Chapter 66: Codename: Aconite Chapter Sixteen

I walk back to the bed to grab my cell phone when I hear a knock at the door. I quickly grab the dagger from my purse and make my way over to the door. I take a look through the peephole to see one of the hotel staff from the looks of him, and I immediately hope someone hasn’t reported my dishevelled state when I entered the building.

“Can I help you?” I call out to the staff member in clear Russian.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am, but there’s been a complaint,” he says contritely. Oh, what in sweet hell is going on now?

With a frustrated groan, I try to wipe the blood from my hands before I toss the handtowel on my bag. I grab my robe, quickly throwing it on and tying it shut despite the painful protest from my shoulder. I make my way over to the door and open it, with the intention of keeping my hands concealed and my headwound obscured.

“What do you mean there’s been a compla-”

I haven’t finished my sentence when suddenly the door is forced open, and a fist comes flying at my face. My reflexes kick in and I manage to block the punch and dodge it before it can connect with my face. While I’m busy blocking this punch, I neglect to react in time to the second punch that connects with my face and sends me whipping to the left as throbbing fire shoots through my face and I immediately register the familiar warm metallic taste of blood in my mouth.

I collide with the dresser and manage to look back at the prick who I’m very certain isn’t actually a staff member. The motherfucker looks like he never got enough hugs as a child and has decided the world needs to suffer for it. He has greasy – or over-gelled – curly dark brown hair that’s combed back and reaches his shoulders. His long, large sideburns, along with his stubbly goatee against his off-white skin make him look like a gutter rat, and his suit is a size too big, which leads me to believe it’s not his, and that he probably beat or killed some poor hotel worker and took it off him.

It's only now that I notice the leather gloves on his hands. He stares down at me with a sadistic glint in his eyes as he pulls two wooden sticks from his pocket, but as he begins to unravel them, I realise those aren’t sticks. Those are the two ends of a garrotte. He pulls the two ends taut, causing the piano wire that ties them together to glint in the light of the hotel room.

“I was so hoping I’d get to do this,” he gloats in a thick Welsh accent. North Welsh if I’m not mistaken.

“Can’t say I share the sentiment,” I say as I grab the nearby lamp and smash it over his head.

As he cries out in protest while trying to shield himself from the shards of broken lamp, I grab a hold of his hair and begin slamming his head repeatedly down onto the dresser. He manages to twist and land a vicious punch to my abdomen, right where Silas had kicked me earlier, and I immediately feel bile travel up my throat. Using my moment of distraction, he elbows me with extreme force right in the face, causing me to stumble back. I’m momentarily blinded as my brain struggles to recover from the blow, and it only begins responding again when I feel the piano wire wrap tightly around my throat.

My eyes blow wide as I feel his body weight pin me to the bed as he begins to pull the wire tight, cutting off all air and blood to my brain. My head goes light, my scalp starts to prickle unpleasantly, and I struggle to see straight as I feel like my head is about to pop off as I feel the sting of the piano wire cutting through my throat.

“Not so fucking tough without your poisons, are you?” the man taunts, hovering over me with deranged excitement in his dark olive eyes.

I glance to my right and can see my purse just within arm’s reach. With the last of my consciousness, I focus on keeping myself calm as I quickly reach out and open my purse, retrieving my dagger from inside and begin jamming it into this son of a bitch’s ribs, over and over and over again. His eyes freeze open wide, and a gargled gasp escapes him as I force my dagger into his lung, but I don’t stop. Every survival instinct inside me has kicked into overdrive, pumping my body with adrenaline like rocket fuel, giving me the strength to stab him over and over, refusing to stop until the threat is gone.

I feel the wire go lax around my throat as he manages to pry himself off me and stumble back away from me. I force myself to sit up, unwrapping the garrotte from around my neck and tossing it as a vampire would a crucifix as I pant, my lungs sucking in air with such desperation it sets my insides ablaze.

I look over at my would-be-assassin as he clutches his side, blood bubbles spilling from his mouth like a science class volcanic project. Rage and the determination to live fill my veins, and I stare at the cunt with the fury of a thousand-woman army. I launch myself from the bed with a primal – yet strangled cry – throwing all my body weight at him as I drive my dagger straight into his heart. His body gasps once more, his eyes staring at me in disbelief as if he never for a second considered this might be the outcome. I stare into his eyes, refusing to look away for even a moment. I watch on with prodigious glee and witness the very second his life comes to an end and the light leaves his eyes.

I step back and watch his body drop to the ground with a thud as blood begins to pool out from under him; soaking and imbedding itself into every fibre of the room’s carpet. I collapse down onto the bed and continue to stare down at my assailant. His eyes are wide and lifeless as blood continues to trickle from his mouth like a leaky faucet. I look down at my hands, now covered in even more blood; the realisation that I almost died twice tonight hitting me like a freight train.

I look around at the mess and slowly get up, wincing at the pain radiating throughout my body as I walk over and shut the door. I then walk back over to the bed, grab my cell, and dial a number I haven’t had to call in a while.

“Privyet?”

“Privyet, dyadya,” I croak out like I’ve suddenly come down with a nasty case of laryngitis. I clutch my throat in a vain attempt to stop the pain that now comes from speaking.

“Dasha? Dasha, my girl, is that you?” he says with concern.

“I need your help,” I say, forcing the words out.

“Where are you?”

“Hotel National, room 503. I’ll also need a repo crew,” I inform him.

“Understood. I’ll be there soon,” he says before hanging up.

I hang up and once again drop my phone on the bed. I decide to pull down my dress from around my waist and stare at it in dismay. Now stained with my blood and sporting an unwanted bullet hole, I weep for my dress that is beyond the point of salvation and glare down at the corpse on my floor.

“You fuckers have ruined my Valentino couture,” I spit as I land an unnecessarily hard kick to the dead man.

I toss the dress and walk over to the mini-bar and grab every bottle of booze it stocks, before flopping into an armchair where I proceed to numb the pain the best I can.