Elemental Assassin 05 - Spider's Revenge

It was only during a recent fight to the death with another Stone elemental that I’d been able to tap into enough of my Ice magic to blast through the blockage. Now, the silverstone scars held my Ice power instead of preventing me from using it.
    A few weeks ago, the feel of Jo-Jo’s warm, healing Air magic, which was so different from my own cool Ice and Stone power, would have made me grind my teeth together. The dwarf’s magic just felt wrong to me, like a pair of shoes that were too tight.
    But ever since I’d used my Ice magic to numb my body when I was fighting LaFleur, the feel of the dwarf’s magic hadn’t bothered me quite as much. Oh, it still annoyed me, still made that primal little voice in the back of my head mutter, but I didn’t snarl at the sensation anymore. At least, not as often. Or maybe that was because I knew that Jo-Jo was healing me, not hurting me with her magic like so many others had done over the years.
    Jo-Jo leaned forward so that her palm was an inch above the black, bloody hole in my leg. Something hot sizzled to life on the surface of my thigh, the first prick of what morphed into a thousand needles stabbing deeper and deeper into my skin until it felt like my whole leg was on fire.
    The sensation was just Jo-Jo using her magic. Air elementals healed people by tapping into all the natural gases in the atmosphere, especially oxygen, and making them circulate through wounds. The dwarf was using her Air power, using the oxygen, to push the bullet out of my thigh, repair all of my broken blood vessels, and pull the ragged edges of my skin back together.
    And it hurt like hell.
    Even though Jo-Jo was healing me, her magic was still the opposite of mine. Two elements always complemented each other—like Air and Fire—and two elements always opposed each other—like Fire and Ice. The dwarf’s Airmagic was the opposite of my Ice and Stone magic, and her using that kind of power just felt wrong to me, the same way that my magic would seem strange to any other Air or Fire elemental.
    Even if I’d wanted to move, to squirm away from the dwarf, her elemental power, and the hot, invisible, healing needles stabbing me, I couldn’t have—not with Sophia’s hands clamped down on my shoulders.
    So I gave myself over to Jo-Jo’s magic, drifting in and out of consciousness while the dwarf worked on me. Sometime later, something thunked into a metal pan—the bullet that Sydney had put into me. A few minutes after that, the needles of pain started dying down in my leg before disappearing. I sighed, my body going limp in the salon chair. Jo-Jo’s magic might not bother me as much as it had before, but I was still glad when she stopped using it.
    “Leg’s done.” Jo-Jo’s voice seemed distant and far away, even though I knew that she was still right there leaning over me. “Let’s get that silverstone vest off her and look at those wounds in her shoulder now.”
    “Uh-huh.” Sophia grunted her agreement.
    Hands moved me around, unzipping my silverstone vest and stripping it off me. The snip-snip-snip of scissors sounded again, as Jo-Jo cut through more of my gray layers, and the warm air in the salon swirled against my bare skin.
    “Not nearly as bad as the leg wound,” the dwarf murmured. “These didn’t hit anything too important, at least.”
    Once again, the feel of the dwarf’s Air elemental magic gusted through the room, and the needles started prickingme once more, now centered in my shoulder. But this time, the pain wasn’t as intense and didn’t last nearly as long. Two more thunks sounded as Jo-Jo used her power to fish the bullets out of my body.
    “Good as new,” Jo-Jo pronounced a few minutes later.
    I didn’t feel as good as new. Being healed, even by an Air elemental, took a toll on your body, as you suddenly went from knocking on death’s door to being in one piece again. The mind needed some time to play catch-up and realize what was going on. As close as I’d come to dying tonight, I could sleep for the next eight hours and still wake up feeling tired. In fact, I could have drifted off right now, but I forced myself to keep my eyes open.
    “Thanks,” I murmured.
    Despite Jo-Jo’s ministrations, my words still slurred a bit, probably from the blood loss.
    “You’re welcome, darling,” Jo-Jo said. “But where’s Finn? Why isn’t he with you? Why didn’t he bring you in?”
    “He didn’t go with me,” I mumbled.
    Jo-Jo frowned. “Why