Catwoman: Soulstealer (DC Icons #3)(30)

Ivy didn’t bother to reply as she turned toward the staff-only door and bolted.

Selina sprinted after her, satchel bobbing at her side, the bullwhip in one hand while she glanced back. Right as the guards came barreling through the spores leaking from that flower, coughing—

She lingered at the door for a heartbeat. Just in time for them to get a glimpse of her, the suit, and the empty spot where the painting had been. Just in time for Selina to sketch a bow—right as the guards inhaled that green smoke, likely custom-made by Ivy in her lab from whatever combination of plants, and collapsed onto the parquet floor.

Fancy and effective, Selina admitted as she shoved through the door and charged after Ivy into the labyrinth of staff passages.

Nyssa and Talia would approve.



* * *



—

Sirens cleaved the night, but Selina’s suit fed her the intel she needed: heading toward the museum, not after them as they escaped into the nearby quiet, posh neighborhood, full of embassies and old-money residences. The last place any sane criminal would flee to, considering the security cameras mounted on every building, the guards posted at every other entrance.

Which was why they kept to the rooftops.

Ivy had no issue scaling the building behind the museum using the fire escape—and apparently, no problems with cardio or heights as she kept pace with Selina, leaping without hesitation over the distances between buildings.

They made it three blocks before a particularly large gap appeared. Large enough to merit careful consideration on how to take the jump. Selina slowed, panting lightly—lungs barely needing to push themselves. Ivy’s breathing was heavier, her eyes bright.

Selina studied the gap, the cop cars that had just arrived at the museum illuminating the night sky behind them in flickers of blue and red. The lights cast Ivy’s hair in varying hues of deep crimson and purple, the silky strands ruffling past her face in the cool night breeze. No sign of the little flowers, as if they’d ducked into the safety of her hair. “Too far,” Ivy observed around gasps for air, studying the gap. “Take the drainpipe down.”

That would take too long and take them too far from where she needed them to be. So Selina shook her head, flicking her wrists to free the claws in her suit.

Ivy flinched, backing away a step. Her left hand went to a pocket in her bodysuit with curling pink petals poking out of it. Selina didn’t care to find out exactly what that flower could do.

She gestured with her claws to the gap. “For climbing,” she said, and wriggled her fingertips.

Strange, to have to explain herself, her methods. Strange, Selina realized, to have become something, someone, who required explaining.

A wraith—a ghūl. She’d given up everything to wear that title, that skin. She hadn’t realized just how far it might separate her from others. That she might become other herself.

But Ivy blinked, hand lowering from the botanical surprise she kept in her pocket. “You can’t make that jump.”

“I’ve cleared worse.” Not a lie. Selina backed up on the roof, calculating the distance, the speed she’d need to clear the gap and land safely.

She’d never considered that those long, all-out runs she’d done for the vault in gymnastics might be a training of another sort. Not until the League.

Selina stopped at the farthest edge of the roof and glanced to Ivy. “You want in, then you’d better learn to keep up.”

Then she was sprinting toward the roof edge, body falling back into muscle memory, into the training she’d had pounded into her bones, her breath.

“Show-off,” Ivy groused as Selina sprinted past.

Arms in formation, legs eating up the distance, body bracing for the leap—

Clear the ravine.

A cold, unruffled order.

Selina had glanced between Nyssa al Ghūl and the ravine that cleaved the two granite mountains. All around them, the unforgiving towers of the Dolomites watched as unfeelingly as her teacher. The five other acolytes, mercifully, seemed to hesitate.

Nyssa only lifted a tanned, scar-flecked hand and pointed to the narrow ledge—and a path—across the ravine. “The way home lies over there. The path behind you is closed.” A hard, brutal smile. The opposite of the sleek, coy smirks of her elder sister, Talia. “Clear the ravine, or live here.”

Or die at the bottom far below.

Selina’s palms turned sweaty, her breakfast churning in her stomach. The other acolytes, all of them in the League’s black battle-suits, began sizing up the gap, the angle. The wind.

She’d learned as much about the other girls as she could: their movements, their reflexes, their height and weight and favored weapons.

The real details, the ones that mattered…None of them shared that information: where they came from, what life they’d led that had brought Talia al Ghūl to come knocking.

All Selina knew was that they hailed from all over the world. The boys, apparently, were trained elsewhere. And Anaya, the acolyte standing beside her, had come from India. She spoke even less than Selina, though she had been here for two months before Selina arrived at the sprawling, luxurious compound deep in the mountains.

If Selina had anything close to an ally here, it was Anaya. She was the only one who ever sat beside Selina at the mess hall or paired with her in classes. Never through any voiced request or invitation, but just a silent, steady presence. That often made other acolytes think twice before pushing either of them.