PROLOGUE
The Night Everything Changed
There are battles that begin before a person is born.
There are enemies who do not hate you because of what you have done but because of what you are destined to become.
And sometimes, the greatest danger to a family does not come from strangers. It comes from the very person who is supposed to protect it.
The night everything changed, Claire was only sixteen.
She remembered the rain.
It was one of those heavy Lagos nights when the thunder sounded like something enormous dragging chains across the sky. The electricity had gone out, the generator had stopped working, and the entire house was unusually quiet.
Her mother was in the bedroom, crying.
Her father had not come home.
Alex, her elder brother, had been behaving strangely for weeks. He had become aggressive, withdrawn and increasingly disrespectful. Vivian, who was usually cheerful and playful, had started having nightmares. Sometimes she screamed in her sleep, calling out names nobody in the family recognised.
Only Jeff seemed untouched by the strange occurrences.
And Claire?
Claire had started seeing a man.
Not an ordinary man.
He appeared whenever she was in danger. Sometimes he stood across the road watching her. Sometimes she saw him in her dreams. On two occasions, he had appeared at their family gate just moments before something terrible happened.
He was tall, dark-skinned, handsome and always dressed in black or white.
He never seemed to get wet when it rained.
He never seemed to sweat under the scorching sun.
And strangely, nobody else ever noticed him.
That night, as Claire sat beside the window, she saw him standing outside.
He raised his head.
Their eyes met.
Then he mouthed four words.
“Your father is in danger.”
Claire jumped up.
Before she could reach the door, her phone rang.
It was an unknown number.
She answered.
A woman’s voice whispered:
“Tell your mother that the next person I will collect is her daughter.”
The call ended.
And somewhere in the darkness, a woman laughed.
That was the night Claire discovered that the destruction of her family was no accident.
It was a carefully planned spiritual attack.
And she was the only one who could stop it.
