Page 63 of Emerald Waves
Intruders.
Mattias’s voice in my head was a reminder to communicate.
There’s some on this side too. One on the roof and one ripping into the building from the bottom side.
I’ll deal with the one on the roof,Ionus declared, leaving me to deal with the one beside the tunnel.
More could make an appearance at any time, but closing it would slow them down, so I landed and sunk my claws into the soil, shifting the earth until the tunnel closed. Hissing, the dragon tearing chunks of stone from the wall decided to hurl some in my direction, which I easily dodged before slamming into him. Out of all of us, I preferred to fight with teeth and claws instead of elemental magic. Flames, however, I never hesitated to unleash. Snarling, he returned fire, unscathed by my assault.Fire dragon, immune. Got it. I smothered his flames with a dust cloud that left him too choked up and blinded to form another.
Something clipped my side, dragging me away from the dragon and pinning me to the side of the archive building, the force of our combined weights smashing a hole through the wall. The glimpse I caught before I hit the side of the building revealed that damned tunnel, a dragon half-way out to join the one that was crushing the hell out of me as we wrestled around on those broken stones. I finally managed to flip him over my head, myclaws digging into his tough underbelly, carving deep, jagged lines into the softer scales there.
This time I was forced to close the tunnel mentally, not that I expected it to hold the dragons long. The whole time I was wrestling with the first one, and trying to trap the second with the tunnel, the third had resumed ripping at the side of the building again. Fine, if he wanted rocks, he could have as many as he pleased, we’d edged the archive building with heavy chunks of quarts and other mineral rich rocks left over from the dig that had made room for the basement. The temperature below ground had always been more consistent and a better atmosphere for some of the older books, at least according to Emerson. I’d just helped dig, setting aside all the pretty chunks of rock I’d unearthed in the process, while annoying my brothers when I wouldn’t allow them to dig too fast out of fear that I’d miss some shimmering precious stone.
Now, as I kicked them up into a whirlwind I used to hammer at the scales of the other dragon, the irony wasn’t lost. I’d put those stones there to shimmer whenever our archivist looked out the window, part of me knowing, even as we constructed the building for him, that he was important to me.
I’d refused to think the wordmate, pushing it down. Hiding it from him as I didn’t wish for him to think I needed rescued. If I hadn’t gotten my head out of my ass a few weeks ago, he’d have still been in this building tonight, terrified and uncertain of what to do to protect the precious tomes and scrolls he’d gathered. He’d never have worried about himself, which sent fury coursing through me. He was the most selfless individual I knew, always worried more about the discovery and not the peril that went with it, as was evident by the way he’d reacted to being kidnapped by the Merdragons.
Best kidnapping ever.
He wouldn’t have been saying that if he was facing off with razor sharp teeth that came inches away from sinking into my shoulder. Snarling, I reversed our positions as my tornado of stones finally smashed the one off the side of the building, along with a good chunk of the wall, on their way in to help me deal with the dragon I couldn’t shake loose. I just hoped the tunnel mouth would keep any other emerging dragons pinned, or I was going to find myself outnumbered again.
I was already running out of ideas and those stones. Fucking hell, owe! Goddess be damned, this was bullshit! They cracked me as often as they slammed into the dragon I was wrestling with, one coming down on my claw so hard the tip shattered as I pinned my opponent to the ground.
Quarts points spun towards my head. I narrowly missed being clipped by them as I ducked and another chunk of the building suffered damage as the tornado of rocks smashed through them. Focusing, I sent them outside to guard the tunnel, while I snarled down at the other dragon, struggling to incapacitate it. A large metal rebar caught my attention, and I stretched out a claw to rip it free of the stone, then stabbed him through the leg, pinning him to the floor below. He bellowed loud enough to send a shower of loose bricks down on us.
Too fucking bad. I needed to find out what they’d come here for, and it better not have been my mate!
Grabbing another piece of rebar, I stabbed it through the same meaty leg, inches away from the first one, his second bellow just as fierce and destructive as the first one. It prompted him to shift and clutch his leg with human hands, wailing as he writhed, leg shredded from the damage I’d done to it, but already healing, once his body had ripped free of the metal. Fine by me. He was going to give me the information I needed to know. He might have shifted, but I was still in my dragon form and slammed a claw through the wound and twisted it, making a show outof doing it slowly, all while he screamed, shook his head and begged me not to. My dragon was pissed off and offended. While this wasn’t Emerson’s home any longer, the fact that it had been up until recently had sent my dragon into a rage.
How dare these fuckers come here, and why here, why tonight?
“What the fuck do you want here?” I half asked, half snarled as I shifted enough that most of me, minus the claws, went back to being human again.
“Was, was just a test,” he wailed as I slowly twisted my claw again. “We were testing the wards! We were trying to see how deep into the archives we could get! Our only orders were to see if we could break in and ascertain what was being housed here! We weren’t even hunting a particular item. We were just supposed to see if we could breach the structure!”
“By tearing holes in the side, yeah, that’s subtle.”
“It was immune to our flames.”
“No shit, we designed it that way. What good are archives if you can’t protect the things inside from the two biggest threats to old things, fire and water! Moths should probably be included too, along with dragon sized pests! Now who sent you!”
“The leader of my clan,” he snarled as I sent out a message to Ionus and Mattias to come when they could and to bring Larkin as I was certain that he was somewhere on the premises helping to deal with this mess.
I let them know I had a prisoner, who might need medical care by the time he finished spilling his guts, though I warned that it was just as likely we’d need a cleanup crew, as the stench of his blood was already growing strong as it poured from his leg. Another twist, another scream, he’d better start elaborating before I deliberately nicked the femoral artery or cracked the femur and tore the leg clean off.
He must have sensed it in my gaze when he stared up at me, pain and fright twisting his features. I already knew he was Gorynych, the blood scent was unmistakable. What they’d done to Emerson was unforgivable. Twisting the claw a fraction brought more agony than twisting all the way. The pause was letting his body trick itself into thinking it could repair the damage I was doing.
Sorry not sorry. If I let him live, this fucker was never going to do damage to anyone else’s property again, at least not with this leg, anyway.
“There were rumors!” he hollered. “About an outcast! One of ours! We were to see if they were true, and what he did here! We were just supposed to gather information.”
“I don’t believe you!” I snarled, fury ramping up to another level now that he’d admitted to being here to spy on my mate.
Or had they intended to confront him?
With the violent nature of the damage they’d been doing, I was more inclined to believe that they were here to retrieve him so they could see for themselves if whatever rumors they’d heard were true.
“What were the rumors!” I snapped, wrenching the claw to the left without caring if it was muscle, bone, artery or all three I was carving into as long as he kept on talking to me.
