They emerged on to the street and Smoke was waiting for them. He reached out for Skulduggery and Skulduggery batted his hand away, then grabbed his jacket, moved to take him down. But he stopped suddenly, and Valkyrie watched Smoke’s aura, dark grey and crackling with yellow, flow over Skulduggery’s.
Skulduggery had been wrong. Smoke didn’t need a physical brain to override because he didn’t corrupt people’s minds – he corrupted their very essence. And not even Skulduggery was immune to that.