Older and craftier, they didn’t rush to their deaths the way the hounds had. They’d developed individual personalities, a preference for their appearance. Nothing original: skulls and horns and fangs are always popular. Demons prefer forms mortals find frightening: the rotting dead, monsters from myth, god-king tales.

We find human fear delicious.

I mean, they do.

A demon with a rhinoceros’s skeletal head shook a spear at me. “Begone, whore. A feast has been readied for us.”

I laughed and bounced the gore-soaked flat of my blade against my palm. “Then come take your due, but you’ll work for this supper.”

This demon group wasn’t stupid enough to attack me one at a time. They wouldn’t have survived long in the Afterlife by being unobservant. They must have seen how well that tactic had served the dogs.

It mattered not. All demons take a savage delight in slaughter.

In this, I was no different.

I stepped to the side as a demon on a skeletal steed’s back tried to run me through, setting his twisting reptilian ride to cross my path. The lizard-mount cried out as I punched the monster between the eyes. Then I grabbed its spiked ruff and dragged it to the ground, so its rider slid within reach. A human skeleton, crafted from pale blue flame, keened in pain as I ripped through his rib cage with my sword.

His compatriots were not idle as I yanked my weapon free. I felt a searing agony where a demon’s barbed lance pierced my armor. The attacking demon bellowed in gleeful triumph, a cry cut short as I grabbed the weapon and pulled her off balance. An arrow bounced against my breastplate, but the second shot found a weak spot along my arm and hit true. Someone shouted flanking instructions from the rear.

I felt a shiver hovering between dread and desire as the battle turned against me.

I fought on. What else could I do? Surrender was impossible. These were not Joratese. They had no mercy for the defeated.

They had no mercy for anyone.

I had accounted for half their number when I heard the howls of incoming reinforcements.

I screamed in defiant response, laughed in their faces, smashed my sword through another demon. His twin responded with claw strikes, melting through my armor’s crumbling edges. I felt her blow as a white-hot blaze across my thigh.

Then the attack shifted. Paused. A gap formed. Demons who had closed all around me fled, running into the woods.

I knew why the demons ran.

Staunching phantom blood with shaking fingers, I turned to face their queen.

She was the most beautiful and horrible monster, skin pale as death, hands slick with fresh-spilled blood. Her gore-dipped hair glowed lurid white; her lips shimmered fungal green. Her breasts and hips held the promise of endless carnal delights, which more than one poor idiot had given their soul to taste.