Asprin, Robert Lynn – Catwoman – Tiger Hunt (With Lynn Abbey)

Her vision blurred as sweat trickled across her face. She let her eyes close, then opened them with a shudder. She lost her balance. She tucked and rolled into a cross-legged sitting position with her back curled. With a defeated sigh, Selina relaxed. Her forehead rested against her ankles. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing. Her mind’s eye was filled with tigers, lions, cheetahs, panthers, and leopard; skulls and bones; and glowing, reproachful eyes.

What are you going to do about us? they asked in overlapping chorus.

Selina made a fist and pounded weakly on the floor beside her.

“I’ll kill him. I swear I’ll kill him.”

What are you going to do about us?

She knew how to kill Eddie Lobb: stake out his home. His kind—the kind that collected relics and hid them behind layers of locks—always came back to restore itself amid forbidden treasure. All she had to do was watch and wait. She could feel her claws sink into his neck; feel the flesh separate as she pulled upward, outward; see the look in his eyes, just before he died, when he realized that a cat had come to claim him.

Then what? Did she leave Eddie Lobb in his blood, surrounded by his obscene collection, for the Gotham City Police to find? Did killing Eddie Lobb end anything but Eddie Lobb? What about Rose, what about the collection?

One of those questions was pathetically easy to answer. With regard to Rose D’Onofreo, Selina Kyle couldn’t have cared less. Rose was an accident, an innocent, insignificant and no longer important. If the nuns could salvage her mind, so much the better; if not, well, that was okay too. What Eddie Lobb had done to Rose was a consequence of his corruption. If it hadn’t been Rose, it would have been someone else—it would become someone else if Selina and Catwoman didn’t stop Eddie Lobb.