Daemonic Desperation — Jim McPherson

The tragic tale of the doomed, but ever-defiant band of perhaps not-so-miraculously re-embodied supranormals known as the Damnation Brigade continues in the second mini-novel extracted from the open-ended saga of 'Wilderwitch's Babies'.

Wilderwitch may be D-Brig's last living member. The main reason she has survived so long is that Demon Queen Lilith got hold of her not long after her and her fellows' expulsion from Subcranial Temporis at the conclusion the War of the Apocalyptics. The Witch may or may not realize this. Lethal Lily certainly does. When the former becomes pregnant by Saladin Devason, the Master of Weir, in 5980 Year of the Dome, the latter does too; albeit less 'by' than 'via'.

As the conceptive mother of the mortal Sed-sons so essential for the mystical maintenance of the six thousand year old Cathonic Zone, what separates the Inner from the Outer Earth, she figures she's unique in the universe. As such, she further reckons she doesn't need the Witch to help bear her latest Sed-son. She may be right about that.

Unfortunately, she seems to have forgotten that daemonic babies, like those of their equally earthborn faerie cousins, tend to feed on their mothers ... while still in the womb. Having, in her hubris, rid herself of the Witch, she's forced to takes on other hosts before her unborn child finishes devouring her from the inside. By the time she realizes the Witch somehow survived the drop from high above the overgrown zone of the Sleepers, it may be too late for her.

Then again demons are remarkable, if highly flammable, creatures. None more so than their ages old, wholly mindful and evidently indestructible queen.