365

may.20.22

His eyes looked calm, cool, and collected. But his mind was racing. He stared down the barrel of a poorly-cleaned nine millimeter, shaking slightly in the hand that held it.

Blinking once, his warm brown eyes – those eyes that could either radiate fire or ice in a second – found the gun's operator. "Are you going to fire that thing, or wave it at me?" His velvety voice kept his venom at bay.

The hotshot tightly clenched his jaw; a nervous habit of his, the man noticed. He'd been doing it all night, until this very moment of sudden ambush. "Just shut your trap, Jones."

"My name is Cal Jones," the man said then. He took a single step forward, toward the gun; the hotshot's eyes widened. Cal smiled at the simple reaction; he was tipping the scales in his favor. "You may call me Cal if we're friends, but since you're aiming a cannon at me, you may call me Mister Jones. Or "Boss"."

The hotshot's jaw clenched again; Cal held back his amusement. "Like hell I'm calling you Boss!"

Cal stepped forward slowly, closing the distance between himself and the gun as he spoke. "If you do not refer to me as such, I'm sure you'd like to swim with the fishes, or perhaps join the earthworms."

Cal was a single step from the gun; the hotshot instinctively stepped back a half step. Cal smiled at this, clear as day. He had him. "You stop your nonsense! You will never take away our business! You do that, we'll–" He stopped then, hesitating, confused. "Well, we'll have to–"

"–Kill me?" Cal suggested, chuckling with it. "Well, well. I would be delighted to see that, Donny. I really would." He took one final step, the gun pressing against the suit of his chest. "Here I am, Donny. Kill me."

The gun shook incredibly, the thought of death making Donny himself shake. Fear filled his eyes; Cal supposed Donny had never killed another man before for anything, let alone in the hooch business. Ice seemed to take over his veins. Donny couldn't move.

The click of a hammer echoed off the walls of the back alley. With Donny frozen, he did not shift as another gun barrel was pressed against the back of his head.

Cal chuckled. "You see, Donny, I cannot die. I'm an immortal being. Whoever points a cannon at me can never fire a single shot." Using his pointer and thumb, he gently plucked the gun from Donny's frozen hand. "You, on the other hand, are not immortal. You are flesh and bones and blood. A racing heart, and nervous wreck." Cal tossed Donny's gun aside. "So is your crew. You're all weak."

Donny swallowed hard. "What are you going to do to us?" His quiet voice shook terribly with every word, the ice seemingly taking over his body.

Cal smiled a dangerous smile. "I'm going to take your souls, Donny. Starting with you." A quick glance at the gunman behind Donny, he turned on his heels. As he began walking down the alley, Donny began shouting his name. He didn't finish before the bullet entered his brain, and he fell to the wet ground below him.

Making his way to his Ford Model T at the end of the alleyway, Cal climbed in and drove off. As he sped through the darkened downtown streets, his eyes watched the shadows, looking for any onlookers who craved the fate of death.