mort possessing

The gunman pressed one hand to a bleeding wound on his head and screamed, a howl of agony that was somehow completely out of proportion with the actual injury. His wild eyes rolled again and he lifted the gun to aim at the little man.
I moved on instinct, throwing myself uselessly between the weapon and the ectomancer. I tripped on a fragment of the ghost-dust-painted door and wound up falling in a heap on top of Mort and . . .
. . . sunk into him.
The world suddenly hit me in full Technicolor. It was so dark in here, the gunman an enormous, threatening shadow standing over me. His voice was hideous and so loud that my ears ached. The stench—unwashed body and worse things—was enough to turn my stomach, filling my nose like hideous packing peanuts. I saw the gunman’s hand tighten on the trigger and I threw my arm up. . . .
My black-clad, thick, rather short arm.
“Defendarius!” I barked, faux Latin, the old defense spell I’d first learned from Justin DuMorne, my first teacher. I felt the magic surge into me, down through my arm, out into the air, just as the gun went off, over and over, as some kind of restraint in the gunman’s head snapped.
Sparks flew up from a shimmering blue plane that formed in front of my outspread fingers, bullets and fragments of bullets shattering and bouncing around the room. One of them stayed more or less in one piece and smacked into the gunman’s calf, and he pitched abruptly to one side, still jerking the trigger until the weapon was clicking on empty.
I felt my mouth move as Mort’s voice—a voice that rang with a resonance and authority I had seldom encountered before, said, “Get off of me!”
If I’d been hurtled from a catapult, I don’t think I’d have been thrown away any faster. I flew off at an upward angle—and slammed painfully into the ghost-dust-painted ceiling of the study. I bounced off it and fell to the equally hard floor. I lay there, stunned, for a second.

Ghost Story Chapter 6, Page 53-54


“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 skills for a moment,” Mort said, somewhat stiffly. “Appreciate it.”

Ghost Story Chapter 6, Page 56-57