Wren

The weight of the deer dragged on my shoulders and compressed my spine, but I refused to let Corson help me with it. I wouldn’t have let anyone help me with it, except for maybe Randy, and there was a very distinct possibility Randy was dead.

The deer could crush my spine before I ever allowed that highly annoying, if not somewhat attractive, demon who insisted on flirting with me to carry it.

I despised demons. Okay, well, not despised, at least not anymore. For many years, I hadn’t known the truth of what happened with the gateway opening, and I’d blamed demons for everything.

Living in the Wilds, I’d known more than the civvies about what had happened to this land, but I still hadn’t known everything. I knew the truth of it now.

The demons didn’t somehow find a way to break free of Hell on their own and invade Earth with the sole intention of striking down everything in their way. No, imbecilic human governments had been messing with things they shouldn’t have. In doing so, they accidentally opened a gateway into Hell and allowed its hideous occupants to spill free.

Before encountering Kobal a few months ago, I’d only ever seen demons as monsters, and I’d gleefully slaughtered any I came across before they could kill me. I hadn’t known Kobal was the king of Hell when I tried to ambush him or I would have stayed far away.

I still shuddered when I thought about what could have happened to my fellow Wilders if Kobal hadn’t spared us that day. Losing my life was one thing, but losing theirs was something else entirely. Randy had appointed me in charge when he left; the lives of the Wilders following me rested on my shoulders, and I felt the weight of that more than the weight of the deer draped around me.

At the time, it had seemed like such a simple attack against Kobal. Disable them, kill the demons, get the stuff, and get out fast. We’d done it countless times before, but Kobal had somehow known we were there and come up behind us with some of his friends while we’d been waiting for them. We could have been killed that day and all because I’d made a bad decision.

Now, I could only hope that I’d made the right decision in approaching the demons to keep the Wilders safe.

But after Kobal let us live, it was a risk I was willing to take. Granted, Kobal left us tied up in the woods and vulnerable to anything lurking nearby, but he’d still given us a chance to survive. It was more than any other demon had given us before. Intrigued by the fact he hadn’t torn our heads off, my curiosity got the best of me, and I’d followed him to the gateway.

After witnessing numerous monsters pouring out of Hell when the seals fell, I decided to put aside my hatred of demons and work with those following the king and queen. It was the only way humans and demons would survive what had fled the gateway. I’d seen everything from a drakón —massive, skeletal, dragon-looking things—to tiny gobalinus—hideous, two-foot-tall goblins—escape the gateway, along with countless other things that should belong only in nightmares.

Corson’s steps sounded behind me, but I didn’t look back. I didn’t know what it was about him that unnerved me far more than any of the other demons. Maybe it was because his eyes, the startling color of citrine, were more than a little intriguing. Or maybe it was because he had this way of flirting with me that made me actually feel like a woman.

Not many men had done that. Not many men were brave enough to flirt with me in the first place. But Corson did, and he seemed to enjoy it. He also looked at me in a way…

I broke the thought off and gave myself a mental shake. I will not be attracted to a demon! Abso-fucking-lutely not. It would never happen. My hands tightened on the legs of the deer as I kept repeating this to myself, but I couldn’t stop my gaze from going to him.

He sauntered through the woods as if he belonged in this world—which, no matter how they’d arrived here, demons were not meant to be here. However, the opening of the gateway had caused Hell and Earth to become intertwined so completely that there would never be any undoing it.

This was our joined world now.

Being around Corson had been easier when we’d all been at the wall. I’d mostly stayed in the houses by the wall and with people, while he’d resided in one of the tents on the hill with the other demons. He’d also left for a couple of weeks to travel through Hell and over to the other side of the world with Kobal. I hadn’t thought of Corson at all while he’d been gone. Nope, not once had it crossed my mind to wonder if he still lived.

With a sigh, I had to admit that even I wasn’t buying the shit I was trying to shovel to myself. He had crossed my mind a time or two, but only because I’d been curious to know if the king still lived or if he’d died when he’d returned to Hell with the others. That was the only reason Corson had entered my mind once he left.

Liar. Ugh, sometimes I hated my stupid little inner voice. It never let me lie to myself.

But most of my thoughts of Corson had consisted of eviscerating his earring-wearing, smug ass. There had been zero dreams of skin touching skin, lips brushing against lips, of my fingers sliding through the thick black hair falling in curls around his pointed ears—hair that was so black it appeared blue in some lights.

Corson smiled when he met my gaze, and his eyes sparkled. With him standing about nine inches taller than my five-seven height, I found my chin lifting to hold his stare. My hands twitched on the deer’s legs as I was hit with the impulse to trace the tip of one of his pointed ears.

And the first time I’d seen those ears, they’d been decorated with three different kinds of earrings from three different women.

I turned away as that reminder lodged firmly into place. It hadn’t taken much time to learn what Corson’s earrings meant. The civvies at the wall were eager to gossip about the demons residing in their midst, except for the queen, River. Few knew much about the queen of Hell, and those who did remained silent about what she was and what she could do. I’d heard rumors that she was Lucifer’s daughter, one where she was an angel, and some whispered she was a witch, but no one confirmed any of those rumors. I suspected the demons enjoyed the numerous tales floating around and that they’d probably started some of them.

The civvies spilled every juicy detail they had on the demons. I’d also learned the civvies didn’t call us Wilders but had different names for us. Some considered us lunatics, others called us savages, and some believed we were stupid to remain in the Wilds instead of retreating to civilization or evacuating when the government commanded it.

However, after everything we saw on the day the gateway opened, Randy didn’t trust the government enough to come forward when, a year later, they swept through near where we were in search of survivors. When the Wilders learned the government and demons had teamed up to work together, it only confirmed that the government couldn’t be trusted. Other Wilders had never encountered the rescue parties and had chosen not to travel to the wall.

Talking with the civvies, I’d quickly realized that Corson had made his way through a fair amount of the women, and this was only one small area of the wall. The king and his closest advisors moved around the extensive wall often, and they’d traveled the wall on the other side of the world too. Corson had probably likely worn earrings from the women he’d met while traveling too, which would have been a lot of women.

Stretching all the way around the United States, the immense wall blocked the outer states from the central states. Those outer states hadn’t been as severely affected by the gateway opening, the release of demons, and the nuclear bombing that followed.

Thankfully, Hell absorbed the nuclear fallout before it could spread across the land. Otherwise, I might be sporting a tail or third eye, or some other radiation deformity. The only concerns I had about fashion were if the clothes fit me, did they blend in with the trees, and were they warm? But even I wouldn’t have appreciated having to cut holes into my pants to slip my tail through.

Or I could have been killed outright and ended up like so many others I once knew. I’d lived in Kansas, close to the gateway when it all started. It was my home, my family, my town that was devastated.

I was only eight when everything I knew changed, but I stopped being a child that day. I barely recalled the good of my childhood, and I rarely thought about the people I’d lost or the things taken from me. It was easier not to remember.

The child I’d been never would have survived in this world. On the day the gateway opened, her existence was burned away as surely as if the bombs had fallen on her home.

I shifted the deer on my shoulders and hurried faster through the woods to get away from Corson. Unlike at the wall, there was nowhere for me to hide from him anymore, nowhere to lose myself as we camped together these last couple of weeks while moving deeper into the Wilds.

We’d abandoned the two vehicles we left the wall with on the fifth day of travel. It was much easier to go undetected on foot in the woods than in a truck on the pitted roads. Finding gas was also difficult, if not impossible out here. Travel may be slower on foot, but it was safer, and my feet were used to walking.

We were about ten miles from the gateway now, if the markings I’d seen along the way and my calculations were correct, and they almost always were. I hadn’t lived this long by not learning how to navigate. I could thank Randy for that too, but then I could thank Randy for almost everything that made me who I was now.

But even without the markings and my ability to navigate, I would know where we were. I walked faster as the memory of what we’d traveled past yesterday shoved to the forefront of my mind. I’d never forget what I’d seen there, but I would spend the rest of my life trying. Unfortunately, no matter how fast I walked, the memory stalked me.