Chapter 14 — A Strange Cat

That bastard is going to pay for this.

I twisted my neck around to finish grooming my hind legs, dragging my rough tongue over my paw pads and the fur of my inner flank. A few lingering drops of his seminal fluid remained stuck there, sticky and warm against my skin. I cleaned every crevice with firm licks until all traces were gone. Then, I straightened my spine and stared out at the backyard bordering the forest.

It seems those two cats left after a while. They groomed each other’s fur, slowly intertwining their tails, and simply strolled away. The molly still showed some suspicion upon seeing me, her fur bristling with fear as she kept her eyes locked on mine. I stayed patient, flattening my ears against my head to avoid looking threatening, and remained completely still.

Deep down, though, I knew I couldn’t just let this pass. Taking the initiative, one of the first things I had to do was make sure they didn’t climb up here again. Maybe I could place foul-smelling herbs on the roof to ruin their trail, or leave a spoiled mouse near their borders.

I quickly dismissed both ideas. That would only make everything more dangerous. If that tom happened to consume any of it, I’d end up responsible for his death, and I don’t want to kill anyone. All I want is to be left alone. There’s a reason I distanced myself from everything related to the Clans…

I stayed silent for a moment. I felt the cool breeze caress the layers of my fur, prickling along my spine and carrying the scent of damp earth.

It’s been a long time since I last saw the Clan. Not that I have any intention of visiting them again anyway. The last time I was there, I didn’t even leave things fully settled. For a second, Firepaw’s image crossed my mind. A bitter prickle ran through my throat and down my spine, and I couldn’t help letting out a soft, dry growl. I shook my head from side to side, twitching my whiskers, and looked back up at the sky.

I need to accept it once and for all. While I’m convinced I have to find a way to deal with those two annoying cats, I can’t rely on anyone’s help this time. Normally, back in the Clan, I’d ask any warrior for assistance, but I suppose there are things I have to solve on my own. Though it’s not like I’m particularly fond of starting physical confrontations either.

My claws aren’t even that strong or sharp. From spending so much time around different types of herbs and flowers, my paws actually smell sweet, but I’ve never had formal battle training. I wish I had paid more attention to my denmates’ lessons when I was an apprentice…

As I turned my head, ground vibrations alerted me before I even heard the heavy footsteps of my Twoleg. He stood in the doorway holding something in his hand, so I scrambled up and trotted over slowly. He bent down and, with a smile, stroked my head between my ears with one of his massive front paws while setting the food dish on the grass right in front of me. Then he opened the door wide, inviting me inside as soon as I finished eating.

I twitched my head slightly, taking a step back.

“Sorry, but there’s something I have to take care of first,” I mewed, tilting my chin toward the roof.

My mews seemed to make him ponder for a moment. He peered out into the night, scratched his chin in confusion, and left the door ajar before heading deeper into the den.

I settled onto all four paws and began eating in silence. I felt the rich flavor restore vitality to my body, filling my belly and helping me regain my strength.

I felt somewhat overwhelmed trying to figure out what to do, but I think I could try something.

Those cats… maybe I can target their weaknesses.

Will this food my housefolk gives me work? I need to be careful with that. It doesn’t harm me, so I doubt it would harm them, but that black-and-white tom was super fat, so he probably wouldn’t care for this kind of commercial food anyway.

I lashed my tail from side to side. Stress took over, and my tail ended up striking the ground repeatedly with sharp thuds against the dirt.

“Hey, you’re making quite a bit of noise, aren’t you?”

I snapped my ears up, swiveling them toward the source of the sound, and turned to the right. I saw no one. I turned to the left, my pupils contracting in the gloom, but still nothing. Where had that nearby voice come from?

I slunk forward with cautious steps, pressing my belly to the dirt and letting my pads cushion the weight of each stride. The shadow of the wooden fence rose high, dividing my Twoleg’s den from the darkness outside. I paused at the base of the planks, stretched my neck, and opened my mouth slightly, letting the cold air draw over my palate to scent for any pheromones hidden in the breeze.

Nothing. Only damp soil and old wood. I dropped my shoulders with a heavy exhale, relaxing my back muscles. I figured the tension was playing tricks on me, a simple hallucination born of fear.

“Hey…”

The whisper tore through the silence right above my head.

Scratch.

A sharp snap cut through the gloom. Before I could react, a shadow descended in a dark blur, and a searing pain scorched the edge of my ear. The violence of the impact made me jerk my head by instinct; immediately, a trickle of warm blood began working its way through the fur on my cheek, dripping slowly down toward my muzzle.

I let out a guttural growl, baring my canines, and leaped backward. I dug my hind claws into the grass, fluffing up every hair along my spine to make myself look bigger.

Up there, silhouetted impeccably against the pale moonlight, a dark shape stood motionless atop the fence. He stared at my blood with chilling composure. He didn’t take an attack stance; he simply balance on all four paws with an almost elegant ease, watching me from above as if I were nothing more than cornered prey.

It was a cat.

“You bastard…! Why did you do that?!” I cried out, feeling my pulse hammering in my ears.

I didn’t know him at all. I had never seen him around these parts, but there was no hesitation on his parted lips, only a lukewarm, mocking smirk that chilled my stomach. The gloom hid his eyes from view, showing only the metallic glint of his presence.

“With that grumpy face of yours, I thought maybe you needed a reminder that you’re on someone else’s turf,” his voice came low, almost a hiss, as he swayed his body with the blind precision of a seasoned predator.

“Someone else’s turf…?” I whispered. The air suddenly grew heavy, suffocating, as my paw pads sank into the dirt with the bitter certainty that I was no longer alone.

The cat lashed his tail from side to side with sharp thuds. He raised one of his front paws, flexing his toes to unsheathe a sharp claw that glinted in the moonlight. I swallowed hard. The paw he held raised was stark white, standing out against the rest of his dark pelt.

He leaped down nimbly from the fence and began to prowl toward me, muffling his steps with practiced skill. His purple collar became clearly visible; the strap was embedded with sharp, broken fangs. The adornment made of dog teeth made him look truly terrifying.

It can’t be… Is he the guy everyone was talking about?

I swallowed hard once more and took a step back, feeling my thighs tremble slightly. I remembered the warnings whispered among the shadows of the trees. Why? Why was he right here, stepping on the grass of my garden? It’s him… isn’t it?

No. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want anything to do with fights or blood ever again.

“By StarClan, I just want to live in peace!” I yowled to the open air, letting out a desperate cry in front of the rogue.

The cat paused a moment before me, tilting his head coldly. My chest heaved rapidly. I began to pant, feeling my body weigh heavy with exhaustion and built-up tension, while the heat of the night made my fur stick to my back.

“Just stop it. You and the other cats around here… Understand that I just want some peace and quiet here for a while.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied, taking another step forward and sniffing the air with disdain, “but I know for a fact you’re not from around here.”

“What…?”

I raised my gaze to face him, and as I focused on his silhouette, I noticed a detail I had missed in my initial terror. That cat was even smaller than me. He had the slender build and small stature of an apprentice, exactly the same height as Firepaw. I froze in place, my tail held stiff over the grass.

Silence fell between us. He stared unblinkingly straight into my eyes. He seemed a bit thin, his ribs faintly showing beneath his skin, but his gaze held a terrifying intensity. He held my eyes firmly, crushing any attempt at resistance, yet I couldn’t help seeing him, purely because of the scale of his body, as just another apprentice.

He stepped a couple of inches closer, stretching his neck out. His scent receptors worked fast, analyzing every molecule trapped in my fur.

“You smell like the forest,” he said in a raspy voice. “And what’s worse… you smell a bit like him.”

I flicked my ears up instantly, swiveling them forward.

“What…?”

As I moved my head, I felt a throbbing pulse in my injured ear. I wiped my front paw down the side of my face to check, noticing the cut was deep; the wound was still bleeding heavily, staining my whiskers. I stretched my neck and tried to duck down to lick it clean, but the cat sliced through the grass between us with a swift, sharp swipe that left three deep gouges in the dirt.

The air crackled with the speed of his strike.

By StarClan, those claws were unreal!

They weren’t ordinary claws; they were reinforced with fragments of dog claws fitted over his own. They could rip anyone’s throat out with a single blow.

I froze, holding my breath. I felt the sheer weight of the situation threatening to crush me against the ground.

“You see… I didn’t come here to kill you,” he continued, lowering his paw and resting his full weight back on all four limbs.

I remained silent. I pressed my tail tightly against my hind legs and simply nodded in silence. The cat continued staring straight at me, tilting his sleek chin up slightly as if gauging my level of submission.

“You really look a bit confused, but let me clear everything up for you.” The cat drew himself up, stretching his front legs to tense his back muscles, and looked at me with absolute coldness. “I am Scourge, leader of BloodClan. You’re a medicine cat, right?”

The small feline maintained his piercing gaze on my face. I lashed my tail from side to side, brushing the blades of grass in a telltale sign of nervousness.

“…No…”

“Come on, speak up already!” he hissed, baring just the tips of his canines.

“…I’m not anymore,” I murmured, lowering my head to avoid his gaze. “I used to be… but I… I gave it up.”

“Well, I don’t care what you decided, that doesn’t matter at all! What does matter is that you’re coming with me now.” The tom shot me an annoyed look, wrinkling his nose, and pointed the tip of his tail toward the wooden fence, gesturing for me to leap over it. “You’re coming with me right now. You’re good at healing with herbs and stuff, right? I need someone who knows how to treat wounds.”

Instinctively, I pulled my body back, digging my hind claws into the ground to anchor myself.

“I don’t know what you’re looking for, but I’m not leaving this place. I’m taking care of my Twoleg’s home, and there are a couple of annoying cats who usually come trespass here.”

“Annoying cats?” The black tom stopped his advance and looked up.

The roof of my Twoleg’s den was completely clear under the night light. Scourge raised his nose, parted his mouth slightly to activate the vomeronasal organ in his palate, and sniffed the air intensely for a long moment. I tilted my head, watching him concentrate on the wind currents, until he finally let out an annoyed snort through his nostrils and sighed.

“Well, it doesn’t smell like much up there, except for the scent of a molly who lives not far from here.”

“You can smell that from here?” I asked in astonishment, taking a small step forward as the vibrations of the wind brought barely a trace of the distant forest.

“I don’t know why you don’t notice it. I wish I were wrong… but maybe your nose has gone completely to ruin from turning into a kittypet. If so, maybe you’re useless to me after all.”

The tom extended one of his front paws, flexing his pads to reveal his bare, sharp claws. Fear shot down my spine. I quickly reared up on my hind legs, balancing awkwardly to fluff up my fur and try to look bigger than I was, a pure survival reflex. However, that defiant gesture only seemed to infuriate him further.

He lunged at me with the agility of a predator, slashing a paw through the air. I dropped onto my side and rolled across the dirt, barely dodging him. I felt the whistle of his claws passing a fraction of an inch from my whiskers. The blades of grass he sliced flew up around us, floating for a second in the night breeze as the dust settled between us.

“No…! My sense of smell is perfectly fine, I promise you,” I mewed hurriedly, scrambling back onto all four paws and taking a step back with my tail tucked between my legs. “It’s just that… I really don’t want to keep practicing as a medicine cat anymore. What do you want from me? Help with something?… Look, I really don’t…”

Scourge stared at me in silence, locking his narrowed pupils onto my face. Suddenly, he swiveled his ears to one side, twitching his whiskers as he caught a vibration, and shifted his focus to the roof for a second. Then, raising a hind leg with astonishing indifference, he scratched behind his ear with quick thumps before locking his cold gaze back on me.

“There’s a cat gravely injured in my clan,” he blurted out bluntly, lowering his paws to the ground. “Either you heal him or I kill you right here.”

“You don’t have to be so drastic…!” I squeaked, flattening my ears against my head and holding back a tremble in my front legs.

“Tch. Blast it… Curse it. Are you the only medicine cat wandering around this part of the forest?”

“I… I don’t know for sure. I suppose so,” I admitted in a muted voice, feeling my mouth go dry.

Scourge growled from the back of his throat and struck the ground hard with his tail, cracking the appendage against the hard dirt. I squeezed my eyes shut, cowering in expectation of the final blow, but the attack didn’t come. Instead, I heard the harsh rasp of his voice:

“If I bring you my companion… will you heal him? He’s in too bad a shape to just let him die.”

I raised my eyes slowly. His green eyes showed deep annoyance, but beneath the hostility lay a rather strange, restrained tension. He was enraged, impatient. He extended his front claws and stared at them for a moment, checking their sharpness.

“My second-in-command, Bone, is severely wounded. I need you to tend to him and heal him right now. I can order him brought to this garden,” he said, taking a firm step toward me and closing the distance until I could feel the heat of his breath. “In exchange, I’ll leave your Twoleg’s house alone and grant you the protection of BloodClan. No one will bother you. Just heal that stupid cat.”

I swallowed hard. I felt a knot in my stomach and let out a heavy sigh that vibrated through my whiskers. Even with my chest tight with terror, I dared to ask:

“What’s wrong with him…? What kind of wound is it?”

I really didn’t want to touch herbs again or get involved in any clan’s conflicts, but I knew full well that if I refused to cooperate, my life would end right there on the grass.

Scourge glared at me with burning fury, raising a paw to point directly at my face. Tiny droplets of my own blood, the blood he had drawn from my ear moments before, still stained the edges of his claws. The fur on his neck bristled, and baring his fangs in a low hiss, he confessed:

“I… I think I killed him.”