Tori winced a little. He came at magic a little differently than what he’d been taught. It made it somewhat hard to explain to other people. “I sort of see it like a knot I’m trying to unravel by working the spell backward. This ward was created sloppily and hastily. It’s loose. I can get this alone if you want to watch my back.”
“Got it!” Cameron agreed.
Tori turned his mind toward the ward, carefully poking at the loose ends until the entire thing started to unravel around the building. The Jaeggi were either struggling badly with their own magic, or they’d put up the ward as a last-ditch effort before turning their full attention to the mages in their grasp.
The ward was down in a matter of seconds, and the dragons closed on the small building from all sides. He caught a glimpse of the Valerii moving in from the rear of the building, while Alric, Baldewin, Ravi, and Gunter approached from the front.
Now that the protective spell was gone, there was no attempt to be quiet. There simply wasn’t time for it. The Taavi mages had been in the hands of the Jaeggi for hours now. If they weren’t all dead, it would be a miracle.
Angry shouts from inside the building were the first hint that the dragons had reached the Jaeggi. Baldewin disappeared from sight as he charged inside. Unwilling to allow his mate to jump into the fight without someone watching his back, Tori followed through the front door his lover had kicked in.
The building smelled musty and moldy after a lengthy period of neglect. There were a handful of shelves along the walls, but they were all empty except for a thick layer of dust. A mannequin missing its head and left arm lay on the floor. Apparently, the place had sold clothing of some sort at one time. At the back of the front room was an empty counter. The glass was coated in a thick film of dirt and dust, mostly hiding the interior that was now a home for bugs and rats.
Sounds of a fight drew Tori to the back of the building, right behind Alric and Ravi. The little wind dragon was sticking close to his king as his personal bodyguard, but the king was not about to stay out of this fight. He had a feeling Alric had a score to settle with these people after they’d taken his mate, and he wasn’t likely to feel at ease until they were all wiped out.
Tori’s heart dropped to his shoes when he walked into a large rear storeroom. Six Jaeggi. There were six fucking Jaeggi fighting against the dragons. The evil mages were still outnumbered, but it was like falling into a nest of vipers. Tori certainly hadn’t expected that many Jaeggi lurking in Finland. He’d been lucky to encounter only two in Helsinki and four in Poland.
For a moment, he could only stand back and watch as the dragons fought the Jaeggi in hand-to-hand combat. There wasn’t enough room for any of them to shift into their dragon form and not risk bringing the entire building down on their heads.
He was attempting to tear his gaze away to look for the missing Taavi mages when a Jaeggi with a shaved head and jagged scar across his throat prepared what felt like a particularly nasty spell, and his eyes locked on Baldewin, who was already tangled up with another Jaeggi.
“Fuck no,” Tori snarled.
All logical thought stopped in his brain, and pure rage took over. This asshole thought he was going to attack his dragon, hurt his mate? He was delusional. Plunging his right hand into the pocket of his jeans, he fumbled around for a moment until he came up with the element the angry part of his brain was searching for.
He thrust his left hand out toward Baldewin, calling up a ball of energy from his mate. At the same time, he smashed the glass vial in his right hand against the concrete. The ancient wild rose seeds were only meant as part of a cleansing spell, but when Tori barked out, “Resti gev adi,” directing the power he’d borrowed from Baldewin, vines the size of full-grown Burmese pythons shot from the seeds and snaked around the screaming Jaeggi. Thorns the length of Tori’s arm sprang from the vines and stabbed deep into the Jaeggi. In a heartbeat, his screams were silenced, and he stopped struggling against the vines tightening around him.
“Holy shit,” Baldewin exhaled.
Tori blinked slowly, as if waking from a nightmare, and looked up at his mate. “He was going to kill you,” he simply said, and he knew that no matter Baldewin’s reaction, he couldn’t regret what he’d done. The Jaeggi had meant to hurt his dragon, and his dragon needed to be protected no matter what.
“Thank you,” Baldewin said with a shaky smile.
“Tori,” Evora called out. “Do you know the spell for Titan’s Shield?” She held up a vial of troll skin flakes. Tori grinned and dug into his pocket for the captured sunlight he’d grabbed from the satchel.
Crossing over to where Evora stood, he prepared to pull the stopper free. Titan’s Shield was a basic spell he knew the mechanics for but had never attempted to cast, thanks to the restrictions of his teachers. Now he had no doubt that he could do it. Not after what he’d already accomplished since coming to stay with the Burkhard Clan.
“I will cover the Valerii dragons if you can get the Burkhard dragons,” Evora said as she prepared the vial of troll skin.
Tori nodded, mentally pulling on Baldewin’s energy again. The power curled and brushed against his mind. There was a strange sense of joy and exhilaration that came with the dragon’s power, as if the dragon himself was happy to be helping Tori in this way. Did he feel the same sense of completion that Tori did when he shared his energy?
Evora opened the vial, and Tori released the captured sunlight. As one, they said the spell command.
Titan’s Shield wasn’t an overly complicated spell, but it was one few mages had managed to cast in the past several centuries, simply because it required so much power that a mage had to draw energy from a dragon. Without a dragon, a dozen mages at least needed to chain together their own power, and even then, it wasn’t as strong as what a bound mage could cast.
Tori grinned like a madman as he watched the beautiful golden shield fall over the dragons and Cameron. His new clanmates were now as invincible as he could make them. The spell wasn’t perfect. It could be stripped away by an accomplished mage, but these Jaeggi were now on the run and had little chance of beating the dragons.
With his dragons protected, Tori turned his attention to locating the missing Taavi mages. It didn’t take much. They were gathered together in the far corner, their faces bruised and dirty. The girl held one of the male mages in her lap, his face slack. From across the room, Tori couldn’t tell if he was dead or merely unconscious.
He carefully worked his way around the room, trying to stay out of the line of fire as the dragons took down the Jaeggi. When he finally reached them, he knelt down and pressed two fingers to the side of the unconscious mage’s neck.
“Nestori? What are you doing here?” Panu asked with a hint of surprise and maybe disgust in his voice.
“The dragons and I are saving your asses,” Tori snapped.
“Is he going to die?” Tanja asked.
Markku’s pulse was thready and faint but still there. His skin was cold and clammy. It was clear his magical core was damaged much like Cassie’s had been, though not to the same extent. They must have reached them in time. Tori shook his head. “No, but we need to get him back to Nuorgam and the healers as soon as possible.”
“It was like they sucked the power straight out of him. What the fuck!” Panu cried, but Tori largely ignored him as he glanced back at the dragons. They’d managed to destroy all but one of the Jaeggi, who was on his knees in the center of the largely destroyed room.