Catwoman: Soulstealer (DC Icons #3)(92)

Luke surveyed the injuries on each. Taking out one assassin would mean being exposed to the other, but maybe if there was just one for Selina to face—

He sucked in a breath, legs bending, fighting past the pain as he prepared to lunge.

Something hissing and metal thumped and slid down the hallway behind the assassins.

Spewing smoke.

Instantly, the hall was full of it. The assassins whirled, daggers flying.

Onyx got a lungful and went down, crumpling to the cracked, blood-streaked tiles.

Rictus stayed up. He must have had some sort of toxin immunity as part of his training—that even Onyx had not received.

Rictus whirled, swords angled upright, as Poison Ivy emerged from the smoke. One of Luke’s fallen batarangs in her hands.

The assassin glanced between them. Ivy didn’t take her gaze off Rictus, her bloodied face pale as she said to Luke, “Help her.”

He didn’t object. Whirling toward the door behind him and throwing the lock, his body barking in agony with each movement, he got through the door. He locked it from within, glancing through the window in time to see Ivy beckon to the seething assassin. Rictus’s sword lifted in answer.

Luke scanned the room.

The machines were on. The platform was dripping dark liquid at the edge of the pool. And the girl now sitting up atop it, soaked…

She rubbed at her face, made a small sound at the thick liquid coating it, her hands. Her hospital gown and body.

Luke said nothing, barely breathing as he compared the healthy girl now sitting up with the wrecked, wasted body he’d seen moments before. She started, as if realizing it, too, a hand going to her chest.

Maggie Kyle sucked in a long, deep breath. Marveling. Glancing at the pool, the factory around her, her brown brows knotting as she twisted the other way, toward the machines—

Luke spotted Selina at the same moment Maggie did.

A limp, lifeless body by the third machine. Her emerald eyes staring up at the ceiling. Unseeing. Unblinking.

Maggie’s sob cleaved the room.

Cleaved Luke’s chest apart.

Feet slipping on the tiles, skin slick with that liquid, Maggie hurtled for her sister.

For Selina, lying on the floor.

Dead.





Maggie was sobbing as she shook Selina’s shoulders. As she stared into those lifeless eyes, the bloodless face.

Luke’s head was empty. Silent.

It hadn’t been this silent since that day in the desert. The memories pushed in, swarming, his chest seizing—

She’d known. That she was running on empty. That this pool had only enough resources for one.

And this woman, through every lie she’d fed him, every taunt and deception…Luke pushed back against the panic creeping over him, the flashes of desert sun and blood. Stay here.

He wasn’t sure if his silent order was to himself or Selina.

Maggie laid her head on Selina’s bloody chest, as if searching for any hint of a heartbeat. Her green eyes—the same as her sister’s—met Luke’s. No shock or surprise filled them upon seeing him, seeing Batwing. Just that panicked, despairing grief.

Do something. Luke pivoted, scanning the warehouse. Basic training had taught him a few medical tricks, ways to keep injured soldiers alive until they could get to a field hospital or the doctors could reach them.

If her heart had stopped, he could pull apart the wires on one of the machines, somehow get a safe-enough current going, and maybe—

The door blew open, and Luke whirled, hand going to his remaining batarang. But it was Ivy. Panting, bloody, but—alive. No sign of Rictus.

Her attention went right to Selina. Then she noticed Maggie, who lifted her head, still unfazed by the company she now kept.

But Luke watched the realization dawn on Ivy as she behld Maggie’s emerald eyes, her now-healthy limbs.

As she understood who Maggie was. What all of this had been for.

Ivy stalked forward as if in a daze. “A Lazarus Pit,” she whispered, scanning the machinery, the pool, and the few feet of liquid remaining at its bottom.

Ivy stopped at his side. Luke breathed, the only explanation he could muster against the panic crushing his chest, “Maggie was dying. If we can get the wires on the machines exposed, we could restart her heart—”

Maggie faced them. The machines and the pool. “Use it to save her.”

Luke studied the pool at the same time Ivy did. Ivy said, “There’s not enough liquid in there.”

“Try it,” Luke said roughly.

“Please,” Maggie begged.

The same word her sister had uttered. Her broken plea for mercy—to save the person Selina loved more than her life. Her very soul, it seemed.

Ivy glanced to the pool again, to the machines. With the lingering chemicals and toxins, the natural charge of the ley line…Ivy’s eyes were darting, as if calculating it, too.

“It’s a slim chance,” Ivy said, but already strode to the machines.

“Take it,” Luke said, Maggie backing away on her hands and knees as he scooped Selina’s lifeless body into his arms. He’d have tried it himself, but his mind was spinning, his body barking in pain, every movement an effort—

Picking her up, the blood on her…He’d done this before. That day. He’d carried a dead friend—

He breathed and breathed, working through the memories, the way his body clammed up against him. Ivy flicked a few switches, studying and assessing.