She was breathless, but she had to keep running no matter what. She would lose them this time, just like always, she reassured herself.

 

She wiped the liquid dripping down her face with her arm - she suspected it was blood, because she felt a steady sting on her forehead from a while ago, but she didn’t have time to stop and inspect the wound.

 

She had been running for hours, and she finally understood why she’d been diligently waking up every morning and building up her stamina. She knew she’d need it someday, and today it proved to be her most valuable asset.

 

Getting rid of the dogs was the hardest part. They were well-trained and blood-thirsty, but she’d shown them that they’d chosen the wrong person to mess with.

 

When she entered the river, letting the water soak her clothes and destroy her smell, she wasn’t counting on the fact that they’d lose her trail and let her go. It would’ve been nice and easier for all of them, but of course it didn’t work.

 

Not long afterwards, she heard their barking from somewhere behind her again, haunting her and promising her a slow, painful death. She did not get scared, though her heart did start beating a little bit faster.

 

She’d had just enough time to climb a tree and take her M1911 gun from its place on her belt, aiming for the dogs.

 

She managed to take down four, leaving two of them right below the tree, blocking her retreat. They weren’t just hungry now, they were going berserk and she knew she wouldn’t be able to run anymore.

 

The easiest thing would’ve been to reload and shoot again, but she was out of ammo so she would have to fight them chest-to-chest.

 

Well, the good thing about her was that she wasn’t one of those incapable assassins who only knew how to be dangerous while aiming at someone from a great distance.

 

But oh, she was so much more than that.

 

She took the black blade out, already missing its weight on her right hip, but knowing that it would come back to its rightful place very soon.

 

Within a minute, everything was over, only silence falling onto the dark woods. The sun was setting, so the darkness would help her make her escape - she would be able to erase her traces and disappear, because no more dogs would be chasing her.

 

The blade was secured to her belt once again, its familiar weight calming her. And now it was bloody.

 

The sun had set and the moon rose above the horizon, lighting her way as she started running again after erasing her footprints and taking a long circle to make it harder for the stupid detectives. He was among them, always breathing down her neck, so she had to pay extra caution not to leave a stray mark.

 

No mistakes were acceptable whenever he was involved. He would hunt her down if she gave him anything to work with. Thankfully, she was always smart enough not to leave a single trace behind.

 

She’d had more than enough time to wonder what went wrong today. Was it her contact that was a mole or a fake, or was it something entirely else? It seemed as if they’d known where she would be, because it all smelled of a big fat trap from the very beginning.

 

But she always had a backup plan, so when the man she was supposed to assassinate didn’t turn up at the designated place, she immediately started running, already trained to dissemble her Barrett M82 while she went down the stairs and into the safety of the crowd.

 

She’d planned her retreat with all precautions, taking care to leave her favorite gun in a trash can that would not get hauled off today in a nearby dead-end street, a place which would not be checked by the police. Even if it was, they would find no fingerprints or evidence of any kind on it, because she did not leave traces behind her.

 

Her gloves were still in her pockets, her protection from the outside world. Her protection from him and everything that he’d do if only he knew who she was.

 

He’d never find out. She would most certainly kill him long before that.

 

And so now here she was, letting down her guard for a second and letting herself limp to the obviously-abandoned house at the end of the street. She was at the other end of the city now, having taken a few wide turns through the woods surrounding it and having arrived to a place where nobody would expect her to be.

 

They were probably searching for her with helicopters, infrared sensors and whatnot technology, but all they would find would be death, which was always her only postcard for all of them. For him especially.

 

She touched the back of her left leg, hissing when she realized a dog had freaking bitten her, which was a very unwelcome complication. She didn’t even have any idea that she’d been wounded in the fight, probably too pumped with adrenaline to notice it. And the wound on her forehead - a graze of a bullet that had flown by her too close for comfort - was starting to hurt, too.

 

But all of that could wait, at least until she situated herself inside of the house. This hadn’t been a part of the plan, but then again, getting chased by a pack of hunting dogs wasn’t either. Oh well, her life was so interesting - she always had new enemies to worry about, and they always spent all their waking hours trying to find some new way to catch her and end her reign.

 

The reign of Hella, who was the most famous assassin in the whole world. She was the smartest and most capable of them all, her identity perfectly hidden and all her murders textbook-clean.

 

Well, she’d had a good teacher, what else could she say? And he’d taught her everything there was to know about her job.

 

She didn’t like having to do things that hadn’t been carefully planned and thoroughly checked, but she was famous for her ability of improvising, too, so it was about time she lived up to all her attributes.

 

Picking the lock was a piece of cake - it was old, rusty and so-20th-century that she snorted, wondering if a child would be able to make the same move. It also gave her a sense of security, because nobody would be occupying such an unprotected home, at least nobody in their right minds.

 

She was out of ammo, but her blade could take care of any threat just as well, though not as cleanly.

 

She stood in the house for a minute, closing her eyes and listening to its sounds. There was nothing out of the ordinary. The kitchen the back door led to was empty, with no fresh dishes in the sink. The fridge was empty. Just as she’d imagined.

 

She found it strange that the electricity was on, though, and that no glasses were shattered or possessions stolen. Perhaps the owners had went on a holiday a couple of months ago or something, leaving their old house like this but still paying the bills.

 

Regardless of why the house was vacant, the most important fact was that there were no alarms.

 

She would be safe here.

 

All she wanted to do was take a shower and go to sleep for a couple dozen hours, but she had many, many more important things to take care of first. She found the first aid quickly, because houses like this one were predictable - the owners had left it in a drawer beneath the ancient television, and thankfully, there were enough bandages and solutions for her to take care of all her wounds.

 

She took the first aid to the bathroom, deciding to take a shower first after all. But before all that, she needed to find ammo - her gun was common enough, and the house American enough for her to be able to hope she would find adequate ammunition here, or at least some old gun that was still working properly and that would be her lullaby, allowing her to sleep peacefully.

 

She couldn’t find anything downstairs, no matter how many times she opened the empty closets full of cobwebs. Perhaps this house wasn’t so predictable, after all, but she would know only after she checked the upper floor, too. Americans had a habit of keeping their guns in their bedrooms, too, so maybe she would strike jackpot when she found the strength to limp up the stairs and reach the soft bed - she hoped there would be at least one.

 

For now, she settled on sitting on the couch in the living room area and taking out her black blade again - it was short, only a bit bigger than a dagger, both its handle and the blade itself as black as the darkest night.

 

It was a valuable gift, and a lesson she would remember whenever she laid eyes upon it.

 

She didn’t want the blood to get dry on the blade - it got really hard to wash it after some time passed, and the blade was too valuable to her. So she took a cloth from a kitchen and started cleaning the blade, reminded of what she’d had to go through in the woods mere hours ago.

 

It must’ve been the client that was the problem. There was nothing else that could’ve alarmed them of her presence, and the whole thing regarding the exact location and time of assassination seemed a bit fishy from the very beginning.

 

She didn’t usually accept such jobs, because she liked having her freedom, but this client had a recommendation from a good friend, one she’d done many jobs with and who’d never tried to double-crossed her.

 

Well, apparently everyone tried, sooner or later. Just another day in her life.

 

She spent a long time under the shower head, very thankful for the fact that the owners of this house paid their bills and allowed her to enjoy the steam at least for a little while. Only when her leg started hurting again did she turn the water off, wrapping her wayward hair of various light colors in one towel and herself in another one.

 

She was thankful for the clean towels, too - the house was looking more and more inviting as the minutes passed, and she even started wondering if she could stay here for another day, giving herself time to plan her retreat from this city before they realized she was still here.

 

The wound on her leg looked ugly, but considering that the hunting dogs’ eyes were bloody and that they looked famished, their ribs clearly visible and their lips drawn back to show meat-thirsty teeth, she could say that she was incredibly lucky that there was only one bite on her body, and that it wasn’t that bad.

 

The wound was open and bloody, but thankfully, it wasn’t very deep - the dog had just enough time to make a bite and pull, tearing a bit of her flesh apart, but not enough to make more serious damage. She let herself use some time to clean it and bandage it, so after a while, her leg was all ready to heal - or well, as much as it could, since she didn’t stitch wounds that well.

 

She was only worried if the dogs carried some kinds of diseases with them, because that would prove to be a much more delicate problem that would make things progressively worse for her if left untreated.

 

Tomorrow, she reassured herself. Tomorrow she would be out of this forsaken place that had attempted to behead her, but it apparently didn’t take any of the stories about Hella seriously.

 

She approached the mirror, more worried about what she was going to look like for the next couple of days with the bloody trail the bullet had left on her forehead. People would memorize her, because it was so unusual that it could neither be covered by a giant bandage or makeup, or attributed to some mundane disaster.

 

Sure enough, the wound was there, but it looked more ugly than she imagined - it wasn’t just a long, bloody scratch, but an actual wound instead. The bullet had just grazed her, but it was enough to make her wince when she started cleaning the wound, deciding not to bandage it because it would only bother her and it could heal this way, too.

 

Ah, she would cut her hair tomorrow and make her bangs fall over her forehead, creating the perfect - and inconspicuous - disguise. As reluctant as she was to ruin her hairstyle, it was the easiest solution and much more stylish than wrapping her head in gauze and hoping people would think she was a hospital runaway instead of the most wanted criminal in the whole world.

 

As she slowly limped up the stairs, the pain of the wound slowly dissipating because she’d found painkillers in the house and drunk a few more than the prescribed dose, she quickly devised a plan in her head. She knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep before at least an outline of it existed, and it wasn’t easy to devise an escape plan now that she was safe from the dogs and the not-too-bright cops.

 

Tomorrow morning, she would steal a car and drive over to Chicago, which was only an hour away and where she had a stash of international passports and a safe house. Chicago was too large a city for them to be able to track her there, and perhaps they wouldn’t even report the robbery soon enough for them to associate it with her. The cops were almost certainly looking for her in the woods, thinking she’d headed north and perhaps even towards the Canada border - they were dumb like that.

 

Not him, though - she knew he would be searching for her in this city as soon as tomorrow morning, when the infrared search turned up empty-handed. And she had to disappear before he realized what she was going to do.

 

The house was small, which she liked very much, because she could quickly get acquainted with every corner and assess any situation that might rise up before her, devising a backup plan before she was in danger again.

 

Her leg was going to be a pain for some time, but Doc would get her back on her feet again soon enough. She only needed to find ammo, and it would be a perfect ending to a long day - though sun had set many hours ago and soon dawn would start to break. Darkness was her ally, and she didn’t like going to sleep so late, because it’d make her vulnerable in the early morning hours.

 

But she felt safe in this small place, and now she only needed to choose between the three rooms the hallway led to. She started from the end of the hallway, finding herself in a child’s room with a crib and various paintings on the walls.

 

She smiled to herself. Cute, but not her style. All that mattered was the familiar weight of the blade on her hip.

 

The second room seemed to be the office, with a small library and a working desk that was empty. She searched for a gun or any kind of firearms in the table, in double bottom of the lowest drawer and secured to the bottom side of its top.

 

But there were no guns anywhere, and she couldn’t help but be disappointed. She trusted her blade, of course, but she would’ve felt much safer, had she found at least some old-fashioned revolver or something…

 

She approached the third room with her eyes half-closed, barely able to limp there now that the painkillers were beginning to work their way through her system. She just wanted to fall asleep, and she knew this room was the bedroom - she just hoped the bed was cozy and warm.

 

She opened the door and searched for the light switch with her hands, but thankfully, she heard the sound before she managed to find it.

 

The sound of snoring.

 

The blood froze in her veins, making her snap to her senses and fight the pull of the painkillers immediately.

 

She was not alone in the house.

 

She had no ammo, and she was not alone.

 

Damn it, damn it, she kept repeating to herself, wanting to groan and start crying hysterically because this was so unfair. Could she at least get some sleep like she wanted, after having been almost shot in the freaking head and being chased by freaking hunting dogs and then actually being bitten by one of them?

 

But no, instead she had to go and kill whatever man was lying on that bed and then sleep on the couch because she would not sleep in that bed.

 

Great.

 

She went over to the bed, taking out the blade, her only true friend. She didn’t have strength for dramatization - she just wanted to get some rest already and if she’d secured the perimeter when she’d first entered the house or if this person had made some actual noise other than the awful snoring that was making her ears bleed, she would’ve avoided all of this commotion completely.

 

Perhaps she didn’t have to kill him. Maybe it would be enough to just hit him in the head with the backside of the M1911, tie him up and throw him in the basement or something.

 

She was so sick of murdering, of the pointlessness of the majority of the kills she had to make. Perhaps this person would even prove useful, if he could tell her where he kept the gun or if he had a car for her to steal without making a ruckus.

 

But as her eyes adjusted to the darkness and as she noticed that the moonlight shining from the window illuminated the person sleeping in the bed and making those abominal noises, she realized that once again, she’d made a wrong judgement.

 

It was most definitely not an old, obese American lying in that bed and getting some rest.

 

It was him.

 

The man she’d seen a bunch of times, always aiming at her, always screaming for her to stop, always calling her various names and swearing because she was always faster and smarter than him, always a step ahead.

 

He was a bloodsucker, and for a long time she wondered why he’d chosen her as his prey. The guy never rested - he was always a step behind her, running after her and trying to catch her before she striked her next victim. He’d managed to bribe many of her acquaintances and he’d almost ruined her reputation many times because some customers didn’t want to risk her failing a job because some psycho detective was chasing her.

 

It was a problem she rose above by hard work and diligence. She kept successfully carrying out her tasks regardless of the pumpkin-head wanting to put her in jail, and her customers recognized and appreciated it. She soon rose to become the most wanted assassin, one surrounded by legends and exaggerated stories speaking of her conquests and ability to keep evading the best detective Kim Jongin for over a decade.

 

She would call him anything but the best, especially as she looked at his sleeping form, so oblivious to the evil that was standing within an arm’s reach, so vulnerable and incredibly stupid.

 

She’d been ending people’s lives for eleven years. Eleven years ago, she had called herself Hella for the first time, and Hella’s hand was steady as it held the blade, ready to strike the detective, her biggest enemy.

 

As she brought it to his neck, the moonlight seemed to be following the path of her hand, illuminating the black blade and making it cast a strange reflection that made it look light. It looked unnatural to her eyes, so she withdrew the blade quickly.

 

All that was left was the detective’s moonlit face.

 

She’d never given him a closer look. It didn’t matter how he looked - he was boring and incapable of doing anything right, just like the rest of his team was. Special forces. Yeah right. She could only imagine what criteria was set for regular forces if guys as dumb as these ended up in the elite units.

 

She associated a middle-aged obese face, a mouth stuffed with donuts and a three-day beard with the name of Kim Jongin. A short body with too much fats in all the wrong places. A standard sky-blue police uniform with ketchup stains on it and the smell of perspiration.

 

The moonlight showed her a completely different image: a young face without blemishes, a tone darker, more eccentric and exquisite than that of regular policemen, and a smooth skin with no trace of a beard.

 

Her eyes started moving at their own accord, taking in the form sleeping on the bed. In front of her was a tall, handsome, shirtless man packed with muscles in all the right places. She felt hot all of a sudden, unable to move her eyes from the firmness of his pectorals or his abs or his biceps or just about any part of him.

 

She was drooling. Definitely not something Hella would ever do.

 

In that moment, she was not Hella. She was merely a 27-year-old who hadn’t seen such a nice sight in a long, long time.

 

She struggled to remember that this was her supposed worst nemesis, one she had to get rid of immediately, and that it was most certainly unacceptable to lean in and taste the skin over all of those muscles, or to drink in the scent of testosterone that was practically dripping off him.

 

No, it was most certainly unacceptable to trace a line from his neck to his mouth, with the excuse of checking whether there was really no beard to bother her. And no, she would not kiss his mouth just to check whether it was as hot as the rest of him.

 

Her hand started moving on its own accord again, the blade lost somewhere next to her on the bed so that both of her hands would be free when she decided to screw everything and just touch the damn chiseled athletic. She couldn’t care less who he was; she would have her way with him and then do whatever she felt was the best for her, like, for example, murdering him so that he could finally stop chasing her around like a lost psychopath.

 

Her eyes traced a path her hands and mouth wanted to try out, from his abs to his biceps and up his shoulder straight to his mouth-

 

She caught two dark eyes staring at her, most certainly having seen enough to know her dirty intentions. Good.

 

“You move, you die,” she said calmly, her voice still laced with the desire her eyes must’ve been showing openly. It was a passion she hadn’t felt in a long time, one that she most certainly wanted to get lost in, but not making a bigger mess out of everything was more important at the moment.

 

She didn’t manage to grab her black blade in time. It had never happened before, but then again, she’d never been so out of it before either.

 

No excuses, her teacher’s voice echoed in her head while Kim Jong-Whoever grabbed her waist and flipped them expertly until her back was on the soft, warm bed, just like she’d imagined when she’d entered the house, but with an extra addition - a hot, half- guy pinning her down and making the temperature in the room reach scalding hot.

 

“What were you saying again?” he said playfully, though she knew he was anything but - oh, the pumpkin-head hated her too much to be able to act so well. He was probably still kinda disoriented from having been woken up from his winter sleep. Not that she minded his current behavior, and how they were touching in all the right places, as if this was a thing of her orchestration.

 

“I said, You move, you die,” she repeated, trying to free at least a hand so that she could touch the piece of art that this runaway model was. He raised his eyebrows, securing his hands around her wrists and completely immobilizing her in the process.

 

“I don’t think you’re quite in the position to make threats.” His voice was still playful, and she waited for him to realize who she was and recoil from her, but he seemed perfectly fine being so close to her with so few garments between them that she wanted to laugh. “Are you, Hella?”

 

She shivered from how close his voice was to her ear, her mind still working too well for her to understand what was going on. So he actually knew who she was? She was baffled that his peanut-sized brain could even process two things at once, especially when the second one was lying in bed with a woman who had nothing but a towel wrapped around her.

 

But no matter how hard she tried, he didn’t let her start moving her hands freely, and it was beyond unfair. “Oh, of course I am, detective Jong-something,” she said in the sweetest voice she could produce, batting her eyelashes while he smiled wickedly, his face again above hers. “You freaking son of a !”

 

With that, she kneed him in the place that hurt the most, just like how she’d been taught. Just like she’d done millions of times when boring, slimy lower-graders just like this guy tried something, annoying her beyond her mind for some reason.

 

“Don’t you dare ever trap my hands again, you hear me, pumpkin-head?” she screeched, sitting up in the bed while he howled and howled, falling onto the floor and rolling around. So much for all the testosterone. He’d probably sprayed some cheap cologne all over himself to make him seem more manly. Well, she hated to break it to herself, but it wasn't working.

 

“I guess it’s better than, say, being chased by a pack of hunting dogs, wouldn’t you say?” His voice was muffled, as if he was in pain while speaking - which he most certainly was, and which was most certainly justice for the detective - but there was some strength in his words that made her start doubting that he wasn’t just a regular mild boy sitting at a typewriter and scared of everything that came through the door, barely able to handle himself around a gun.

 

“You know nothing about what it feels like,” she answered coldly. “After all, you were here, lying in your soft bed and snorting while I was fighting for my life.”

 

He got up and she got up too, the blade again in her hand after she’d managed to find it among the sheets, while the other held the towel securely around her form. He watched her like a panther, ready to strike at any moment and probably enjoying the fact that there was such a striking size difference between them.

 

He was much, much taller than her, but he’d howled in much the same fashion like guys who were shorter than her, so she knew that height didn’t matter at all.

 

Whether she was as wrong about his personality like she was about his physical appearance, though, she did not know, and she did not want to find out tonight. All she wanted to do was wrap herself up in these warm sheets that smelled of a strong male presence and lose herself in a dreamless sleep that would take the image of the hunting dogs away from her mind.

 

“Oh, so you got scared?” The moonlight disappeared, leaving them both in the darkness of the room, but his eyes were more accustomed to the darkness.

 

He seemed to be a panther indeed, because she didn’t even manage to make a step when his hands found her wrists again, this time pinning her to the wall - he was not gentle the least, and both her head and leg felt the impact.

 

Thankfully, the towel stayed around her body.

 

She wanted to tell him that he was only lucky that she was wounded and that she’d drunk a round of painkillers, because her movements were slow and she was feeling disoriented and not at all sane.

 

Had it been just a normal day of her life? Hella would’ve put this whiny boy to his place a long time ago.

 

She didn’t manage to say a word before his voice, low and cruel, found itself impossibly close to her ear again. “You deserve a far worse ending than being torn apart by bloodthirsty dogs, if you ask me.”

 

“Well, it’s a great thing that nobody asks you anything, then,” she couldn’t help but say, again trying to take his hands out of his but being prevented by an impossibly strong grip and a carnal growl.

 

“I could kill you right now, Hella.” He spat her name as if it was the worst insult anyone could ever imagine, and she started shivering again. She kept telling herself that it was just that the room’s walls were cold and that her back was , but she knew that she was actually afraid of this person - or well, the sane part of her, at least.

 

“I could put my hands around this pretty neck and end this insane hunt.” With that, he shifted his grip so that he was now holding both of her wrists in one of his hands while the other one trailed a path that moved from her hands to her elbows, up her arms and up until it reached her neck, playing with it and dancing along it, but not wrapping around it, like she expected from the psycho to do.

 

“But you know what?” His voice was a mere whisper now, his hand moving from her neck to stop on her lips, preventing her from stopping the point he was about to make.

 

She could make no witty remarks. She was too intent on breathing from the close proximity of them, and she had her doubts that he was doing all of this on purpose, because he’d read into her moves already and realized what effects his body had on her.

 

It was just the body, though. The mind was stupid, boring and so regularly full of morals and nobility that she wanted to puke.

 

“You don’t deserve that,” he finished, his voice now coming from someplace between her neck and hair and ear, as if searching for something that was most certainly not there. She would wait for him to lose focus and as soon as she was able to get her hands free, he would be a goner.

 

The blade was still in her hand, though. It would take just one strike, just one moment of a mistake for her to end things right here and now. But she kind of didn’t want to. And she kind of knew that he didn’t, either.

 

“You deserve to be hunted and hunted until you are so out of your mind and so scared of getting caught that you gladly go to prison on your own.”

 

Oh, he was so right. Maybe this detective didn’t have a peanut-sized brain after all… maybe it was the size of two peanuts. At most.

 

So she deemed him intelligent enough and seeked out his lips with her own, going for a kiss that would make him forget all about detectives and hunting dogs and all that unimportant stuff.

 

But he was much taller than her, and when he started moving away from her - not all at once, but slowly, successively, letting her chase him - she could not follow.

 

He then straight-up laughed at her, as if she was a schoolgirl trying to have her first kiss and him an experienced rugby player finding her innocent behavior adorable.

 

For that, he deserved another kick into his manhood.

 

And she was most certainly not innocent, especially with the blade as dark as night still in her hands.

 

The moonlight showed up again, illuminating his frame, and she was perfectly content with just staying there and staring at his chest, but apparently, the great detective had different plans for them. His other hand appeared beside the one holding her wrists above her head and took the blade out of it.

 

She screamed, holding the blade as tightly as she could but he was stronger and having the upper hand, so it slipped away. A second later, she heard it hit the far side of the room, and she wondered why he hadn’t used it to hold true to all his promises of torture and distress for her.

 

“I don’t need blades to be able to handle myself,” he said through a chuckle, amused by her moonlight-illuminated face that betrayed shock on it. But if it was not death he had planned for her, what did this lunatic want, then?

 

“And I know that neither do you.” She was so immersed in trying to find his lips again that she could barely even hear what he was saying; she’d always hated the typewriter guys anyway, especially because they could talk so much. Could he just kiss her already?

 

His grip on her suddenly disappeared, but before she was able to throw herself at him, she lost her balance and sank to the floor, the world hazy and her eyelids droopy. She didn’t know that he had been supporting her form that much, but she was definitely feeling it now that he'd moved away. The painkillers were really something - perhaps she should’ve taken less pills, and maybe now she would’ve been actually winning this battle of who could stay in their rightful minds longer instead of fighting with sleep, which seemed to be winning.

 

“Get yourself cleaned up, junkie, and we’ll continue this when you’re at least able to fight me properly.” She wanted to jump and claw his eyes out for calling her a junkie when she was anything but, but the only thing she was capable of doing was laughing - just like a junkie would.

 

“Go screw yourself,” she whispered, letting herself go. It was not the soft bed she’d wanted, but her crashing place seemed like the most beautiful mattress in the world at the moment, because she could finally get some much-needed rest.

 

“This is pathetic. I can’t even subdue her because she’s like this.”

 

The psycho would get what was coming for him tomorrow.

 

Oh, he would remember Hella very, very well.

 

She would make him an example for all the other dumb detectives out there, so that none of them ever dared to try and stop her.

 

But for now, she would sleep and dream of a dark, tall man that was most certainly not the clumsy detective who was chasing her around the country for over a decade.

 

No, he was much, much hotter than that pumpkin-head.