He freezes and I put the Glock to the back of his head.
“I know you want to die by hoodoo like a real warrior magician. I get it. And that’s why it’s going to happen like this.”
I shoot him and let him fall on the floor with the dead guards. Fuck him. Fuck magic. Fuck the faction. And double fuck whoever shot me in the chest.
I open my coat—which has more than a few bullet holes in it, thanks, you fuckers—and pry the bullets out of the body armor. Toss them on the floor with the other dead dopes.
The trunk is empty, so it’s not very heavy when I pull it over to the altar. Sandoval and Sinclair aren’t going to be happy when they see what I’m bringing them. Most of what the magicians were using in the ritual has been shot to shit. It’s all twisted metal vessels, splintered wooden idols, and shattered vials. The only thing intact is a vellum scroll. I shove everything else into the trunk but set the scroll aside. Whatever it is, it’s probably worth something and I’m going to want leverage over Wormwood until I’m 100 percent alive.
When I open it, the scroll is just a jumble of geometric shapes and runes laid out in a grid pattern. I can’t read a word of it, and I don’t get a chance to decipher it with hoodoo because there’s an ominous crack above me that runs down the walls and rumbles the floor.
With two walls missing, the room is collapsing. As I grab the trunk, the halogen lights start going out. I find a shadow in the dying light of the very last one and dive in.
I come out of a shadow across the street. Car alarms are going off for blocks. Lights are coming on in the nearby houses. The street shakes as the chapel groans and snaps, crashing down onto itself until it’s one big holy crater in the ground. I’m covered in dust from the vaults, asbestos, and who the hell knows what else that’s raining down from the dead chapel. I stay there just long enough to make sure I’ll leave a good trail of toxic shit on the rugs when I’m back at Sandoval’s mansion. But as people gather to gawk at the wreckage, I drag the trunk into a shadow. Back to Beverly Hills and my brand-new, shiny, perfect life.
I’M NOT SUBTLE when I return to Sandoval’s. I come in right through a wall in her office, dragging the trunk behind me.
She and Sinclair jump when they see me.
“Goddammit, Stark. That was amusing the first time or two, but not anymore. Come in through a door like a human being.”
I drop the trunk and it kicks up a little cloud of dust.
Sinclair frowns.
“What are you—and it—covered with?”
“The Chapel of St. Alexis. We’re pretty much all that’s left of it.”
“You were supposed to kill a few men. Not make a scene,” says Sandoval.
“I wasn’t the one that cratered the place. It was one of the faction’s magicians.”
“You destroyed it? The whole chapel?”
“You’re not listening. I didn’t do it. I was just going to collapse the crypt. A faction magician collapsed the building.”
“And you let him,” she says.
“I didn’t know he was doing it—there wasn’t exactly time for a zoning commission meeting. I barely got out of there with your Easter basket.”
Sinclair says, “What’s wrong, Eva?”
“The faction lost a valued piece of consecrated ground tonight. They won’t take that lightly.”
I shake some dust off my jacket and onto the floor.
“Hey, I just saved L.A. And you. Why don’t you be happy about that for two minutes before you go off again?”
She looks at me.
“Yes. I suppose you did.”
She looks at the trunk.
“Are those the artifacts?”
“That’s them. But they got a little banged around in shipping.”