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I’M almost to the forest’s edge. Only a few hundred feet to go!
Zelaide’s surroundings suddenly turned into a beautifully maintained garden promenade. Decorative iron-wrought streetlights and elaborately pruned trees neatly lined the walkway under the indigo sky. But this was no public park—it was Haydn’s private estate.
Immediately after he walked into the small flower-filled plaza, something sharp cut through the quiet late-summer evening and echoed in his eardrums.
Gunshots!
Came from the north…inside the mansion! Yumi!
He couldn’t afford to worry about tripping the sensors anymore. Zelaide ran like lightning toward the white wall towering ahead of him. The wall was too high for a private villa. It was more suited to a high-security facility.
The mansion was constructed to go higher as it followed the sloping mountain, and it ended in a semicircular dome built right into the mountainside.
Gettin’ over this wall comes first.
Something dry cracked the air at his feet. If he had been running even a little slower, he would’ve taken a bullet to the leg.
Zelaide shot out his right arm, releasing his wrist wire into the tree in front of him and using it as a fulcrum to pull him horizontally through the air. It whipped his body around at an almost complete right angle turn. Bullets blew holes in the pavement.
There!
Snipers always targeted from high ground.
With his bird’s eye view, Zelaide spotted two watchtowers sandwiching the main gate. Snipers aimed at him from both. He’d never infiltrate the mansion if he kept getting shot at from above.
I’ll silence this side first.
Zelaide swung under the tower on the left. Putting his back against the wall made it hard for them to shoot him from the right, but left him open to being sniped from above. He fired the wire hook into the tower’s angled roof and used its powerful contraction force and his feet to scale the tower in a zigzag motion. Bullets grazed his hair, shredding it. Several more passed through his billowing coat. But the snipers weren’t skilled enough to land a direct hit on a moving target.
In less than a minute, he scaled the sixty-five foot tower and swung onto the platform, plunging his feet into the face of one sniper. The sniper’s rifle flew from his grasp and onto the ground below. He lost his balance and fell off the turret platform.
“Uwaaaaaaaaaaah!” His scream echoed the whole sixty-five feet down.
The other sniper, who was too busy gaping to do anything, took Zelaide’s fist to the nose. He landed hard on top of the narrow platform. Blood gushed from his broken nose and split-open lips, staining the decorative white tile. He wore gear from the Romanesque City Guardians, but he was still too young to be on the force. The sheer difference in power robbed him of the will to fight back.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Bullets sprayed the pillar behind them. Snipers fired on Zelaide from the opposite tower. Zelaide grabbed the young man by the neck and moved forward with him as a meat shield.
Fire temporarily ceased as the other guards hesitated to shoot one of their own. Zelaide used that opportunity to lift his gun and fire on them.
He only fired off a few shots, but each hit their mark. Blood sprayed in the distance. It wasn’t a high-caliber gun, but it dealt a fatal blow if aimed right. Zelaide couldn’t stay still long enough to judge if he had taken them down. There should’ve been at least two shooters in the other tower, but they had stopped firing on him. By the look of things outside, it was unlikely the mansion had many guards. Zelaide was in luck. Being a Beast Blood only made him superhuman not invincible. Maybe Haydn wasn’t expecting a full-scale attack this soon.
Zelaide jumped from the tower.
He landed on the wall first before hopping into the shadow of the leafy shrubs below. The sun had set, leaving no natural light. Floodlights kicked on in the garden. Two wide circles of light from the right and left exposed him. Bullets rained down from above. He rolled on top of the soft grass, escaping the cadence by the skin of his teeth. Back on his feet, he fired at the bright lights as he ran. He wouldn’t miss this shot with his eyes closed. With a loud crack, the area was bathed in darkness once more.
Darkness gave Beast Bloods an advantage. At the price of not seeing in color, they saw the finer details of what was in the dark. If anything, their senses heightened with the lack of color and light.
Zelaide, who managed to get under the eaves of the building while the enemy was stunned, broke a large stained glass window and charged inside the mansion as glass fell around him.
Haydn likely held Euphemia captive in the dome at the back of the mansion.
Zelaide rushed through a series of hallways before exiting into a spacious greenhouse with a skylight ceiling. The only way forward was through the greenhouse.
Someone stepped out of the shadows on the other side of the massive room. Their silhouette wasn’t that big, but cold, silver light radiated from their right eye.
It was a Beast Blood.