Detective Who?

Chapter 4

She is resilient, I'll give her that.
She swings to the right, and I block; I punch forwards, and she ducks.
She kicks the back of my knees, and I falter; I swing to her front, and she retreats.

Jewels can fight, and it seems like I underestimated her abilities because she is so good at combat that I felt like I was back at the training grounds.

Finally, I manage to land a hit to her chest, and she knocks into a wall, but her agility allows her to escape my grasp and slip under my held out arm. I wipe my mouth slightly and see red covering my sleeve. Probably shouldn't have taken my eyes off my opponent as she spots my attention is elsewhere and swings the candlestick again into my ribs. I drop to my knees, heaving and look up at Jewels in her black mask. She is taking laboured breaths, and I can already see some bruises starting to develop on her side through the mesh material.

"You're seriously not going to give up that candlestick, are you?" I ask through gritted, bloody teeth.

"Not until you stop getting back up." Jewels replies. Her voice was surprisingly soft when she spoke, but the malice in her tone was evident.

Deciding to see if she was telling the truth, I rise, and true to her word, she advances with her candlestick.

We were engaged in our joust once more, and my fatigue is obvious as too many hits to the head and other body parts results in my movements becoming sluggish. Luckily, I wasn't the only one affected by our predicament as Jewels actions were also appearing sloppy. Her frustration at me still standing was clear as her moves were becoming more desperate by the swing. Even her grip on her interesting weapon of choice is looser due to exertion.

In my tiredness, Jewels lands a hit in my midsection, but I don't give in as my newly hunched over position leaves me in a nice place to send a well-formed uppercut to her own torso.
Jewels backs away from me slightly, creating some much needed distance between us to consider our future attacks.

With our matching broken noses and same hunched over position, we gaze at each other, seemingly viewing one another in a new light.
I didn't expect Jewels to be so accomplished in combat, let alone being able to literally back me into corners and beat the shit out of me.
It wasn't like I was going easy on her either; the majority of my punches were at my full strength as I hoped to put her down as quickly as possible.
I'm wondering why Jewels wanted to fight me in the first place, though.
She obviously planned to knock me out cold as soon as I walked in, but me stopping her subsequently messed with her plans.

She seemed to be rethinking her choice of victim as she was now sizing me up, taking into account the combat abilities I've shown, my sheer resilience to stay down, as well as my injuries.
As I looked at her, I counted all the injuries I inflicted on her that I could see. So far it consisted of a busted lip, bruised left cheek and jaw, a broken and bloody nose, a black eye, brushing on the ribs and chest and probably some back bruises from where I slammed her against the floor and walls countless times.

Considering my own appearance, we were probably too beat up to continue fighting, but there was still a raging fire behind those emerald eyes.
It was as if she wasn't going to stop until she rendered me immobile.
Hoping above all hope that I could land just a single well placed punch to be the victor of our spontaneous altercation, I raised my chin and spread my shoulders in a defiant manner.

Jewels replied to this threat by giving me a shit eating grin, like she knew something I didn't, and proceeded to lick her lips.
Her rosy pink tongue glided across her plump top lip, collecting blood that dripped from the open split. She maintained eye contact with me as she tucked her now bloodied tongue back into her mouth.
Those true emeralds parted my mind as I viewed them between the holes in the mask's black fabric. I'm amazed that her mask didn't fall off when I was swinging her about, but then again, if it fell off easily, she wouldn't be able to wear it dancing.

Flexing her fingers around her beloved candlestick, she stood up straighter regardless of the amount of pain that movement put her in. I mirrored her movements, preparing myself for round two when she slowly took a step back and slunk herself out of the door.
I completely forgot about there being a door there and failed to notice she was taking slow steps back toward it when we were evaluating one another.

My shoulders dropped in exhaustion, and I let myself lean against the bed for assistance.
I was delirious.
My head was spinning, and I needed to go home. If I waited too long I was afraid of Jewels coming back with something worse than a candlestick or even bringing in the beefed up bartender as backup.

If either of those events happened, I wouldn't stand a chance of winning as I did not have my gun on me due to this supposed to have been a simple recon job.

Walking through the door Jewels left from, aka the one I walked through to get here, was out of the question as there were too many eyes out there that could see my current state. That would also require me to willingly go into the room filled with other pub workers, and I wasn't taking the risk that the other girls could fight like Jewels.

Peering around the room for a means of escape, I noticed the wall opposite the bed had two doors, one on the far right and the other on the far left.
They were painted the same hickory brown, and both were basically slabs of wood on hinges. Neither had a door frame or panels to suggest they were even doors.
I had to choose carefully as picking the wrong one could lead to another part of the building I really don't want to be trapped in.

After not much consideration - considering the longer I stayed the closer I was to another beatdown - I picked the door to the right, deciding that there was nothing worse behind either door than what was behind the entrance.

Shakily making it to my feet, I pressed a hand against the wall to keep me upright as I twisted the doorknob.

A cool rush of air greeted me when I made my way past the threshold.
It was a sort of shed area with solid wooden gates that was fortunately open at the end of parallel bricked walls.

An alleyway lay to the right of the building, and I made my way down it and onto the silent cobble streets.

Turning over my shoulder, I sneered at The Kitten Pub's painted sign and listened to the soft hum of music filtering through the stone walls.

The walk to my house was too far for my weary muscles to carry me this late into the night but luckily my dad said I could crash at the family house once I finished my mission so we could go to work at the same time tomorrow morning.

My steps were slightly laboured but my determination to get me away from this cursed whore house helped me pick up speed.

I wrapped one arm around my ribs in an attempt to minimise movement to reduce the stabbing pain and I focused my gaze squarely forwards.
So with a bruised and beaten face, slumped shoulders, and bruised pride, I started the walk of shame home.