Page 1 of Greed
Chapter One
In the light of a full moon, Cardinal City glowed softly under a blanket of white dust. Griffin Lazarus slipped on a roof tile, cursing when a clump of snow thudded with a powdery explosion three levels below.
“This isn’t stealth.” His voice modifier made his speech deep and gravelly.
His brother Evan crashed onto the roof beside him, narrowly missing the ledge. “Stealth is my middle name.”
“You don’t have a middle name.”
The chuckle they shared was short lived as the cold, frigid air seeped through their clothes. They wore identical black leather pants, hooded jacket, andfukumenface-scarves covering their noses and mouths. Except where Griffin’s scarf was blue, Evan’s was green.
Evan jumped to a jutting rooftop a level down, slipped and almost toppled over the edge. In a flash, he unsheathed his twin Katanas and used them like trekking poles, stabbing onto surfaces as he moved until he hopped to another ledge below, and finally down to the cobbled laneway.
Griffin winced.So noisy in the quiet night.
He pulled his baton from his back brace and activated the spring lever with a well-trained flick of his wrist. In an instant, each side of the baton lengthened with a metallicshing. The staff, now body length, was stronger than titanium and as flexible as ash wood. Griffin popped a button and a spike shot out of the end to jab through the snow at his feet. A muted thud sounded. Yes. Sturdy. Good grip. Less noise than the Katanas.
Before he went down, he pulled back his sleeve to check the status of the Yin-Yang tattoo on his inner wrist. The special ink reacted to his response to sensing greed. In short, the more greed he felt, the blacker the ink became, darkening the entire symbol in ink. Too much black and he was in danger of losing control and killing any greed signature he sensed in his proximity—any. It was a chaotic, deadly urge he never wanted to repeat. Using his wristwatch, he’d learned that timed exposure to sin or virtue had a sliding scale response on his tattoo ink. Seeing he was about to foil a robbery, he’d be curious to see which way the act tipped the balance—toward dark, or light.
After noting his tattoo’s current status, he laboriously set the timer on his watch, tongue touching the tip of his teeth until he got the correct setting. Once satisfied he was recording, he took a deep breath and vaulted down to the ledge, and then to the next until he landed swiftly and silently next to his brother.
“About time. I’m freezing my nuts off.” Evan used his Katanas to gesture around his general crotch area.
“Maybe you should have worn thermals,” Griffin ground out.
A masculine chuckle came through Griffin’s ear piece, reminding him that his brother Parker monitored their progress. Technically, Sloan should have been providing tech support… or at least their father Flint, but neither were available tonight.
Evan touched his earpiece. “ETA, Pride?”
When in the field, they had to address each other as their sin’s code-name to avoid their true identities being exposed.
“I can’t triangulate a location. I need more information. Greed?”Parker said through the earpiece.
“I told you, the sensation keeps moving. Andwekeep moving,” Griffin replied, miffed.
“So stop and focus.”
He clenched his jaw at Parker’s authoritative tone. With a sigh, he shut his eyes and forced all street noise from his mind. The feat was an effort for him, more so than any of his brothers. Sounds seemed to drill into his bones, teasing him until they irritated, but the brutal training he’d received during his youth had also been drilled into his bones.
His breathing deepened, and his heart slowed. The hoot of the owl became a breeze, his brother’s heavy puffing became a whisper, and the distant sirens became a memory. He inhaled deeply and focused on the sense of sin causing his gut to wrench. Greed coated the city like a toxic film, slowly suffocating it.
But he was after the strongest, the most grimy, the—
A cold, hard projectile hit Griffin in the face, along with a burst of gravelly laughter. Griffin tried to shake it off, and refocus, but the cold hit had shocked him out of his meditation. His knuckles whitened on his bo-staff. His teeth clenched. Every nerve in his body screamed as rage took over, and bloody memories flashed before his eyes. Broken bodies lying in the dirt. White bones poking through red flesh. Blood on his hands… Soldiers screaming for him to stand down. Stand down.Stand down!
He opened his eyes to find Evan packing another snowball, glee sparkling in his eyes.
Bile burned the back of Griffin’s throat as he forced the bad memories to fade.
Not tonight. Not now. He was in control now. Nothing like back then.
A second snowball hurtled at his face and he deflected with his bo-staff, exploding the ice into white powder.
“What the hell?” Griffin growled, trembling with restrained violence, twitching with the need to inflict pain.
Evan shrugged. “I’m not used to feeling cold. Need to warm up. Plus, you’re too uptight. We’re not going to find the source of greed unless you loosen up.”
“You sound like Lust.” Were his family conspiring behind his back?
