Page 136 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland
There was no time to wait for a savior, though. Just this one final line to cut into her skin—
Taurus was on her then, wresting the pen out of her grasp, sending it flying through the air and smashing into the marble wall. The pen shattered into a million pieces.
No.
“You’ve lost.” His forearm pressed against her shoulder—he felt both real and noncorporeal at the same time, there but hollow, as if he weren’t completely assembled yet. His breath was guttural and foul. “Come with us. If you offer us your power willingly, it becomes stronger. That said, I’m happy to take it off you by force.”
A weapon. She needed some kind of weapon.
The pen had shattered. That left only the tattoo gun.
It still lay next to Minna, both of them silent, both of them getting colder by the second.
Beatrice shoved against—no,throughTaurus—and grabbed the tattoo gun. She felt the malignancy of him rushing toward her, around her, as if he were in front and behind her—the smoke of him was all around and there was no time.
A simple spell. She might have only half a second left. Less.
She closed her eyes and let it come: the whisper, in Naya’s voice. Naya’s real voice? Her only option was to trust that it was.
Make your mark, kill the dark.
She said Naya’s words out loud as she shoved the gun into the darkness that was the sooty cloud of Taurus’s malformed body. The tool buzzed to life, the energy roaring up her arm and into her chest. The scream that rose was such agony that she couldn’t tell if it came from her or Taurus. Her ribs felt as if they were ripping apart, bone from sinew. Pain darkened her vision and she gave a tortured gasp. In her hand, the whirring gun felt slick, as if coated with blood.
As hard as she could, Beatrice drove the vibrating needle upward into the black energy of Taurus.
He shrieked, a torn and ragged sound that drained all hope from the world.
His shape contracted, shifting, breaking.
Then, Taurus simply shredded, drifting apart into thin black ribbons that curled into acrid smoke. The scream continued for another few seconds, but he was gone so fast, the room felt as if a vacuum seal had been broken.
Fuck.
Minna’s face was whiter than the marble she lay on and exactly as still. No life moved in her. The trade for Minna’s life hadn’t yet been completed. The sigil Beatrice had cut on her thigh wasn’t yet done. Minna still wasn’t breathing—more than a minute had passed now, maybe ninety seconds.
There wasn’t a single second to spare. Not a second to say good-bye to her sister, to let go of the people she loved.
Only Minna mattered.
The last miracle—it was time to spend it.
With the gun chattering in her fingers, Beatrice scored thelast piece of the sigil into her skin, connecting the line of the teardrop to the scale.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Death is the biggest surprise of all.
—Evie Oxby,Come at Me, Boo
Everything stopped.
All sound—gone.
All pain—lifted.
Could she feel anything at all? Of any sort? Beatrice wasn’t sure if she could. She wasn’t in a body, or if she was, she wasn’t sure she fit inside it.
She wasn’t uncomfortable.
