Catwoman: Soulstealer (DC Icons #3)(65)

Tigris showing up had been unexpected.

Oh, Nyssa and Talia must be mad. Furious. And with Shrike and Tigris now dead…

“Get up, you pathetic worm.” Tigris’s burning dark eyes were barely visible beneath her hood. “Do you think our enemies give us breaks to catch our breath?”

Always words like our and us were used here at the compound. Despite the brutality, the competition, there was an us vs. them mentality to the very way the instructors spoke; all designed to include. Indoctrinate.

We. Us. Ours.

Lying on the mats of the training center, barely able to breathe around the stitch in her side, Selina focused. Tried to calm her raging heart and get up.

“Too slow,” Tigris hissed, and launched herself upon Selina.

She had enough time to raise her arms, to bring up her knees. Enough time to roll up and out of Tigris’s path, but not enough to avoid the sweeping kick that knocked her down again. The blow to the throat that truly ripped the air out of her lungs, then the blow to her stomach that knocked her down for good, curling around herself.

“Pathetic.” Tigris had laughed at her then. Laughed and walked away.

Selina had hated her ever since. Hated her more when she’d seen some of the other acolytes not be able to walk away. Or breathe. Permanently.

Nyssa and Talia had never punished Tigris for it—for killing acolytes during training. Nyssa had only declared it natural selection. Talia had just stroked Tigris’s dark hair.

Selina had imagined ripping out Tigris’s throat more times than she could count.

Tonight she’d known that Tigris would savor killing her. Luckily, Tigris’s confidence had been her downfall. She hadn’t been prepared for Selina’s show of skill, for Selina to want to win, and it had made the assassin furious to realize she had to go on the defensive. To realize that Selina had been sneaking in extra training at the League, had been studying Tigris herself during every encounter.

Yet when Selina had slammed her into those steps, accidentally breaking her spine…

That dark, shredded part of Selina had savored it, too. That blow. The repayment. For all of them.

Selina did not mourn her. She’d uttered that prayer because…She didn’t know why. Perhaps out of some fool’s idea that if she herself had fallen, she’d want someone to do the same for her. To at least mark that she’d existed—that Selina Kyle had existed.

But Selina didn’t want to think on it. Think too long on the pieces inside her that were so blood-splattered.

“We should have ended him when we had the chance,” Harley spat. “Made it look like he and whoever that was killed each other.” A pause. “Who was that woman?”

“A crony of some boss,” Selina half lied. Tigris did answer to Nyssa and Talia.

Ivy called over her bike’s engine, “Definitely should have killed him, then.”

Selina didn’t answer. It had been hard enough to keep the two of them at bay, keep them from seizing their chance to bring down Batwing. They didn’t understand that if the League was closing in, they needed a hero. She needed him. To keep the League away for as long as possible.

Limited time. She was on limited time.

She knew how Nyssa and Talia hunted their own. She’d helped them do it in the past.

First the vanguard: Shrike.

Then the test of abilities: Tigris.

And the next step…

There was not much time left before the next step.

And she would need an army to face it.

Selina looked up at the stars barely visible with the glow from the distant city lights.

Armies required money. And a healthy dose of fear.



* * *



—

“Remind me why we’re sitting up on this rooftop in the cold?” Ivy’s breath curled from her mouth as she sat beside Selina and studied the alley below. Summer was finally yielding to autumn’s chill. A small mercy, to at last say farewell to the heavy heat.

“Because I need you to cover me while I have a little chat with some lowlifes in a few minutes.”

Ivy only yawned, rearranging her colorful assortment of shimmering flowers on the roof tiles before them. Her little vine friend was tucked into the warmth of her pocket. “Plants don’t like cold.”

“Well, you’re still technically a human, so it doesn’t apply.”

“Some days,” Ivy admitted, “I don’t feel like it.”

Ivy had no idea how much Selina agreed with that sentiment. But mentioning it opened the door to too many questions.

So Selina picked up the newspaper she’d brought with her, telling Ivy when she’d asked that it was for the wait.

She’d already done the crossword puzzle, Ivy leaning over frequently to interrupt or snatch Selina’s pen to fill in an answer.

Selina snapped the paper, flipping through the international headlines.

An inquiring meow sounded across the roof, and Ivy made a small sound of delight. Lowering the paper, Selina smiled at the little gray cat who padded over to them. “Stalker,” she told the cat as she brushed against Selina’s shins, wending through her legs.

Ivy leaned over, stroking the cat’s back. “Do you know that free-ranging domesticated cats are responsible for the death of billions of birds and mammals each year? Our little fur-baby here is a stone-cold hunter.”