could have walked into it without having to duck her head down very much.
However, just because he was now wearing a pair of jeans, it didn’t mean that
she didn’t take the opportunity while he was bending down tending to the fire
to appreciate how well those hard, round globes filled out those jeans.

And she accused
him
of being awful…

Before he caught her
staring, Briana forced herself to turn her attention to Beatrice Hildebrand’s
book that was currently opened to the first full page of that strange writing.
Taron had promised to read it aloud to her, and Briana couldn’t help feeling a
growing excitement.

Despite every crazy and
terrifying thing that had happened to her today, she had to admit that she was
looking forward to learning exactly what had happened to Beatrice when she had
used the skeleton key to literally open a door into Taron’s world. What she
must’ve thought seeing a dragon soaring in the sky for the first time…?

“My guess is that she
ended up within an
Ansi
dwelling,” Taron said abruptly as he sat down on
the sofa with only inches between them, startling her from her thoughts. “Being
a descendant, she would’ve been welcomed with opened arms, especially if they
knew or at the very least, had an inkling of who her ancient ancestor—
your
ancestor—had been. Perhaps it was even she who showed them the way to your
world again.”

“You’re
sure
, absolutely
sure, that I have
Ansi
blood?” Briana asked for the millionth time.

“Positive. It’s like the
scent of a lightning bolt, metallic and full of power; the fragrance is
unmistakable.”

Unsure of how she felt
being part-witch, she let the issue go for the moment, one of a thousand
different things on her “to-examine-later” list. “Okay, okay. So, are you going
to read the whole book or…?”

“As much as I would like
to, I don’t believe we shall have that luxury,” Taron said, his expression suddenly
grim. “Although I
think
that I muddied our trail enough, it really is
only a matter of time before Cabak finds us. That he’s here in this world at
all means that the stone dragons have become desperate, either because they
have failed to break through the defenses of the tower where Dagon sleeps to
claim his body even after all these years at a significant loss to their forces,
or as you suggested, the
Ansi
may have taken him instead. Perhaps the
Ansi
plan on capturing
me
in order to acquire Dagon’s Dragon Fire to use as a
bargaining chip.”

“The intrigues of
monarchies and their enemies make my head hurt,” Briana groaned. “What exactly
are you hoping to find in the book? I’ll listen for clues you might miss while
you read it to me.”

“A confirmation,” he
replied. “Before you attempt to use the skeleton key, I need to know whether or
not Beatrice returned to this realm from the same door she used to enter mine.”

“Ah, I see, but
considering that I’m the one—”

Without warning, the
entire wall behind them crashed inward, shoving a wave of dust and rock towards
them and nearly making Briana bite her tongue as she instinctually dove forward
across the coffee table, her body propelling the book onto the floor along with
her. Coughing violently as she tried to breathe through a cloud of dust, she
only had enough time to raise her head and glimpse the large body of what
looked like a blue, stone sculpture of a dragon suddenly come to life before a
pair of muscled arms as hard as steel wrapped around her middle and jerked her
backwards towards a side door.

Rather than scales, the
texture of the dragon’s body was very similar to the large blocks that had been
used to build the castle. A stone dragon. Cabak…

Once across the
threshold, Taron wasted no time scooping her up into his arms and sprinting
down a long, dark hallway. His hair was almost completely gray with dust as
well as sprinkled across his face. However, the hazel-orange of his eyes seemed
to ignite into literal flames as they raged with his anger.

He cleared the narrow
staircase at the end of the hall in two bounds and raced to the left down
another hallway full of tapestries whose designs blurred altogether in chaotic
swirls of color as they sped by. Another turn to the right at the end of that
hallway and Taron slid to a halt in front of a thick, wooden door in the
center.

“We don’t have much
time,” he growled urgently as he set her down onto her feet. “Use the key on
this door!”

“Right!” Briana rasped,
digging a hand into the front pocket of her jeans as the castle walls shook
violently once again. “But where—what if I do something wrong—”

Taron grabbed her
shoulders tightly. “Listen to me. The skeleton key appeared within
your
hand. Your ancestors came from my world. I can only hope the Fates will unlock
this door and reveal the place where we need to go, the place that, in a way,
we
both
originated from. The original ‘door’ within the fabric of our
worlds my
Ansi
betrayer opened and thrust me through.”

She nodded curtly in
sudden understanding. “The door to the tower where your brother hopefully still
Sleeps.”

“
Astaron
!” Cabak
roared, so loudly that Briana was afraid that her eardrums would rupture.

 However, she didn’t
drop the key to cover her ears like she desperately wanted to. Instead, she
gritted her teeth and scrambled to thrust it into the keyhole, amazed when it
actually went in smoothly without the slightest resistance.

The floor beneath them
started to crumble after another crash shook the walls around them. Briana let
go of the key and cried out in alarm as she began to fall down into a huge
crack that had formed between the stones under her right foot. Taron grabbed
her left arm and jerked her back flush against his front.

“Turn it
now
!” he
shouted.

Briana grabbed for the
skeleton head sticking out of the lock and gave it a sharp turn, half-afraid
that she would break it. A loud
click
sounded out amidst the cracking
and rumbling of the castle being demolished around them by a rampaging stone
dragon, echoing louder than was natural. It was a reverberation she swore she
could feel in her very bones.

Then Taron all but
shoved her against the door just as she turned the doorknob, his body heavy at
her back, and before she knew what was happening, they were both falling
forward onto a red and black woven rug littered with strange symbols, Taron
landing onto her back.

Her head swimming with a
sense of vertigo, Briana tried to make sense of her surroundings. Her first
instinct was to panic. Crap, did the key not work? Her next was to panic for a
completely different reason. What if the key
did
work?

She had never intended
to follow Taron across the threshold into his world. In fact, she had never
even gotten past the thought of opening the portal, much less how she expected
to get back home from a country she had entered without a passport or going
through customs.

Briana instantly froze
when the blade of a sword appeared mere inches from her nose and a deep voice
spat out a string of unintelligible words above her, angrily. Then Taron was
shouting urgently near her ear in some weird, guttural language, and suddenly
her vision was flooded by several pairs of darkly-clothed legs rushing towards
them.

“Taron!” she cried out
in alarm, wondering what the hell was going on, wondering if she was about to
die.

The weight on her back
vanished, and Briana suddenly found herself in Taron’s arms again, her back
pressing into his front. His arms were steel bands around her waist as though
he was afraid she was going to dash away.

“It’s all right,” he
said into her hair just as she finally got a good look at her surroundings.

Briana gasped as she
realized that they were in a dimly lit room with gray, stone walls. The only
illumination came from a series of blazing torches that cast shadows over the
bed they encircled, as well as over the bodies of at least a couple dozen
black-haired men and women dressed in identical black tunics with thick red
threading along the cuffs and seams that were surrounding Taron and her. Most
held swords, but a few were aiming a wooden, crossbow-like weapon directly at
them.

“Uh—what part of this
picture is all right?” she hissed.

“Everything,” Taron
replied in a strange tone. Then he let out a joyous whoop before she could even
open her mouth to reply and tightened his arms around her in a back-breaking
hug. “After two centuries of exile, I’m finally
home
.”

Briana had known before
she craned her neck over her shoulder so fast that her neck popped loudly that
she was completely and utterly screwed.

The staircase that
descended into an eerie gloom from the threshold of the door she and Taron had
just fallen through just confirmed it, if not the fact that an unnerving
silence had replaced the sound of a castle being destroyed by a pissed off
stone dragon. She could hear her own breathing more keenly than she ever could
before, short, gasping, and
panicky,
while her heart was beating fast
enough to send her into cardiac arrest.

Shit
.

“It’s there, right?” she
whispered. “The key—it’s still there in the keyhole, right?”

She felt Taron stiffen
against her, before he gave her another squeeze around the middle, this one
reassuring. “It is.”

Briana let out the
breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and sagged with relief in his arms.
The key was still there. Maybe she wasn’t as screwed as she had thought.

Now that she wasn’t on
the brink of freaking out, she finally remembered that they had a rather
sizable audience, and the likely reason why.

“Is that Dagon on that
bed?” she asked tentatively.

Taron released her and
stepped forward. “Yes,” he replied, that one word steeped with a plethora of
emotions.

That single step
shattered the stillness that had fallen over everyone else in the room, and
within two beats, Taron was mobbed like a celebrity suddenly spotted by
paparazzi. A flurry of words, laughs, and embraces were exchanged, and even
though Briana couldn’t understand a word of it, pure joy was universal, and
seeing that emotion on Taron’s face made her feel choked up as well.

As she stood apart from
the celebration, feeling awkward and unsure but nonetheless happy for Taron,
she remembered the skeleton key that Taron had assured her was still sticking
out of the keyhole in the door behind her. A quick glance over her shoulder
confirmed it. While she was being ignored, Briana hurried over to the door and
pulled out the key, deliberately ignoring the fact that the key was now so cold
that it actually burned her skin when she touched it. She shoved it back into
her pocket and vigorously wiped her hand on the side of her jeans to get rid of
the sting.

When Taron finally
turned around, sunset eyes seeking her, she was back in the spot he had left
her as though she had never left it, staring back at him uncertainly. She had
been tempted to try to use the key on the other side of the door while his back
had been turned and everyone else was distracted, but what stopped her was the
possibility that the door on her world may no longer exist thanks to Cabak.
Between the thought of opening a door that led into a dimensional void or
sticking with Taron, who just might be able to lead her to an
Ansi
still
loyal to the firedrakes who could safely open a portal back home for her, it
was a no-brainer.

“Come,” Taron beckoned
with a crook of his fingers. “I’ve explained to the royal guard your role in getting
me back to this world. You have as much right to see this as they do.”

“See what?” Briana asked
as she approached him cautiously.

She was surprised when
he reached down and took her right hand in his left and led her through the
crowd of guards who instantly parted like the Red Sea to the bed in the center
of the room. At first glance, the Sleeping dragon-shifter looked dead. Dagon
was outfitted in a thick, black tunic embroidered in gold thread in an elegant,
stylized flame pattern and black breeches made from a linen-like material. He
even had on a pair of black, knee-high leather boots. His hands lay with
fingers intertwined in the center of his chest. A narrow crown of golden flames
also encircled his head. He looked like a monarch laid out in the best of his
finery for a state funeral, striking against the crimson coverlet.

He also looked
remarkably like Taron, giving her an unpleasant flash of
déjà vu
of
seeing Granny Ruth lying in her coffin in the chapel of the funeral home. To
see someone so familiar in a remarkably similar state again gave her a chill
and made her heart clench with remembered grief.

“He doesn’t look like
he’s even breathing,” Briana murmured in dismay.

Taron squeezed her hand.
“That’s because he’s not,” he replied. “When I removed his Dragon Fire, his
body fell into a near state of suspended animation. This is the only time a
dragon’s mind can completely rest as we don’t sleep.”

“You don’t sleep even
when you’re in the form of a man?” she asked incredulously.

He shook his head. “We
naturally have an overabundance of energy due to the nature and power of our
Dragon Fire. Thus, our bodies don’t need sleep to recharge or repair themselves
like humans or even the
Ansi
.”

“Dragons really are
incredible,” Briana said with a hint of awe.

Taron smirked. “Yes, we
are.” He released her hand and stepped closer to the bed. “However, our Dragon
Fire is something even more magnificent.”

This time, he held out
both hands as the blood-red fireball she had seen once before emerged from his
chest and settled onto both upturned hands. She marveled how it didn’t seem to
burn the navy blue argyle sweater he was wearing at all on its way out of his
body even though she could feel the immense heat radiating from it.

The collective
anticipation of the guards behind them once their king’s Dragon Fire appeared
was so thick in the air that it made her skin crawl. Briana had to fist her
hands at her sides to keep from vigorously rubbing her arms. Despite that, even
she watched with baited breath as Taron placed the undulating red ball of fire
over the center of his brother’s chest and then drew his hands back. It
immediately began to sink into Dagon’s chest until its glow and heat
disappeared completely.

For a couple of anxious seconds,
his body remained deathly still, then Dagon gasped harshly, and his chest began
to noticeably rise with breath. Briana unconsciously leaned closer in her
excitement, but the silence stretched on without so much as an eyelash
fluttering.

“It’s done,” Taron
abruptly announced, making her jump.

“What do you mean ‘it’s
done’?” she demanded. “He’s still unconscious!”

He nodded. “And he’ll
continue to sleep for at least another day. Remember, he’s been in a period of
Soul Sleep for over two hundred years. It’s a bit like being in a deep coma for
many years and then slowly awakening after all the trauma finally heals. The
re-merging of the Dragon Fire with Dagon’s body is a tedious process.”

“Makes sense. So, what
do we do now?”

“
You
are going to
sit on the edge of this bed and rest while I go talk to the captain of the
royal guard. You look a breath away from collapsing in exhaustion.” He touched
a hand to her cheek, making her wince as her abused skin still felt as
sensitive as a day-old sunburn. “I know this day has been one big jumble of
stress and confusion for you, so if you’ll just bear with me for a moment longer
while I get a better grasp of our current situation, we can then figure out how
best to move forward.”

He tapped the pocket of
her jeans where the outline of the key was visible and then flashed her a
meaningful look. She nodded curtly. Maybe he had been paying a lot closer
attention to her earlier than she had thought.

Even after Taron and a
guard with a sharp, almost angry expression whom Briana assumed was the aforementioned
captain began an animated discussion in the guttural language of before while
the rest of the guards resumed their guard duties with grim expressions, she
felt the occasional eyes trying to bore holes into the back of her head. She
did her best not to show just how much it bothered her by relaxing her
shoulders and not turning to look at them at all while concentrating her gaze
solely on Dagon’s peacefully sleeping face.

She was more relieved
than she cared to admit to herself that Taron showed no desire to abandon her
at all now that she had fulfilled her role. She wondered what the other
dragon-shifters thought of her, especially when they could probably smell her
Ansi
heritage. Would that make them suspicious of her intentions? Her loyalties?

Her eyes slanted briefly
over to the door that was now closed. She wondered if Cabak realized that Taron
had made it back home. What was the huge bastard doing now? More importantly, who
was the witch that had sent the stone dragon to her world, and was that witch
also hiding within Briana’s world, waiting for Cabak to succeed in capturing
Taron or building a portal back to this world even as she sat watching the
dragon king?

Briana felt an invisible
hand squeeze her heart painfully when she thought about Carol. Her friend must
be frantic with worry. She had likely called the police. If only she would’ve
had the chance to let the older woman know that she was okay, that Taron had
saved her life by stealing her away from the shop.

Just what kind of
hornet’s nest would an investigation into a wealthy foreigner like Taron
Hildebrand knock over, especially when they find that the man, himself, had
also seemingly vanished off the face of the earth? What if she never managed to
find her way home, skeleton key or no skeleton key? Carol would likely go to
her grave thinking Briana had been murdered by Taron. And Mr. Brown? What had
become of
him
?

By the time Taron
returned to her side, Briana had worked her emotions up into an anxious knot.

“It’s just as you said,”
Taron said as he sat down on the bed next to her. “About two years ago, the
Ansi
abandoned the stone dragons and barricaded themselves behind a magical shield
cast around a single town near the royal palace. The stone dragons were just
beginning to gain ground against the firedrakes protecting this tower when they
were abandoned without warning or explanation both here and at the siege of the
royal palace. The fact that neither this tower nor the royal palace has fallen
under the control of the stone dragons is great news. I have always feared that
I would return to a world that I no longer recognized.”

“Two years ago—that’s
when you said Cabak first appeared in my world,” Briana said.

Taron grimaced. “Yes, a
coincidence that can’t be ignored, and a cause for great concern. The flare of
magic that brought us here wouldn’t have gone unnoticed by the
Ansi
. A
hole was opened in the fabric of this world by the power of the skeleton key.
They would recognize the magic’s—flavor, for lack of a better word, and very
likely guess that the true king will soon awaken from his Soul Sleep.”

“Then, the
Ansi
really are after the Dragon Throne, too,” Briana cut in, feeling her mouth go
dry at the thought of the type of offensive power a group of people who had the
unfathomable knowledge to open portals between worlds might wield, “after your
brother’s body.”

“Yes. The same laws
dealing with a succession of the throne the stone dragons have been trying to
exploit apply to the
Ansi
, as well. The ancient protection spells the
Ansi
of old placed on this tower have so far managed to keep the current
Ansi
from breaching them even with a portal, but according to Captain Rizall, ever
since the
Ansi
defected from the stone dragon’s side, they’ve redoubled
their efforts in breaching the barrier. Several weaknesses have already been
detected and no way to patch them. We can’t risk waiting for Dagon to awaken
here. We’ll have to smuggle him out right under everyone’s noses, somehow.”

He lowered his gaze down
to her pocket. His expression was suddenly unreadable.

“We also absolutely
cannot allow the
Ansi
to learn of the existence of the skeleton key. It’s
a magical item from another world that has no business wreaking havoc in this
world. Thus, we must remove it from the equation, entirely.”

Briana sucked in a sharp
breath. “You mean, try to use it on this room’s door to open the way back to my
world. What if Cabak destroyed the door on the other end or transformed back
into his human form and is picking through the rubble as we speak? Plus, I
might only have one shot at this to go back home. It might be safer for me to
try it on a different door.”

Out of the corner of her
eye, she saw a few of the royal guardsmen stiffen when she mentioned Cabak and
realized that even though they likely couldn’t understand English, they were
still listening very carefully to her conversation with their prince and would
recognize the stone dragon’s name.

Taron frowned. “You’re
right, and consulting Beatrice’s book is out of the question as it’s currently
either under a pile of rocks and debris or in Cabak’s hands.”

The last was said with a
scowl of disgust, and Briana seconded the feeling. Whether she made it back
home or not, it seemed most of Beatrice Hildebrand’s story would forever remain
a mystery. The thought made her want to punch something.

Still frowning, Taron
turned and asked Captain Rizall a question. Nodding at the other’s short
answer, he said, “Only my brother currently sleeps within the tower. We can go
to the chamber one floor down and try that door.”

Briana’s heart sped up.
Would that work? If she used a different door, would she end up somewhere
familiar, or like Taron, in a stranger’s house in some remote corner of the
globe like Iceland or Tasmania? She swallowed nervously. If she wanted to go
home, then she had to try the key at some point. Waiting was just stupid.

She stared into Taron’s
sunset-colored eyes. Had it really only been a few hours ago that she had found
them unnerving? Now she just thought them beautiful. She felt her chest tighten
at the thought of never seeing this incredible man, this dragon-shifter, ever
again.