Mouse shot

I came through my apartment door, took one look around the candlelit place, and half shouted, "Hell's bells! What is wrong with you people!?"
Morgan sat slumped against the wall with the fireplace, and fresh spots of blood showed through his bandages. His eyes were only partly open. His hand lay on the floor beside him, limp, the fingers half curled. A tiny little semiautomatic pistol lay on the floor beneath his hand. It wasn't mine. I have no idea where he'd been hiding it.
Molly was on the floor in front of the sofa, with Mouse literally sitting on her back. She was heaving breaths in and out, making the big dog rise and settle slightly as she did.
Luccio lay where I'd left her on the couch, flat on her back, her eyes closed, obviously still unconscious. Mouse had one of his paws resting lightly on her sternum. Given the nature of her recent injury, it seemed obvious that he would need to exert minimal pressure on her to immobilize her with pain, should she awaken.
The air smelled of cordite. Mouse's fur, all down his left foreleg, was matted and caked with blood.
When I saw that, I rounded on Morgan in a fury, and if Murphy hadn't stepped forward and grabbed my arm with both hands, I would have started kicking his head flat against my wall. I settled for kicking the gun away instead. If I got a couple of his fingers, too, it didn't bother me much at the time.
Morgan watched me with dull, hardly conscious eyes.
"I swear," I snarled. "I swear to God, Morgan, if you don't explain yourself I'm going to strangle you dead with my own hands and drag your corpse back to Edinburgh by the balls."
"Harry!" Murphy shouted, and I realized that she had positioned her entire body between me and Morgan and she was leaning against me like a soldier struggling to raise a flag.
Morgan bared his teeth, more rictus than smile. "Your warlock," he said, his voice dry and leathery, "was trying to enter Captain Luccio's mind against her will."
I surged forward, and Murphy pushed me back again. I weighed twice what she did, but she had good leverage and focus. "And so you shot my dog?" I screamed.
"He interposed himself," Morgan said. He coughed, weakly, and closed his eyes, his face turning greyer. "Never meant... to hit..."
"Harry!" Murphy shouted, and I realized that she had positioned her entire body between me and Morgan and she was leaning against me like a soldier struggling to raise a flag.
Morgan bared his teeth, more rictus than smile. "Your warlock," he said, his voice dry and leathery, "was trying to enter Captain Luccio's mind against her will."
I surged forward, and Murphy pushed me back again. I weighed twice what she did, but she had good leverage and focus. "And so you shot my dog?" I screamed.
"He interposed himself," Morgan said. He coughed, weakly, and closed his eyes, his face turning greyer. "Never meant... to hit..."
"I swear to God," I snarled, "that's it. That is it. Molly and I are going right to the wall for you, and this is how you repay us? I am pushing your paranoid ass out my door, leaving you there, and starting a pool on who comes for you first-the Black Council, the Wardens, or the goddamn buzzards."
"H-Harry," Molly said in a weak, nauseated, and... shamed voice barely more than a whisper.
I felt my anger abruptly drain away, to be replaced by a wave of denial and a slowly dawning sense of horror. I turned, slowly, to look at Molly.
"He was right," she wheezed, not looking at me, struggling to speak over the burden of Mouse's weight. I could hear the tears reflected in her voice as they began to fall. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Harry. He was right."
I leaned my shoulders back against the wall and watched as Mouse looked at me with grave, pained eyes and stayed right where he was-both holding Molly down and shielding her body with his.
We got Morgan put back into bed, and then I went over to Mouse. "Okay," I said. "Move."
Only then did Mouse remove himself from Molly's back, limping heavily to one side. I knelt down by him and examined his leg. He flattened his ears and leaned away from me. I said firmly, "Stop that. Hold still."
Mouse sighed and looked miserable, but he let me poke at his leg. I found the wound, up near his shoulder, and a hard lump under the skin.
"Get up," I said to Molly, my tone steady. "Go to the lab. Get the medical kit under the table. Then get the little scissors and a fresh razor from the cabinet in my bathroom."
She pushed herself up slowly.
"Move," I said, my voice quiet and level and unyielding.
She was obviously still recovering from being pinned to the floor. But she moved quicker, and staggered down to my lab.
Murphy knelt down next to me and ruffled Mouse's ears. He gave her a miserable look. She held up Morgan's gun. "Twenty-five caliber," she said. "Big as he is, wouldn't have been easy to kill him with it, even on purpose." She shook her head. "Or Molly, for that matter."
"Meaning what?" I asked her.
"Meaning maybe Morgan didn't intend the attack to be lethal. Maybe he used the smaller weapon for that reason."
"He used the smaller weapon because it was the only one he had," I said, my voice harsh. "He'd have killed Molly if he could have."
Murphy was quiet for a moment before she said, "That's attempted murder."
I glanced up at her for a second. Then I said, "You want to arrest him."
"It isn't an issue of what I want," she said. "I'm an officer of the law, Harry."
I thought about that for a moment. "The Council might-they might-respect it," I said quietly. "In fact, I'm certain they would. It would be the Merlin's call, and he'd love nothing better than to buy more time to work out how to get Morgan out of this mess."
"But others wouldn't," she said.
"Madeline and Shagnasty sure wouldn't," I said. "And if Morgan's in jail, there's no way to force Shagnasty into a confrontation where I have a chance to take Thomas back." I looked at Mouse's wound. "Or trade him."
"You'd do that?" she asked.
"Morgan? For Thomas?" I shook my head. "I... Hell's bells, it would make a mess. The Council would go berserk. But..."
But Thomas is my brother. I didn't say it. I didn't need to. Murphy nodded.
Molly reappeared with the things I'd sent her for, plus a bowl and a pair of needle-nose pliers. Smart girl. She poured rubbing alcohol into a bowl and started sterilizing the suture needle, the thread, the scalpel, and the pliers. Her hands moved like they knew what they were doing without need for her to consciously direct them. That probably shouldn't have surprised me. Michael and Charity Carpenter's eldest daughter had probably been taught to deal with injuries since the time she was physically large enough to do so.
"Mouse," I said. "There's a bullet inside you. Do you know what that is? The thing that a gun shoots that hurts?"
Mouse looked at me uncertainly. He was shaking.
I put my hand on his head and spoke steadily. "We've got to take it out of you or it could kill you. It's going to hurt, a lot. But I promise you that it won't take long and that you're going to be all right. I'll protect you. Okay?"
Mouse made a very soft noise that only the ungracious would have called a whine. He leaned his head against my hand, trembled, and then very slowly licked my hand, once.
I smiled at him and leaned my head against his for a second. "It will be all right. Lie down, boy."
Mouse did, stretching slowly, carefully out on his side, the wounded shoulder up.
"Here, Harry," Molly said quietly, gesturing at the tools.
I looked at her, my face hard. "You're doing it."
She blinked at me. "What? But what I did... I don't even-"
"I? I? Mouse just took a bullet for you, Miss Carpenter," I said, my words precise. "He wasn't thinking of himself when he did it. He was putting his life at risk to protect you. If you want to remain my apprentice, you will stop saying sentences that begin with 'I' and repay his courage by easing his pain."
Her face went white. "Harry..."
I ignored her and moved around to kneel by Mouse's head, holding him down gently, stroking my hands over his thick fur.
My apprentice looked from me to Murphy, her expression uncertain. Sergeant Murphy stared back at her with calm cop eyes, and Molly averted her gaze hurriedly. She looked from her own hands to Mouse, and started crying.
Then she got up, went to the kitchen sink, and put a pot of water on the stove to boil. She washed her hands carefully, all the way to the elbow. Then she came back with the water, took a deep breath, and settled down beside the wounded dog, taking up the instruments.
She cut and shaved the area around the injury first, making Mouse flinch and quiver several times. I saw her cringe at each pained movement from the dog. But her hands stayed steady. She had to widen the tear in the dog's flesh with the scalpel. Mouse actually cried out when the knife cut him, and she closed her eyes tight for a long count of three before she went back to work. She slid the pliers into the shallow injury and pulled out the bullet. It was a tiny thing, smaller than the nail on the end of my pinky, a distorted, oblong bit of shiny metal. Mouse groaned as she tugged it free.
She cleaned the site of the wound again, using the boiled water and disinfectant. Mouse flinched and cried out when she did so-the most agonized sound I had ever heard him make.
"I'm sorry," Molly said, blinking tears out of the way. "I'm sorry."
The injury was big enough to need a trio of stitches. Molly did them as swiftly as she possibly could, drawing more shudders of pain from Mouse. Then she cleaned the site again and covered it with a small pad that she cut to the proper size, affixing it to the bare-shaved skin around the injury with medical tape.
"There," she said quietly. She leaned down and buried her face in the thick ruff of fur around Mouse's throat. "There. You'll be all right."
Mouse moved very gingerly, moving his head to nudge against her hand. His tail thumped several times on the floor.

Turn Coat Chapter 34, Page 315-320


I waited until she was outside to look at Mouse. The big dog sat up, his eyes gravely concerned. He wasn't favoring his shoulder at all, and his movement was completely unimpaired.
Mouse got hit by the driver of a minivan once. He got back up, ran it down, and returned the favor. The Foo dog was very, very tough. I doubted he'd really needed the medical attention to recover, though I was also sure it would help speed things along. But I hadn't been completely certain the injury wasn't as serious as it looked.
In other words, the freaking dog had fooled Molly and me both.
"You were acting?" I said. "To make it hit Molly harder?"
His tail wagged back and forth proudly.
"Damn," I said, impressed. "Maybe I should have named you Denzel."
His jaws opened in a doggy grin.
"Earlier tonight," I said, "when I was trying to figure out how to find Thomas, you interrupted me. I didn't think about it before now, but you helped him track me down when Madrigal Raith was auctioning me off on eBay."
His tail wagged harder.
"Could you find Thomas?"
"Woof," he said, and his front paws bounced a couple of inches off the floor.

Turn Coat Chapter 34, Page 326