And just like that he knew. Cold seemed to seep into the room around me, the kind of cold that stiffened your limbs, the kind of cold that crept over bodies when they died.
He pressed the button and the section of the bookcase opened, just as silently as it had the first time. He walked past me and into the narrow hallway that led to his closet-sized safe and stopped. “Get in here,” he commanded.
I walked over to the door but didn’t go any farther.
He drew a key out of his pocket, unlocked the door where the bodies wouldn’t be, and opened it wide.
The silence that surrounded us was so thick you couldn’t even cut it with a knife. He pivoted around to stare at me, his eyes glowing an odd shade of violet. Then he turned away again, opening the second door, the door to the secret apartment.
He called out for the soul, not calling her by name, and I wondered if that was on purpose or if she just didn’t have one. I stepped forward, looking toward the entrance, and I knew when he realized she was gone because a chair flew by and hit the wall, smacking whatever was there and shattering some glass.
I prepared myself for his wrath as he faced me.
“How did you manage to pull this off?” His voice was deadly calm.
“You’d be surprised what a man can pull off when he’s aptly motivated.”
“Where is she!” he roared. His anger was so intense that it was palpable energy that flew off him and barreled toward me.
It slammed into me, sending me backward, my feet dragging across the floor as it pulled me. It would have yanked anyone else off their feet. It would have flattened them into the wall and knocked them unconscious.
I wasn’t just anyone. I had a few abilities that I could use to my advantage.
My body absorbed most of the energy he threw, using it to fuel my cells and pump me up for a fight. I might not win against G.R., but I could do some damage.
I dug my feet into the large area rug that covered most of his office, planting them solidly apart. What was left of the energy kept going, pulling at my hair and my clothes until it snapped away, crackling behind me and knocking over everything that sat on his desk.
My body was overfull with energy, so much so that my fingertips crackled with it, so I flung my hands out, sending back some of what he gave me. The energy had a red glow about it, and it moved so fast it looked like the retreating taillights of a car speeding along the highway at night.
The Reaper moved, but not fast enough. Speed was my specialty. It hit him in the shoulder, singeing a hole in his perfectly tailored shirt and knocking him to the side. He didn’t fall down because he caught himself on the edge of a nearby club chair, but watching him stumble was pure pleasure.
His eyes flashed violet again, a color I never thought of as threatening until now. Thinking fast, I picked up one of the chairs that sat in front of his desk, the same chair I used for many of the lectures I was made to endure, and I threw it at him. It moved slower than the energy so he was able to dodge it, but it landed on the edge of his sleek glass coffee table, shattering the entire sheet of glass.
A few of his security guards came rushing into the room. They all had the telltale ring of their souls around them, marking them as Escorts. These must be new ones because I didn’t recognize any of their faces.
“Take. Him. Down,” the Reaper growled, pointing at me.
All three of them rushed me. I sucked in some of their eager energy and cracked my neck, ready to take them on.
The first one lunged and I kicked him in the thigh, crippling his leg and making him go down. I used the surprise of his fall to grab the next one closest to me, and I punched him right in the jaw, snapping the head on his shoulders. He came back for more and I instinctively dropped into a boxing position and began bouncing on my feet. The lighter I was on my feet, the harder I would punch.
The way my stance and body position changed, the Escort knew I wasn’t some inexperienced kid—like him. I saw the doubt in his eyes when he lashed out and I smacked his arm away and nailed him again, right in the eye. Then I put him in a headlock and slammed his body into the other one, who was climbing up from the floor. Both of them went down in a heap.
I turned to the final Escort, the one who’d been silently watching. This one had an orange ring around him, and he decided he was going to use a weapon instead of his fists. He reached over and grabbed a letter opener off the desk, brandishing it like a knife.
I laughed.
“You know,” I said as I kicked, sweeping both his legs out from under him and watching him fall hard onto his back, “most people who try to defend themselves with a weapon end up having it used against them.” And with that I snatched it out of his hand and stabbed him in the upper thigh.
He howled in pain.
I swiped my arm across my forehead, breathing heavily, and looked over at G.R. “You got any more kids you want to send in here?”
His eyes narrowed. “So smug,” he spat. “Do you think the way out of getting Recalled is by trashing my office and taking what’s mine?”
“I think a little extra insurance never hurt anyone.”
“I ought to Recall you right now,” he spat.
