Catwoman: Soulstealer

Catwoman: Soulstealer is a young adult novel reimagining iconic DC Comics characters.

In Gotham City's impoverished East End, seventeen-year-old Selina Kyle fights in underground arenas run by mob boss Carmine Falcone. A member of the Leopards, an all-female street gang led by their Alpha, Mika, Selina has gone undefeated in twenty-seven bouts, using a bullwhip and acrobatics honed through childhood gymnastics training. She fights to support her thirteen-year-old sister, Maggie, who has severe cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that causes dangerous mucus buildup in the lungs. Their mother abandoned them years ago due to a substance addiction. A doctor's grim prognosis confirms that Maggie's lungs are failing and a transplant is unlikely. One Friday night, Maggie silently mouths the words to a Carousel song about a father vowing to provide for his child by any means, her failing lungs unable to produce sound. The understanding in Maggie's eyes, recognizing that Selina's bruises mirror the song's promises, sends Selina into a private breakdown.

Police arrive to place the sisters in separate foster homes after their mother's arrest. When an officer roughly grabs Maggie, Selina attacks both cops and is subdued with a Taser. She wakes handcuffed in a precinct room, where Talia al Ghūl, a leader of the League of Assassins, offers a deal: Selina will attend Talia's training school in the Dolomite Mountains of Italy, and in exchange, Talia will erase Selina's criminal record and place Maggie with safe adoptive parents. Selina agrees and boards Talia's private jet at dawn without saying goodbye.

Two years later, Selina returns to Gotham completely transformed. Now nineteen, she operates under a fabricated identity as Holly Vanderhees, a billionaire socialite. The persona was built using money stolen from Nyssa al Ghūl, Talia's half sister and a brutal instructor at the League of Assassins, the secretive global criminal organization where Selina trained. At the League's compound, Selina endured ruthless conditioning, including her first assassination: killing a wealthy predator in Venice, an act that left her feeling a fundamental part of herself destroyed. She also witnessed Nyssa shove Anaya, Selina's closest ally among the trainees, off a cliff to her death without explanation.

Selina leases a penthouse across the hall from Luke Fox, son of Lucius Fox, the CEO of Wayne Industries. Luke is a former Marine who returned from combat a year ago with PTSD, triggered by an IED explosion that killed friends. At the suggestion of his father and Bruce Wayne, the billionaire owner of Wayne Industries, Luke secretly operates as Batwing, a vigilante in a high-tech armored suit with retractable gliding wings. He patrols Gotham while Batman, the city's primary vigilante, has been absent for weeks.

Selina launches a crime spree as Catwoman, wearing a modified black suit with cat-ear-shaped helmet receptors, oversized lenses, and steel claws. She steals a priceless Egyptian cat statue and destroys the Bat-Signal, the rooftop spotlight used to summon Batman, atop the Gotham City Police Department (GCPD) precinct. At the Gotham Museum Gala, she encounters Poison Ivy, a college-age botany prodigy turned human-plant hybrid who can emit toxins and control living vines. Together they steal a ten-million-dollar painting from Luke's collection. When Batwing confronts Catwoman on a rooftop, she outfights him and leaks footage of his defeat to the press, declaring herself a new power in Gotham's underworld.

Selina recruits Ivy and Harley Quinn, the Joker's unpredictable ex-girlfriend, into a criminal trio. Harley saves Selina's life by killing a League assassin with a thrown ax. Selina promises Harley she will free the Joker from Arkham Asylum, the maximum-security facility for Gotham's most dangerous criminals, though she privately has no intention of following through. The trio's escalating heists make them famous, and criminals begin pledging allegiance to Catwoman as the Queen of the Underworld.

Meanwhile, Selina cultivates a parallel relationship with Luke as Holly Vanderhees. They bond over pizza and competitive rounds of Jeopardy!, and Luke begins to see past Holly's socialite facade. After Luke has a PTSD episode, Holly comforts him and shares her own childhood experiences of abuse. As Catwoman, she warns Batwing that the League is sending forces to Gotham. After he is badly wounded, she stitches his wound in a dark room. They remove their helmets and kiss, but Selina sedates him with a hidden needle and disappears, knowing she cannot afford the connection.

Selina's true plan gradually surfaces. She stole the League's most valuable secret: a formula for creating a self-regenerating Lazarus Pit, a legendary pool with the power to heal the dying and even reverse death. When Selina begged Nyssa to use the League's existing Pit to save Maggie, Nyssa refused, dismissing Maggie's illness as natural selection. Selina stole the formula, deleted all copies from the League's files, and purchased an abandoned factory atop a ley line, a naturally occurring pathway of energy beneath the earth on which Lazarus Pits depend. She secretly built a Pit using stolen chemicals, intending to cure Maggie.

Selina allows herself to be captured by police, who take her to Arkham Asylum. The district attorney publicly removes her helmet before assembled media, revealing Holly Vanderhees's face. Luke, watching the broadcast, breaks into her apartment and traces her real identity through GCPD records, connecting her criminal enterprise to her mission to save Maggie. When Nyssa's assassins blow open Arkham's walls to reclaim the formula, Selina brokers a deal: The Joker's army of inmates fights the League in exchange for the formula. She tips off Commissioner Gordon, the GCPD's leader, to recapture the Joker, and calls Mika and the Leopards to guard the hospital. Selina races to retrieve Maggie, now skeletal and unconscious.

Harley, enraged at being manipulated, intercepts Selina and throws a knife that pierces her shoulder. Ivy steps between them, using her toxins to put Harley to sleep. Bleeding heavily, Selina drives to the factory, where Luke waits. Seeing both Selina and Maggie dying, he takes Maggie from Selina's arms and carries the girl to the Pit, then locks himself outside to fight three elite League assassins.

Selina activates the Pit and lowers Maggie into its dark liquid. The Pit heals Maggie completely, but Selina collapses from blood loss and dies. Luke, aided by Ivy's arrival, fights past the assassins and rushes inside to find Maggie sobbing over her sister's body. Ivy operates the machines to attempt revival with the Pit's depleted remnants while Maggie performs CPR. When Maggie slams her hand onto Selina's heart, Selina arcs off the floor and gasps back to life.

Selina and Luke drive Maggie to her adoptive fathers, Hiroki and Peter, who embrace their healed daughter. Selina watches from the shadows, unwilling to draw attention to Maggie's connection to her criminal past. She confirms that the Holly Vanderhees identity will vanish and that she has destroyed the Lazarus Pit formula permanently. Luke proposes a partnership: Catwoman will wield influence over Gotham's underworld while he continues as Batwing, and together they will reform the city. Selina reveals she donated the stolen money to Maggie's care and the children's hospital. They agree to both a working and personal relationship.

Selina meets Ivy at a riverside café, her hair restored to its natural dark color, and tells Ivy everything. Ivy forgives her, affirming their friendship was real. Harley has gone willingly to receive therapy. Selina gives Ivy keys to a new underground hideout with lab space and three bedrooms, the third held for Harley. Selina adopts a small gray alley cat she names Jane. For the first time, she feels her life is truly her own.