The Reign of the Demon Queen

The black, toiling skies stretched into the distance—a never ending oppression. There was nowhere to run, not anymore. The Demon Queen would choke the world with her hatred unless Johnnie could achieve the impossible this day.

He didn’t expect to live, him or Bridgett, but there was nothing else to be done. Either way, this would be the end.

Hunched over the desert sands like so many languire, the Demon Queen’s children clutched the overhang of their cavern with clawed feet, drooling in anticipation. Johnnie could not count their numbers, and they were just the vanguard. Beyond the entrance, on which they stooped, lay their twisted maze of burrows, brimming with balberith and demon-scratis, and Earth knew what other monstrosities.

They were mad to attack this place, but they weren’t alone.

“It is a shame your father isn’t here for this.” Katrin Molotova—the leader of what remained of the once great, Eastern Horde—looked at Bridgett, and smiled grimly at the brawny man’s memory. “He would have enjoyed it.”

Johnnie grunted. He was going to enjoy it himself: ever since these things had driven his wife to suicide, he’d taken pleasure at every lethal blow he'd managed to land.

Demon hunter was a title he hadn't truly embraced until the day she died, but he did now.

He put a hand on Bridgett’s shoulder, still staring at the salivating monsters on the rock ahead. “His daughter will have to do.”

She looked down at him, her steel-gray eyes as piercing now as her father’s, and he realized there was bloodlust in them too. The fear in them had transformed.

“I’ll cut a path for you,” she said. “But you’re the only one who can kill her. Take this.”

She handed him something from around her neck—a rusted, heart-shaped locket from long ago. Johnnie knew what it was: Bridgett’s father had kept it on his person for years, refusing to ever part with the thing—even in battle. Inside was a photo of Bridgett’s mother, before the Victarian Empire had burned her inside her own home; before the Empire itself had burned.

Johnnie looked back at her. “Why are you giving this to me?”

Bridgett dawned her dark helmet so that he could no longer read her expression. Her voice came out deep and muffled through the intercom. “If anyone survives this, it will be you. And I want you to remember my mother for me, and the world she wanted to create. If you don’t, no one else will.”

Katrin raised her horn to her lips and blew, and the men behind her lifted their gun-spears into the air, roaring with the same ferocity of the planet’s most fearsome storm—Raging Earth.

The demon vanguard took flight.

Johnnie didn’t have time to force Bridgett to take back the locket—to explain that there was no way he was going to survive this, or that she was a far better candidate to lead what was left of humanity into the future. If there was anything left. If anyone survived.

He supposed it didn’t matter. If she lived, she could pick it off his corpse. It was them or the demons—there would be no partial victory.

He knew what he had to do. He sprinted as hard as he could, his focus lanced on the gaping cave mouth leading into the Demon Queen’s new lair. If he could reach it, they would have a chance—albeit a small one. His scentless-ness was the only edge they had against a species who relied so heavily on their sense of smell.

Their blind queen would sniff out and murder anyone else before they even got close. But if he could find her before she found him, he might be able to kill her.

The demons above arced from the sky, and dove like the carrion-loving rackitas that had once haunted Johnnie’s nightmares. He could still see those sharp, intelligent eyes sizing him up as they gnashed into decaying flesh with their razor-toothed beaks. Back when he was just a boy in a small town on the northern shores of Treem, though, he’d been afraid of death. Back then, he believed he could avoid it somehow.

Today, he knew it was a certainty. There was no fear left in him, and he trusted Bridgett and Katrin to protect him for at least long enough for him to reach the demons’ lair.

The jets at the bottom of Bridgett’s boots flared as she shot over him and skewered three of the diving beasts into a snarling, armored kabob. For no longer than a single breath, they reached out, clawing and screeching; their black, spider blood crawling down her obsidian sword. Then she threw her arm to one side and the creatures splattered onto the ground for the warriors of the Eastern Horde to lance and shoot with their gun-spears.

She smashed a fourth aside with her shield, and cut the throat of a fifth. Her blood rushed hot and her skin prickled with passion. She never expected to experience a battle frenzy—but this was her inheritance. The genetics the Victarian Empire had blessed her father with had been passed onto her, despite the fact that her mother was not one of their super soldiers—their angels.

If Johnnie had been able to look back, he would have seen her disappearing into the darkness of claws and teeth, but even then he wouldn’t have been afraid for her. She was every bit her father’s child. She would not go down easy.

Katrin Malotova led her Hordesmen forward. They galloped alongside Johnnie, their halibacks clawing through the sand as their riders shot, and speared, and died in the raining darkness. They were the most fearsome warriors this world had ever known—the forever free men and women of the endless deserts. For centuries they had survived the brutal wastes, munching on scratis: giant millipedal insects who had warred with and preyed upon humankind long before the rise of the Demon Queen.

Johnnie had come to trust them too.

He didn’t stop; didn’t take his eyes off the entrance.

He was inside.

The noise of the battle began to fade as he steadied his breathing and his pace. He swore he could hear the demons panting all around him, skittering and climbing along the walls. The smell of death rushed by like a strong wind again and again as more drew away from the hive to join the desperate brawl outside.

Eventually he would light the lantern on his belt with his free hand: he would have to if he wanted to locate and slay the Demon Queen. But some of her children were not blind like she was, and for now, he simply had to stride on into the black, following the map the monks from the north had inexplicably placed inside his mind.

They had been connected to her—knew her when she was still a goddess of protection for the Earth; before her heart had been consumed by revenge for the harm humanity had done to her world. Johnnie still wasn’t convinced that he was doing the right thing by slaying her—a large part of him still believed she was right. Humanity had no right to live, not anymore. The nuclear war two centuries back had been just the tip of the iceberg when it came to his race’s egocentric atrocities.

But he wasn’t doing this for humanity. Part of it was revenge, yes. For what they had done to his wife, Lauren. She hadn’t deserved to die—she had given everything to everyone else until the day the demons stole her mind. The other part, though…well he didn’t fully understand it himself. He had been a cold-hearted mercenary for so long, it was hard for him to comprehend anything that smacked of heroism.

Johnnie stifled his thoughts and continued down the dark path, following the twists and turns of the scratis caves the demons had since claimed for themselves. In a way, the bugs were still here—just darker, more monstrous ghosts of their former selves. The Demon Queen had nearly managed to absorb the entire world into her army, species be damned.

This is it, the voice in his mind was as sudden as it was certain.

He lit his lantern.

It was the last minute of his life. No sooner had the light touched the walls of the giant chamber, than the demons surged toward him: claws, tails, and teeth flying in like black and jagged swords, slashing and stabbing from all sides. There was barely any distinguishing them from the darkness. His lantern shattered against the floor. Its fragments glinted in the blaze, as did the armored carapace of Johnnie’s adversaries.

Somewhere in the black behind them loomed their queen. She was the shadow he could not see, but he knew she was there. Fear coiled in his chest: the dark miasma that surrounded her was choking, almost paralyzing. She didn’t care that he wasn’t afraid—she made people afraid.

He had come here to kill her, but how could he possibly reach her? His blade flashed and clinked against the hail of claws. He could do nothing at all but grasp at his next move.

If he thought of anything else, even for a moment, those claws would plunge into his chest or throat, or eyes, and he would die. But he would reach her. He had to. Not to save the sickly remains of humankind. And not just for revenge either. It was for the little girl he’d saved in that cavern all those years ago, and everything that rusted, heart-shaped locket—now hanging from his own neck—represented.

It might have been his last minute alive, but he was going to make it count.