Page 22 of Greed
“Are you okay?” he asked the trembling woman encased in his arms.
“I think so.” Together they turned to face the gaping hole in the external wall. Light streamed in on dusty rays. A groaning sound came from the foot of the rubble. Nathanial was semi-covered by crumbled bricks and mortar.
“I have to help him,” Griffin said to Lilo. “Stay here.”
When he went to let go of her hand, she resisted.
A shadow blocked the light. He looked up at something nonsensical. Standing inside the hole in the wall was Greed, or someone dressed in his blue trimmed leather combat gear. Griffin rationally tried to come up with an explanation. Maybe someone had stolen his suit. Maybe he’d left it somewhere. But even as the thoughts formed, they dissolved with disregard.
This was something else.
Someone else.
To get a better hold on the intruder, Griffin pried his hand from Lilo’s. The sense of greed bloomed in his gut until pain pierced him, begging him to double over. The sin came from the imposter and was vaguely familiar.
Lilo panicked and took hold of Griffin’s hand again, washing the sin away, leaving Griffin only the sense of sight and smell to view the offender. A black hood covered a head, and a blue scarf made from stretch fabric covered a nose and mouth. Only dark, flat eyes stared at Griffin from beyond the hood’s shadow. Eyes that tracked around the room until they settled on the squirming man beneath the rubble.
“There you are.” A dark, lifeless voice came out of the masked man. He pointed a gun at Nathanial.
Griffin was too far away. He would have to leap over the rubble and that would push more onto to Nathanial. But then again, if he tried nothing, the fake Greed would kill Nathanial, anyway. This imposter had missed Nathanial at the jewelry store and had come to finish the job.
Griffin stepped forward. The fake Greed shifted his gun to point at Griffin and fired. Pain burst through his shoulder. Lilo screamed. Griffin slapped the wound to put pressure on and everything inside him buzzed. Warm blood pulsed at his fingertips and the imminent danger was enough to set his instincts scrambling into protection mode. His new power swelled and filled the room with magnetic energy. Power surged and tingled in his veins. The taste of copper hit his tongue. It was as though he’d stepped inside an electric field. Every metal object in the room became connected to Griffin. He felt the nuts and bolts underneath the cot. He sensed the iron in Lilo’s hoop earrings, the bullet embedded in his shoulder, and the metal in the gun now aimed at his head.
Pushing further into his sixth sense, Griffin connected with the bullet in the barrel of the gun and somehow, he knew that if he concentrated, he could move that bullet any which way he wanted.
Lilo whimpered, and his concentration lapsed. All he could think was to get her to safety. She was more important than testing out some new inexplicable power. Wincing against the pain in his shoulder, he nudged her back to the glass wall.
On the other side, the police officer on duty desperately tried to unlock the door.
Seeing the cavalry, the interloper pointed his weapon back at Nathanial—his priority purpose for being there.
“No!” Lilo shouted.
Nathanial turned to Lilo. “Find your fath—”
Bang!
Nathanial went limp as a bullet ripped through his chest. Lilo flinched away to avoid seeing the bloody carnage.
Griffin had been too late. Too slow. Yet, another life lost because of his negligence, of his denial. If he’d embraced his new ability instead of running from it, perhaps Nathanial would be alive.
He pushed off the glass wall and torpedoed into the imposter. Agony shrieked in his shoulder as he hit the man in the torso. Together, they tumbled through the hole in the wall to the cold, soggy snow outside, blinded in the morning light. Griffin twisted so he landed on his good side, then rolled and recovered to face his opponent. His glasses had slipped and embedded in a pile of old snow, slowly melting under the sun.
“Who are you?” Griffin growled, crouched and ready to pounce.
The man looked at him and then turned to escape.
Unlikely.
Griffin pushed off his feet and punched toward the imposter, but he deflected with his forearm, blocking Griffin’s attack.
“You should have left well alone,” the attacker said, voice muffled under his face mask. “I’m only after the greedy ones.”
Defiance bloomed in Griffin. That washisjob. No one else's.
“Like hell you are.” Griffin sent his magnetic awareness out and latched onto his opponent’s weapon. He let his power coat the metal, cover it like a blanket, and then pulled until it tugged out of the imposter's hands and hurtled to the pavement beside them.
They both sloshed through the wet mess to get to it first, but Griffin kept amping his polarity to push the gun away. Every time the other man grabbed hold of it, the gun slipped from his fingers.
