"Face me, old man. I'm robbing you, see?" The young cat trembles in his boots, blinking against the rain in his face. He winds his fingers around the handle of the knife and tries to steady his paw to show he means business. He's been following the mouse all afternoon and here, in the rain, in this alley, away from the eyes of the city watch but beneath the glow of the Vicar's Sigil upon clouds he makes his move. He scuffles closer, his feet soaked, sniffling and chilled to the bone.

The hunched mouse looks over his shoulder but does not turn around.

"Old man, maybe. But call me Twig, friend." His voice is gentle and he sways his bare tail slowly.

"Shut up and give me that sack," the cat yelps. He carves at the air between them in anxious ragged arcs. Twig falls into a somber, even tone.

"You carry a knife because you are afraid to go unarmed. You think it gives you an advantage that you would not have without it." He now turns, smiling, shuffling in place. "Without it, you think you might not be threatening enough to take from me what is mine. Without it, you think I might resist you."

Twig grunts, standing up straighter, his back aching with the motion. He pulls back the heavy hood and lets the water and the dim Sigil light describe his ruined, withered face. He can see the effect it has upon the boy; a cat with claws and fangs and grace, who has not yet learned that he doesn't need a knife any more than he needs to stick up old men in back alleys. The cat's eyes widen in shock, aghast at the old mouse's flayed features and the dim green pits of his sockets. Twig steps closer, closing the distance.

"Now, you put down that piece of metal and threaten me like a predator, and maybe I'll give you what you want." He mouth curls in a hard, twisted smile and he unslings his sack from his shoulder, still holding it close. The ancient mouse springs with surprising menace upon the boy who falls back another pace, almost stumbling on the slick cobblestones.

"I've been opened by teeth bigger than that laughable toy. When these freakish, wounded holes were still eyes, I saw my sister hanging from talons larger than that child's weapon you clutch as a talisman against what you fear, what you do not understand."

He comes within reach of the cat, whose perfect, clear eyes dart side to side; his ears back, heart pounding.

"But I understand you, boy. I can see your trepidation."

The cat swallows thickly and whispers, "J-just give it to me." They hold each other's gaze for a tense few beats.

Twig scowls. "Bah," he tosses the sack down into the muck of the alley, "Take it before you hurt yourself, bloody fool."

The cat snatches it up and fumbles open the tie, looking inside for his prize. He glances at Twig, regaining a measure of composure, "I saw you earlier today, old man. Trading in the market. I saw the money you made." Twig shrugs, feeling tired and wet. He pulls his hood back low over his face. The cat rummages through the bag, pulling out scraps of paper and rags, feathers, small bones and rubbish. He tosses them aside, digging deeper.

"In my day, a cat was a fearsome creature, a terror along with the owl and the fox."

The cat turns away, ignoring Twig as his fingers find the gold. The smile on his damp face spreads like a stain. Twig continues gravely, closing empty green eyes, "But now, cats carry dull knives in place of claws, stealing like parasites from those they would have previously killed for sport. A cat should be terrible, curious, cunning and aware, but you-"

"What's that? Are you still here?" The cat holds aloft a few heavy coins, his grin catching the rain spattering off them in his palm. He can't look away from their wet lustre.

"Boy, you say you saw me in the market, making money," Twig wraps his mouth around the word like something lewd. "But which market, mmm? And selling what? You mean you didn't notice? You weren't the least bit curious, cat?"

"Creepy old fuck, you must want me to cut you, is that it?" The cat turns the bag over, dumping out a tinkling pile of bones and carved tinder, beaded string fetishes and halfmade dolls. A few folded sheaves of parchment. Crumbs and mementos. There is nothing worthwhile left within, so he lets the rough sack fall away.

"I have your gold and I still have the knife. So mebbie you better get moving before you catch a cold out here in this rain. Or worse." He holds the knife in one hand, the loose coins in the other; the cat feels powerful and wonders whatever could have rattled him about this hunched feeble mouse with the strange empty eyes.

"You are no cat," his scarred muzzle blooms into a cracked toothy smile. The cat hisses and charges him, putting the knife to his neck, his arm across Twig's chest to pin him against a near wall. Twig struggles, chuckling even as he fights for breath.

"No, of course not. Not curious at all, not you. Ignorant whelp, you cast down the treasure and the power for mere gold," Twig laughs, wheezing, infuriating the feline to prick the rodent's old skin with the tip of his blade.

Behind him the writhing demon of sinew and sackcloth, sloppy in the rain, tangles its tatter fingers in heavy wet loops around the cat's throat and face, unfurling into his mouth and pulling him off of its master. It quickly twines about his screaming head, smothering him in the filthy trashwater. In his panic, the cat jabs at his own face, slicing through the coarse rags with his knife; his knife when his claws would do. His eyes open, runny under the blade, his nose splits along the muzzle over and over. Blood seeps into the cloth and he gurgles through muffled layers of tightening burlap, flopping on the ground in the endless cold rain until dead.

Twig slumps over, panting, grabbing his chest, his heart dancing madly. He moans over the roar of the rainfall, squinting up at the dull eye of the Vicar's Sigil floating against the clouds, bright as the moon.

"You certainly took your time, demon," he manages to say. The creature unravels itself, coiling into shape of a lithe whiplash ragdoll. The cat's head is crushed to pulp, messy in spreading puddles. The demon lopes about the alley, picking up the spilled goods and swallowing them away. It bows and scrapes, genuflecting and simpering.

"A thousand apologies, master. Of course I am only bound to protect you from harm. So I could do nothing until he drew the smallest drop of your sweet, precious blood." It speaks with the harsh ripping sound of linens for burial, war trench tourniquets, honeymoon nightgowns and stillborn swaddlings. Rags in the mouths of all those muffled and shot. Blindfolds on babes, unable to keep their balance in the back of swerving black vans. Torn red national flags snapping in the wind, banners on battlefields. Butcher's smocks and menstrual wadding. Sacks of traitors' gold and moneylenders' magic. It speaks and rips its mouth anew each time, only to have the threads reweave themselves in silence. The demon gorges itself on all it can carry and then it falls quiet; again an ordinary, rough bag at Twig's feet. The old mouse takes up the weight onto his shoulder and sops a hand over his slick face, sniffing back rainwater. He shrugs deeply into his cloak and shuffles out of the alley.

"Dealing with demons will be my undoing, brother," he says aloud.