Catwoman: Soulstealer (DC Icons #3)(39)

She debated letting her own vehicle roll back to tap his as she ascended the ramp onto the busy, sunny street, but it’d mean a delay in getting the money to the bank, and the possibility of getting her trunk opened up.

So she merely turned right while he went left, watching him vanish around a corner in her side-view mirror.

Perhaps she’d have to do something about him. Make sure his apartment became unavailable to him. Because having someone around asking questions, especially if he was a trained Marine, was not good.

She’d think about that later.



* * *



—

The alley in the Coventry district that night was quiet. Secure.

Selina had arrived early to ensure that. She’d bought her own burner phone today to contact Ivy, giving her the time and place. Nothing more.

Gotham City was stirring again. The rich were uneasy and the underworld was sitting up, paying attention.

Look. Look how easy it is, she’d been purring to them these two weeks, with each robbery. While you cower and run, look how I make out.

Her plan was coming together. Not as fast as she wanted, as she needed, but…it was weaving together. Talia would be proud. Perhaps even Nyssa. In the muted, cold way both of them expressed such things.

She’d often wondered whether the sisters had been born that way or if they’d had all traces of warmth and humanity trained out of them.

Footsteps sounded down the alley.

Selina’s helmet scanned the approaching person and found nothing.

She could see the female figure slipping from the darkness, but the suit’s normal feed of intel provided her with more: heart rate, height, weapons…nothing.

And Selina knew. Before the woman fully emerged into the dim light of the alley, Selina knew that it was not Harley or Ivy.

But a wraith.

A ghūl.

Sent from the dark heart of the League of Assassins to kill her.





Shrike.

Selina had not seen the assassin in months. Nyssa and Talia had dispatched Shrike to Tokyo for an assignment, and Selina had deemed it a small mercy.

As the small-boned, beautiful woman prowled out of the shadows, clad in black and her own Death Mask, Selina remembered why.

She wasn’t holding guns—no, that wasn’t Shrike’s preferred way to kill. Shrike enjoyed causing pain. Savored it. A sadist with a dagger in each hand.

That was how one of Nyssa’s most notorious assassins liked to end her targets. Slow, deep cutting. Carving you up.

Selina had been granted the pleasure of being Shrike’s target practice more than once. Of being cornered in a shadowed hallway of the compound and feeling that knife in the assassin’s right hand press into her throat as Shrike had purred in her ear, Where are your claws now, kitten?

Shrike paused about twenty feet away. Selina flicked her wrists, claws sliding free, trying and failing to master her thundering heart. Knowing Shrike could detect every frantic beat.

Shrike’s battle-suit had been modified to fit an assortment of daggers. Her Death Mask helmet was painted with strokes of bone white, which looked like nothing up close, but from where Selina stood…they formed the face of a skull.

Selina calmed her breathing. Took in every bit of the alley: the brick walls, the dumpster to her right, the trash piles, the doors and lights.

She waited for some explanation for why Shrike was here.

Why those knives were out.

Shrike offered nothing.

Absolutely nothing as she hurled one of her daggers right at Selina.

Selina ducked, rolling to the side, already avoiding Shrike’s countermove: the second knife that the assassin sent her way, anticipating Selina’s dive to the right. But Shrike didn’t foresee the dumpster that Selina slid behind. The dagger clanked against its side, burying itself deep.

Selina had three heartbeats to unsheathe the twin short swords artfully hidden in the back of her suit. Standard for all League suits. The bullwhip would do nothing against someone with Shrike’s training—not unless Selina wanted it chopped into pieces.

Sucking in a breath, Selina whirled from behind the dumpster just in time to catch the glint of a third dagger. A swing of one of her blades had the dagger skittering to the side, the reverberations biting through her skin, even with her gloves.

Then Shrike was there, two longer daggers in hand. Slashing low and high.

Selina parried one, met the other.

A twist of Shrike’s foot and it was hooked behind Selina’s knee. Selina spun out of the way, using the momentum of her fall to avoid being gutted by Shrike’s left dagger.

Not fast enough.

Metal screamed, and Selina yanked her head back, narrowly missing Shrike’s blade as it instead carved a line down her helmet. Glass splintered in her left lens. Another strike and it’d go right through.

Selina swept with her blade for Shrike’s back, but the assassin turned with her, fast as an asp.

Calm. Fear will get you killed. Calm your breathing, your heart.

Nyssa’s lessons whispered through her mind. But there was no way to catch her breath as Shrike unleashed herself upon Selina, landing blow after blow onto her swords.

Forced to retreat, Selina knew she was being herded to wherever Shrike wanted her, had assessed for herself what would be the prime place to end her.

Her helmet’s left lens was cracked enough that the vision in that eye was worthless. She might as well be fighting with the eye closed.