Ghost Story (The Dresden Files 13)

tug of some sudden force, as subtle and inarguable as gravity, and I had to lean against it to stop myself from sliding across the floor toward him.

Other spirits appeared, drawn in through the shattered door as if sucked into a tornado. Half a dozen Native American shades flew into Mort, and as the gunman swung the golf club, he let out a little yipping shout, ducked the swing more nimbly than any man his age and condition should have been able to, caught the gunman’s wrist, and rolled backward, dragging the man with him. He planted his heels in the gunman’s midsection and heaved, a classic fighting technique of the American tribes, and sent the man crashing into a wall.

The gunman rose, seething, eyes entirely wild, but not before Mort had crossed the room and taken an ancient, worn-looking ax down from a rack attached to one wall. It took my stunned brain a second to register that the weapon looked exactly like the one Sir Stuart had wielded, give or take a couple of centuries.

“Stuart,” Mort called, and his voice rang in my chest as if it had come from a bass-amplified megaphone. There was a flicker of motion, and then Sir Stuart’s form flew in through the doorway as if propelled by a vast wind, overlaying itself briefly onto Mort’s far smaller body.

The gunman swung the club, but Mort caught it with a deft, twisting move of the ax’s haft. The gunman leaned into it, using his far greater weight and strength in an attempt to simply overbear the smaller man and push him to the floor.

But he couldn’t.

Mort held him off as if he’d had the strength of a much larger, much younger, much healthier man. Or maybe men. He held the startled intruder stone-still for the space of five or six seconds, then heaved, twisting with the full power of his shoulders, hips, and legs, and used the ax’s head to rip the club from the intruder’s paws. The gunman threw an enraged punch at his face, but Mort blocked it with the flat of the ax’s head, and then snapped the blunt upper edge of the ax into the gunman’s face with an almost contemptuous precision.

The intruder reeled back, stunned, and Mort followed up with the instincts and will of a dangerous, trained fighting man. He struck the intruder’s knee with the weapon’s haft, sending a sharp, crackling pop into the air, and swung the flat of the blade into the intruder’s jaw as the bigger man began to fall. The blow struck home with a meaty thunk and another crackling noise of impact, and the gunman dropped like a proverbial stone.

Mortimer Lindquist, ectomancer, stood over the fallen madman in a wary crouch, his eyes focusing on nothing as he turned his head left and right, scanning the room around him.

Then he sighed and exhaled. The steel head of the weapon came down to thump gently against the floor. Shapes departed him, the guardian spirits easing free of him, most of them fading from view. Within a few seconds, the only shades present were me and an exhausted-looking Sir Stuart.

Mort sat down on the floor heavily, his head bowed, his chest heaving for breath. The veins on his bald pate stuck out.

“Hell’s bells,” I breathed.

He looked up at me, his expression weary, and gave me an exhausted shrug. “Don’t have a gun,” he panted. “Never really felt like I needed one.”

“Been a while since you did that, Mortimer,” Sir Stuart said from where he sat beside the wall, his body supported by the ghost-dusted paint. “Thought you’d forgotten how.”

Mort gave the wounded spirit a faint smile. “I thought I had, too.”

I frowned and shook my head. “Was that . . . was that a possession, just now? When the ghosts took over?”

Sir Stuart snorted. “Nay, lad. If anything, the opposite.”

“Give me at least a little credit, Dresden,” Mort said, his tone sour. “I’m an ectomancer. Sometimes I need to borrow from what a spirit knows or what it can do. But I control spirits—they don’t control me.”

“How’d you handle the gun?” Stuart asked, a certain, craftsmanlike professionalism entering his tone.

“I . . .” Mort shook his head and looked at me.

“Magic,” I said quietly. My bell was still ringing a little, but I was able to form complete sentences. “I . . . sort of bumped into him and called up a shield.”

Sir Stuart lifted his eyebrows and said, “Huh.”

“I needed to borrow your