Predatory Hearts/Thunderclan Arc

Prologue
Vinestar dodged a pounce from his new attacker, slipping away like a minnow with his lithe, narrow frame. The tip of his unnaturally long tail brushed she startled she-cat’s nose, and he considered biting it, slipping away from the battle using his viper Lovac.

''No. Not here. I made a promise not to reveal it to anybody.''

“This will be the last time you and your warriors fool around on Thunderclan territory with your stupid games!” coughed up the winded she-cat as she scrambled to her paws. “You may have thrown away eight lives in your reckless antics, but I will take away your ninth!”

The Windclan leader’s narrow green eyes gleamed tauntingly at her. “Ooh, I’m so scared,” he drawled. He dashed at her, a blur on the moonlit moor. An accurate swipe at her eyes sent the she-cat reeling.

Vinestar took the opportunity to observe the status of the battle he had caused. If Yewtoe had jumped more carefully of the Sky Oak he wouldn’t’ve broken his neck and the patrol wouldn’t have spotted his body, therefore he would never have been caught and this battle would have never happened!

''We would have gotten away with it if you were smarter, Yewtoe! He roared silently to Starclan. It wasn’t my fault, you blubbering bee-brain!''

He had trained his warriors to be quick and evasive, moving like blurs compared to the other clans’ warriors. It was a way of minimalizing casualties and confusing the enemy. Making sure to hide himself in a dip in the moor to avoid surprise attacks, he spotted Thunderclan’s leader Spottedstar limping away from the scene as flashes of fur swiped at her, disappearing as quickly as they appeared. His chest swelled with pride. They were wearing her down, and wouldn’t stop until she called the retreat command. It was a foolproof strategy.

Any second now, he prayed, kneading his claws into the ground in impatience.

“Thunderclan, retreat!” sighed a weary Spottedstar. The Windclan warriors, giddy with another victory, chased after the retreating warriors, like a wave washing over the moor.

Vinestar’s excitement was too much to contain. “Ha!” he exclaimed, leaping out of his hiding place and on to the Tallrock, where he usually called Clan meetings. “Windclan, more like Winclan!” he loudly gloated to the fleeing warriors. He was too occupied with admiring his warriors to notice a dark shape, camouflaged against the moor, streaking closer to him.

A black shape crashed into him head-on, paws outstretched in an attempt to strike. They caught his throat, and the two cats tumbled backwards into the camp, Vinestar flailing his limbs in panic. The strange cat had his limbs wrapped around Vinestar’s body, making it impossible to escape. Vinestar tried to roll around to try to loosen his attacker, but it was no use. He felt the strangest sensation as the cat flipped him up into the air, and felt the breath rush out his lungs as he hit the tough ground, pinned instantly.

Breathless, he strained his head upwards to meet his opponent’s furious expression. I recognize that face! Batsnout, Thunderclan’s deputy.

“You win,” croaked Vinestar. Without a smart comeback or dramatic one-liner, Batsnout crushed Vinestar’s throat in his jaws, and flung the lightweight cat’s body outside the camp as if he was just a piece of prey, and slunk out of camp before anyone woke up.

Vinestar helplessly watched Batsnout cross the moor. He felt he was drifting away, losing his final life. I have no regrets, he thought fondly, reflecting over the stupid things he did with his friends: Jumping backwards off of trees, attempting to swim, overdosing on herbs… It was fun and it was stupid, but he felt like he properly lived.

He spotted the spirits of other cats who died in the battle, thick-headed Pikebelly and the clueless Beaverfoot. His two closest friends.

“Come with us, Vinestar! There’s no point holding on to your last life,” chirped Beaverfoot.

“Yeah, Vinestar, just die already!” encouraged Pikebelly, before getting a hard cuff on the ear.

“Rude furball!” hissed Beaverfoot under his breath.

Pikebelly blinked a few times in confusion, then a look of horror spread across his starry face as he realised what he said. “I’m so sorry, Vinestar!” he wailed frantically. I didn’t mean it like that!”

By now Vinestar had left his body, and ignored the conversation, brooding over the last few minutes of his life. Now he had lost his viper Lovac, his leadership, all because of Batsnout! He had to pay. Vinestar would get revenge in the worst way possible.

“Let’s go,” he ordered his two friends sharply. The two cats followed him as the moor transformed into Starclan, whispering excitedly.

Vinestar’s mentor, Thicketpelt, greeted him with an unimpressed stare. “You lived longer than I thought you would,” she stated simply. She turned to Pikebelly and Beaverfoot. “Come with me. There’s something I need to explain to you now you are members of Starclan.”

Vinestar was left alone, in this world of starry cats. The first thing he had to do was find the cat who gave him his Lovac, and find out about the other possible ones.

“Harecry told me there were seven Lovacs, but one was so dangerous Starclan never grant it to a kit,” he muttered to himself as he started walking, transitioning into a run. “Harecry! Yo, buddy!”

He found Harecry sharing prey with a cat he didn’t recognise. The light brown tabby tom was the previous hawk Lovac holder, and his long flowing fur looked even more glamourous with stars in it.

Vinestar skidded to a halt in front of the couple. “Tell me about the missing Lovac,” he demanded. Harecry turned around startled.

“Welcome to Starclan, Vinestar. I didn’t expect you to use all of your nine lives so quickly.”

“What I did with my lives is none of your business, but that’s beside the point. Now answer me!”

Harecry muttered a short apology to his partner and the two toms walked off. “It’s called the Wild Dog Lovac, Dog Lovac for short. It’s so dangerous, Starclan trusted it into the paws of an ancient cat when it was last returned to our hunting grounds, and nobody knows who he is.”

Vinestar started walking at a faster pace. “What is a Dog Lovac holder like?” He noticed Harecry had stopped walking and looked visibly uncomfortable, with fidgeting paws, staring at his toes, and a quivering pelt.

“They’re pretty easy to spot: they could never be successfully groomed, so their fur is ragged, knotted, patches missing, you know the sort. An eyesore for even their own mothers. And…” he trailed off and shuddered. “What makes Dog Lovac Holders so scary and damned by Starclan is…”

“Spit it out!” spat out Vinestar.

Harecry slowly lifted his head to meet Vinestar’s impatient stare. “C-c-cannibalistic ten-de-de-dencies,” he whimpered. “As a kit, they are curious about the taste of cat flesh, and in Lovac form when they first catch a taste, there’s no stopping them! They’ll do anything, Lovac form or not, to eat cat flesh! They will slowly get driven mad by it, living around so many cats, it’s like a cat in a clan where everything is made of fresh-kill but they’re not allowed to eat!” He was cowering on the ground now, paws over his eyes. “It’s why you don’t see any previous Dog Lovacs in Starclan, they all go to the Dark Forest and they can’t help it!” he yowled in fear.

Vinestar grinned, showing rows of neat white teeth. “Perfect,” he growled. “I’ll leave you to cower like a kit. I have work to do.”

After reuniting with Beaverfoot and Pikebelly, he quickly explained his plan. “All we have to do is find who’s guarding the Dog Lovac,” he meowed slowly and quietly. He spotted Thicketpelt, a grey-blue shape watching them from afar with slits for eyes.

“What are you planning, Vinestar?” she growled. “More reckless stunts now that you have no possible chance of dying in Starclan, I expect?”

Vinestar gave large shakes of his head, doing his best to look innocent. “I wanted to know if you could tell me who’s safeguarding the Dog Lovac,” he meowed in a cheerful voice. “I want to learn more about them, as well as my friends of course. It was their idea, and they asked me to ask you because you’d listen to me since you were my mentor.”

Thicketpelt didn’t budge. “You’re plotting something in that walnut-sized brain of yours, I know it.”

“No, really, Thicketpelt!” Beaverfoot burst out. “Since Vinestar was a Lovac himself, you told us that yourself, we want to learn more about them!” He widened his eyes like a kit to try melt Thicketpelt’s stony heart.

Thicketpelt turned away, and started to walk off, sick of the trio’s shenanigans. “Even if I did know,” she said smugly, “I’m not even authorised to tell you.”

Vinestar felt tension rising in him. “Fine!” he shouted after her. “We’ll find it ourselves!”

“Maybe we could ask an elder,” Pikebelly suggested timidly. “They’re ancient cats, after all.”

Vinestar instantly switched from flat-out disappointed to as high a Red Kite. “Pikebelly, that’s the smartest thing I’ve ever heard a bee-brain like you say! All the cats who labelled you mentally retarded didn’t know squat.” He loped off, in a new high.

Elder after elder after elder, the cats found themselves going through multiple generations until they were directed to a dark red tabby with the name Poppydawn. She was so faded it was hard to tell she was even there.

“You should find Pinestar,” she beamed at the young cats. “He volunteered to take it, because he didn’t want any cats to end up like his son, something like that. Did you know, you’re the first cats to talk to me in many, many years!”

Vinestar hastily turned away and walked off. “Thanks!” he called, signalling for Pikebelly and Beaverfoot to follow him.

“Pinestar!” Vinestar screeched. His two friends echoed him, disturbing cats of every clan and ignoring the “shh!” that came from every direction.

A massive reddish-brown tom appeared in front of them. “You called?” he grunted.

Vinestar quickly composed himself. “I heard you had the, er, Dog Lovac. We’ve been searching for it for a while now.”

Pinestar studied them suspiciously. “Who told you that?”

“I think her name was Poppydawn. We want to learn about it.”

Pinestar nodded. “Well then, you’d better come with me.” He turned around, and started to walk.

Bad mistake, old timer, quipped Vinestar devilishly to himself as he spotted it: a gleaming white ball of light wrapped around by Pinestar’s tail. He reared up and batted it out of Pinestar’s grasp, quickly bent down to pick it up in his mouth and zoomed off, faster than he had ever run before. Pikebelly and Beaverfoot lumbered after him.

Knocking past a small tortoiseshell she-cat, Vinestar dived into the looking-pool and into the lake territories, falling slowly and landing gracefully in the Thunderclan camp. He felt the thuds of his two accomplices behind him, landing not-so-gracefully.

“Thunderclan?” gasped Beaverfoot, “Why Thunderclan?”

“Because,” grinned Vinestar, bouncing on his paws with excitement, “I’m going to curse Batsnout’s only kit with the Dog Lovac and curse him with the destiny of destroying Thunderclan from within!” He laughed maniacally. “Aren’t I a genius?”

Beaverfootswept his tail along the sandy ground. “How do you know he has a kit? Are you going to choose the right one?”

“Before I met up with you before explaining my plan, which I just re-explained to you now, I had a quick visit to Thunderclan’s territory, which I can do because I’m a leader and I’m in Starclan so I can go anywhere I please, and I saw a queen giving birth who mentioned Batsnout being her mate, and she has one kit, a pale brown tabby tom named Acornkit.”

He marched over to the nursery, batting the Lovac between his paws like it was a moss ball. The sky was quickly growing lighter. He spotted Acornkit, sleeping beside his parents, and eased the ball of light into his mouth.

“Batsnout will pay for what he did to me,” he snarled. “I curse you, Acornkit, with the destiny to destroy Thunderclan from within! You will grow up to hate your clanmates, and you will kill them off in Lovac form, one by one, even your family, and then your father! In fact, you’ll become so driven for cat flesh you’ll end up eating his carcass, in front of all your clanmates, and nobody will know it’s you! And the only one who can stop you is another Lovac holder!” He cackled, feeling like the supervillain featured in so many elders’ stories.

“He can do that?” questioned a puzzled Beaverfoot, blinking in surprise.

Pikebelly just shrugged. “He’s a leader, and a Starclan cat. It’s safe to say that he can do anything.”

Vinestar stepped back. “I’ll return, Acornkit,” he cooed softly. His eyes blazed maniacally. “Pikebelly, Beaverfoot, let’s go back. My work here is done.”