Chapter 4: Ashes of Dawn

Elena's Perspective: The Wolf Claws that Tear the Sunlight

The morning light stabbed into her pupils like thousands of silver needles. Elena was tearing apart the armored vehicle of the Holy See with her bare hands. Her fingernails had completely transformed into wolf - like, deep - blue blades. Her skin was steaming with a blood mist under the sun, which was the Nightborne blood resisting the curse. The demon hunters who were sent flying stared in horror at the shadow at her feet: half was a bat's wing, and half was a wolf's form.

"Sister!" The hybrid girl suddenly rushed out from the street corner, and the chip around her neck flashed violently with red light.

Elena instinctively lunged forward to protect her. Behind them, the church bell tower was blasted into powder by a laser cannon. In the rain of rubble, she saw the words written in blood on the girl's palm: "The energy tower is in the catacombs."

Lane's hymns came from all directions. The six - winged mechanical angel hovered above the city. In the shadow cast by its wings, the unconscious hybrid children floated like marionettes. Elena's wolf ears caught the faint sobs, which were the chips siphoning their vitality.

"Cain taught you the structure of the energy tower, right?" She broke off an iron fence by the roadside as a weapon. When the girl nodded, big tears dropped to the ground. "But to activate the self - destruct program, it needs... a Nightborne's heart."

Elena laughed. She licked the black blood oozing from the back of her hand, the vampire toxin of Cain that was corroding her. "Coincidentally, I was just thinking this heart was making too much noise."

Cain's Perspective: The Blood - Drinking Silver Wolf

When Cain bit through the throat of the third demon hunter, he tasted the abnormal growth of his own fangs. The moonlight should have made his power surge, but at this moment, it was like sulfuric acid corroding his blood vessels. His canine teeth had become long, thin, and sharp, the characteristics of a vampire. Selena's blood ring glinted in the distance, and the witch's curse was pushing him towards the abyss of racial collapse.

"You're becoming more and more like her," Selena walked out from the shadows of the ruins, the muzzle of her gun aimed at the Nightborne totem on Cain's chest. "It's so interesting. Elena is bleeding in the sun, and you're rotting in the moonlight."

Cain's sharp claws stabbed into his own abdomen, using the pain to suppress the impulse to suck blood. Fragments of past - life memories suddenly flashed: on the same moonlit night three hundred years ago, he was also kneeling in front of Lillian's corpse, allowing the Blood Moon Stone to drain her Nightborne power.

At this moment, the holographic communicator blared. The image of Witch Maggie was intermittent due to energy interference: "The church... catacombs... The core of Lucifer is in..."

The second half of the sentence was drowned out by an explosion. Cain turned his head and saw a mushroom cloud rising in the city center. In the thick smoke, he could faintly see Elena's wolf form struggling with the wings of the mechanical angel. His pupils suddenly contracted. That fool was force - wolfing by burning her Nightborne blood!

The temperature in the catacombs was so low that the breath frosted. Elena ripped off the last energy pipe, and the hybrid girl inserted the chip into the control console. The mechanical gears let out a dying roar, and one of Lucifer's wings suddenly broke off and smashed through the dome of the catacombs.

"Now!" The girl trembled as she activated the self - destruct program, but the control console popped up a scarlet warning: [Nightborne vital signs termination required].

Elena's wolf claws stabbed towards her heart without hesitation. But at the moment the blade tip touched her skin, it was entangled by silver chains. Cain leaped down from the collapsed hole, and his vampire - transformed fingertips tightly clasped her wrist. "You self - destructive lunatic!"

At this moment, Lucifer's mechanical eyes opened. The angel's song suddenly became shrill, and the hybrid children opened their eyes simultaneously, their pupils turning the same pale - gold color as Lane's. The girl suddenly let out a shrill scream, and the chip burst out of her body and turned into metal tentacles, instantly piercing through Elena's right shoulder!

"I'm sorry, sister..." Her body quickly carbonized. "But Brother Lane said... this way, the moms won't hit me..."

Cain's fangs pierced Elena's neck, and Nightborne blood flowed into his body. The moment their blood blended, Lucifer suddenly froze. A crack opened on the angel's forehead. Inside was curled up Lillian's mummy, with Cain's silver claws from his past life stuck in her heart.

Selena raised the blood ring in the ruins of the bell tower, and the moonlight shone through the ring surface and branded a contract formation on her palm. "Heart for heart," she swallowed the ring, and her skin began to crack and peel off. "Cain, I want you to always remember - it was you who turned me into a monster."

And Lane stood on Lucifer's shoulder, the inverted cross tattoo creeping up his cheek. He looked down at the embracing Elena and Cain, holding a mechanical heart in his hands that was beating with Lillian's brain - wave frequency. "Mother, your most perfect creation is about to wake up."

Next Chapter:

When Cain's fangs uncontrollably pierce into Elena's artery, and when Lillian's corpse opens its eyes inside the angel; "Hug me," Elena pulled out a broken smile in a pool of blood. "And before I completely wolf out... kill me."