Catwoman: Soulstealer (DC Icons #3)(57)

Harley lunged into motion, half running toward the indicated cabinet.

Selina stalked for the greenhouse wall behind them, scanning the dark. Nothing. Not a sign of whoever had sent that little bomb and nasty message. “This location is compromised,” she declared as Harley hurried over with the salve and bandages. “You need to move.”

“Not until she’s cleaned up,” Harley said, falling to her knees in the grass to examine the long cut in Ivy’s pale leg. No indication of glass in the wounds, Selina’s helmet told her. She said as much. Harley ignored her, smearing that salve onto the scratch.

By the time Harley reached for the bandages, the skin had started to knit together.

Selina blinked. “How—”

“Nature has an answer for everything,” Ivy said, still shaking. Harley just kept working, pigtails swaying with her steady, efficient movement.

Selina said again, “That message could have come from anyone.”

“Batwing?” Harley asked without looking up.

“Not his style,” Selina said. Too cowardly for Batwing. No, he would have faced them directly and put them in jail alive. “And GCPD would have done a raid. This was some criminal lowlife not appreciating us encroaching on their territory.” Selina surveyed the beautiful lab, the haven Ivy created. “I’m sorry. You need to move. Now. GCPD is likely getting reports of an explosion in the park. And if someone tracked you here—”

“She gets it,” Harley snapped. “Instead of talking, why don’t you help?”

Selina stiffened, but strode for the moss-made couch, brushing off glass before she pulled off her gloves, dipped her fingers into the jar of milky salve and smeared some on Ivy’s upper arm.

“It could have been anyone,” Ivy said as Harley finished up one leg and started with the other. “Falcone, for what we did to his men a few weeks ago.”

Selina considered. “It could be. And that’s why when we retaliate, we’ll do it wisely.” Because that gleam in Ivy’s eyes…revenge was burning there. In Harley’s, too. The hateful message on the brick in the grass behind them seemed to glare as brightly as a neon sign.

“Then what do you have in mind?” Ivy demanded, surveying her plants, the lab she’d made. Her home, Selina realized. This was truly Ivy’s home.

A pang of jealousy went through Selina, odd and cold.

She jerked her chin toward Harley. “I want names. Three names, for three of the Joker’s petty cohorts. Lowest of the low—the kind that are definitely behind bars.”

That lethal gleam in Harley’s eyes sharpened. “Why?”

Selina went to Ivy’s other side to tend to her right arm. “Because we need to send a few messages of our own.”

“How will you get them out?”

“Leave it to me. Just bring explosives that can take out concrete and steel.”

Selina finished on Ivy’s right arm, and reached for her gloves on the other side of the woman.

“What’s that bruise?” Ivy reached toward the hint of black-lining-purple just peeking out from beneath Selina’s sleeve.

Selina smoothly slid on her gloves. “Nothing.”

The Leopard tattoos.

Talia had wanted to laser them off. It was the one thing Selina had defied her on. She’d given up everything she was, everything she loved. But the tattoos…Talia would have to skin her alive to remove them if she wanted them gone. Selina had told her as much.

Talia had merely shrugged and drawled that petty attachments to the past would interfere with her ability to do what was necessary to further the League’s cause.

Talia didn’t know the half of it.

Ivy gave Selina a look that said she didn’t believe her, but Harley sighed, shooting to her feet, pigtails bouncing. “You can crash with me, Vee. Get whatever shit is most important, and let’s go.”

Ivy swept a long look around the paradise of her own making—yeah, that was sorrow there. These plants…her friends. Her family.

But a glass house was definitely not the place for someone to live when they were throwing quite so many stones.





Luke knew he could be an asshole.

But he’d really, truly been one last night, when instead of thanking Holly, he’d said some things that he really hadn’t meant. But he’d been pissed off, still raging after three weeks of hell, chasing after Catwoman and her cohorts.

Three weeks and six robberies. Banks, jewelry stores…It was a shock there was any money or valuables left in Gotham City thanks to Catwoman and her merry band of criminals.

Then there were the little explosions—cargo boxes at the docks destroyed, animals freed from the zoo and circus….There was no rhyme or reason to their attacks. Some for cash, some just for hell-raising.

And worse than all that, Gordon had told him last night, right before Luke had gone into his boxing match: some criminals were even pledging allegiance to Catwoman. Thanks to those leaked photos in the papers. The footage of their unchecked rampage. A new Queen of the Underworld, the papers and petty criminals called her.

So he’d gone into his fight mad. Unfocused. He’d won, but he had taken one hell of a beating for it.

So when Holly had come in, when his body had been aching and his temper already on edge, and she’d casually mentioned her date. He’d reacted poorly.