(Skeleton Key) Into Elurien Read Free Page B

the knees of my pyjama pants, and I opened my eyes to bright lights. Not electric lights, but flickering flames—and that was the least unusual thing that surrounded me.
    Voices filled the air, screaming or yelling, all speaking over each other so I couldn’t tell what anyone was saying.
    They sounded angry. My heart kicked into a gallop, and cold sweat covered my skin.
    I curled instinctively into a ball to protect myself from the huge shapes gathered around me, but couldn’t close my eyes. Costumes, I thought as I caught confused glimpses of furred legs and scaled hands. Some kind of furry convention.
    Yeah. Here in Fairbrook. During the off-season. At the frigging Old Brook Inn, which you were the only person staying at. Look again.
    “Kill her!” screamed a voice that sounded completely inhuman. A carnivorous voice. I raised my head from the floor and pushed up onto my stinging knees.
    And then I screamed. I always hated screamers in books and movies, but for this I could forgive myself. A hulking creature— troll, I thought. No, ogre —stood in front of me with a massive axe raised high over its shoulders, ready to bring the blade down on my neck.
    “Stop!” I yelled, holding out my hand as though that would stop the deadly blade from reaching me. The ogre hesitated, a confused look crossing the hideous brownish-green face that seemed to be all lower jaw, with protruding teeth and massive lips. Its beady eyes looked down at me, then to my left.
    “Lieutenant,” it said, “I don’t think this is her.”
    “Finish it!” ordered that terrifying voice. I turned slowly and raised my other hand in surrender.
    This is a horrible joke . It had to be. I glanced at the faces that made up the crowd, all standing too close for me to get a real handle on where I might be. I had fallen into a room of monsters. The ogre was the largest, but the others were no less fearsome. A man with the head of a bull. A centaur, dressed only in the blood that dripped over her shoulders and breasts. Things I didn’t have words for and couldn’t wrap my mind around.
    Everyone turned to the creature giving orders. She stood like a human, and parts of her appeared to be. Her legs, hips, and torso were shaped like a woman’s, but covered in a thick coat of spotted grey fur. A similarly furred tail with a black tip swung in agitated arcs behind her, matching her angry face, which resembled a silver leopard’s. She wore thick rings in her ears, and sharp silver spikes pierced her face between her whiskers. Aside from the jewellery, the only thing she wore was a gore-spattered violet sash over one shoulder that crossed her chest and attached to her sword belt. Short-fingered hands gripped a curved sword.
    I’m dreaming. I fell, I knocked myself out, and I’m dreaming. Hallucinating. I have a concussion.
    There was no possibility any of this was real.
    The cat woman stepped closer, and the knives strapped to her belt clinked together. “I said finish it! This is one of Verelle’s tricks. Hold her.”
    “She’s shifted!” someone bellowed. Strong hands grabbed my arms and forced them behind my back. I struggled, but it only made my shoulders scream with pain.
    The ogre looked doubtful.
    The cat woman snarled. “Then I’ll do it. Major Zinian will hear about your failure, and he will not be pleased.”
    The ogre lowered its head and raised its axe again.
    “Please,” I begged, feeling half stupid for being so terrified when I knew none of this was real. But it all felt real, from the stone floor to the chill of the air, from the animal smells of sweat and fur to the suffocating tightness in my chest. I fought down panic that was as real as any I’d ever felt. “I don’t know what a Verelle is, and I—”
    “Shut up,” the cat ordered, and grabbed my hair to force my head down. “You won’t fool us. We know all of your tricks.”
    My body trembled. “I swear, I just opened a door, and I was here…”
    Her low growl