Elemental Assassin [9] Heart of Venom by Jennifer Estep Read Free Book Online Page A

ragged edges of the gunshot holes back together, but it did slow and then finally stop the blood loss—for now. Jo-Jo’s injuries were deep and serious, and it wouldn’t be long before the Air magic in the ointment faded away and the wounds started to bleed once more, and that was if one of the bullets didn’t continue its journey on into her heart in the meantime.
    Once again, that hot, agonizing fear that I was going to lose her rose in me, but I ruthlessly squashed it, focusing on what we needed to do next to save her.
    “We’ve got to get her to a healer, to another Air elemental,” I said. “Right now.”
    “But who?” Bria asked.
    Rosco eased back over to Jo-Jo’s side and whined again, as if he was asking the same question.
    Who indeed? Air elementals weren’t all that rare, but they didn’t exactly grow on trees either. Not to mention the fact that not every Air elemental used his or her power to heal. Some, like Sophia, used it to destroy, to rip apart skin and bones and sandblast molecules into nothingness.
    My heart clenched again at the thought of Sophia and what she could be experiencing at Grimes’s hands right now, but I pushed those sick, guilty feelings away. First, I had to save Jo-Jo. Then I could go after Sophia and rain down all of my cold, cold wrath on Harley Grimes for what he’d done to the Deveraux sisters.
    Jo-Jo coughed, as though she was trying to say something. I leaned closer so I could hear what she was telling me.“coop . . .” she finally whispered. “. . . er.”
    It took me a moment to put the syllables together. “cooper?”
    Jo-Jo’s head lolled to one side, which I took as a yes .
    Bria frowned. “cooper? cooper Stills? Do you think that he can heal her?” cooper was Jo-Jo’s gentleman friend. Well, I suspected that they were a little more than friends, but that didn’t matter right now. All that did was the fact that he had Air magic. cooper was a blacksmith by trade, so I didn’t know how good at healing he was. Still, I knew that he’d do his damnedest to save Jo-Jo any way he could.
    At around five feet, Jo-Jo was tall for a dwarf, and she was heavy, because of her stocky physique. All of her thick, strong muscles had saved her from being immediately killed by Grimes’s bullets, but they weren’t doing her any favors now, because Bria and I didn’t have the upper-body strength to move her as quickly as we needed to. All we could really do was carefully shuffle forward with her a few steps at a time—time that Jo-Jo didn’t have.
    Since Bria had Jo-Jo’s shoulders and I had her ankles, I grimaced thinking about how Finn and I had moved those giants’ bodies a few days before behind the Pork Pit.
    And now here I was, doing the exact same thing to Jo-Jo. 
    It was one of the cruelest, sickest feelings of irony that I’d ever experienced.
    And another thing that I was going to kill Harley Grimes for.
    “We aren’t getting anywhere like this,” Bria finally said.
    “Put her down. I have an idea.”
    I bit my lip, wanting to scream at the delay, and she noticed my hesitation. Rosco let out another whine, mirroring my frustration.
    “Trust me,” she said.
    I nodded, and we slowly lowered Jo-Jo to the blood— spattered floor. Once that was done, Bria moved in front of the dwarf, as though she were going to leave the salon and step out into the hallway, although she ended up crouching down beside Jo-Jo’s bare feet. She put her hands flat on the floor, and the bluish white light of her magic leaked out from underneath her palms. A blast of power filled the salon and rolled outward through the entire house, and my own Ice magic stirred in response to the welcome, familiar feel of my sister’s cold, frosty power. A second later, the light and the feel of her magic vanished.
    “There,” she said, getting to her feet. “Maybe this will help make it easier to move her.”
    I peered out into the hallway, which