Where Sleeping Dragons Lie (Skeleton Key) by Cristina Rayne, Skeleton Key

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