Catwoman: Soulstealer (DC Icons #3)(68)

Selina steered the car into the dark. “I made a sacrifice, and then I didn’t need to take care of it anymore.”



* * *



—

Ivy told Selina where to stop, pointing out an abandoned factory that loomed like an iceberg in the sea of blackness before them. A dusty service road led off the paved street to the warehouse, dirt crunching under the Range Rover’s wheels as they approached.

“Did you bring me here to murder me?” Selina asked as she put the car in park.

Ivy laughed. “If I’d wanted to do that, wouldn’t it have happened by now?” She threw open the door, stepping into the night, and Selina followed suit.

The night was brisk, the stars clearer above them. Calm and quiet and safe.

Ivy gulped down a breath of air. “I’d forgotten—what fresh air tastes like.”

“Me too,” Selina murmured. In the silence, they stared up at the glittering bowl of the sky.

Movement caught her eye, and Selina glanced to Ivy in time to see her tip her chin up, her face bathed in moonlight. All along the vines on her hands, peeking through her sheet of red hair, white blossoms began to bloom, as if opening up to the stars themselves. The petals nearly glowed, as if they were lit from within.

Ivy slid her gaze toward Selina, toward the mouth Selina knew was hanging open. “Not all the side effects of my transformation were awful or deadly.” More flowers bloomed in her hair, until a crown of them flowed over her brow.

“It’s beautiful,” Selina whispered.

Ivy smiled, wide and warm. “Thank you.”

She spoke with enough gratitude that Selina wondered when the last time was that someone had said such a thing.

Selina’s chest tightened at the thought. Shoving that tightness away, Selina cleared her throat and asked, “So this ley line, where is it? Under the factory? I thought it would be more obvious.”

Ivy nodded, those flowers furling up and slipping back into her hair. “People have been drawn to ley lines throughout history, without even knowing why or what they were. There’s no scientific reason for them, for how ancient people knew those lines were there. All we have to go on is that many of the world’s monuments are built atop them, Stonehenge being one of the most famous. You can feel the energy in some of the lines, in the stones on them.”

“I can’t feel anything.”

Ivy beckoned, striding toward the wood-and-steel warehouse amid the barren field. Selina marked every detail as they approached: the one-story building, the high-up windows that seemed mostly shattered, the sagging tin roof. The wooden slats that made up the siding had been cracked or ripped away in spots, the gravel drive leading to the building mostly overgrown with weeds and grass. No one had been here in a long, long while.

“It might fall down on us,” Ivy warned as they paused by the small antechamber that jutted out from the side of the building, the glass window in the steel door caked with grime, “so don’t go inside, but the line cuts through right about…here.” She pointed to a spot in the grass beneath her feet, moonlight shining on shards of glass scattered among it. “You feel it?”

Selina stood where Ivy indicated. Still nothing. “I think I’ll just have to take your word for it.” She pointed to the car. “No hill to try it on, it seems.”

“I know. I just wanted to get out of the city for a while.”

“I should have guessed as much.” Selina chewed on her lip. “So no one has ever harnessed the ley line’s power? Here or elsewhere?”

Ivy shook her head, red hair flowing like a silken river around her. “No. Why?”

Selina followed a straight path through the grass and debris, walking the ley line. “Have you ever heard of a Lazarus Pit?”

A beat of silence. Selina looked over her shoulder at Ivy as the woman asked, vines slithering around her wrists as if curious, too, “No, what is that?”

Selina went back to tracing inside the line with her steps. “There are only a few dozen in the world. They’re naturally occurring pools with regenerative powers. All atop ley lines.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“Because their owners don’t want you to.”

“And you were making fun of me for the hocus-pocus earlier?”

Selina shrugged. “Legend claims that a Lazarus Pit can keep old age and sickness at bay. Even bring you back from death.”

“Hence their owners protecting them. And the name.”

Selina nodded, pivoting on one foot—just as she’d done so many times on the balance beam at the Y—and traced the line back toward Ivy. “Once used, though, the Pit’s powers are drained forever. So it’s a onetime get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“How do you know about them, if they’re so secret?”

Selina paused her steps. “In the place where I was trained…” Ivy tensed at that, at the implication of that word. Trained. She’d know from that word alone what Selina was. That she’d answered to deadlier powers than Falcone or the Joker. “They had a Lazarus Pit in the catacombs. It was guarded day and night. I first heard about it from the other students, who claimed they heard instructors whispering about it.”

Certainly never from Nyssa or Talia.

Ivy crossed her arms. “I’m not surprised the rich and powerful want to keep such a natural wonder and gift to themselves.”