Secret Lure of a Cat Demon

I stood outside her door for a while. I heard her abnormal breathing knowing I had upset her. I had to train the damn woman and who knew how long that would take, and what the out come would be. I hated the council for it and the fact that the woman doing the hearing was my mother so I knew she was up to something.

I walked off down the corridor towards her room. It didn’t take me long to get there following the secret passages. I knocked on her grand oak door and waited.

“Yes” she shouted. I walked in and shut the door behind me. “Ah, Zev” she seemed pleased to see me for once.

“What the hell mother?” I asked her. She didn’t say anything just moved to her dresser and sat doing her hair. “Mother, tell me what you are doing?” she looked at me through the mirror.

“I’m helping you” she said.

“Helping me? I don’t need helping, I’m fine” I snapped. She looked at with raised eye brows.

“You don’t have any compassion left, my son. You take your work too seriously” she said

“And you think a skitty little kitty is going to help me?” I asked her. She nodded “Well you are very wrong, we hate each other. Cats and wolves always have and so I don’t know why you put her in a platoon of wolves. She also isn’t going to help me find love, like I know you want me to because you and dad are not getting any younger and it will soon be my turn to take the thrown” I told her.

“Because I know you will keep her safe. You might be an emotionless ass hole, son, but you do care. You have proven that already.” she told me. I wanted to attack her and make her understand that this arrangement would never work out but she wouldn’t budge.

“Does father know?” I asked. She smirked at me.

“Why would I let him know my grand plan?” she asked me. I sighed. She wouldn’t. My mother as nice and strict as she was, she was sneaky. I walked out of the room and walked the corridors. I didn’t want to sleep, I wasn’t really in the mood. I wasn’t tired either.

I walked the court remembering how large it actually was. Various guard members walked around bowing when they saw me, even curtsying if they were part of the female side of the guard. Most of them would be here for a night or two to rest up and then would move on to keep an eye on things, my patrol were special, we were the elite and so we dealt with the elite such as Katsi.

I was going to make my way back to my room when a sound caught my attention. Chanting was not common unless there was fight and if I heard well enough they were shouting ‘fight’ repeatedly. I rolled my eyes and made my way towards the fight.

When I got there, there was a crowd. I was curious as to who was fighting but I couldn’t have my guard fighting amongst themselves, it would mean having to change the patrols and it was a very complicated process. I got to the back and people saw me, they bowed and moved out the way. I got to the front of the crowd and was surprised to see Katsi standing there poised and ready to go, again, by the looks of it.

Opposite her was another cat demon, Lilith, and she was my best fighter with in her platoon but we didn’t speak much, she respected me because she had to but other than that she hated me. Lilith looked just as ready to go as Katsi. The look in their eyes were pure anger. Stupid cats I thought. They were too territorial, and if they knew each other it was worse. I didn’t say anything. I chose this as my chance to see what would happen. I wanted to asses Katsi before we started her training in the morning, with any luck I would just had to teach her the trade of the guard and the history, nothing to do with fighting. She looked fine with holding her own.

“What are you really doing here Katsi?” Lilith asked.

“How is it any of your business?” Katsi retaliated. She bared her teeth, and Lilith took it as a challenge.

“I will find out, I have friends in high places” she said. Katsi raised her eye brows.

“You are probably the worst guard member around, you were always a crap fighter and stalker.” Katsi shot. I smiled. She knew how to push someone else’s buttons alright.

“You don’t know anything child, you were always blind to everything around you.” Katsi blinked at Lilith as though she was speaking gibberish.

“Child? Blind? Look who’s talking, you were the one to challenge me? You are stalling, either get on with it so I can find some food, or drop the challenge.” Katsi was treading on thin ice, Lilith never denied a challenge but she loved to power her self up before hand. Katsi was going to open her mouth to come out a remark but Lilith pounced. Everyone cheered but I just watched cautiously.

Lilith threw a good hard punch at Katsi that caught her chin as she tried to dodge it. Katsi was able to unwind her self from Lilith’s grasp and in the process kick Lilith in the side. I knew it winded her and she bent over breathing hard. Katsi then walked up to her pulled her by the hair and smiled.

“You should know by now that you will never beat me.” she then moved her leg to knee Lilith in the stomach but Lilith ripped out of Katsi’s grip faster than I thought possible.

“You wouldn’t know how much I have advanced since our last little encounter. Lilith pounced knocking Katsi to the ground, holding her to the stone floor punching her in the face but just as I was about to step in Katsi threw Lilith off her, making her land on her back, she coughed arching her back, Katsi got up wiping the blood from under nose.

She looked down at Katsi and placed her foot on her neck. Lilith looked fearful by now. This couldn’t have been the first time this has happened. Katsi put pressure on her food and smiled snidely.

“You will never learn. I will always win, I will always beat you. You can never win. It’s how the pride goes. Mother always told us I would win, and when you left, well, you lost the prides strength. Sorry sis” just as I thought Katsi was going to crush Lilith’s neck, she lifted her foot and walked off, past me smiling gleefully. She caught my eye and winked at me. I knew instantly that Katsi wouldn’t be hard to train and this was good.

I walked over to Lilith and tried helping her up but she pushed me off.

“Leave me alone” she whispered. She got up and stumbled away. I sighed and then I glared at everyone around me. They then knew to move on, they seemed astonished that I had let them fight it out but as it seemed to go further back than the guard I couldn’t stop it, pride problems were nothing to do with the guard unless it threatened the demon races.

Once everyone had gone I walked down the corridor and around the corner, I was astonished to find Katsi leaning against the wall.

“Why didn’t you stop us?” she asked me as I walked past. I didn’t stop and I didn’t answer her. She followed me though. “Answer me Zev” she said, catching my arm. I tore away and carried on walking.

“It has nothing to do with the guard, and so I can’t do anything. You and Lilith were in the same pride and so as it stemmed longer than here I can not step in, just watch in amusement and hope no one kills each other, or else I would have to step in.” I told her.

“Did you know that Lilith was here when you brought me in? Did you know we were in the same pride?” she asked me. I shook my head.

“Last I heard of Lilith, she was three days north of here. I also didn’t know you were in the same pride.” I said. She seemed to believed me as she shut up for all of a minute before she asked me another question.

“Where are we going?” I stopped and studied her face. Her eyes twinkled green with wide pupils. It showed she wasn’t angry. Her cheeks were tinged red where the blood tried to cope with the fighting she has done. Her lips were full and slightly parted. She was very pretty and quite a turn on but a criminal nonetheless.

“My dear, we are going to get some food.” I told her as sweetly as I could. It dawned on her that I knew she was hungry and that I actually did care. Well that is what she thought. I didn’t care for her exactly, it was the responsibility that I had to look after her.

We started walking again to the food hall in silence. That was alright with me. I didn’t want to get attached to anyone. I didn’t want her to ‘woo’ me and I was sure she hated me anyway.

We soon got there and she smiled. It was a nice smile. It was soulful and I could tell she was genuinely happy for the first time.

“Thank you” she said and rushed off to the queue, but instead of waiting she forgot about them and rushed to the fish. Typical cat I thought. Everyone looked at her and started cursing but when I walked past them all to find Katsi they shut up knowing that the thing that had just rushed past them was with me. No one defied me. If they did, the punishment was bad.

The problem with the guard and the court was that we were very medieval about the way we worked. Sure we could live and work in the modern world but our races within the demon world, we were quite primitive with the way we handled things.