If League assassins were converging on Gotham City, he was perhaps the only other person who might stand a chance against them. Keep them occupied until she’d finished her mission.
She knew precisely what they were after—why they thought they could come to claim what was hers.
Nyssa and Talia often set their assassins against each other, gave them the same, competing missions. To keep them on their toes. To see who might survive. This was no different.
Selina wondered who Shrike had pissed off to warrant being dispatched here. If Talia and Nyssa had bet on who would walk away from their fight. They often did.
But Batwing’s PTSD was interesting. Terrible for him, but an interesting piece of the puzzle.
Taking on Gotham City’s underworld would no doubt inflict some serious internal scars, but to have his reaction be so debilitating…
Whatever he’d witnessed, it must have been…Selina tried not to imagine it. Even if he was her opponent.
Harley had no clue—Selina was certain—that her little pyrotechnics would trigger that reaction in him.
No, the explosion had been a giant middle finger to Selina. She’d probably tracked Selina here, seen the cops, and blown up the car as a warning to Selina not to double-cross her and Ivy. A little indication of what Harley was capable of if provoked.
A loose cannon. But one Selina would manage. Somehow.
Yet seeing Batwing on the ground like that, shaking…For a moment, she hadn’t been on that footbridge. For a moment, she’d been in a marble-and-gold bathroom, hurling her guts up, a waltz trickling up through the shining floor below. Because what she’d done minutes earlier…
“It is a simple movement,” Talia had purred in her ear, resting her head on Selina’s shoulder as they peered at the aging, overweight man paralyzed on the plush bed.
His eyes, however, were wide with terror as he watched the young woman he’d led up here, to his bedroom, while his masquerade party went on below.
“You know what he likes to do,” Talia said, her ice-cold hand wrapping around Selina’s wrist. The dagger held there. “Make him pay for it.”
Selina had given him a choice. At least, in her head she had. A secret, silent choice: to be a better man than his file suggested and not invite her up here. To avoid this moment, to let her find some way to get out of it, to spare his life and convince Talia that it was too risky to kill him. She’d piled up a list of plausible excuses, had been prepared to sneak into a bathroom and trigger the sprinklers, but then he’d invited her here.
And when he’d shut the bedroom door, when she’d pretended to study the art on the walls and had used the mounted antique mirror to watch him dump the contents of a tiny vial into the glass of champagne before he handed it to her, he’d chosen his fate.
A kiss—a kiss that had nearly made her gag—had transferred her own drug to the man’s lips. Into his system when he’d licked his mouth afterward. By the time it had entered his bloodstream, he’d been on the bed, unable to move.
Talia had slipped in a moment later, her ivory mask concealing her face. Selina’s own half-mask remained in place, black as night.
A level below, Venice’s wealthiest glittered and danced, the Carnevale revelry soaring toward its peak. This masquerade ball was an annual tradition. Hosted here, by this man.
She’d read his file on the drive down here from the mountains and as she dressed tonight, preparing her body the way Talia had shown her, adopting the speech and mannerisms. Gone was the clawing backstreet girl. Gone was the sullen, stone-faced fighter.
Talia moved Selina’s wrist upward, holding the blade for them both. Dim light danced on the steel. No guns—not for this first mission.
This rite.
The first kill must always be a blade. Nyssa had told her before she left. So she could feel it when she ended someone’s life. Guns were too impersonal, too distant. With a knife…she had to mean it. Had to be close.
“You have practiced,” Talia whispered in her ear, pantomiming the movement with Selina. “Now show me what you learned.”
The man’s private guards would not interfere. They had been trained to ignore any shouts of pain from this room. To stay away.
She knew Talia had picked this target specifically for that. For the victims who Selina had seen, one photo after another. A corrupted lesion on society, Talia had said. One that had to be