Chapter 7 - Shattered Steel
“Get off me! Get off!” Julian shrieked, thrashing wild fists against Evelyn’s injured ribs. His knuckles struck her gunshot wound, sending fresh sprays of blood across her trench coat, but Evelyn held on with demonic strength, her bandaged fingers locked around his throat.
“You wanted to watch me burn, Julian!” she rasped into his ear, blood bubbling through her gauze wraps. “Now you get to watch the sky fall!”
“Julian!” Arthur shouted, skidding to a halt near the exit doors. He raised the revolver again, trying to aim at Evelyn, but the two bodies were thrashing too violently in the center of the aisle. “Let him go, you bitch!”
00:18.
Victoria stood on the platform, paralyzed by horror and the threat of the invisible pressure plate beneath her feet. “Evelyn, stop! You’ll kill yourself too!”
“I died three years ago, Tori!” Evelyn yelled back without turning her head. “Look at me! There is nothing left of me! But you… you can still walk away!”
00:10.
00:09.
Arthur sprinted back down the aisle, desperate to drag his only son away from the kill zone. He reached out, his hand grasping Julian’s tuxedo jacket, pulling with all his might. The fabric tore. Julian slipped an inch from Evelyn’s grip, his face purple from asphyxiation.
“Arthur!” Evelyn lunged forward, not at Julian, but directly at Arthur’s arm. Her bandaged fingers sank into the patriarch’s wrist, twisting with brutal leverage. The revolver fell from Arthur’s numb fingers, skittering across the floor and dropping into an air conditioning vent with a metallic clatter.
00:03.
00:02.
“Jump, Tori!” Evelyn screamed.
Victoria didn't think. Instinct took over. She gathered the heavy skirts of her satin gown, bent her knees, and leaped forward off the altar platform with all the force her legs could muster.
She hit the marble floor hard, sliding across the slick tiles on her stomach.
There was no explosion beneath the altar. No blast wave. No collapsing floor.
It had been a phantom threat. Evelyn had lied to keep Victoria frozen safely out of the impact radius until the very last second.
00:00.
A deafening, shrieking groan of stressed steel echoed from the ceiling. The heavy magnetic locks snapped with a sound like cannon fire.
Victoria rolled onto her back, looking upward in petrified awe.
The ten-ton crystal chandelier detached from the vaulted roof. It fell through the empty air like a glittering, descending meteor, dragging severed electrical cables that whipped around, shooting blinding showers of blue sparks against the glass dome.
Arthur looked up. His eyes reflected the descending crystalline nightmare. A choked, pathetic whimper escaped his throat.
CRASH.
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The sound was apocalyptic. Thousands of crystal pendants, steel crossbars, and heavy brass rings obliterated the center of the chapel. A shockwave of pulverized glass and marble dust blasted outward in a violent circle, blowing out the floor-to-ceiling side windows with a concussive roar.
Victoria covered her head with her hands, screaming into the dust as razor-sharp shards rained down over her ivory dress, slashing her arms and tearing her veil to shreds.
