Elemental Assassin 05 - Spider's Revenge

once. I cried out from the pain, screaming and thrashing. At least, I thought that I did. I certainly wanted to. Even Mab’s elemental Fire hadn’t felt as bad as all this, as painful, as agonizing, as brutal. It was like every last molecule of my skin was being ripped off and then stitched back on, one cell at a time. And there was no stopping it, no escaping it. Just pain, pain, and more pain.
    “Hold her steady,” someone muttered. “I can’t have her thrashing around and tearing up what I’ve already healed.”
    It might have been my imagination, but I thought that the pressure on my arms and legs increased that much more.
    “You’re exhausted,” someone else rasped in a broken voice that sounded vaguely familiar. “Help you.”
    “Me too,” a higher, lighter, lilting voice chimed in. “I don’t have Air magic, not like you do, but you canuse my Ice power. I’ll feed it to you however I can. Maybe it’ll help. I have to do—something to help her. I can’t—I can’t stand to see her like this. So broken and melted—”
    The voice cut off in a choked sob. After that, silence.
    “All right,” the first voice said, sounding more tired and weary than any person had a right to be. “Let’s just hope that mashing all our magic together doesn’t kill her outright. Because I’m running on empty at this point.”
    For a moment, the needles faded away. I sighed with relief. But I’d barely drawn in a breath when they returned, even sharper and hotter than before. More and more of them, stabbing me over and over again in an unrelenting wave of agony.
    I threw my head back and screamed and screamed and screamed into the blackness.
    A soft, cool hand stroked my forehead, and I felt the faintest trickle of Ice magic glide over my body, enveloping me in its cold, sweet caress. I sighed with relief and tried to lean into the touch, but something stopped me. My whole body felt like it was immobilized, wrapped, bandaged, and strapped down like I was one of the poor souls languishing away in Ashland Asylum. Maybe the powers that be had fitted me for my straitjacket already, as crazy and jumbled as my mind was right now. I didn’t have the strength to fight against whatever was weighing me down. I didn’t have the strength to do anything.
    “Rest, Gin,” that high, lilting voice murmured in myear, the same exhaustion that I felt coloring her words as well. “Just rest.”
    So I did.
    The next time that I woke up, it was for good. I opened my eyes and found myself staring up at a cloud-covered fresco on the ceiling. I sighed with relief, and more than a few tears slipped out of my eyes. I was safe at Jo-Jo’s house once more. Somehow, I’d done the impossible—killed Mab Monroe and lived to tell the tale. Wow. Sometimes, I surprised myself. I grinned. But in a good way.
    Dark cloaked the room, although it was slowly giving way to dawn. A soft snore rumbled close to my left ear, and my eyes flicked over to find Owen asleep in the rocking chair next to the bed, a blanket covering him.
    I wondered how long Owen had been sitting there, watching over me, waiting for me to wake up. He looked as exhausted as I felt. Deep lines grooved into his face, purple circles ringed his closed eyes, and a thick growth of black stubble covered his face, as though he hadn’t shaved in a week. I couldn’t see his clothes, but I imagined that they’d be just as rumpled as the rest of him.
    Still, the sight of him sitting there, watching over me even when he was so obviously exhausted himself, made me happier than anything had in a long, long time.
    But instead of waking him up, I carefully turned over onto my side. Blankets had been piled on top of me too, so I couldn’t see what kind of shape I was in. Curious and a little afraid of what I might find, I lifted the covers.
    White gauze covered me from head to toe, wrapped around my legs, arms, torso, toes, and everything in between.I’d never considered myself to be a particularly vain person, but my fingers trembled just a bit as I put my hand up to my face.
    More gauze there too, although at least it wasn’t an inch thick like it was on the rest of me. I felt like a mummy. Give me a pyramid and some dusty treasure to guard, and I’d be right at home in a horror movie. I looked like a monster too, given all the gauze and the ointment that I could feel underneath it soaking into my skin—or what was left of it.
    But I wasn’t too worried. I was still alive,