“You… are not the boss… of me.” Lulu slowed, then stopped. She sat down in the middle of the path, breathing hard. She looked unable to move, but Huey learned differently when he tried to make a break for it. Her paw fell on him like Divine Judgment. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Away from you, crazy cat-lady! I won’t let you put yourself in danger.”
“Tough seeds, rodent,” Lulu countered. “We’re in this together.”
“Oh, please. Teaming up to put a kink in Señor Pantalones’ tail is one thing, but a cat protecting a hamster? That’s like a cop protecting a donut!”
“Huey, you’re no donut,” Lulu said solemnly. Then she frowned. “Did that sound as dumb as I think it did? Never mind. What I’m saying is, we’re not just cat and hamster any more, predator and prey; we’re partners. We share a gift. We can see and hear things that others can’t. The power’s the same, whether it touches a hamster or a cat.”
“Cue violins,” Huey said wryly. “As long as you’re not related to them.”
“Look, if you want to be snarky, fine, but all the snotty one-liners in the world won’t change what I know: Lady Bast gave me my powers for a reason, and I worship her best by using them rightly.”
“By throwing away your own life to save mine?” The hamster was not convinced. “Why would a cat goddess want you to take care of a rodent?”
“I believe that Lady Bast is a goddess first, a goddess of cats second. What kind of god or goddess places a limit on love?”
Huey looked up at Lulu in awe. “Is your faith that strong? I can hardly-”
Before the hamster could finish, the shrubbery to either side of the path erupted as seven lean, muscular tom cats shot out of the darkness. The foremost one knocked Lulu to the ground. She lost her hold on Huey in the tumble, but before the hamster could gather his wits and run, a second feral sprang forward and pinned him down. As Lulu squirmed impotently in her captor’s grasp, she heard the bushes rustle again. Though her head was pressed to the path, she was able to turn it just enough to see the large black and white fulfillment of her fears amble up to seat himself a whisker-length away from her nose.
“Poor kit,” he said sweetly. “I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this. You should have given me what I wanted, but at least you’ve ended by presenting me a revelation worthy of one of your own gut-dabblings. When you and this… snack-” he gave Huey a blood-chilling smile. “-sneaked into my lair and freed that stupid mouse, my first reaction was to ask why I’d tolerated your existence for so long. Then it came to me: I only need you because you are Catopolis’ Seer. But why are you Catopolis’ Seer? Because you said you were! You claimed Bast appeared to you in a dream, and two other cats swore they’d shared it. Only two.” His gaze drifted over the faces of his seven waiting minions. “I think I can swing that.”
“You can’t just proclaim yourself a Seer!” Lulu shouted. “You haven’t got the gift!”
“Sometimes, kit, the gift of prophecy lies in the Seekers, not the Seer. What a difference a title makes! Call yourself a Seer, and they all stand ready to believe you can see! Fill your prophecies with vague, ‘mystic’ words, and your Seekers blame themselves when their foretold futures don’t come to pass as predicted. Such a clever trick.”
“That’s not how I serve Catopolis, and you know it!” Lulu protested.
“But it is how I will do things when I take your place.” Señor Pantalones looked as though he’d fallen heir to a catnip factory.
“Our kin will find out you never had Lady Bast’s blessing,” Lulu said. “You won’t be able to fool them for long.”
“Long enough to remake Catopolis in my own image. As for Bast’s blessing, don’t make me laugh! How can a scrap of some ancient cat’s imagination bless anything? You put all your faith into a pretty fable, staked your life on a myth, and where did it get you? Where’s your so-called goddess now?” He smirked, then told the cat restraining her: “Let her up. I want her to have a clear view of this.”
As Lulu shakily got to her feet, Señor Pantalones made a terse gesture with one paw. The minion holding Huey grabbed the hamster by the back of the neck and dropped him in front of his master. “My first Reading,” Señor Pantalones said, his whole body rumbling with wicked delight. He lifted one paw for the killing blow.
“No!” Lulu exclaimed. She tried to reach Huey, but her feral guard shouldered her back. “
Please. Spare him and I-I’ll read the omens any way you want! And if you want to replace me as Seer, I won’t stand in your way. I’ll confine myself to exile among humans. I’ll never show my face in Catopolis again!”
“All that, for this?” Señor Pantalones sneered at the hamster in his clutches. “Have you a reason, or have you simply lost your mind?”
“This creature is a greater Seer than I could ever hope to be,” Lulu declared. “He can speak to the dead.”
“Any minute now,” said Señor Pantalones.
“He also has the power to read minds.”
The big black and white cat threw back his head and guffawed. “Is that so?” He looked down at Huey. “All right, little snack, prove it. Look into my mind and tell me how I’m going to kill you.”
The hamster regarded Señor Pantalones calmly. “You think you’ll do it by slitting me open throat-to-tail. Of course now that I’ve said that, you’re thinking you’ll make it tail-to-throat, just to be a wiseass. You’re also thinking that as soon as you’re boss of Catopolis, you’ll never have to associate with smelly trash like your feral buddies over there.” Huey waved a paw at the seven street cats.
“Bah! Nonsense!” Señor Pantalones huffed. But a nervous look twitched over his face and he refused to meet his minions’ eyes. “That will be enough out of-”
Undaunted, Huey forged on:
“Plus, you think you’ll be able to fool the other cats with your stupid ‘I had a dream from Lady Bast making me a Seer’ plan, except you’re all ego and no brains. Otherwise you’d to realize Lady Bast can send real dream-visions to every cat in Catopolis, telling them what a big, fat phony you are. Which is something your feral buddies will already know when you kick them to the curb like a bag of empty Tuna NomNom cans. And what’s more-”
“I said enough!” Señor Pantalones’ bared claws slashed down. The force of the big black and white cat’s blow tore Huey open from throat to tail, as the hamster himself had predicted. Lulu yowled.
And then, a miracle: Instead of the expected gush of blood and innards, Huey’s ravaged body erupted with a surge of blinding light. The humble park pathway became a carpet of fragrant lotus blossoms. Silver stars danced in swirling midair streams. As the awestruck cats stood witness, a lithe, graceful feline as tall as a royal palm tree ascended from the fuzzy shell at Señor Pantalones’ feet. Her ears and paws were adorned with rings of pure gold. Her flanks were the color of the immortal desert, and her eyes were green mirrors of the moon.
She showed the big black and white tom teeth like a row of scimitars. “
Surprise, moth-brain.”
Señor Pantalones stared openmouthed, faintly uttering the feline version of homina-homina-homina-homina until he regained control of his tongue. He then flung himself flat and called out, “O great Lady Bast, have pity!”
“Way ahead of you,” the goddess replied. “For your name alone, if nothing else.
Señor Pantalones? What were your humans thinking? Remind me to smite them with a plague of locusts, or at least make them lose their car keys. But aside from that, it’s impossible not to pity someone whose main goal in life was to become the sole ruler of Catopolis. You actually thought you had a future herding cats?”
“My lady, I-”
“Ffffftttt!” She silenced him with one admonitory hiss. “Señor Pantalones, your crimes are many. You doubted my divinity. You attempted to corrupt my chosen Seer. When she refused to serve your purposes, you sought her death. You have brought about the self-serving slaughter of so many of this city’s mice, endangering the food supply for my feral children, that I was compelled to assume rodent’s guise in order to intervene. Do you have any idea of how humiliating that was for a cat goddess? Do you think I enjoy this whole felis ex machina gig?”