Flicker & Burn: A Cold Fury Novel (22 page)

Outside, a loudspeaker announced Dominic Hughes coming up to bat.

Uncle Buddy . . . I don’t hate you anymore. I need you. Help me, please . . .

Juan buzzed to the window, looked out at the field, and said, “The bag is full. Primero . . . kill her.” The creature leered down with its eel tongue, and I uttered it once more—
Please!
—as razor-sharp steel pierced my neck.

The muffled crack of a bat sounded close by.

The window exploded and Hughes’s foul ball caromed around the suite.

I threw my dead-weight arm at the wooden tray, clumsily grabbed the hypodermic needle, and drove it through Teardrop’s gloved hand. It had a high tolerance for pain but not for watching six inches of pointed steel bisect its hand. While it gaped in shock, I lunged at the five full vials, knocking a pair to the floor, where they exploded like tomato-juice bombs. Juan shrieked again, manipulating the wheelchair toward me as I grabbed the other three vials and tumbled to the ground, a savage boot nearly crushing my skull. I rolled away from Teardrop and awkwardly got to my feet on one side of the gurney, woozy and wobbly. Teardrop and Juan were on the other side with Juan scrabbling at the blood-filled bag. As I raised my hand to smash the three vials, the commemorative baseball bat on the wall grazed my knuckles. I turned, groping for it, dropping and crushing the three vials underfoot. Teardrop sprung over the gurney, the hypodermic piercing one of its hands and the scalpel firmly in the other as it hissed,
“Ahora usted muere!”

I felt the blade rip between my shoulder blades as I pulled the bat from the wall.

I turned, swinging, cracking Teardrop across the face with the fat end, watching it twirl on one heel, gasp, and fall. The floor was drug-wavy beneath my feet. Juan was trying to free the blood bag from the IV stand, but his spindly fingers were too slow. I lifted the bat, assumed a home-run stance, and said, “Step away from it or I’ll knock your goddamn head off. It won’t take much.”

Juan buzzed backward, seeing truth in my eyes. “I still have
them.
You came here to trade,
sí
? Okay, more blood from your veins for your family.”

“So you can create an unstoppable army of criminals?” I said, unhooking the bag. “Screw that. This curse stays in my family.”

“It’s a
neurological abnormality
!” he bellowed, bobbling his head like a jack-in-the-box. “You will give me that blood or
they . . . are . . . dead
!”

“With only six vials to go?” I said, shaking my head. “You’re lying.”

“I mean it! I’ll throw away the whole grand scheme and kill them one at time!”

“I was a fool,” I said. “My family would never want me to sacrifice myself, because it’s not fighting. It’s surrender. What the Rispolis are to the Outfit, who my father is . . . who
I
am . . . it’s sick. But it’s
our
sickness, and Chicago’s. Not the world’s.”

“I’ll murder them,” Juan chanted, his voice like wind carrying a distant scream. “I’ll start with the boy. So intelligent and sophisticated. He deserves a long life, and society deserves the goodness he would bring to it.” He buzzed closer, pupils jiggling. “First I’ll burn the soft flesh from his eyes, and then . . .”

And then I punched a guy who cannot walk.

A man with bones like straw and organs the consistency of rotten mushrooms.

I used my mom’s signet ring to brand Juan’s huge white forehead with the Rispoli
R,
the diamond teeth biting the letter into flesh for time immemorial.

His jaw swung from its cranium, his eyes rolled back, and he slumped like a scarecrow in the wheelchair. He looked dead, but then he hadn’t looked quite alive, and I didn’t have time to worry about it; experience informed me that few organisms recovered from a blow to the head like Teardrop. I pulled out the electrodes, slid the blood bag into the waist of my jeans, and with the bat at my side, slipped through the door. The walkway was empty, but I knew it wouldn’t be for long; someone would come on the run to check the window shattered by Hughes’s baseball. I hurried along, realizing how brilliant Juan’s plan had been—they couldn’t get me in a car chase or on the street, but I never suspected they’d infiltrate my best friend’s head. The ramp to the main gate was nearby, and I was passing a closed door when I heard something that stopped me.

Samba music.

I turned and looked at a card next to a suite, which read
MKK Fan Appreciation Day.
I’d known there was a party for Sec-C users, but the shock of Juan’s chamber of horrors had pushed it from my mind. Now I stood bristling at the fact that Doug was partying while, if circumstances were different, I might be dead. I gripped the baseball bat and kicked open the door as the rhythms of Rio scratched to a halt. Across the room, a crush of jittery people buzzed and slurped in front of a soft-serve machine like a crush of ants attacking a piece of candy. Doug saw me, and his sticky mouth opened and shut before he said, “Oh. Sara Jane. You’re . . .”

“Alive,” I hissed as the crowd turned with a rose-colored glare. Every race and sex was in that jumpy crowd, but not every age; Juan hadn’t targeted anyone much older than twenty, from an acne-scarred redhead in an oversized Bulls jersey to an African American beauty with piercings and tattoos to a scruffy Latino dude who looked like he slept in alleys, and on and on. As they stared, I saw something that I’d seen in Doug’s gaze since I’d known him—a hungry need to be part of something. Almost every kid in America learns the dangers of controlled substances in grade school, sees classmates smoking weed and taking pills in middle school, and is fully versed on recreational use versus addiction by high school. A fact taught along the way is that, among other emotional triggers, people are drawn to the drug culture because it’s a social institution, like square dancing or a street gang, where the most forgotten loser can find acceptance.

That’s how I saw Doug now—a kid who had been systematically ignored by unfeeling, vodka-swilling, dope-smoking parents. He wanted not to be fat—to be liked, even adored, perhaps caressed. His mind was being fooled by Sec-C into feeling sexy while his brain prepared to explode inside its skull. I couldn’t allow that to happen. I would
not
allow it happen. I threw the bat on my shoulder and strutted inside, Outfit style.

“Um . . . pardon me,” a voice chirped. I turned to a cute, freckled face with chipmunk teeth and pinkish eyes. She crinkled her nose, lifted a clipboard, and said, “Welcome, newbie! I’m Konnoisseur Colleen! Name, please?”

“Is that Sec-C?” I said, nodding across the room. Through a glass window in the machine, it folded over on itself, pink, white, and slimy.

“Indeedie!” she chirped. “Good and good for you, as they say!”

“How much of it do you have to eat before your tongue falls out?”

Her eyes narrowed and smile evaporated. “What’s your
name
?” she brayed.

“Let me spell it for you,” I said, hocked deeply, and spit in her face. She reeled back, and I cut through the crowd, knowing I was an interloper and worse, a buzz kill. Doug huddled behind his fellow addicts, whom I shoved out of my way. His eyes jiggled as I quoted one of his favorite films, saying, “I’m
ba-ack.
”

“Uh . . . hey, Sara Jane,” he said, and broke for the door. He didn’t take a step before I got him by the collar into a walking headlock.

“This is called tough love,” I said. “You don’t like it? Tough.”

The crowd pushed behind us, gaining momentum, as Konnoisseur Colleen cried, “She can’t have him! He’s ours now! One of you—
stop her
!” And then it was a crush of humanity, but I was first out the door, hauling Doug, who was trying to slow us until I gave him a hard shot to the kidneys. He howled but moved, with both of us running up the ramp instead of down to the exit, trailed by MKK fans. As we headed for the nosebleed seats, a sunshine-filled entryway opened in the walkway. I pulled him onto the stadium rooftop with its junk food and beer stands, and its smoking fans who want a break from the game. It overlooks the main gate on Clark Street, and I hustled Doug to the edge, looked down eight stories to the sidewalk where people were having pictures taken wearing big, silly glasses, and back at MKK fans streaming onto the rooftop. I wrapped my arms around Doug’s waist and said, “Over you go! Move it!”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Hurry!” I said, fighting him as he scrabbled to stay on the roof, and saw I had no choice. I blinked the cold blue flame into existence, grabbed his gaze and said,
“Jump!”

“
No!
You can’t make me do
anything
!” Doug said with a crooked smile, his eyes redder than I’d ever seen them. “I can actually say
no
to you!”

“Say no to this,” I said, clipping him with a left hook on the chin and pushing him over a low railing and off the roof. I was about to follow when Konnoisseur Colleen snagged my ankle.

“Got you!” she yelled, tasting the heel of my shoe as I hammered her mouth, lost my balance, groped at nothing, and fell through the warm air over Clark Street.

Below, Doug lay on his back gaping up at me. He scrambled and rolled, giving me just enough room to land next to him on Dominic Hughes’s huge inflatable glasses, which huffed and bowed. He lifted his arms and squealed, “I’m
bleeding
!”

“That’s my blood!” I said.

“
You’re
bleeding!”

“No, a bag of blood broke. I was carrying it in my . . .” I hesitated, knowing the MKK fans were regrouping inside Wrigley Field. “I’ll tell you about it later! Let’s get out of here!”

“No!” he said, sliding to the ground. I followed, looking at Doug’s dancing eyes, jumpy hands, and sticky face, as he said, “
Those
are my friends!
This
is my life!”

“Those are junkie wannabes and you’re wasted. I just punched their leader in the head, maybe killing him. And this?” I said, showing off my blood-soaked self. “It came out of my veins. It was the culmination of that maniac’s master plan, which I destroyed. Are you sure you want to waltz back in there, since I was your ‘special guest’?”

He absorbed it through a drug-addled brain and said, “Let’s get the
hell
out of here!” We sprinted to the El station like our lives depended on it and darted onto a train. When it was safely barreling toward the Loop, I realized something.

Besides an “abnormality,” Juan never told me what cold fury actually is.

It meant that I still didn’t understand the greater part of myself.

I was alive, though. Brain intact, Doug at my side. And for now it was enough.

A PRIMER ON WHAT HAPPENS WHEN AN
addicted friend is deprived of drugs.

First he’ll get pissed off and start babbling nonsense, kicking over furniture, and being abusive to small Italian greyhounds. Second, he may seem like a life force, but in fact he’s suffering from withdrawal, and it could kill him if he doesn’t kill himself first. Finally, and most important, he will call you every vile name under the sun, including a few you’ve never heard before. If you’re going to save his life, you must turn off your feelings. Ignore everything he says and call 911.

Of course, I couldn’t do that. I had to take care of Doug on my own.

All Saturday night and into the early hours of Sunday, he raged around the Bird Cage Club pinkly foaming at the mouth, damning me to hell for ruining his new, svelte life. I cracked the notebook to chapter six,
“Metodi”
(“Methods”). Not finding what I’d hoped for, I flipped to chapter seven,
“Procedimenti”
(“Procedures”), came up dry again, and nearly gave up when I decided to try to chapter five,
“Sfuggire”
(“Escape”), and there it was, a short, scribbled section that read:

How to Shake Free of Hooch, Horse, and Nose Candy

Addictive substances are good business but STRICTLY FORBIDDEN for Outfit members; incapacitation affects one’s ability to earn. To kick a habit, mix and administer three quarts of “Screaming Banshee,” as indicated below; you will need:

A) Vinegar, six raw eggs, ginger, cayenne pepper, and one medium-sized herring

B) Lots of towels, and a bucket

C) Handcuffs

D) Someone large to apply the handcuffs, as juiceheads and junkies hit, bite, and claw

I removed the steel bracelets from Johnny, who sat benignly, gazing past the scene; Sec-C had left him in a constant state of compliance. Doug, on the other hand, was in a boiling tantrum, and when he turned to scream about the size of my nose, I was standing there. He looked at what I held and said, “Those are
my
handcuffs!”

“Remember when you locked me to a chair? Seems like yesterday.”

Doug’s eyes glowed like neon strawberries as he took a step backward. “So?”

“So now it’s your turn, slim,” I said, and the struggle was brief—he slapped while Harry nipped at his pant leg, and I kneed him in the gut, taking away his breath, and dragged him by his collar, whimpering. When I had him secured to a chair, I said, “It’s time to puke for a while.” Doug let loose with ear-bleeding invective, quieting only when I yanked back his head and filled his big mouth with the (aptly named) Screaming Banshee, clamping my hands over his face to make him swallow. He did, his eyes went wide, and I barely managed to catch the crimson explosion in a bucket. The next hour was brutal, disgusting, and necessary as we repeated the process half a dozen times. Doug was as weak as a kitten in a storm drain when his stomach was finally, completely empty. I threw him on my mattress and fed him water. His eyelids fluttered to unconsciousness. When I was sure he was out, I reapplied the cuffs, attaching him to the radiator in my bedroom/office. It was the most painful way to kick a drug—do-it-yourself rehab—that brought to mind Heather, and further, Uncle Jack and Annabelle.

I sat on the couch next to silent Johnny, who sipped water and nodded off. Harry laid his head on my lap, and I thought about my cousin glowing with the crushing force of beauty while pulsating with a power she barely understood. The old man, with the facts from
“Volta”
swimming around his plaque- and guilt-ridden brain, all that vital knowledge unable to be collected or remembered. And his middle-aged daughter, mute with regret and resentment but able to voice deep-seated greed. All of their secrets, desires, and failures—I felt the weight of them because I’d grown to care about them. The problem was that caring is dangerous. Sentiment and emotion had no place in my life—they were deadweights and anchors. Rolling Harry aside, I resolved to ask them to leave the bakery, to pack up and be gone by the end of the day tomorrow. Johnny would be dealt with too, probably left anonymously with one of the city’s many Polish social clubs. Grimly, I wondered if he might be so generous as to donate his red eye to satisfy Lucky.

I stood and crossed the room, watching Doug snore, knowing I had a decision to make about him too. He’d betrayed me in such an egregious way that it had almost gotten me lobotomized. It was becoming more and more imperative to allow no one to threaten my existence as I fought to free my family from Juan Kone.

And then I made the mistake of talking to Gina.

• • •

By Monday morning, Doug was sweating like a lawn sprinkler and misquoting movies in his sleep (“Frankly, my dear, I
do
give a damn . . .”) but wasn’t thrashing about anymore. I unlocked the handcuffs without waking him so he could use the restroom, and told Johnny that he had to stay inside the Bird Cage Club. He blinked his different-colored eyes. I told him to eat anything he wanted and not to touch anything sharp. He yawned and shivered from his well-worn spot on the couch and fell back asleep. As usual, I had to go to school so as not to raise suspicion, and glanced back at Johnny as I left, hoping that both he and Doug would politely not die while I was gone. As rattled as I was by my encounter with Juan, as hollowed out as I felt about my separation from Max, I resolved to make it an uneventful day.

That resolution was kicked in the face the moment I walked into school.

Talking to Gina knocked it out cold.

Kids whispered and pointed as I walked down the hallway, and it continued until last period. It was with my head turned, tracking a group of oglers, that I plowed into a pair of Mandi Fishbaum’s look-alikes. The first one flipped her hair and said, “Better keep your eyes open, SJ.
Wide
open.”

“Speaking of,” the other one said, “I never noticed before, but you and Heather have the same color of eyes.”

“That’s not all they share!” The first one smirked, giggling and turning away.

My instinct was to squeeze their throats until they choked up whatever it was they were cackling about. Instead, I went straight to the nucleus of all gossip. The hallways were emptying as kids hurried for the exits. When Gina saw me coming, she slammed her locker and hustled in the other direction, but between her heels and my determination, she never had a chance. I grabbed her, and when she turned, it was something I’d never seen before—her face etched with pity. Without preamble I said, “What?”

“What what?” she replied, trying on a smile that slipped.

“Don’t bullshit me, Gina. People are whispering. What’s going on?”

“SJ . . . ,” she said, biting her lip. “Sara Jane, please. I don’t want to tell you.”

“How is that possible? You always want to tell everyone everything.” I leaned in, cornering her against a locker. “I want to know. Whatever it is.”

She sighed, shaking her head. “The party Saturday, at Mandi Fishbaum’s? There’s a rumor, unconfirmed . . . Supposedly Heather slept with someone.”

Of course people knew we were cousins, but I wondered what it had to do with me, and said, “Okay, big deal. She finally chose between Ken and Kendra, or she chose both, like an Olympic sex event, Ken to Kendra to Kendra to Ken. Who cares?”

Gina looked at me, face pale, eyes moist. She wiped her nose, saying, “I always liked you, Sara Jane, but you’re so, like, clueless to how the real world works . . .”

“I don’t get it,” I said, my mind thick, the pieces coming together too slowly.

“The someone,” she said nearly inaudibly, “was Max.”

My brain pushed against my eyes, my throat clogged, and my heart stabbed itself with something sharp enough to die. I touched tears and realized that part of me was a flimsy lie. So sure I’d disconnected myself from love, so stupidly positive that nothing could pierce the emotional shell I’d constructed from scar tissue, and now I stood weeping and weak. All I wanted was for it not to be true, but I knew something had happened between Max and Heather, since something
always
happens for a rumor to ignite. Besides a self-destructive desire to find out exactly what occurred (I didn’t
want
to know but
needed
to), the only other sensation coursing through my veins was the worst one known to human beings—a smothering combination of physical rejection and emotional abandonment, imagining the person you love touching someone else, kissing someone else, whispering things to her he’d spoken only to you. And how all of your intimacy—so precious and protected—had been destroyed by one secret moment that
never
remains secret. It can’t, because it’s infused with carelessness and disregard for the third person, the one for whom no concern is shown. Me.

Gina hugged me and I stood rigidly in her perfumed embrace as she murmured, “At least you’re not boring anymore.”

That’s all it took to understand that I’d been wrong;
plenty
of concern had been shown to me, but of the treacherous kind. I remembered Heather’s threat, hissed in semi-darkness—
You won’t even see it coming!
How better than to steal her cousin’s ex-boyfriend? It cut deeply and also created the sort of humiliation that would stick to me until I graduated. The only part that gave me comfort was knowing that it had been a plot, and Max a pawn. It wasn’t lust or charm she’d used to seduce him, but ghiaccio furioso. It didn’t mean he hadn’t done anything, only that he’d been powerless. And then my lifted heart fell, and I was enraged for myself and for Max, and mumbled, “He couldn’t resist.”

“Oh honey, I know,” Gina said, hugging me tighter. “She’s too hot.”

“It’s time to cool her off,” I said as electricity snapped across my shoulders.

“Ow!” Gina cried, jumping away. “You shocked me!”

“I’m just getting started,” I said, sprinting down the hallway and bursting through double doors into screaming daylight. I knew Heather would be heading to the El by now, and I ran for it, hitting the platform just as a train shuddered to a stop. I looked left and right as people flowed off and on, the cars pulled away, and my name was called, dancing behind the rumble.

She was there, waiting for me, slim hips swaying as she moved languidly. A small, secret smile plumped her lips. “Gotcha,” she purred.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” I said. “I mean . . . did you? Do it?”

“Gee, SJ,” she said, using a pinkie to smooth her lip gloss, “that’s kind of a personal question. Between Max and me, I mean.”

“Remember when you asked me to tell you when you were being an asshole?” I said, cracking all ten knuckles. “It’s now.”

The platform was empty except for us, and she moved within arm’s length, saying, “Max is a sweet boy, by the way. Not a lot of experience, but developing new talent is
very
L.A., so I was happy to—” And then she went silent, since it was impossible to talk with my fist in her mouth. She hit the boards hard on her back, skidded to a stop, and rolled to one knee. Holding her jaw, she spit blood, and said, “You sucker punched me!”

“It’s
very
Chicago. An old tradition when someone talks trash,” I said, curling my fists and facing her shoulder-forward in a boxing stance, ready.

She rubbed her jaw, shaking her head, and said, “I should’ve known. You’re half a liar and half a cheat. No help when it’s really needed. Just like the rest of the family.”

“You know
nothing
about my family,” I spit, feeling the cold blue flame flicker in my gut. “All we share is DNA.”

“This could’ve been avoided if you’d helped me understand ghiaccio furioso. By the way, the ‘Trust Test’? You failed,” she said, rising carefully to her feet, kicking off her shoes. “Did I mention I was the capoeira champion?”

“Of Rancho Salud? Must’ve been some tough opponents . . . you versus ninety-pound crackheads.”

Heather smiled, drawing a pointed tongue across white teeth. “Of L.A. County. My therapist thought competitive mixed martial arts would be, quote, ‘a positive channel for an untamed life force,’ end quote. That’s rehab talk for I’m going to kick your skinny ass.”

“I was right, wasn’t I?” I said as we circled slowly. “You used ghiaccio furioso in a sick and twisted way, just like I predicted.”

“You call it sick and twisted. I call it a beautiful act between consenting adults.”

“Except Max didn’t consent,” I said, lining up my fists. “That’s how you get that precious attention you need? Bending the will of a guy who loves someone else?”

“Funny, he didn’t mention anyone. Then again, he was busy having his will bent,” she said, dropping and sweeping my ankles out from under me. I hit the boards and tucked and rolled, her hammering heel missing my face by inches as I leaped to my feet in time for a sharp cracking backhand to my face. I reeled, spit blood, and ducked. Her next punch swooshed overhead and I drove a fist into her solar plexus, knuckling the oxygen out of her lungs. As she gagged for air, I jabbed her twice in the face and she went back on her butt. She lost no momentum, rolling to her feet as I blinked, giving full, furious life to the blue flame, and my gaze scrabbled for hers.

“Stop,” I said calmly, and she did, like playing freeze tag, seeing what was burning behind my eyes.

And then she stopped me too, blinking just once, mirroring my gaze.

“By the way, I don’t need your help after all. I think I’m getting the hang of it,” she said, drawing near, and it was like pointing the tips of magnets at each other, the power repelling each other, each of us unable to wholly grab the other’s mind—me trying to locate her deepest fear, her trying to wrangle my most closely held desire. All I saw were blips and scratches of what was buried in Heather’s brain—her dad screaming at her to
Be prettier! Be cuter, happier, more peppy, zestier and bouncier and more TV-worthy, goddamn it, or no one will love you, ever . . . ever!
and her mom, Annabelle, turning away from it all silently, doing nothing as Heather’s dad pointed a finger and called her
Stupid girl! Clumsy girl! Big-nosed and too tall and too skinny and too this, too that!
But I couldn’t hold or contain those terrible old feelings, and suddenly Heather was so close that I smelled her acrid sweat, salty blood, and curdling perfume. Contemptuously, she said, “Oh look, how sweet, all at home together . . . perfect mommy and daddy who love their daughter unconditionally, and a smart little brother who’s so devoted to big sis that he wants to link pinkies . . .
awww,
” and she was right, there they were, the image of my family between us, real and alive, and I desired it so badly that love rose up and crushed my heart, squeezing it to death. I was so weak I could barely move. And then the image peeled away in wet, gray strips, revealing another underneath. Heather’s face was so close that our noses touched as she hissed, “That’s right, SJ. Throats slit, bodies cold, staring into nothingness for eternity.” She’d seen it, that nightmarish image of my parents and Lou buried in my mind, and she was trying to use it to disable me, but all it did was start a
sizzle-crackle-buzz!
and then I could not have cared less if they were dead, since I could kill
her.