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.
CHAPTER NINE
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.”
CHAPTER TEN
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.
“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.
Where Sleeping Dragons Lie (Skeleton Key) Page 6
