Storm Front

"Murphy," I said. Then, louder, "Murphy."

I saw her stir, a fitful little motion that was in response to my voice. "Easy, easy," I told her. "Relax. Don’t try to move. I’m going to try to help you."

I knelt next to her, very slowly, watching the room all around. I didn’t see anything. I set my staff aside, and felt her throat. Her pulse was racing, thready. There was not enough blood for it to be a serious injury, but I touched her shoulder. Even through the jacket, I could feel the swelling.

"Harry?" Murphy rasped. "Is that you?"

"It’s me, Murph," I told her, setting my blasting rod aside and slowly reaching for the phone. The middle drawer of my desk, where the scorpion talisman had been, was open and empty. "Just hang on. I’m going to call an ambulance to help you."

"Can’t believe it. You bastard," Murphy wheezed. I felt her stir around a little. "You set me up."

I drew the phone down and dialed 911. "Hush, Murph. You’ve been poisoned. You need help, fast."

The 911 operator came on and took my name and address. I told her to send an ambulance prepared to treat someone for poisoning, and she told me to stay on the line. I didn’t have time to stay on the line. Whatever had done this to Murphy, it was still around, somewhere. I had to get her out of there, and then I had to recover Victor’s talisman, to be able to use it against him when I went out to the lake house.

Murphy stirred again, and then I felt something hard and cool flick around my wrist and clicker-clack shut. I blinked and looked down at her. Murphy’s jaw was set in a stubborn line as she clicked the other end of the handcuffs shut around her own wrist.

"You’re under arrest," she wheezed. "You son of a bitch. Wait till I get you in an interrogation room. You aren’t going anywhere."

I stared at her, stunned. "Murph," I stammered. "My God. You don’t know what you’re doing."

"Like hell," she said, her lip lifting in a ghost of its usual snarl. She twisted her head around, grimacing in pain, and squinted at me. "You should have talked to me this morning. Got you now, Dresden." She broke off in a panting gasp, and added, "You jerk."

"You stubborn bitch from hell." I felt at a loss for a second, then shook my head. "I’ve got to get you out of here before it comes back," I said, and I stooped forward to try to gather her up.

That was when the scorpion exploded toward me from the shadows beneath my desk, a harsh burst of dry, scuttling motion. It wasn’t a bug I could squash with my fingers, anymore. It was the size of a large terrier, all brown and glinting, and it was almost too fast to see coming.

I convulsed away from it, and saw the flash of its tail, saw its stinger whip forward and miss my eye by a hair breadth. Something cool and wet speckled my cheek, and my skin started to burn. Venom.

My startled motion made my leg jerk, and kicked my staff and rod away from me. I rolled after the latter desperately. Murphy’s handcuffs brought me up short, and both of us made sounds of discomfort as the steel bands cut at the base of our hands. I stretched for the rod, felt the smooth roundness of it on my fingertips, and then there was another scuttling sound and the scorpion came at my back. The rod squirted out from beneath my grasping fingers and rolled away, out of reach.

I didn’t have time for a spell, but I grabbed at the middle drawer of my desk, jerked it all the way out of its frame and barely managed to shove it between the scorpion and myself. There was a hiss of air and a smacking sound of breaking wood. The scorpion’s stinger plunged through the bottom of the desk drawer and stuck fast. A crab-claw pincer gouged a hole through my sweatpants and into my leg.

I screamed and hurled the drawer away. The scorpion, its tail still stuck, went with it, and they both landed in a heap a few feet away.

"Won’t do you any good, Dresden," Murphy moaned incoherently. She must have been too far gone from the poison to understand what was going on. "I’ve got you. Stop fighting it. Get some answers from you, now."

"Sometimes, Murph," I panted, "you make things just a little harder than they need to be. Anyone ever tell you that?" I bent down to her, and slipped my cuffed wrist beneath her arm and around her back, drawing her own arm back with me, my right arm and her left bound by the handcuff.

"My ex-husbands," she moaned. I strained and lifted us both up off the ground, then started hobbling toward the door. I could feel the blood on my leg, the pain where the scorpion had ripped it, hot and hateful. "What’s happening?" Confusion and fear trembled in Murphy’s voice. "Harry, I can’t see."

Shit. The poison was getting to her. The poison of the common brown scorpion found all over most of the United States isn’t much more venomous than the sting of a bumblebee. Of course, most bumblebees aren’t the size of the family dog, either. And Murphy wasn’t a big person. If a lot of poison had been introduced into her system, the odds were against her. She needed medical attention, and she needed it immediately.

If my hands had been free, I would have taken up my staff and rod and done battle, but I didn’t like my odds tied to Murphy – even if I could keep the thing off of me, it might land on her, sting her again, and put an end to her. I was at a bad angle to search for her keys, and I didn’t have time to go down the ring trying them on the handcuffs one by one. Any magic that I could work fast enough to shatter the cuffs in time would probably kill me with flying shrapnel, 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.