Page 18 of Immortal Throne

“Your mom kept running, but your father always knew where you were,” Chupey said softly. “He’s always watched out for you, and when he couldn’t, he sent me.”

His tongue lolled out from the side of his mouth, and I reached out to give him a pat on pure instinct.

Ooh, I probably shouldn’t touch the creature. Should I? Did one pet a demon familiar? Did it matter?

I drew back.

If I really was dying, I might as well lean into something familiar, like petting the dog I found eating garbage from the dumpster behind my apartment building ten years ago. Chupey waited patiently.

I reached out again and scratched behind his ears. When he leaned into the contact and closed his eyes, a sense of calm washed over me.

Maybe this whole talking demon familiar thing wouldn’t really change anything. Chupey was still my Chupey.

“It’s about time you knew,” he finally said with a groan.

I shifted my scratching from one ear to the other. “About how you’ve been spying on me?”

Everything went from halfway normal—outside of me knowing I was about to die—to topsy turvy in the span of a few minutes. How was that possible?

My biological father apparently cared about my continued existence.

Demonic dog familiars existed.

That meant demons existed.

Another thought twisted my gut. That meant Mr. Dante’s claims weren’t batshit crazy, like I had originally thought, and I very well could be part demon as he claimed.

Motherfucker.

What else was possible?

A headache bloomed behind my eyes as my mind continued to spiral. Pain squeezed my chest. Either my mystery disease created some serious hallucinations, or this was all real.

“It’s about time you know the real reason I’m here with you,” he replied. “Not that I haven’t loved those homemade peanut butter treats you make. But your dad wanted you to be cared for.”

The pain in my chest increased, squeezing the air from my lungs. I’d wanted my father to care for years.

My mother had been tough as nails, but the absence of a second parent had left a hole, an unfulfilled role in my life. Every parent-teacher conference, every family day where classmates proudly held the hands of both parents, every holiday movie, I keenly felt how I was different, how I lacked something in my life that other people had.

This didn’t take anything away from Mom. It made me love her more. But her strength couldn’t fill that sense of loss whenever my mind dwelled on my absent father. I coped by making him out to be an asshole, the villain. Mom was so scared of him that it wasn’t a stretch. It had to be true.

And now to hear he cared? That he’d taken measures to protect me?

It was too much.

“If this is all true, if my father wanted me safe, where is he now?” I asked. “I buried my mother a year ago. Why hasn’t he shown up? Where is he?”

Chupey went quiet, and my stomach sank.

Uh oh. Not good at all.

“I don’t know,” Chupey admitted, his eyes sad and his tail tucked between his legs. “I don’t know where he is.”

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