It was the first time Leona facing a monster like this, so she did exactly what she was told during the training—waited for the enemy to attack, and observed how it fought. She kept on dodging for quite a while, finding this red berserker seemed to know only melee battle, and although it was incredibly fast and strong even for her, it got angry easily.

Then…at least making a strike won't be too hard.

So she evaded another uppercut, grabbed Anastacia's dagger on the desk, using it to attack the blood warrior and intentionally miss it. Just like she expected, seeing Leona wielding the proud work of its so rudely agitated this partly human beast, and it just jumped on Leona with no tactics, leaving its abdomen open right in front of her.

Now is the chance.

Leona squatted and thrust her blade into its chest, sliced it down all the way to its belly so easily like she was cutting through cheese. The monster fell down from the side, letting out a roar in pain, and Leona seized the chance to throw the two knives in her hands: one going for the head, and the other aimed at the heart.

These two places were supposed to be the weaknesses of most life forms, and they were both hit in an expert precision. Leona stepped back, watching how this creature reacted, couldn't believe she just achieved something like that so skilfully.

It lied on the ground quietly for a few seconds, which almost fooled Leona into believing that she'd succeeded, but immediately this blood warrior held itself up with its shaking limbs, screamed and dashed towards her like a lightning, as if those wounds didn't really damage it…simply enraged it even more.

This made it much worse for Leona, because she just didn't know what else she could do. She panicked. She threw up the desk to hinder its path, and pulled her blade back out from its head, kept battling, hurting it, but all the cuts on its liquified skin would just recover within seconds, while the power of its fists were so fierce that Leona could literally feel it shattering her ribs—even just a small mistake she made when avoiding, would leave a injury so hard to heal, while all the attacks she managed were merely scratches for this terrifying creature.

At first, Leona was still able to hold her stand and react in time to all its moves, but as all her efforts turning out to be useless, her stamina was finally unable to catch up. Her body started to slow down, her judgement was smudged, and she could barely find a chance to drink the blood bag to speed up her recovery.

It was like it's inevitable. A smash to chin caught her off guard, turning her world upside down. Leona felt like her jaw was fractured, and the buzzing in her quaking brain was numbing her way of thinking. In her sight tainted by her own blood, she saw the monster approaching, with that black hole on its face forming a shape of crescent.

It was a smile. It was enjoying it.

The crimson berserker gripped Leona's throat, lifted her up and walked towards the window, allowing moonlight to shine on her, watching the scarlet lush of her blood turn into glossy nigritude, as if it was appreciating its work.

And it threw her out of the window.

Leona fell down on the street, right by the side of the river. She felt like her organs were totally scrambled. For this degree of damage, if she had been a human, she would have died several times, but at the corners of her body, something so weak and helpless was still trying to repairing and fixing, patching her up, and that was the only barrier between her and death.

However soon, she would wish she had died.

As if defeating her wasn't enough, the monster jumped out from the building, too, with Leona's knife and its dagger in its hands. It crouched by Leona's side, raised the blades up, targeted them at her shoulders in a deliberately slow speed, like it wanted her to watch the process.

It stabbed them into her clavicles, and twisted the knives in her flesh.

Leona screamed, and the beast laughed in satisfaction, with its face closing in, and its mouth widened, then it bit her neck.

But the pain was already too unbearable, and Leona was losing her strength even to make a sound. Little by little, she couldn't feel anything, and her eyes were blurred by a dizzy, warm light.

Her body shrank out of the blue, as if the time was rewound, turning her into a small, young little girl. She stood there, startled, wearing a baby blue nightdress, surrounded her tiny arms around a big guy who was kneeling down, hugging her.

She must have been hallucinating. Leona thought.

Chinese girls grew slower than the white ones in general, and the bumpy life she had didn't really provide her with all the nutrition, so Leona felt her mini-world was totally enclosed by this man—his cheek on her hair, his breath on her neck, his head heavy on her shoulder, and the way he held her so tight that she couldn't make a move.

It was when she was 16. Now Leona remembered. They were found and she was at home, unaware of the danger, so Zack ran back to warn her, and said his goodbye.

She could smell gunpowder and blood on his black coat. Realizing it was the final farewell, Leona's lips were pale and shivering, and she hugged him even tighter, grabbing his collar so forcefully as if she was tearing it down, with a string of tears hanging on and dropping from her eyelashes.

"I'm sorry." Zack was whispering.

He didn't need to apologize at all—he had done everything that she could ever hope for and more. She should be the one who said this.

Leona never treasured her own life. She grew up to never value herself more than a wild animal, because no one ever did. Until he gave her meaning.

She was the proof, the witness of him. Everyone else thought him to be a machine, a tool, a weapon, a mean to an end who had no heart, so they could use him to do whatever they want. And she proved them wrong. If there were ever going to be a judgement day, she would stand for him in the trial of angels, and tell them how she became a proper human because of this killer in their eyes.

He was the man…who laid the foundation of everything that's beautiful in her. And now he was about to die, so that she could live.

Zack released her, looked at her properly for one last time, wiped the blood on her face she got from him, and said:

"Run, Leona, and live. Live a good life."

Those were his last words.

Yes. She would. Leona made him a promise. From that moment, this life of hers had a meaning. She could not die. If she died, then no one in this world would be alive to remember him as his true self, and his death, his sacrifice…would just be another joke made by God's vulgar sense of humour.

And she wouldn't allow it. This is a promise too important to betray.

So live, then. Run and live.

A stream of heat rose from deep inside her, and broke out from her shoulder, where Zack used to rest his weary head on, like spouting lava. Leona opened her eyes, stood up, took out the last bag of blood she had, torn it open and drank it.

That heat she felt, was the scarlet threads coming out of her back—the threads that also marked the curse on Cain—with blood flowing and shapeshifting around them, forming into a lonely, beautiful wing, and on the tip of the wing, was the blood warrior skewed by the red strings through its mouth. It was frozen, as if refusing to accept what Leona just did was true.

But it was true. Leona looked at this creature as if it was already a corpse, and started to use her wing to toss and smash it on the ground repeatedly, right to the left, left to the right, again and again. Her body was still weak, but strangely steady, even when its blood was spat onto her eyes and into her nose, she didn't ever blink.

Until there was nothing left but a pile of paste mixed by blood, meat and bone fragments beneath her feet, until she finally ran out of all of her strength, Leona passed out, and fell back down into the Danube.

Then her body dropped out of the painting, leaving a pool of blood under the portrait of Cain. The guard downstairs was spooked by this loud thud, pulled out his gun and rushed up here, but when he made it to the painting, Leona was already not alone—A man in a wolf-face mask and a leather coat was carrying her in his arms.

He gazed straight at the guard with his red, radiant right eye, and commanded this mortal in an undeniable tone:

"Clean up and get everything back to normal, then forget you ever see us."

After that, he took Leona and walked to the window, jumped out and disappeared into the night.