Changes (The Dresden Files #12) - Jim Butcher Page 0,90
lassitude.
“Say that five times fast,” I murmured, and tried. It was something to do that I couldn’t screw up too badly.
A while later, Mouse made a whuffing sound from the top of the stairs outside, and Molly plodded up them wearily. “Cab’s here, Harry,” she called.
I got myself moving. Stairs on crutches isn’t fun, but I’d done it before. I took my time, moving slowly and steadily.
“Look out!” she yelled.
A bottle smashed against the top interior wall of the stairwell, and its contents splashed all over the place, fire spreading over them as they did. Ye olde Molotov cocktail, still a formidable weapon even after a century of use. There’s more to one of those things than simple burning fuel. Fire that hot sucks the oxygen out of the air around it, especially when it has a nice, dank stairway to use as a chimney. And you needn’t get splattered by the spilling fuel to get burned. When a fire is hot enough, it’ll burn exposed flesh from inches or feet away, turning the atmosphere around it into an oven.
I was only on the second or third step up from the bottom, but I staggered back before anything could get roasted—been there, done that, not going back. I tried to fall onto my uninjured side, figuring that it deserved a chance to join in the fun, too. I landed more or less the way I wanted to, and it hurt like hell, but at least I didn’t faint. I screamed, though, a number of vitriolic curses, as fire roared above me, leaping from my little stairwell to the rest of the house, chewing into the old wood like a hungry, living thing.
“Harry!” Molly called from somewhere beyond the flames. “Harry!” Mouse let out a heartsick-sounding bay, and I saw fire beginning to climb the sides of the house. The fire was starting from the outside. By the time it started setting off fire alarms, it would be too late to escape.
At this time of night, somewhere up above me, Mrs. Spunkelcrief was asleep and unaware of the danger. And on the second floor, my elderly neighbors, the Willoughbys, would be in similar straits, and all because they were unlucky enough to live in the same building as me.
I’d dropped one of my crutches up on the stairs and one end had caught on fire. There was no way I was pulling much in the way of magic out of my hat, not until I’d had food and some rest. Hell’s bells, for that matter I didn’t know if I could stand up on my own. But if I didn’t do something, three innocent people—plus myself—were going to die in a fire.
“Come on, Harry,” I said. “You aren’t half-crippled. You’re half-competent.”
The fire roared higher, and I didn’t believe myself for a second.
But I put my hands on the ground and began heaving myself upright. “Do or die, Dresden,” I told myself fiercely, and firmly ignored the fear pounding in my chest. “Do or die.”
The dying really did seem a lot more likely.
28
I looked up at my apartment’s ceiling, hobbling along on my crutch. I found the spot I thought would be the middle of Mrs. S’s living room and noted that one of my old sofas was directly beneath it.
Using the crutch as a lever, I slipped one end of it behind one of my big old bookcases and heaved. The bookcase shuddered and then fell in a great crash of paperback novels and hardwood shelves, smashing down onto my couch. I grunted in satisfaction and climbed up onto the fallen bookcase, using its back as a ramp. I crawled painfully up to the end of the ramp, lifted my right hand, and triggered one of the rings I wore there.
They were magical tools, created to retain a little bit of kinetic energy every time I moved my arm, and when they were operating at capacity they packed one hell of a lot of energy—and I had freshly charged them up on the punching bag. When I cut loose with the ring, invisible force struck my ceiling, blowing completely through it and through the floor of the room above, tearing at faded carpeting the color of dried mustard.
I adjusted my aim a little and blew the entire charge out of the ring on the next finger, and another one after that, each one blasting the opening wider, until it was big enough that I thought I ought to fit through it.