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Grant Stonehouse stumbled through the ankle deep murky water of the sewer tunnel with the elegance of a giraffe on ice skates. The rainwater poured down onto him through the open grate above his soaking wet head, saturating his dark business suit. He epitomized the proverbial drowned rat. Why oh why had he decided to wear the business suit and not the much more durable overalls and work boots? This was just one of many questions racing through Stonehouse’s mind as he collapsed into a heap clutching his stomach.

For the past week or two, the former executive had devised a new moneymaking scheme, and had already, seemingly, fine-tuned it to perfection. That was until tonight. Rather than dressing in sturdy workwear and breaking into a factory or wearhouse to pillage whatever he could find - whether it be a couple of DVD players, a box of cheap perfume, or simply bits and pieces of construction material – tonight he had adopted a new approach. Stonehouse wanted to play the role of the businessman; a role with which he was more than familiar. He’d cleaned up his dark suit as best he could, and buffed his leather shoes to create a half decent impersonation of a city banker. Instead of sticking to the shadows and sneaking in through the metaphorical back door, the showman strode through the literal front door, bold as brass. There was some kind of evening fund-raising dinner in one of the city buildings. His plan was simple: walk in to the office block with the masses of other city types, talk the talk, steal a few items while nobody was looking, and vanish into the underworld. The huge flaw in the plan was the large number of other people. They were supposed to act as his shield. He was going to be hidden in plain sight, camouflaged by numerous other businessmen in smart suits, blending in like a corporate chameleon. However, the shear volume of voices, the concentration of conversation, and the barrage of business banter had caused Stonehouse to panic. He still hadn’t managed to control the crazy overload on his senses, and a crowed room was rapidly becoming his nemesis.

Stonehouse was no longer as cool as a cucumber, but was more like a fiery chilli when confronted with a crowd. He felt like he had a beehive inside his skull, and needed to escape the throng as soon as possible, barging past many other suit-clad executives, spilling several Champagne cocktails in the process. The fracas oozed out into the night air as a couple of security guards chased him through the revolving doors. Stonehouse ran, his head ringing like an endless alarm clock, as he managed to evade the guards by diving into alleyway and plunging into a sewer tunnel. Unfortunately, the commotion had somehow attracted the attention of a new adversary, one far deadlier than a doughnut munching security guard.

No sooner had Stonehouse given the guards the slip by descending into the underground system, than he came face to face with his new foe, and this one was wielding a gun. The hunter wasted no time in introducing himself, firing several rounds in the direction of the startled Stonehouse. Only pure good fortune prevented the ambushed Stonehouse from being turned into Swiss cheese as each bullet narrowly missed its target and ricocheted off the tunnel walls behind him. Before Stonehouse could fully react and grab hold of a weapon, another volley of lead headed his way. This time, fortune was not on his side, and a bullet pierced his guts. The pain was intense, as if all the bees in the hive had left his skull and stung him at once on the left side of his stomach. He clenched his midriff as droplets of black tar-like blood erupted into the damp air of the tunnel. The hunter sensed an opportunity to finish off its prey, and charged at the wounded victim like a rhino. Stonhouse swiped out his arm, clutching the rusty hacksaw that had so far served him well, firmly in his right hand, catching the attacker’s thigh. The hunter let out a scream as the rusty saw blade drew blood, but it was nothing more than a superficial flesh wound. Furthermore, the makeshift weapon was rendered pretty much useless as the old blade snapped during the hit. Stonehouse threw the tool at his attacker, striking him on the jawbone, giving him just enough time to draw the hammer from inside his suit jacket and lunge at the dazed hunter. The head of the hammer crashed down onto the shoulder blade of the assailant, caused a cracking noise to echo through the tunnel. Stonehouse moaned in pain as his own exertions caused the wound in his guts to burn intensely. The hunter retaliated by clubbing Stonehouse across his back with the butt of his gun, following up with a sharp kick to the ribcage. As Stonehouse winced in agony, another boot slammed into his stomach, compounding the pain of the existing gunshot wound. The bedraggled victim gazed in horror as he saw the tunnel soldier reload his gun, ready to seal his fate.

Surely this wasn’t it: he wasn’t going to die like a rat in the sewers? Fuelled by a heady cocktail of adrenalin and endorphins, a desperate Stonehouse swung his arm with all the power that he could muster, and struck the hunter on the temporal bone of his skull with the blunt edge of the hammer. A crisp crunch of metal on bone on brain was quickly followed by a dull thud as the hunter slumped to the floor, draping himself over Stonehouse’s weary legs, blood escaping from his head into the cold, slimy sewer water.

Stonehouse let out and almighty sigh as he fell backwards into the water, staring at the tunnel ceiling as he clutched at the wound in his stomach. Dragging himself to his feet, Stonehouse attempted to stumble through the tunnels, but fell back to his knees holding his hands to his stomach wound. The hammer may have got him out of jail on this occasion, but he needed something more substantial. He needed a real weapon.

The pain radiating through Stonehouse's stomach from the bullet wound was intense, like a giant termite boring deep inside him. The slug of lead had penetrated his small intestine, perhaps in the ileum, and although Stonehouse's reasonable knowledge of human anatomy reassured him that he wasn't about to die just yet, he did know that he was in a precarious state. He lay on the cold wet floor of the sewer tunnel, curled up in a foetal position, clinging to the oozing opening in his stomach lining. In a warped kind of way, the injury had focused his mind and deadened the mental riot that had taken place only minutes earlier. The sensory overload from which the wounded man had been repeatedly suffering had perversely died down as the excruciating pain took command, obscuring his surrounding. Normally he would have heard the footsteps of an approaching stranger above the general hiss of splashing sewer slurry as rainwater dive-bombed into it. The scent of recently used shower toiletries would usually have broken through the rotten odour of the underground tunnels. But not this time - the pain seemed to mask everything.

The woman's voice startled him, causing Stonehouse to turn sharply, which consequently drew a wince from his lips as the twisting motion wrenched his guts. With his left hand firmly lodged up against the hole in his midriff, the weary invalid stared up at the young woman who stood before him. Almost involuntarily, his grip on the shaft of the hammer tightened as a burning question flowed through his mind: was she here to kill him, to finish him off, or was she here to help him? Was she Freddie Krueger from his nightmares or Florence Nightingale from his dreams? Holding his gaze, trying to read her body language, he couldn't work out which one it was.

The stranger wore dark clothing, with some kind of woollen cardigan that would probably weigh a ton if it got soaked with rain. Despite the dreariness of the tunnels, she had sunglasses covering her eyes, adding to her air of mystery. She was clearly an attractive young woman, but there was something very odd about her, very unnerving. Stonehouse sensed an aura of deep sadness around the woman, as if she were surrounded by a cloud of doom and gloom. Was she some kind of soul sucking wraith, here to drain the life out of him?

Rather than offering a polite answer to her initial question, Stonehouse's defensive mechanisms kicked into gear and he barked out a somewhat aggressive reply in his roughest Mancunian accent. "No, I'm bloody well not okay!"

Before he gave her a chance to respond, he waved the bloodstained hammer in her general direction and continued. "Who are you? Are you here to kill me?"

Stonehouse felt weak. His "firm grip" on the hammer shaft was loosening by the second as his whole arm started to possess the strength of a limp stick of rhubarb. Who was he trying to fool with his pathetic display of defiance? He knew that he could offer little resistance if the potential assassin struck. As he sat on the saturated tunnel floor with his back against the hard, damp brickwork, Stonehouse realized that he was a sitting duck.

Agility was a strength that Stonehouse had always possessed. As a child, he was a master at the game where one person holds their hands together as if they are praying, and defends, while another tries to slap their hands. Whether this skill was down to being blessed with dexterity and lightning fast reflexes, or the fact that he always maintained eye contact with his opponent and tried to somehow psyche them out, he would never quite know. While playing the part of the attacker, Stonehouse could frequently fool his adversary into thinking that he was about to strike, making them jerk out of the way, and claim a free slap. Alternatively, he could simply hit, almost at will, without his hapless counterpart being able to dodge his assault. Similarly, when he assumed the role of the defender, the nimble-limbed youth would regularly avoid the attacks by quickly withdrawing his hands before the aggressor could land a blow. Such games were long forgotten in the school playgrounds of time, but it appeared that the old avoidance mechanisms were still very much alive and well.

As the mysterious woman reached out a hand towards Stonehouse’s wrist, presumably (he thought instinctively) in an attempt to disarm him, the wounded man swept his weapon-wielding hand away with a swiftness of which a champion pickpocket would be proud. Alas, he didn’t even have time to get an embryonic smug grin across his well-defined face as the speed at which he retracted his arm caused the hammer to fly straight out of his hand and crash into the tunnel brickwork with a thud. A brief glance to the floor on his right let the now unarmed man know that the hammer was annoyingly out of reach. Turning his attention to the darkly dressed woman, Stonehouse let out a pathetic laugh, mocking his own clumsiness. “I suppose that I should get a better grip on my shaft.”

Stonehouse’s contact with other people, let alone a young woman, had been very limited of late, and his childish instinct for the use of innuendo just couldn’t help but escape. He loved a double entendre, in fact it was fair to say that he’d slip one in whenever possible. He could amuse himself for hours, concocting ridiculous phrases that were guaranteed to bring a smile to his face, no matter what the circumstances. However, something was different here. It wasn’t the burning pain of the gunshot wound - which seemed to reignite in his guts as he chuckled - that cut short his self-deprecating laughter. It was something more sinister. Stonehouse felt as though the humour had been sucked from him by the very presence of the woman.

There was an eerie silence for a second or two as the two strangers weighed each other up. Stonehouse had convinced himself that he wasn’t about to pass away just yet, despite the bullet wound, so his initial thought was to mentally agree with the woman’s statement about him not going to die. But his thoughts began to wander. She may say that she wouldn’t ask if he were ok if she were about to kill him, but perhaps that was just a ruse to lure him into a false sense of security? Maybe she was going to kill him… maybe she really was some kind of angel of death?

After a second more of scanning her up and down, Stonehouse finally responded to the woman, deciding that a direct approach would determine her true intentions. “I’m not sure whether or not I’ll die, if I’m honest.”

He paused, glancing down at his stomach, before looking into the sunglasses of the young lady. “All I know is that I’ve been shot in the guts and it bloody hurts like hell, and that you appear to have a huge sword stuffed up your jumper.”

A somewhat sarcastic smile spread across his face as he continued. “My apologies if I seem a little abrupt and defensive. You understand that, right?”

Stonehouse wasn’t quite sure whether to look into the woman’s newly unveiled eyes, or to focus on the splendidly crafted weapon that she was holding in front of him. She wasn’t brandishing the sword with the same exuberance that a small child may do when they are trying to show you their latest toy, but instead simply displaying it, like it was a historical artefact. She held it with a certain reverence, her lowered, almost kneeling position – granted, done to accommodate Stonehouse’s injury - almost giving the impression that she regarded her creation with incredibly high esteem like a religious relic.

The removal of the craftswoman’s sunglasses afforded Stonehouse the briefest of glimpses into her green eyes. They seemed hollow, drained of that sparkle that symbolizes the joyous soul of a person. Even when she held her smile, given in response to his poor innuendo, there seemed to be something missing from her eyes, an absence of happiness perhaps? However, there appeared to be a twinkle of passion in her otherwise darkened orbs when she began talking about her skilfully created blade with such enthusiasm. Was this her vocation in life? Was she some kind of modern day swordsmith with a furnace, an anvil, and a huge forging hammer? She didn’t really look like the stereotypical medieval blacksmith, but as Stonehouse was quickly learning, not everything, or everyone, was what they seemed in this crazy city.

Stonehouse tried to straighten himself up from his slouched position on the sewer tunnel floor so that he could take a better look at her work. How he wished that he’d had that tucked inside his clothing when the hunter had attacked him, rather than the rusty hacksaw and battered old hammer. He was cautious not to move too quickly or grab at the weapon in case it freaked the woman and caused her to back away.

“So you call it Breathtaker?” said Stonehouse as he moved gingerly forward, wary of not agitating his stomach wound.

Suddenly he grimaced as his guts contorted as a result of his movements. His whole midriff seemed to go into spasm, and he began to cough and splutter uncontrollably. Bloody Breathtaker indeed, thought Stonehouse as he clutched his stomach and coughed violently. A pain shot through his abdominal muscles as if a corkscrew were being twisted through the enflamed fibres. With a gut-wrenching jolt, the hunter’s bullet popped out of the gunshot wound like a cork from a Champagne bottle. Stonehouse gazed, open-mouthed, at the slug of metal, coated in smoky black blood, as it lay on the ground. He stretched out a slightly trembling hand and picked up the offender, wiping it clean. Bringing it close to his inquisitive eyes, Stonehouse examined the bullet, before breaking out into laughter. Turning his attention back to the young woman, crouched on her haunches, holding her sword attentively throughout the coughing fit, he smiled, as if he were holding a winning lottery ticket.

“They say that there’s a bullet with your name on it” said Stonehouse rather smugly. “Well I’m going to get my name engraved on this little bugger!”

Slipping the bullet into his pocket, a souvenir of his victory, Stonehouse checked his stomach wound, noting that it was no longer bleeding. He glanced at the weapon, then focussed on its creator.

“So it’s called Breathtaker,” continued Stonehouse, “and the name that I’m going to engrave on the bullet is Grant.” He paused then smiled at the woman, trying to see if that sparkle was still in her eyes.

“I guess that only leaves you without a name.”

Stonehouse knew a couple of women called Laura. One of them was his former classmate at high school, Laura Potter, who was a fantastic artist. She always received the top marks in class for any kind of drawing or painting assignment, and eventually managed to get some of her artwork on display at the Tate Gallery in Liverpool. Stonehouse had seen her pieces hanging proudly on view in the popular tourist attraction down at the Albert Docks when he was in the area having a few drinks with his university colleagues. Stonehouse was all fingers and thumbs when it came to art, but he appreciated the skill involved in creating such exquisite pieces. The second Laura in Stonehouse’s mental address book was Laura Headey, a former sales representative for Elixir who covered the Yorkshire area. Like her namesake, the feisty blonde from Sheffield possessed a great gift. Her territory fell into Stonehouse’s northern region control, and during a European conference in Madrid it wasn’t just her sales patch that was under him. It’s fair to say that her surname reflected her talents. Perhaps all people called Laura possessed some kind of natural flair or aptitude, thought Stonehouse as he extended his arm to accept the woman’s introductory hand. He paused, rather awkwardly, and smiled at his new acquaintance with a look of mild embarrassment etched across his face.

“My apologies, Laura,” said Stonehouse as he wiped a trail of dusty blood from his hand, “I don’t want to soil your hand.”

Having cleansed his palm to the best of his ability, leaving a greasy stain across the sleeve of his suit jacket, Stonehouse completed the handshake and consummated the introduction with a warming smile. He wasn’t sure if it was the skin of the woman that was cold, or just her whole being that radiated a certain aura of coolness. There was an absence of warmth, not as in she had a frosty personality, but in a way that conveyed a hollowness to her, a deep sadness.

Having exchanged the customary pleasantry of shaking hands, Stonehouse addressed her question. “No!” he exclaimed, perhaps a little too bluntly. “I’ve never been shot before.”

He took the opportunity to glance down to his wound, noticing that not only had the blood flow arrested since the removal of the bullet, but that the entrance hole itself appeared marginally smaller. Stonehouse returned his gaze to the young woman, examining the contours of her face in an attempt to extract more knowledge of her personality.

“I’ve managed to get myself into a few sticky situations,“ continued Stonehouse, “but this is the first time that I’ve been shot.”

The nearest that Stonehouse had previously come to becoming target practice was during a break-in a few nights earlier. He was becoming adept at picking the locks and bypassing the alarm systems, but that particular night, an over-confident Stonehouse had taken his eye off the ball. He was clumsy, impatient, and had caught the attention of a guard. Not even the silver-tongued Stonehouse could manage to talk his way out of that one, and in the ensuing skirmish, the guard had drawn his sidearm. Fortunately for the agile Stonehouse, his overweight adversary didn’t respond too well to a couple of kicks to the groin, and slumped to the warehouse floor. At least his foot was on the ball, if not his eye. Stonehouse didn’t hang around long enough to see if the security guard recovered, and vanished into the sewer network - a lucky escape. It initially appeared that his luck had taken a turn for the worse tonight, but perhaps this Laura girl could be a lucky charm, contemplated Stonehouse as he continued to weigh up the swordsmith.

“And who are these hunters?” asked Stonehouse as he locked eyes with the craftswoman.