“Jackson, has Azazel given you the information on your… assassin yet?”
Carter’s question could have frozen time itself, as both Jackson and Ayres paused. He and Carter locked eyes, shared in the moment that was created. A pounding rang from the door, and a shout asking if everything was alright. No answer was given, but Jackson held his weapon high and approached the pair.
“What did you say?” he said in a low, windy growl.
“You really thought that I would not know your story, Jackson Crowe?” Carter replied. He stood and broke free of Cassiel’s protective hold, brushing off the scuffs on his suit. “You gave me your name, after all, so I decided to do some research. Well, there was no true information on Jackson Crowe, of course. Naturally, I have some other channels and I just happen to know you now, truly know you. And, I believe I know what it is you want most.”
Jackson’s rough hand shot out and clutched the knot of Carter’s tie, and he pulled his face close. “Tell me…”
Carter flashed that signature smile, “It won’t come free of course. I am a businessman. Now, what would you be willing to give?”
“I’ll let you live,” Jackson said through gritted teeth.
“Ah, life. But you see our mutual friend had taken two lives. Yours, at least once, and that of… Jennie? Was that her name?” His voice was slippery and slithered through the air between them.
Involuntarily, Jackson’s other arm, clutching his weapon, sprung out like a launching catapult and collided with Carter’s face, dropping him back to the ground. Jackson was visibly infuriated; his breathing was heavy and his nostrils flared. His eyes were large and focused under an angered brow. “You don’t get,” he said between deep breaths, “to say her name.”
Carter turned over, wiping blood from his lip and retaining his smirk. “You’ll regret that soon enough,” he said while laughing. “First, though, you still owe me another life in exchange for information.”
Jackson kept his stare focused on Carter, but raised his hand to point toward the angel who was not his roommate.
“Oh, please,” Carter said to this gesture. “As if you could kill Cassiel. No, I think what I want is my own life, of course, and then I would like an additional life, for my troubles. After all, an angel needs her fix!” His smile was so large one would have believed it would break off of his face.
“I don’t understand…” Jackson replied.
Ayres watched Carter and Jackson speak, and she could almost smell the tension that fermented in the air between them. From where she stood, Jackson towered over him and it seemed like a moment of triumph for the Order. That was when she saw it, like a light through fog. It was an opportunity. Cassiel was fixated on Jackson, and on defending Carter, but in this moment she was not focused on Ayres.
Ayres could see something in Cassiel. Her hand twitched at the hilt of her blade, her eyes glared unblinkingly at Jackson, and she was braced, prepared. Ayres could see the way Cassiel stood now, impatiently, and she could feel her intent. She had seen this before, how one of her kind could be so dependent on what Carter could offer, and she knew Cassiel’s next move as if it was already in motion. Time itself slowed for Ayres, and she was so vigilant and so focused that she could see the smallest, and slightest, movements from Cassiel. The way her muscle fibers would swell and her skin would tighten. How her knees slowly bent as if she were a jaguar preparing to pounce. Carter tugged at his guard like she were a marionette controlled by invisible strings. He cackled as she tensed up before him.
Then, it became clear; Cassiel would kill Jackson Crowe, and Ayres watched her raise her blade for the attack.
In the fraction of a moment, Ayres could not help but reflect on her past. She could almost feel the warmth of Sydney’s blood on her hands, and hear the sound of the blade carve into her shoulder. Her smile and words haunted Ayres. She knew she could not allow herself to feel this loss, the kind of which the Ascendance were not supposed to feel, again. Then, she thought of her time with Jackson. The first night where she tended to his wounds as he lay beaten down before her, or how much he had changed in such a short while. The moments standing by the window, the time where he lay strapped to a table only minutes from being dissected, and their embrace above the city. Her teeth grinded, and the last thought through her mind was when she herself had ended the life of an Order of Dust so long ago. Her leg twitched again, the ball of her foot dug into the stage and cracked the wood, and she pushed off with the force of a living bullet.
But, she had read Cassiel entirely wrong, and a flash of silver was all she could see in her rush.
“Jackson…” groaned a gurgling voice behind him.
As he turned, he felt something cold against his leg and could see a flash of armor pass by him in a blink. He took a step and collapsed with a pain that stung through his flesh, and blood soaked his pant leg. He dropped his gun, clutching his leg that bled intensely in steady streams of shining red. He heard the gurgling voice again, and when he looked up, he could see Ayres laying a few feet before him. She clutched her stomach, but the blood had coated her hands and dripped onto the ground surrounding her.
“A-Ayres...Ayres…” he said softly, pulling his body toward her sluggishly. His hands shook as his fingernails dug into the wood beneath them, yanking himself closer to her. Behind him, with ever inch he dragged himself, there was a trail of his blood smearing. “Please... Just hold on…”
The knocking at the door intensified, both voices shouting from outside. To Jackson, they could have been miles away as all he could focus on was the bleeding woman in front of him with fear in her eyes, fighting for a single breath. The old Jackson bellowed in his mind, and the writhing anger within him tossed sickeningly in his guts. He did not notice at all, but a tear had pushed itself from the corner of his sunken eye and slid down his gritty cheek.
The knocking had now become a banging and the two from behind the door began to throw themselves at it, pushing it more and more. With every thump the barrier cracked open a bit more as the bodies, some unconscious and some nothing but corpses, slid a bit more on the blood below. The sound of Coldin smashing against the door rang out like a sledgehammer against steel.
“Well, Jackson,” Carter’s voice called out as he stepped past him, “I do believe our deal is settled. Two lives for two lives.” He made his way towards the door behind the stage and smiled at the crying and scared people huddled behind the curtain.
“You fuck...” Jackson choked up. “I’ll kill you… both of you.”
Cassiel had already entered the back room and stood just under the ladder to the roof exit. Carter stood in the doorway, admiring the scene. Bodies scattered, a pile of dead pushed aside by the gigantic man and little boy shoving the door, the possessed now regaining consciousness, and of course Jackson who made his way towards the fallen angel. “Here is my end of the bargain,” Carter snickered. “Corner of Maple and 23rd, a small store. Normally empty. What they sell? Sandwiches, grocery items, just an average store. But what they really sell are jobs, to the highest bidder. Well, Jackson, your bidder was one known simply as Kinsley, and he possesses the body of a man known named Michael. You may remember Kinsley from your… normal days. That is, before he ended it all with the rope!” He scurried to the back and up the ladder, laughing the entire time.
“Ayres… why aren’t you healing.” Jackson muttered as he held her blood-soaked hands in his and applied pressure to her wound. He ignored his own bleeding leg and they were soon in a small pond of their mixed blood. Coldin and Aldrich ran to the stage as fast as they could, with the boy immediately putting his own small hands in the mix to stop the wounds. Coldin went towards the people lined against the wall, untying them.
“The... the knife...” Ayres said, her eyes becoming heavy and her strength fading out like a dying star. “Kni-knife...” she repeated. It felt like her body had become nothing but rubber as the two held her wounds and shouted to keep her conscious just a little longer.
“Jackson, there’s no–” Aldrich started.
“Shut it.” Jackson groaned, “Hold the pressure... Stop the bleeding.”
“Order, you–”
“Shut the FUCK up!” Jackson screamed, and from just under the brim of his hat a tear fell over the rough terrain of his face and splashed into the blood below them.
Ayres lay beside them. Her body had lost its light, its warmth. Long, black braids lay over her face and fell down into the blood, like ivy over the edge of a pond. She was cold and so still; all that moved was the remaining trickle flowing from her wound. Jackson held tight, he whispered beneath his breath come on over and over. Aldrich was next to him, the sad eyes of a child bouncing between the two. There was a thumping across the wooden stage and Coldin drew close to them.
“Jackson… we need to move,” he said as he approached them. “We can’t stay here, someone must have heard us by now.”
Jackson ignored him, come on… come on… come on…
He placed his hand on Jackson’s shoulder and gripped him tightly. “I’m sorry, Jackson... But she’s gone.”
No one had noticed Jackson’s wound, until now. He tried to stand, but he was weak and fell back into the blood, unconscious.
11
Colourwave
He dreamt.
There was Jennie. Behind her register, surrounded by the aroma of fresh coffee and sweet cream. Her skin was so pale, smooth and pristine like untouched snow over a field. Blonde hair fell on her shoulders, stiff and straight, the kind of hair that someone could tell was dyed but still suited her so well.
A younger Jackson stood in line, waiting for his chance to stare into the pale blue sky that colored the iris of her eyes. Jennie smiled at every customer that walked up to the register, but to Jackson it felt as if his received smile was just a little different. This is what kept him coming back day after day; he was barely even a coffee drinker to begin with.
“One extra-large sweet mocha! For... Dan? Dan? Is there a Dan?” she said with a sweet voice, almost as sultry as it left her lips.
There were a few people ahead of Jackson, and that was not his order. But part of him wished he was man enough to just walk up, take it, and then slide her a cool line such as I’m not Dan, but thanks anyway, babe.
He didn’t. Instead he waited, listened to conversations around him and patiently watched her from his place in line. The click of keyboards from the many guests who had laptops and sipped fancy hot beverages. They all seemed so annoyed, so angry. He continued to watch the people around him; a mother and a young boy who ate cookies together at a table by a window, an older couple having tea reading separate newspapers, and one man who sat alone in a booth with an empty cup and a large grin. The last man seemed so familiar, but in this dream, he was just another face in a crowd.
“Medium iced-coffee, black,” Jackson said softly, barely holding eye contact.
“Ooh, black,” Jennie repeated, “what a tough order.” Her sarcasm was more playful than hurtful and the two shared a smirk just as their eyes met again.
“H-how,” Jackson stumbled over words, his voice while deep would also break when nervous, “do you take it?”
“Take what?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Uh... coffee. Your coffee,” he replied, feeling a bit dumb although it was a simple question.
“Oh, I misheard you,” she said, a little more disappointed with her expression, “cream and sugar, I guess.”
“What did you think I-I said?”
She smiled back at him, a smile so human it warmed him more than all the coffee in the world, even though he drank it cold. “I thought you said... ‘Where can I take you?’” doing her best impersonation of his voice. She even included the break.
Jackson sat timidly at his desk, with the sound of a steady tick in the background from a large white clock with black hands. They moved slow, and each second that passed was another moment of his life gone. He would stare at it, leaning his head on his hand propped up by his elbow on his desk. In his mouth was the end of a pen, chewed and discarded, a habit held over from his teen years spent chain smoking.
On his desk was a computer, a keyboard, a mug full of pens, and scattered papers. He sat here each day, watching his clock, and explaining to those in need that their loans would be denied. It was a mundane job for a mundane man but most of all it as safe. Jackson was not the guy to live on an edge, unless it was the edge of the roof on his apartment building where he could sneak a cigarette and take in the nightly glow of the city with the one he loved. Otherwise, he was the guy to sit at his desk, organize his pens and papers, and type away his minutes until the day was done.
It was on a day much like this one that he had a different guest.
The man was disheveled, to say the least, with a thick accent and a thin frame. He wore a loose fitting, old and tattered suit just to apply for a bank loan, as he thought that if he looked the part maybe he would be approved. Jackson could not read people well, and often he would hold back tears himself for those who cried over their denial of the funds, but this man was different. He was certainly nervous, shaking his leg rapidly and taking a long time to fill out the forms. Even before Jackson ran the figures and began to process, he knew this man would be denied.
“Ay’,” called the man who sat only feet from Jackson. “Let’s say ya had multiple jobs ova the year,” he remarked in his heavy accent. “What ya put down for salary?”
“Your current position only,” Jackson replied without looking up from his computer screen.
“And if ya don’t have a current?”
“Well,” Jackson started, with that pit growing in his stomach, the sinking feeling that he would disappoint another customer. “It would be zero, I am afraid.”
“I see and do people normally get approved with a… zero?”
“Sometimes,” Jackson lied, but the small smile on the man’s face comforted Jackson.
He watched as the scrawny man scribbled his answers on the page, then flipped and began again. With every etch of the pen, and every scratch of a line, Jackson wanted to jump up and let the man know he was wasting his time. Let him know that the bank would not comply with this loan, but he knew that he could not. Instead he quietly watched as the man continued his fruitless work.
“Think it’s all done, I do,” the man said with a weak smile, and slid the paperwork across the desk. “Really need the money.”
“Of course,” Jackson muttered reprehensibly. He studied it with a raised eyebrow, “This is a personal loan, but the reason is…?”
“Hardship,” the man responded. “Lost my job, I did.”
“Sorry to hear that, sir,” Jackson said and began to input the information. He felt sick inside, as he knew the conversation he was soon to have.
The man sat quietly, just smirking in his big suit and shaking his leg nervously. Each minute that went by felt like hours, and yet he was so patient. The man needed this, perhaps even more than others, and Jackson knew this. But there was nothing he could do.
“I’m sorry, sir, but your loan was–”
“Can ya run it again?” he interjected.
“Unfortunately, unless the information is changed it will be the same outcome,” Jackson responded with sympathy and remorse. “With no income, no d
eposit, no collateral, the bank will not approve it.”
“Mr. Crowe?” he said after looking at the name plaque on Jackson’s desk. “My family needs this, I have a child and a wife. Please…”
Jackson could feel the sorrow bubble within him, and he was more sensitive than he would like to admit, but he had always been great with one thing: following orders.
“I’m very sorry, sir. The loan is declined,” Jackson said softly. “I know this is difficult–”
“They’ll leave,” the man said with a tear in his eye. “My wife, my child, they’ll leave. Can’t hold down a job, can’t pay the bills. I just need some time.”
Jackson looked this man in the eyes and could see the pain as clear as the rain outside spattered the window beside them. His own father had been the same way, a man who bounced jobs like a basketball, and Jackson could remember all of the times his mother gave the same empty threat. This memory gave Jackson a smile, wrong for the moment but from a place of sincerity, and he gave the man a nod.
“It will be alright,” Jackson said back. “We cannot give you a loan, but I am sure things will work out!”
There was a knock on his office door, and in popped Jennie.
“Ready for lunch, Jackie?”
“Mr. Crowe,” the man interjected again. “There has to be something we can work out; I just need a little something.”
“I would, I really would, but I can’t. Please understand, I have to go with the bank’s best interest.”
“Ya don’t get it, ya really don’t get it. I got nothin’ and my family–”
Order of Dust Page 18
