Chapter 1:  Vanished

The Warrior Chief leapt from the ground to the tomb with the cherub. From there, he looked around the City of the Dead, looking to see if anyone was watching. After scanning the city thoroughly, he leapt higher, up to the tomb with the flat roof. Each leap brought him closer to the summit of the City of the Dead. The white cat’s olive-green eyes narrowed in concentration as he pulled his muscular body upward, his paws silent against the ancient stones. At the peak, the Overlord waited, motionless, his golden eyes reflecting faintly in the dim light.  

The Chief hesitated for a moment, taking in the figure of his Overlord, his mirror image in nearly every way. The golden eyed cat’s broad, scarred face was fiercely calm, a mood of total awareness. Nothing escaped the Overlord’s notice. Scars across his right cheek, souvenirs of battles past. The heavy jowls that both cats wore around their faces were the marks of seasoned warriors. The Chief Warrior’s eyes were restless, flicking from shadow to shadow as the wind stirred the air around the tombstones below.  

“Patch and Blanca,” the warrior said in a low growl. “Vanished.” 

A humid breeze lifted the fur on Greg’s shoulders. His gaze remained fixed on the sprawling graveyard below, the city that belonged to both the dead and the living. The place their clowder lived. 
 
The two brothers called each other by their kitten names only in private. No others could get away with this. They were named by the grandchildren of a woman who used to own them and their mother many moons ago. The warrior chief was called Snowball by his brother. The Overlord was called Greg by his.

“How long?” Greg’s spoke so softly that Snowball couldn’t see his mouth move.  

“Three days.” Snowball paced beside Greg. “Maybe hunting, but too long.” 
 
Greg looked across the fence into the Neighborhood. The city of humans. When cats vanished, they were often to blame.

“The Blood Moon is rising.” Snowball dropped the comment then strode to the opposite side of the parapet. He gazed across the city and up at the blushing moon. It was huge, much larger than normal. It filled the eastern sky. 
 
“I’ll arrange a posse.”

Greg’s eyes, molten gold, finally cast upon Snowball. His tail was held closely around his lean body—it was noticeably shorter than it should have been, reminder of old battles, one of the many things that has vanished since his clowder formed so many moons ago.

After watching a raccoon scurry across the foot of the mausoleum they used as their headquarters, Greg said, “Three days. Not so long.”   

Snowball turned and walked slowly toward his brother. “Not long under a different moon. But the Blood Moon is rising. Better to start a search while we can.” 

Greg turned his gaze back across the neighborhood beside their city of tombstones. The soft hum of the electric lights was constant, but the stillness weighed on Snowball. The Blood Moon wasn’t just another full moon. It brought with it something different, something that made him wary.  

At long last Greg’s whiskers twitched. “Do what you need to,” he said. “Find them. But don’t alarm the clowder.”   

“You think they’re not alarmed already?” Without waiting for a response Snowball leapt down to the neighboring mausoleum, and scaled the cast iron fence beside it before landing with an audible “oof” on the ground. The Blood Moon would be here in the coming hours. He didn’t know how he knew it was coming, but he was seldom wrong. He felt it. When the moon was crimson, the shadows grew longer, deeper—more sinister. His mind raced ahead of his body, figuring out his next move as he ran.

The Blood Moon changed the way the creatures out at night saw everything. Colors that were normally muted became sharp, vivid, unsettling. Snowball couldn’t shake the sense of urgency creeping into his bones due to the vanished cats. He cast off his kitten name and became the Chief. The Chief organizer. The Chief Warrior. The Chief Protector of the clowder.

A vague plan was forming in Snowball’s mind, but he knew it was risky. His jaw clenched at the thought of relying on a bat. Bats were prey on a normal night. But the Blood Moon brought strange alliances. Perhaps he could strike a deal with the bat in the waxing crimson light.

“Dracine will see what we cannot from the sky,” Snowball said to himself, as if his brother was there to respond. Not that Greg would often break his silence.

For this to work, Dracine had to be willing to help. What could the Chief offer a bat that would force him to scout a pair of vanished cats?  

The Blood Moon wasn’t something anyone truly understood. It made creatures act strangely, made them see the world in ways they couldn’t comprehend. It sharpened their senses, made their fur stand on edge, their whiskers twitch at every sound. Snowball needed to know that Patch and Blanca were safe before the moon reached its peak. He needed to know where they were.

Dracine was just waking, hanging upside down beneath the eaves of of a blue shotgun house across the narrow alley from the City of the Dead. She’d been sleeping there since another cat vanished, back when the brothers’ sister came to live in this house. From here Dracine could keep an eye on the City and the Neighborhood.  

As Dracine’s eyes fluttered he saw the Chief approaching from the edge of the City. She was instantly wide awake.

“What do you want?” she said, stretching her wings after her long day’s sleep. “Do you hope to eat me, or is it something worse?”   
 
Snowball leaped onto the top of the cyclone fence and wavered for balance. It was an ancient metal fence that separated the Neighborhood yards from the alley that ran along the front of the cemetery they called the City. He turned his back to his adversary and muttered into the twilight. “We need your help.” 
 
“Why should I?”  
 
The Chief turned to face the tiny bat.

“You work with me and we don’t eat you tonight.” 
 
Dracine tightened her wings around herself to conceal the shiver running up her spine. She didn’t speak.
 
The Chief noticed. “Does that mean you appreciate my generous gesture of a reprieve before you’re prepared for dinner?” 
 
Dracine poised for flight. “A year.”  
 
“You’ve got to be kidding. You think I’ll agree not to taste your flesh for an entire year?” 
 
“For a full year you will harm no bats.”  
 
“NO BATS for a year?” The Chief scoffed. “We get hungry. And you’re delicious.” Snowball and Greg still reminisced about their first meal of bat as young kittens. Their mother brought it home. It would forever be their favorite food.
 
“Get lost.” The bat calculated the distance between hermself and the cat to ensure she could escape without being swiped by those claws. 
 
The ancient fence squealed as the Chief jumped from it to the ground. With a heavy gait he walked to the wall and sat below where Dracine hung. Eye to eye, the animals examined each other.

The Chief’s jaw chattered hungrily in spite of himself. He could probably find the missing cats without the bat’s help, but the bat could get an aerial view of the City and the Neighborhood and save precious time. No matter how high a cat jumped, it could not fly high enough to see what a bat could see. A bat can soar and stay aloft long enough to understand the scene below. The Warrior Chief needed that perspective to find the missing members of his clowder quickly. 
 
The white cat looked up at the small brown bat, wrapped like a burrito in her black wings. A bat is a delicacy, but they would have to eat mice this year.  
 
“Two cats are missing.”

“Good,” said Dracine. “Good news. Keep up the good work.”

“A year.”

“How can I trust you?”

“One year. No bats.”

At that moment a cloud began to roll silently over the pale pink face of the moon. Once it vanished it would be hard to tell how quickly the color was changing. Dracine knew she would have to take the risk. The potential of the offer was too good to refuse. A year in which his kind could recuperate and grow stronger.

“If one of your cats hunts any of my bats this year, you’ll pay.”

“Help me, or we feast tonight.”

The bat spread her wings and flew into the moon. The Chief watched as she shadowed the pink lunar orb and disappeared into the blackening night. He kept watch until he could no longer hear the rustling of her leathery wings.

Look for the next chapter.



 

Another novel by Kellie Snider