The Blood Moon Clowder and the Ephemeral Fence Between Worlds
In Blood Moon Clowder Chapter 2, Dracine, the brown bat navigates a world of uneasy alliances between cats and bats as she begins her search for the missing clowder members.
Dracine efficiently captured mosquito after mosquito on the wing. Hearing the faint fluttering of another bat, she turned and saw her sister fly into the light.
The bats looped around each other two, three, four times. “The cats are all on alert,” Lunaria said.
“I wondered,” Dracina said.
Lunaria flew in close, “In the City I overheard the Overlord telling the Chief not to raise alarm and upset them, but he’s too aloof to see what’s in front of him. They already know.”
Dracine circled the lamp, capturing several more bugs before replying. “The Overlord misses a lot.” she muttered. “Thinks he’s the only one holding things together.”
Lunaria’s eyes flicked to hers. “Yeah, well, he’s not. It’s the Chief we have to worry about.” The sisters often spied on the cats to stay ahead of their feline plans.
Dracine said nothing. They both knew the truth of it. The Overlord might have title and status, but the Chief was the real force behind the clowder in the City of the Dead. His commands carried weight. His presence alone had kept the cats in check for so long, but he had no reason to stop them from eating bat delicacies whenever they wanted to.
“Greggie thinks the cats can’t handle a little truth,” Lunaria continued, bitterness threading her words. “It’s he that can’t handle it. The vanished ones… the clowder’s smarter than he gives them credit for.”
Dracine’s ears twitched. “The Chief knows. He’s not the type to play games, which is why I had to make a deal with him.”
Lunaria circled her sister in a frantic flutter of wings.
“You did what?”
“I struck a deal with the cats.”
Silence hung between them, the faint hum of the streetlamp the only sound. Dracine could feel the heat rising in her sister’s small body.
“What deal did you make?”
“I said I’ll help him find the missing cats,” Dracine said quietly, “in exchange for a year’s reprieve. He agreed the bats would be left alone for a whole year.”
Lunaria stared, eyes wide in disbelief. “You… you made a deal with him? The Chief? We cannot trust him!”
“Do you think I want to be part of this any more than you do? I know what the Chief’s capable of. But this is a chance the bats will be safe for a year.”
Lunaria shook her head, incredulous. “I never thought you’d ever fly this low…” She fluttered off, then circled back, pushing her face right into Dracine’s, and flapping her wings wildly. “He’s not to be trusted.”
“I know that,” Dracine hissed, “but what choice did I have? It’s either this or… worse. More of the same bats for dinner. Our numbers are dwindling too quickly. We need to slow down the decimation.”
Lunaria flitted to the top of a tree just beyond the street light. Dracine followed. The sister bats hung upside down in uneasy silence, the faint rustle of leaves barely audible against their thundering thoughts. Lunaria took a breath, visibly trying to compose herself. “The Overlord might be blind, but the Chief? He’s watching everything.”
“I’ll be watching too,” Dracine said, eyes darkening. “And when the time comes, I’ll be ready.” She stretched her wings and swung her body a few times before lifting off into the darkening sky.
Her belly now full, Dracine spread her wings, leaving her sister’s fury behind. She didn’t need to hear Lunaria’s words to know why she was angry. The deal she’d struck with the Chief left a bitter taste, one that wouldn’t fade easily. But it had been necessary. She couldn’t see another way, and Lunaria certainly hadn’t offered one.
As the cool night air rushed past her, Dracine flew back toward her home roost. The Chief should have left the house beneath whose eaves she had long found refuge by now, leaving its familiar lines a comforting silhouette against the deepening twilight. It was a precarious thing, this sense of security, given the woman who lived there.
The woman was always interfering with the cats—stirring up trouble, watching them, upsetting their routines. Dracine had seen it countless times. The things she did sometimes helped the bats because the cats would be preoccupied for days. But the woman never meddled with the bats. Not once. That made it relatively safe to nestle beneath her eaves, hidden away from the madness below, but in a place where she could surveille the humans.
Dracine angled her wings, lowering herself toward the shadowy roofline. She couldn’t help but think of the irony: here she was, making deals with cats, while finding safety above the very home of a woman who seemed determined to meddle with their world. Still, as long as the woman left the bats alone, the house provided a safe harbor.
For now.
Dracine heard movement inside the house, a soft shuffling that drew her attention. She gained foothold under the eaves, her sharp eyes fixed on the window below. The familiar white cat leapt onto the windowsill, its fur nearly glowing in the dim light. That one rarely ventured outside. She had been trapped inside for years, caged by the human’s will. Dracine had never seen her perform mating rituals or bear young. She was but a shadow of a threat to the bats, as long as the human kept her indoors. On the rare occasions she slipped outside, the bats kept their distance.
As Dracine watched, the woman appeared, her movement drawing Dracine’s eyes away from the cat. She dragged two large cages out into the alley, her hair almost the color of the blood moon, its curls touched by the fading remnants of yellow sunlight, turning the strands a fiery copper. Her loose dress flowed like water as she moved, and her skin was marked with strange, permanent symbols in the shape of paw prints—an enigma Dracine didn’t understand. Why wear a symbol of the very animals she set out to torment?
The woman pushed the two cages against the wall near the alley and, with quick motions, popped one open. A deep, guttural yowl emminated from within. She opened the second cage and retreated.
Dracine’s muscles tensed. She expected Patch and Blanca to dart out of the cages, making easy work of her dastardly agreement. But they didn’t. Instead, two sleek black figures emerged, eyes glinting like gold coins in the low light. Black cats—foreign to the city, more at home across the Neighborhood. These were not the pale hunters from the City of the Dead; their fur would have been too visible against the white tombs. No, these were from the Neighborhood. They rarely came this far east.
Explorers, perhaps? Or emissaries, sent to speak with the Overlord?
Dracine’s eyes narrowed. The Overlord held sway over both the white cats of the City and the black cats of the Neighborhood, his authority unquestioned by either clowder. But seeing these two black cats captured so close to his domain unsettled her. Disruption in one community rippled through the others, unsettling the delicate balance. The animal factions were like symbiotic enemies, locked in a mutual dependence despite their underlying rivalries.
Whatever they had been up to, they hadn’t made it far. And now they were part of the human’s games.
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Chapter 2