Catwoman: Soulstealer (DC Icons #3)(44)

A kiss—a kiss that had nearly made her gag—had transferred her own drug to the man’s lips. Into his system when he’d licked his mouth afterward. By the time it had entered his bloodstream, he’d been on the bed, unable to move.

Talia had slipped in a moment later, her ivory mask concealing her face. Selina’s own half-mask remained in place, black as night.

A level below, Venice’s wealthiest glittered and danced, the Carnevale revelry soaring toward its peak. This masquerade ball was an annual tradition. Hosted here, by this man.

She’d read his file on the drive down here from the mountains and as she dressed tonight, preparing her body the way Talia had shown her, adopting the speech and mannerisms. Gone was the clawing backstreet girl. Gone was the sullen, stone-faced fighter.

Talia moved Selina’s wrist upward, holding the blade for them both. Dim light danced on the steel. No guns—not for this first mission.

This rite.

The first kill must always be a blade. Nyssa had told her before she left. So she could feel it when she ended someone’s life. Guns were too impersonal, too distant. With a knife…she had to mean it. Had to be close.

“You have practiced,” Talia whispered in her ear, pantomiming the movement with Selina. “Now show me what you learned.”

The man’s private guards would not interfere. They had been trained to ignore any shouts of pain from this room. To stay away.

She knew Talia had picked this target specifically for that. For the victims who Selina had seen, one photo after another. A corrupted lesion on society, Talia had said. One that had to be excised to cleanse the ruling order. Men who were shielded by their power, their money.

Talia let go of Selina’s hand.

The blade remained upright.

And Selina reminded herself of those victims. Of their faces, their corpses. He likely wouldn’t have killed her, not when she oozed money and class tonight, but he’d have given her that drugged champagne, taken what he wanted, and predicted that she would be too ashamed and afraid to speak out about it. The others…they hadn’t been given the armor of privilege. Lost, forgotten souls that no one would miss or fight for.

A cold, rippling sort of rage settled her. Spread through her, crackling like hoarfrost.

The system is broken, Talia had said. We are its cure.

The dagger did not tremble as Selina brought it slicing home.

She made it out of the room, down the hall, slipping past the unaware guards, Talia on her heels. She made it to another hallway, near the back exit of the palatial home, and then stumbled into the nearest bathroom.

The small window was open to the night air, the canal a glittering thread, the revelry across the city blending with the music playing below.

Blending with the sounds of her retching as she fell to her knees and hurled up the contents of her stomach.

Talia strode in behind her, silently shutting the door. Watching as Selina vomited again and again into the toilet.

Talia handed her a pile of paper napkins. “Wipe away any trace and flush. There’s bleach in the cabinet below the sink.”

Hollow and numb, Selina obeyed.

She didn’t speak to Talia as she cleaned. As she wiped away any trace of herself.

As the last of who she’d been swirled down that toilet and out into the Laguna Veneta.

Selina blinked, the train beneath her slowing as it headed into a station.

Time to go.

She felt distant, far from her body once more, as she slid off the car and to the murky tunnel floor below, her aching thigh protesting.

She wondered if Batwing would sleep as poorly as her tonight.





Standing atop the shadowed roof of the twelve-story Hotel Devon two nights later, her Death Mask repaired and the shallow wound to her thigh healed enough that walking was no longer painful, Selina surveyed Ivy and Harley from head to toe.

They grinned back at her.

Pacing a few steps, Selina said quietly, “Where are all the weapons?”

They said nothing, their grins faltering.

“Where,” Selina repeated, “are the weapons I told you to bring?”

They glared at her. Selina glared right back. Even if they couldn’t see it through the helmet.

Nyssa and Talia would have a collective heart attack if any of the League assassins came so unprepared to a job. And then peel the skin from their bones.

Selina had seen the punishments doled out for disobedience. Done not by Talia, who never dirtied her immaculate hands, or even Nyssa, who relished such things, but by the League assassins themselves. So they realized what, exactly, would be done to them if they similarly failed. Precisely the sort of lesson the sisters loved to give.

Leaning against the metal door that led to the hotel below where the Save the Gotham City Landmarks Gala was well under way, Harley patted the holster at her waist, the twin colorful orbs hanging there. Strapped across her chest, intersecting her baseball tee that read Gotham City Sluggers, a bandolier of smaller ones, no larger than Christmas ornaments, hung as well. She cocked her head, pigtails bobbing with the movement, almost in time with the band playing ten levels below. “Isn’t this enough?”

Selina pointed with the coiled-up bullwhip clenched in her hand—clenched hard, to keep from throttling them. “I told you to bring weapons. Not toys.”

Harley took a step forward, her bright-red-and-black boy shorts catching the dim light over the roof door. Her fishnets did nothing to hide the tattoos inked on her thighs, flowing right into her calf-high combat boots. Animals, ranging from a roaring lion to a monarch butterfly, covered her skin. She thumbed free one of those orbs. “Just wait and see what fun these toys will bring to the boys and girls down there,” she said, a wicked smile on her mouth.