Read Where Sleeping Dragons Lie (Skeleton Key) for Free Online

our circle. He works for an auction
house in Dallas. I had invited him to come take a look at the book this morning,
but from Carol’s words—it was someone you knew, wasn’t it? Is that why
you charged the door like a crazed linebacker?”
    Taron’s eyes narrowed. “Oh,
I knew him very well. That he’s here in this world at all right now
makes me both hopeful and fearful.
    “In this world…” Briana
repeated, her words trailing off at the implications.
    “Of course. Did I not
say that it was true that there are no dragons native to this world?”
    “Then—how are you here?”
    “According to you, a
dream,” he replied with a deep chuckle that made the air noticeably vibrate
around her.
    Briana scowled. She
hated to admit it, but Taron did have a point. Not even she had dreams this
convoluted and vivid. It really would be stupid to continue to delude herself.
    “Fine. Laugh all you
want,” she growled, “but even you have to admit that me dreaming
everything that just happened made more sense than me landing right smack in
the middle of a fairytale.”
    “Fair enough,” he agreed
amiably, his tone somewhat mollifying her rising irritation.
    “So?” she asked, looking
up at him expectantly.
    Taron tilted his head
curiously at her before abruptly nodding. “Right. We were talking about the unexpected
visitor in the shop…”
    “...and how you came to
this world,” Briana reminded him, cringing inwardly at how ludicrous that
sounded.
    “The answers to both
questions are interconnected,” he said. “While I wish I had the time to explain
the prologue to this tale more thoroughly, I’m afraid the person we left behind
at the shop won’t give us that luxury. Even so, I can’t in all good conscious
ask you to help me any further without giving you at least a truncated version
of the story.”
    “Though you didn’t
exactly ask when you threw me over your shoulder like a sack of
potatoes,” Briana said dryly. “So that’s why you didn’t shift back into a man
once you had me up here. You’re running from that person. You want to be able
to fly away without having to waste time shifting.”
    “I am sorry about
that,” Taron replied, sounding genuinely contrite, “but I didn’t expect Cabak
to track me to this city so quickly. Never mind the book, there was no way in
hell that I was going to let that bloody bastard discover your existence. We’re
both extremely lucky that I got to you first.”
    “ Me ?” Briana
exclaimed in bewilderment. “What the hell do I have to do with any of this? It’s
not like I could read anything in that book if that’s what he was after.”
    “Maybe nothing or
everything,” he replied grimly. “The point is that Cabak would have snuffed out
your life the moment he caught your scent.”
    Briana instantly jumped
to her feet. “Scent? Wait! Don’t tell me we just left my friend Carol alone
with another dragon-shifter—no, that isn’t important—with a potential killer !”
    “Harold would have made
sure she, at least, made it to safety,” he assured her firmly.
    Frantic with worry, it
took her a long moment to remember that Harold was Taron’s so-called appraiser.
“Don’t tell me your appraiser can shift into a dragon, too!”
    Just how many dragons
were now running around the world pretending to be human?
    “No, just a very capable
human.”
    Looking around, Briana
spotted the building’s rooftop door and started to step towards it. “I need to
go back, anyway—hey!”
    Between one blink and
the next, Taron snatched her up into one giant fist and lifted her up to his
eye level. Feeling as though she was trapped inside an uncomfortably tight and
textured tube, rather than struggle futilely to free her arms, Briana settled
on glaring at one of his enormous eyes.
    “The best thing you can
do for your friend is to stay away,” he said frankly. “Cabak will have no doubt
caught your scent from the shop. He will realize what I have found,