Catwoman: Soulstealer (DC Icons #3)(58)

And he would have gotten up to apologize, but his battered body had refused. Literally refused to get up from that couch. He’d slept on the damn thing. When he’d awoken and knocked on Holly’s door the next morning, she hadn’t answered.

He didn’t have her cell, or he might have texted her with a request to meet up—not an apology. He owed her those words face to face.

But the day passed, and he spent it sleeping on and off, watching whatever football games were on TV. He staggered to knock on her door around lunch: nothing. Dinner: nope.

If she was ignoring him, he didn’t blame her.

Luke was still lying on the couch as night fell, wondering how the hell he’d get into his suit, right as the football game cut to live footage. Of Blackgate Penitentiary smoldering under the night sky. Luke swore as he read the headline on the bottom of the screen, then bolted for his bedroom.


Three of Joker’s Henchmen Freed from Prison,

Catwoman Suspected





* * *



—

Selina strode into the small bar at the docks, Ivy and Harley trailing her. The Joker’s three henchmen, still in their orange jumpsuits, two steps behind them.

Everyone packed into the dark, wood-paneled space went dead still. Even the raging rock music from the speakers cut out.

She’d waited until now, weeks after that encounter at the bank, for a reason. Had picked this bar for a reason. Knew it was a hangout for people like Carmine Falcone, people who answered to many of the bosses in this city and came here to meet on neutral ground.

The grenade at Ivy’s place had just propelled Selina to act a little faster.

Cops didn’t come here. They didn’t dare. Even the crooked ones.

Ivy and Harley stood tall beside Selina as she surveyed the room: the polished oak floors, the original 1800s tiled ceiling, the displayed photos of bosses both old and present, the globes of golden lights mounted on the paneled walls. For a group of criminals, they’d taken care to preserve the original character of the space.

And all of them now stared their way, some with drinks in midair.

Selina said to no one in particular, “Here are the rules.”

Her claws slid free of her gloves, glinting in the dim lights. At her side, her bullwhip was a weight, begging to be used.

Not yet. Not yet.

“You stay out of our way, you assist us when asked, and the rewards will be…” She strode to the three chained men. A brutal slice of her claws had their shackles snapping free. One after another. “Plentiful.”

The Joker’s henchmen grinned, rotating their wrists.

“You decide to get in our way,” Selina said softly to those assembled as she prowled for the man seated nearest to them at the ornately carved oak bar, “you try to screw us over, and the punishments will be…” The man trembled on his red velvet stool as she gently ran a claw down his stubbly cheek. Then the other. She rumbled a soft laugh. “Plentiful.”

She turned, nodding to Harley and Ivy.

“Bitch,” someone spat from the back. Selina rolled her eyes.

Yet—she knew that voice.

Selina halted.

The room was silent as a tomb.

Her mask identified the speaker, though she didn’t need the intel. An aging, overweight Italian man seated at a table near the dartboard.

Carmine Falcone.

Precisely who she’d come to see.

He still looked the same, still wore his too-tight tailored suits, still had that slicked-back hair and sneer permanently on his pale face. The burst capillaries all over his hawkish nose. She wondered if the Leopards still answered to him. If Mika had broken free yet.

Selina stalked toward him. Ivy murmured, “You’ve done it now, asshole.”

To his credit, Falcone didn’t flinch.

He only smirked at her and took a swig from his beer. No one had ever made him tremble. No one had ever defied him.

There was a first time for everything, Selina supposed.

She thumbed free her bullwhip and let it sing.

One crack had Falcone’s beer shattered in his hand.

The second had the whip wrapped around his neck, and him hauled over the table, thrashing like a lassoed pig.

Four of his men leapt to their feet from nearby tables, guns out.

Only to find Ivy and Harley with their own personal arsenals already aimed at them, the Joker’s henchmen flanking the women, eager for the fight.

In Ivy’s hand, a blood-red flower glowed in the golden lights of the bar.

I made a new model after the bank heist, Ivy had said when she showed Selina earlier. Flowers that were capable of taking out many men, not just the one closest.

But Ivy hadn’t stopped there. Around her other hand: that vine. Its tip now equipped with slashing thorns.

The man closest to Ivy was cringing at the swirling plant around her wrist. The crony before Harley had blanched at the small metal ball in her hand, painted like a child’s toy.

Selina tightened her grip on the bullwhip as she stalked closer, Falcone trying and failing to free it from around his bulging neck.

Selina swiped her claws down his back, opening up his suit and the checkered shirt beneath. A hairy, sweaty slab of flesh greeted her. “The East End is mine,” she said quietly.

It always had been.

And despite the whip around his neck, Falcone screamed as she ran one claw down the column of his spine, skin splitting, blood gushing.