Flicker & Burn: A Cold Fury Novel Read Online Free PDF

terrifying run-in with the creatures on Friday and then spending that long, achy night in the mausoleum, I’d returned to the Bird Cage Club early Saturday morning, pulled the shades, crawled beneath a blanket, and stayed put. When I wasn’t writing, I was sleeping (flailing-twisting-muttering), and when I wasn’t asleep, I was sweating like a sumo wrestler in a sauna. At first I thought it was an emotional reaction to being attacked by gender-neutral, cherry-eyed mutants.
    And then the electrical crackling began, subtly, like joy buzzers grazing my skin.
    The pen jumped from my hand when rogue electrical storms broke out over my shoulders and snapped through my bones. I lay back with an arm over my face as the current zigzagged inside my body, into my brain, and settled behind my eyes, humming. There was a knock at the door as Doug entered late Sunday morning, took one look, and bit his lip. Harry backed away with his ears on his head and tail between his legs, whining.
    “What?” I said weakly.
    “Nothing.” He shifted uneasily. “It’s just that you look, well . . .”
    “Extremely exhausted?” I croaked.
    “Completely insane,” he said. “Like you’re taking a break from the straitjacket for a few minutes before you return to the padded cell.”
    I sat back, wiped my forehead, and told him about my house and the bridge—how the first creature was there to snatch me, the second drowned trying to run me down, and that Teardrop turned murderous after I “killed Beauty.” And then I explained the electrical current that had possessed me, how it overrode the frozen logic of ghiaccio furioso. Each Rispoli counselor-at-large used the power of cold fury as a business tool—to resolve disputes, broker peace, and force thugs to work together—in other words, to keep the money flowing. Admittedly, there have been times while using it on a depraved mobster that I’ve been tempted to inflict some well-deserved pain. Except that it’s tough for a depraved mobster to earn enough to make his monthly Outfit payment if his arms are broken. Logic dictates that as long as he’s earning money and it’s business as usual, the Outfit will leave me—and the question of my absent father—alone.
    On the bridge, all-encompassing voltage had nullified good judgment.
    Cold fury should’ve reminded me that the creature was more valuable alive than dead. But the electricity radiated its own logic, the inhuman rationality of murder, and caving in Teardrop’s face felt natural. Anyone else would’ve interrupted as soon as I’d uttered “ice cream creature” and “electricity in my brain,” but Doug was formed by thousands of movies that made the unbelievable completely believable. Throughout the summer, as we tried to unlock
“Volta,”
I schooled him in all things Outfit—its corporate structure, virtual invisibility while remaining integrated in every aspect of Chicago where there’s a buck to be made, and my expanding role as counselor-at-large. For his part, Doug explained how cruddy his home life was, with a mom more concerned with vodka and his lawyer stepfather than Doug, and a dad who basically smoked dope and ignored him; he moved into the Bird Cage Club with no protest from anyone. He also confessed that helping me had sparked a sense of self-worth, and that the quest to find my family had become his own. “That means everything to me,” I told him. “But eventually you’ll have to find something or someone that’s all your own.”
    “Someone?” he said, opening his arms, displaying a XXL chunkiness. His face was a series of concentric circles, from tiny, round eyes to a pudgy piglet nose to multiple chins, while his hair had a fuzzy mushroom quality to it. He snorted and said, “Who the hell would want me, besides the manufacturers of big-boy jeans?”
    Doug is impossible to BS and harder on himself than any bully or best friend could be. He eats right and exercises for a few weeks, but then he