Storm Front - By Jim Butcher Page 0,93

and there wasn't time to work out a gentler escape spell. Dammit, Dad, I thought, I wish you'd lived long enough to show me how to slip out of a pair of handcuffs.

"Harry," Murphy repeated, her voice thready, "what's happening? I can't see."

I saved my breath and lugged Murphy toward the door without answering her. Behind me, there was a furious scraping and clicking. I looked back over my shoulder. The scorpion's stinger was stuck fast in the drawer, but the thing was rapidly ripping the wood to shreds with its pincers and legs.

I gulped, turned, and hobbled out of my office and down the hall with Murphy. I managed to swing the door to my office shut with one foot. Murphy's legs did little to support her, and the difference in our heights made the trip awkward as hell. I was straining to keep her upright and moving.

I reached the end of the hall, the door to the stairway on my right, the elevator on my left.

I stopped for a moment, panting, trying not to let the sounds of splintering wood down the hall rattle my judgment. Murphy sagged against me, speechless now, and if she was breathing, I couldn't tell. There was no way I was going to be able to carry her down the stairs. Neither one of us had enough left to manage that. The ambulance would be arriving in minutes, and if I didn't have Murphy down there when it arrived, I might as well just leave her on the floor to die.

I grimaced. I hated elevators. But I pushed the button and waited. Round lights over the elevator doors began counting up to five.

Down the hall from me, the splintering sounds stopped, and something crashed into my office door, rattling it on its frame.

"Hell's bells, Harry," I said aloud. I looked up at the lights. Two. A pause approximately ten centuries long. Three. "Hurry up," I snarled, and jabbed the button a hundred more times.

Then I remembered the bracelet of shields around my left wrist. I tried to focus on it but couldn't, with it twisted awkwardly beneath Murphy, supporting her. So I laid her down as gently and quickly as I could, then lifted my left hand and focused on the bracelet.

The lower third of my office door exploded outward, and the brown, gleaming form of the scorpion bounded across the hallway and into the wall. It was bigger, now. The damn thing was growing. It bounced off of the wall with a scrabbling, horrible agility, oriented on me, and hurtled down the hall toward me as fast as a man can run, its legs clicking and scuttling furiously over the floor. It leapt at me, claws extended, stinger flashing. I focused my will on the defensive shield the bracelet helped me form and maintain, struggling to get it together before the scorpion hit me.

I did it, barely. The invisible shield of air met the scorpion a handsbreadth from my body and sent it rebounding back onto its back. There it struggled for a second, awkward and flailing.

Behind me, the elevator dinged, and the doors swooped graciously open.

Without time to be delicate, I grabbed Murphy's wrist and hauled her into the elevator with me, jabbing at the button for the lobby. In the hall, the scorpion thrashed its tail and righted itself, oriented on me again with an uncanny intelligence, and flew toward me. There wasn't time to get my shield together again. I screamed.

The elevator doors swooped shut. There was a sharp thud, and the car rattled, as the scorpion smashed into them.

The car started down, and I tried to regain my breath. What the hell was that thing?

It wasn't just an insect. It was too fast, too damn smart for that. It had ambushed me, waiting until I had set my weapons aside to come after me. It had to be something else, some kind of power construct, built small, but designed to draw in energy, to get bigger and stronger, an arthropod version of Frankenstein's monster. It wasn't really alive, just a golem, a robot, a programmed thing with a mission. Victor must have figured out where his talisman had gotten to, and set a spell on it to attack anyone it came in contact with, the crazy bastard. Murphy had stumbled right into it.

It was still growing, getting faster and stronger and more vicious. Getting Murphy out of danger wasn't enough. I had to find a way to deal