My heart pounded in rhythm with the frantic beat his feet made against the old floorboards. Then, he must have tripped. There was a curse, followed by the clatter of something heavy and fragile.
His string of curses was interrupted by another scream. The sound sent a chill straight to my marrow. Then, a pinched yelp and the crunch of bone as a torrent of blood and bits of flesh exploded onto the ceiling.
My hand slapped over my mouth to stifle a scream of my own.
A bullet wasn’t responsible for that kind of carnage.
I knew the labyrinth of antiques like the back of my hand, and could navigate the aisles with my eyes closed. But the mysterious quake had shifted everything, throwing off my sense of direction. I had to look up and use the signs pointing toward the exit.
The arrow dangling over my head, now covered in specks of blood and brain matter, pointed me to the front door.
I stepped over broken pieces of furniture and traversed piles of toppled bookcases, hope lifting my chest when the front door came into view. It came crashing down to the pit of my gut when the second gunman—the one I’d knocked out—rounded the corner, blocking my path to the door.
“There you are, bitch! Give us the topaz!”
Taking a step back, my head swung around in search of a weapon. There was nothing but smashed china and antique tchotchkes. Shit luck. But, what else was new?
The intruder was wearing a half mask, but his evil grin shone bright in his eyes.
“The McCrum’s magic really has run dry through the generations, hasn’t it? Your family used to be powerful monster hunters. Now look at you. Cornered like a helpless animal.”
He took another step toward me, close enough now that I could smell the blood dripping down his temple. He reached for me, and I raised my hands to defend myself. He wouldn’t be the first creep I’d had to fend off tonight.
The blow never landed.
A porcelain doll flew at him, like someone had flung it. At first I thought it might have been Conor, growing some balls to help me out. But then a collector’s plate on the wall was ripped from its display hook and smashed into the man’s head. Then a lamp and a dozen more objects followed.
No one was throwing them. The antiques were moving on their own!
The man covered his head with his arms and stumbled for the door. He reached for the knob, but his fingers never made contact. A floorboard ripped up from its nails and smashed through his chest. Blood splattered the stained glass clover onthe door, the eye nestled in the center of the leaves looking at the man with blank indifference.
He crumpled to the floor, lifeless.
The beat of my heart turned into a brain-obliteration roar in my ears.
It was the building.The building attacked the cultist.
Before I could do anything else, there was a sound of cracking glass again. On the next frantic beat of my heart, a flash of amber light illuminated the wreckage, and the building shook again.
The antiques, the furniture, the wall hangings—everything—began to vanish into thin air. The floorboards and the nails holding them down disappeared next. Then the roof and walls.
One moment, I was standing in my antique shop and the next, I was outside. Like the building had never been there to begin with.
The corpses of the two cultists flopped to the Earth, and as my apartment upstairs disappeared, my clothes, my drawing pencils, and other various possessions rained from the sky.
Gilly landed on her feet and zipped off into the alley behind Mrs. O’Neill’s store.
The desk Conor had been cowering beneath was gone in a blink. The red-head looked around the street, wide-eyed and half out of his mind. We made eye contact for a second before he shot off into the night.
As the final traces of McCrum’s Curios and Antiques vanished right before my eyes, the topaz remained in the air. As if it had been the thing holding up the shop rather than the other way around.
It was cracked, with the bullet still embedded in the stone.
The silhouette of aridiculouslylarge man began to shimmer around the topaz, slowly taking shape. He had flaming locks of copper hair, with smoldering tips that crackled and smoked. The glow of his hair chased away the murk of night.
He was insanely tall, with a muscular frame donned in a duster jacket that fell to the tops of his heavy leather boots. The jacket was made of a hodgepodge of materials, with leather and floral patterns I’d seen before. A moment later, it hit me. His jacket was made from the upholstery of various pieces around the shop.
The man was standing with his back to me but even from this vantage I could see the gold and jewels draping his brawny frame.
