car bomb

I snarled and closed my eyes, forcing control upon myself. This was no life-and-death struggle. It was a sidewalk. There would be no noisy and satisfying release of that anger, but the energy that I had unconsciously gathered had the potential to be dangerous in any case. I reached down to brush the sidewalk with my fingertips, allowing the dangerous buildup of magic to ground itself more or less harmlessly into the earth, and only a trace amount of energy flared out into a disruptive pattern.
It saved our lives.
The instant I released the excess energy into the area around us, a nearby stoplight blew out, Murphy’s cell phone started blaring “Stars and Stripes Forever,” three car alarms went off—
—and Murphy’s Saturn coupe went up in a brilliant ball of fire and an ear-shattering blast of thunder.

White Night Chapter 6, page 69


There was no time to do anything. Even if I'd been crouched, tense, and holding defensive magic ready to go, I wouldn't have beaten the explosion to the punch. It was instant, and violent, and did not at all care whether I was on my guard or not. Something that felt vaguely like an enormous feather pillow swung by the Incredible Hulk slammed into my chest.
It lifted me up off the ground and dumped me on the sidewalk several feet later. My shoulder clipped a mailbox as I went by it, and then I had a good, steady view of the clear summer sky above me as I lay on my back and ached.
I'd lived, which was always a good start in this kind of situation. It couldn't have been a very big explosion, then. It had to have been more incendiary than concussive, a big old rolling ball of flame that would have shattered windows and burned things and set things on fire, and pushed a whole lot of air out of the way along with one Harry Dresden, wizard, slightly used.
I sat up and peered at the rolling cloud of black smoke and red flame where Murphy's Saturn was, which bore out my supposition pretty well. I squinted to one side and saw Murphy sitting slowly back up. She had a short, bleeding cut on her upper lip. She looked pale and shaken.
I couldn't help it. I started laughing like a drunk.
"Well," I said. "Under the circumstances, I'm forced to conclude that you were right. I am a control freak and you were one hundred percent right to be the one driving the car. Thank you, Murph."
She gave me a slow, hard stare, drew in a deep breath, and said, through clenched teeth, "No problem."
I grinned at her and slumped back down onto my back. "You okay?"
She dabbed at the blood on her lip with one hand. "Think so. You?"
"Clipped my shoulder on a mailbox," I said. "It hurts a little. Not a lot. Maybe I could take an aspirin. Just one. Not a whole dose or anything."
She sighed. "My God, you're a whiner, Dresden."
We sat there quietly for a minute while sirens began in the distance and came closer.
"Bomb, you think?" Murphy said, in that tone people use when they don't know what else to say.
"Yeah," I said. "I was grounding some extra energy out when it went off. It must have hexed up the bomb's timer or receiver. Set it off early."
"Unless it was intended as a warning shot," she said.

White Night Chapter 7, Page 70