Skullcrusher began struggling—all in the mindspace or also in the physical, I couldn’t determine. My own body felt beyond my reach.
He resisted my control. I fought back.
He hardened his will against me. I hardened mine more.
He attempted to pull free, to disrupt the flow oflushethat linked us. I didn’t allow it. I reinforced the connection … and reversed the flow of energy.
This time, it worked.
Now his essence was streaming into me, mine that he stole returning with it.
When his fear first burgeoned, I believed it was mine. But before long I realized the terror I was experiencing was his.
He understood what I was only just beginning to sense:This, this that I was doing, it wasdreamwalking.
There was no requirement for sleep or dreaming. I was traveling among his thoughts,his mind. Worse still for him, I suspected I could actually overpower them.
I could force my will upon his.
Abruptly, I discovered Skullcrusher’s hands gone from my head. My skull pulsed, but only in recovery from his assault. Shoulderwrencher, too, had released me.
My thighs quivered as I struggled to keep myself upright. My shoulders tingled as if swarmed by fire ants.
It was a smart move on Magnum’s part. My physical body was signaling, and loudly, that it required immediate attention.
I had to refuse it.
With an internal, guttural roar, I grabbed on to Skullcrusher’s essence like I was in a tug-of-war—ferociously. I made that taffy my bitch.
Then … Iheaved.
His essence pitched forward.
I felt more than heard him scream. I heaved and tugged and pulled more and more of his energy into me. All of mine finished returning.
Only then did I realize he was speaking aloud.
“Wait! Wait, wait, wait, wait,” his voice pled, arriving as if from the opposite side of sprawling mountain ranges. “You can’t kill me.”
Like hell I can’t.
“I took some of your power,” he hastened to add.
My eyes remained tightly shut. My mind’s eye was trained on his, on continuing to siphon his essence.
“It’s true,” he insisted in a whine. “You can’t kill me.”
“I … can.” My voice sounded unfamiliar to my own ears. It was the same pitch and intonation as always, but it was as if someone far older and far wiser were speaking through me. Thelushinawithin me, perhaps.
“No, no, you can’t,” Magnum said before yelping, then yipping again.
So my claiming his energy hurt him…Good. May it hurt lots more.
“I have enough of your … ow, ow, ow … power that if … you, ow, kill me…” He panted. Starkly gone was the composed archvillain who’d lorded over everyone else. “You won’t be able toresurrect your friends. You’ll die if you … ahhhhhh, ouch, ouch, ouch … if you try.”
He paused just to pant some more. I pulled on that tug-o-war taffy rope with all my might, like I was a beauty queen and my winning grand prize would be global peace and harmony for all.
“You need the power I took from you,” he said. “You needme.”
