Everything after the beach was a complete blur.

Danny burst into my house and alerted my parents of the adventure we had on the beach while I stood in the same spot and watched them all panic. It looked like another one of my nightmares. There was yelling, crying, and lots of frantic running. The three scrambled around my house to collect emergency bags, which I had no idea even existed.

I came to the sudden and horrific realization that this was planned. This was supposed to happen at some point in my life; I was a ticking time bomb.

Here were my parents and my best friend, acknowledging the fact that an actual monster had attacked me and they were acting like it was totally normal. This wasn't my life. I was not some freak who got attacked by random bulls in the middle of a beach. This could not be happening. This wasn't happening.

When it came time to finally leave my home, for good, it took both of my parents and the persistent use of Danny's crutches to push and shove me into my mother's station wagon.

I couldn't find the words to form a coherent sentence. For two whole hours I just sat in the same position, like a lifeless statue and stared at the lush California scenery passing by at seventy miles an hour. Even with music blaring out of my headphones, I couldn't seem to shut out the millions of loud questions in my head. Could questions even be loud? I didn't know anything anymore. Everything felt so disoriented and warped; right was left and up was down all of a sudden.

Eventually, I tried to tune out any distractions with sleep in hopes that I would wake up from my living nightmare, but my mother was still crying in the passenger seat of the car. In fact, she hadn't stopped since I had come home from the beach. I could tell she was trying her hardest not to let her crying be obvious, but shoulders were violently shaking up and down. Her entire body was racked by sobs.

It grew increasingly difficult to shut out my raging emotions as we began to leave California. With every second that passed, we were driving further and further away from the deep blue ocean, the warm pale sand, and the salty sea breeze. I couldn't get over it; how quickly my life had changed. Everything had happened so fast. It was like an odd vortex of fantasy decided to land in Santa Barbara and suck my perfect life away.

With no destination in mind, and no idea on whether or not I was ever going to see the west coast again, I silently said goodbye to my safe haven; the only place I knew to call home, and tried desperately not to fall asleep. I wanted to soak up as much of my life as I knew it as I could, but soon enough sleep caught up with me and I wasn't fast enough to stop it.

I dreamt of a black horse, a golden eagle and a black, cold sea all over again.

When I finally woke up, it was dark, silent and lonely...just like in my dream. I was still in the backseat of my mother's car, parked in some random rest area in the Middle of Nowhere, U.S.A. Panic rose in my throat when I realized my father wasn't in the driver's seat in front of me. Before I could freak out I caught him asking an old man in a pickup truck for directions out of the corner of my eye.

I sighed in relief, turning my attention to my mother; now completely passed out in the front seat. She looked so peaceful and at ease, like she hadn't been crying the entire time. I tried to pretend like nothing was wrong and we were just on an ordinary road trip to the Grand Canyon, New Orleans, or Miami. But that couldn't have been further from the ugly truth.

"Ri," Danny whispered next to me. "You okay?" I hadn't even realized he was still here.

I opened my mouth to say no, or yes - something. Anything. But no sound came out.

Where could I even begin? I thought back to the last twenty-four hours, Bull-Man, the random storm on the beach, my recurring dream, my new bow and arrow, and my hasty getaway to...wherever we were going, but nothing added up. There was no logical explanation on earth to explain the series of events in my life that had unfolded in a matter of hours.

"He called me something...a demigod," I fidgeted with my necklace, thinking back to how it had transformed into a weapon before my eyes.

"Um, Orion, I really don't think -" My hand flew up to cut Danny off. It was my turn to speak. To try to process and make sense of the awful events that had taken place.

He nodded and I took a shaky breath before continuing.

"That...thing said my name was Orion Vera. He said I was a thief and that Hades was coming after me. Hades is a Greek God, isn't he? The God of death and the Underworld."

Danny took my hand, something he had never, ever done before. Oh yeah. This was about to get bad. Really bad.

"I guess now is as good time as any to tell you," he nervously muttered under his breath.

"Tell me what?" I demanded. This was no time for suspense.

"Orion, do you know what demi means?"

"It's Latin for half, right?"

"Yeah, right. So that makes you-"

"She's half Greek God." My mother cut in before he could finish. I hadn't been paying attention to the lack of snoring in the car and the new eerie silence that had taken its place. "And he called you by my last name because it's your rightful birth name."

Now I knew I was on a hidden camera show.

"What are you talking about? Rightful birth name? Half God? You're not a...dad isn't a-" My words raced against my thoughts for a logical explanation.

"Honey, no. John isn't your...birth father. Your real father...he's," my mother pursed her lips before dropping an atomic bomb on my entire existence, "he's a Greek god."

Quick and blunt, my mother wiped out my entire life. Every memory, every laugh, every day and everything I had ever known was a lie. It was a blatant lie. Looking back on it, telling me the truth probably hurt my mother a lot more then it hurt me, but it didn't matter to me right now. I was in complete shock. I felt like a blank slate. I felt like a rug underneath my feet had been yanked out from right underneath me.

"That's not possible. That's literally impossible...it can't happen. Those are just made up stories."

"Oh, sweetheart. They're not. Let me explain it to you as best I can. Please," my mother pleaded with me, tears brimming in her soft green eyes. She knew I didn't have the strength to see her cry for the fiftieth time in the last couple of hours.

She left me with no choice but to hear her out.

As it turns out, my name really wasn't Orion Carter. My original birth name is Orion Vera and my father is, I can't believe I'm really saying this, an actual Greek god. I don't even fully believe in the whole thing, but mom says its best to just agree with it for the time being instead of fighting the facts.

Curiously and frustration overtook my entire body. I wanted to know what my dad looked like, where he lived, what his life was like; all the details. I asked her which Greek god my father was but, to my surprise, she didn't know and even if she did she couldn't tell me. My father has to apparently claim me like some kind of war trophy. It's not even guaranteed that he'll claim me, so I could live my entire life not knowing who my other parent is.

Wonderful.

Anyway, my father, my real father, left when I was six months old. My mom met him before she started pursuing an art career, back when she used to work for an up and coming technology company as soon as she graduated college. I tried to picture my twenty-two year old mother in a blue collared shirt and pencil skirt sitting at a desk; her hair tied up in a clean bun and her snow white skin free of any stray ink. My father was the company's C.E.O. She said he was extremely powerful and a natural leader, but he wasn't sleazy or mean; he was kind, fair, just and very handsome, a comment which made John's eyes roll to the back of his head. Even I gagged a little bit.

My mother said when she revealed to him that she was pregnant, he was initially more excited than she was. But he told her he couldn't stay. The Olympian gods have some sort of code or laws that forbade him from having an active role in my life. She said he loved me, and that she knew he was watching over me, but I didn't buy that load of crap for one second.

If my dad was out there and had been watching me my entire life, why didn't he help us? Why didn't he help me? This was a classic case of the Dad walks out and waltzes back into your life when it's convenient for him scenario.

Well, I wasn't going to let him. He abandoned us and now he was coming back to ruin my life all over again. Not on my watch. One father was enough. I didn't need another one.

When I was a year old my mom met John at one of his shows in New York and they fell in love. She married him to cover my 'half-blood scent' and keep me safe. It was a crazy idea, but it worked for seventeen years. They moved from New York City, my apparent birthplace, to Santa Barbara and we led a normal life up until yesterday.

My father, John, kept quiet the entire time my mom explained my origins to me. His eyes were glued to the road in a pensive state. He knew all along. He knew everything. A lump formed in my throat just thinking of what was going through his head. I couldn't even imagine how he felt watching me grow all these years and knowing I wasn't even his to begin with. He must've looked at me every morning, knowing my dark brown hair would never match his light washed mane, and that my cyan blue eyes were probably my real father's staring right back at him. I wished more than anything that I could've been John's real daughter; that we could go back home and make waffles and talk about how terrible our days were before having a sixties hits jam session outside in front of our campfire. It broke my heart not knowing when we'd have that again.

Danny said that we were on our way to some special place called Camp Half-Blood, where my father eventually wanted me to go.

It's just what it sounds like, a camp for half-blooded freaks like me.

Evidently, there's hundreds, maybe even thousands of unclaimed half-bloods all over the country. Some of them are lucky and are able to live their whole lives in a state of ignorant bliss. They go on to be doctors, lawyers, actors, politicians and live in harmony amongst mortals. But Danny mentioned that most demigods are tracked down and attempted to be killed by monsters by an age as early as seven.

Cell phone signals, powers, and scents attract these monsters, and the older you get, the higher risk of you being killed is. He said I was lucky to be alive.

No one really talked for the remainder of our impromptu road trip.