Catwoman: Soulstealer (DC Icons #3)(85)

The reason behind the final, damning crime…

Luke’s stomach dropped as he looked back at the hospital, the Leopards who had answered their former member’s desperate plea. To guard not just those who could not defend themselves, but also to protect…

To protect…

Luke took Gordon’s laptop with him and launched skyward.



* * *



—

Selina ran for the hospital.

Past the frantic, rioting inmates, past the cops who weren’t dumb enough to stop her, past the panicking people of the city, Selina ran all the way from Arkham, her breath a sharp blade in her chest.

Mika and Ani were already there. Waiting at the doors.

They said nothing as they looked her over—the battle-suit and blond hair.

A new scar marred Ani’s face, but they both seemed the same. They seemed the same, while Selina…She was a stranger in this body, these clothes. A stranger to herself.

Mika inclined her head, stepping aside from the glass doors.

Her old Alpha had picked up on the second ring. Had not asked any questions when Selina explained. When Selina had begged. Called in a favor as their undefeated fighter, who had never refused an order, who had done everything Mika had ever asked.

And so Mika had answered. Brought every Leopard she could.

Selina gave her former Alpha a nod of thanks, and one to Ani, too, before she stalked through the glass doors of the hospital and broke into a flat-out sprint.





It had been two years since she’d last seen Maggie.

The young woman on the hospital bed before her was a husk. A shell of what her sister had been.

Machines hummed and chirped softly, the room dim and quiet. In the two chairs against the wall slept a pair of fortysomething men. Maggie’s adoptive parents.

Camped here, with their daughter.

In her final days. Her final hours.

Maggie’s skin stretched too tight over her delicate bones. Her beautiful curly hair lay limp and thin.

Selina’s hand drifted to her chest, as if it could contain the cracking she now felt within. The feeling of the floor sliding out from beneath her as she stared and stared at her sister.

The cystic fibrosis had wrecked her.

The tubes and machines flanked her bedside, the IVs and monitors standing like sentinels around her unconscious sister. So much technology. None of it could keep her alive.

Incurable.

And the two men sleeping at their daughter’s bedside…They had known when they adopted Maggie that she was sick. Would not have long. That it would be expensive and hard and sad.

They’d welcomed her into their home anyway.

For two years, they’d fought for her sister. Every day. With every dollar they had.

And when the first of the anonymous donations came in a month ago, and all of Maggie’s medical bills were paid off…they had cried.

Selina knew, because she’d been in the shadows outside their beautiful home in the suburbs the night they opened the letter in their kitchen.

But all the money in the world, all that stolen cash and jewels and art, hadn’t been enough to stop the disease from ravaging her sister’s lungs and stealing away her life. Stealing away that beautiful, lovely soul.

She’d known that, long before coming back. Before she’d given them the money.

She’d been keeping tabs on Maggie with the League’s computers, hacking into Gotham City’s social workers’ reports on the status of her sister’s new home, accessing her medical records to check up on the doctor’s latest assessment and treatments.

It had been her secret rebellion, kept hidden from Nyssa and Talia’s watchful eyes. Outside contact was forbidden, as were any tethers to their past lives. But if they’d caught on to the backdoor hacking she’d used to hide any trace of her history on the computer, they’d never called her out. So she’d waited until the dead hours of the night, when even assassins were asleep, and fired up the computer in the compound’s subterranean workshop.

And then one night, six months ago, she’d sat down to do her regular check-in on Maggie.

She read the doctor’s latest report as if through a long tunnel.

Life expectancy: a few months at best.

It was the doctor’s note at the end—It is now about making Maggie as comfortable as possible—that broke her.

Selina had joined the League, their palace of assassins. She’d given everything, lost everything, to honor her bargain with Talia. Her life, her soul, in exchange for Maggie’s safety and happiness.

But it was not enough. And no matter how much blood she spilled for the League, it could not save her sister.

But something else could.

She’d remembered what the scientist had spoken of: the Lazarus Pit.

Not caring about the consequences, or what might be demanded as payment, Selina had gone right to Nyssa the next morning. Had explained that Maggie was dying.

Selina had spent a year and a half training to bring down empires. She had dug her own grave, recited her final rite, and arose from the dead. She had done everything Nyssa and Talia had asked her to do. And yet when she had asked Nyssa to use the Pit on her sister, to save Maggie, Nyssa had laughed.

This is modern-day natural selection at work. The Pit cannot be used for such selfish purposes. Or on someone with so little value to offer. Even once the Pit is fully operational, I would not use it for such weaknesses as familial bonds.