Then Rathe spoke but I didn’t know what he said because it was a language I didn’t understand. It was short and it sounded angry. I spun around. I had to see whether Rathe was really speaking a foreign language or if this was the warlock doing it to him.

But Rathe was no longer there.

I looked at the car to see if he had decided to get inside it after all, but it was empty. I scanned the parking lot, my heart starting to race from the terror clawing at me. I swung back to glare at the warlock who seemed determined to turn my life into a nightmare.

“What did you do with him?” I screamed. My blood pounding in my ears, nausea suddenly turning my stomach. This was my fault. If I hadn’t allowed myself to have him, this wouldn’t have happened. My greedy, selfish, black soul had caused this.

“I can do a lot,” he paused then shrugged, “well, I can do most anything. But, Catalina, I have no power over Angra Mainyu’s only son.” The man did a gesture with his hand. “That’s thin lines and all. Too close to the same source of energy. Rathe is his own cursed abomination. The child created from two beings that were never meant to produce offspring.” He stepped closer to me but I didn’t move away. I couldn’t. My head was spinning so fast I felt dizzy. The nausea was getting worse.

“Whereas you,” he began as I stared at him in disbelief, “you aren’t an abomination. Sure, I could have chosen better than Persephone, but she’s got that bewitching beauty that’s so hard to ignore. As you know,” he said waving a hand at me. “Regardless, she wanted three daughters. I wanted a child. I gave her the third daughter she was so eager to have and she gave me the child I wanted so much.”

This was a lie. All of it. He was lying to me. He had followed me, figured out my worst fears and he was now hurtling them at me one right after another. But why me? Why did he want to destroy me? What had I done to deserve this? I’d tried to be good. Now I’d lost my best friend and Rathe. I had to keep it together and fight for them.

“Who are you?” I asked him, not expecting a response.

He pulled out a cigarette and held it to his lips, then smirked. “Your father.”

I shook my head. I knew who my father was and this was not my father. “No. You’re not my father. My father is dead.”