Chapter 2: The Taste of Power
The abandoned subway station reeked of things left to rot. Mildew crawled across the walls in black constellations. Old newspapers dissolved into pulp in the corners. Somewhere in the darkness, water dripped with metronomic persistence.
Perfect.
Alaric crouched behind a support pillar, watching the platform through eyes that saw too much. The hellhounds patrolled in a loose pack—four of them, each the size of a Great Dane, their shadows darker than the surrounding gloom. They moved with purpose, sniffing the air, hunting for the demigod scent that occasionally drifted down from the streets above.
Three days. He'd been in this world for three days, and he'd learned some hard truths.
First: his weapons were shit. The Gate of Babylon spat out swords and spears that looked impressive but shattered against anything tougher than flesh. He'd tested a bronze blade against a dumpster and watched it snap like plastic.
Second: his body was weak. Thirteen-year-old weak, not the exhausted-twentysomething weak he'd been before. Running three blocks left him winded. Climbing a fire escape made his arms shake.
Third: blood was currency.
That one had taken a day to figure out. After the Empousai attack, he'd felt the power settling into his bones—fire immunity, charm resistance, enhanced healing. But it hadn't been enough. When another harpy dove at him in Central Park, he'd absorbed its essence too, and his hearing had sharpened until he could pick out individual conversations from a block away.
Each monster he killed, each bloodline he consumed, made him a fraction stronger. Not much. Maybe half a percent per creature. But it added up.
The hellhounds hadn't noticed him yet. Good. He needed the smallest one isolated from the pack, because even with his accumulated power, a direct fight would be suicide.
His hand drifted to the bronze dagger tucked into his waistband—the only weapon he'd found that didn't immediately bend or break. Probably because it was already half-broken, the blade chipped and dull. But it held an edge, and right now that made it more valuable than gold.
The smallest hellhound—still massive, but slightly less terrifying than its packmates—wandered toward his pillar. Its nose worked the air, sampling scents, trying to identify the demigod signature it sensed but couldn't locate.
Alaric held his breath. Counted heartbeats. Waited until the creature passed his hiding spot and took two more steps.
Then he moved.
The dagger punched into the hellhound's rear leg, right where the tendon should be. The creature howled—a sound like tearing metal—and spun faster than he'd anticipated. Claws raked across his ribs, shallow but burning, and he dove away before it could bite.
The other hellhounds' heads snapped up. They charged.
"Shit, shit, shit—" Alaric summoned portals as he ran, golden circles erupting around him. Swords, spears, axes—a dozen weapons materialized and he just grabbed, throwing them behind him without aiming. Most clattered uselessly against the platform. One spear lodged in a hellhound's shoulder and it yelped, slowing.
His lungs burned. The exit was thirty feet away, then twenty, then—
The injured hellhound caught his ankle.
He went down hard, face cracking against concrete, stars exploding across his vision. Teeth closed around his calf and bit, and pain whited out conscious thought. He screamed, rolled, and drove the dagger into the hellhound's eye.
Bronze scraped against bone. The blade didn't break—miracle of miracles—but it stuck, lodged in the creature's skull. The hellhound thrashed, trying to dislodge him, and Alaric held on because letting go meant death. His other hand found a rock and he just started hitting, smashing it against the hellhound's snout over and over until finally, finally, the creature went limp.
It dissolved. Black fur and shadow-flesh collapsed into golden dust, and the blood—oh God, the blood—fountained across his face.
Instinct took over. He drank.
The sensation was different this time. Less violent than the Empousai, more... primal. He felt the hellhound's essence flood into him: predator instincts, pack hierarchy, the joy of the hunt. His senses exploded outward. Every smell in the station mapped itself instantly—rust, old food, demigod scent (faint, days old), and the three remaining hellhounds charging toward him.
He ran.
But this time, he could see in the dark. Actually see, not just make out shapes. The hellhound bloodline had given him perfect night vision, and the station's blackness became shades of grey, every detail crystal clear. He vaulted over a fallen girder, squeezed through a gap in the wall, emerged into a maintenance tunnel that stank of sewage.
Behind him, the hellhounds howled. They couldn't fit through the gap.
Alaric kept running until his legs gave out. He collapsed in a service alcove miles from the station, chest heaving, and only then did he look at his calf.
The wound was already closing. Punctures from the hellhound's teeth knitted themselves shut as he watched, flesh regenerating with visible speed. It still hurt like hell, but in five minutes it was just tender. In ten, barely a scar.
"Okay," he gasped. "Okay, that's... that's good."
But his hands were shaking. Not from pain. From the memories.
They hit in fragments: running through moonlit forests, chasing prey, the pack-mind linking predators into a coordinated unit. Except those weren't his memories. They belonged to the hellhound, bleeding through the bloodline connection, trying to overlay themselves onto his human consciousness.
He squeezed his eyes shut and focused on his real memories. Seattle. His apartment. The warehouse job. His mother's face before the cancer took her. Anything human, anything his.
Slowly, the hellhound memories faded to background noise.
"You're still you," he told himself. "You're still Alaric. You're still—"
Human?
The question lingered. Because what exactly was he now? A thirteen-year-old with an adult's memories in a body that didn't belong to him, running around Manhattan drinking monster blood to fuel powers that shouldn't exist?
The crimson eye in his reflection glowed faintly. Just a hint of light, barely visible, but it hadn't done that before.
He pushed the thought away. No time for existential crises. Three weeks to get stronger, and he'd just gained his second major bloodline. The hellhound essence meant enhanced senses, night vision, fire resistance stacking with the Empousai's immunity, and—he tested it—his body temperature ran hot now. Holding his hand over a puddle of standing water, he watched steam rise.
Useful. All of it useful. And if the price was some intrusive memories and glowing eyes, well, that was the cost of survival.
Over the next two days, he became a ghost.
The harpy in Central Park fought hard, but his hellhound senses let him track it through the trees. When he finally brought it down with a summoned net (shocking that worked) and absorbed its blood, his hearing sharpened until he could pick out individual heartbeats in a crowd.
The dracaena near the Met was trickier—snake-woman hybrid, eight feet tall, with a spear that actually matched his bronze dagger's quality. They fought across three blocks, him running and throwing weapons while she pursued with single-minded focus. He finally won by luring her into an alley, collapsing a fire escape on her head, and finishing her while she was stunned.
Her blood tasted like copper and something electric. When it settled, patches of his skin hardened into scales—just small sections on his forearms and shoulders, barely visible under clothes, but tough enough that he tested them with the dagger and it barely scratched.
Each absorption made the next easier. Each bloodline integrated faster, the memories less overwhelming. By the end of day two, he'd killed eight monsters, and his blood potency (a term that just appeared in his mind, like knowledge downloading from nowhere) sat at around 4%.
Four percent. Out of a hundred. He had so far to go.
But he was stronger. Noticeably stronger. He could run without getting winded, could lift weights that would've destroyed his old body, could see and hear and smell with inhuman precision.
The cost was the dreams.
Every night, he dreamed monster memories. Flying through darkness with a harpy's wings. Slithering through sewers as a dracaena. Hunting demigods with hellhound pack-mind. The dreams felt real—more real than his human memories sometimes—and he'd wake gasping, hands checking his back for wings that weren't there, his legs for scales that hadn't manifested.
"You're still you," he'd whisper in the dark. "You're still Alaric."
But the name felt less certain each time.
Day three brought him to Queens.
He'd been tracking the Stymphalian bird for hours—a metallic monster the size of an eagle with bronze feathers that could shred steel. Dangerous as hell, but its bloodline would give him flight capability, even if just temporary, and he needed mobility options.
The bird circled over a residential neighborhood, and Alaric followed from below, using his hellhound senses to track it by sound. It screeched—a noise like tearing sheet metal—and banked left, heading toward...
A playground.
Children's laughter drifted up. Alaric's enhanced hearing picked out at least a dozen kids, maybe more. He emerged from between two buildings and saw them: a normal afternoon scene, parents on benches, kids on swings and slides, utterly unaware of the predator overhead.
The Stymphalian bird circled lower.
"No," Alaric breathed.
His monster senses—the instincts bled through from eight absorbed bloodlines—confirmed what his gut already knew. The bird was hunting. Young demigods gave off a scent, even if they hadn't been claimed yet, and the playground probably had two or three kids with divine blood mixed into the crowd.
He could walk away. Should walk away. Getting involved would expose him, would burn energy on a fight he didn't need, would risk everything for children he didn't know.
A little girl with blonde curls looked up. Saw him standing there. Waved with a gap-toothed smile.
"Not in my story," Alaric growled.
He sprinted forward, summoning portals as he ran. Five weapons burst into existence: three swords, two spears, all of them garbage-tier and fragile. He threw them anyway, using enhanced strength to put some actual force behind the projectiles.
One spear clipped the bird's wing. It shrieked and dove—not at the children, at him. Good. He'd pissed it off.
Bronze feathers launched from its body like missiles. Alaric threw himself into a roll, feeling the feathers whistle past, hearing them embed in the pavement with meaty thunks. One grazed his shoulder and pain flared, but his dracaena scales had taken the worst of it.
The bird came in low, talons extended. He summoned a shield—it cracked immediately when the talons hit—but bought him half a second. Enough to draw his dagger and slash upward, catching the bird's belly.
Bronze scraped bronze. The dagger held. The bird screamed and gained altitude, circling for another pass.
Alaric's breath came hard. This wasn't working. The bird was too fast, too armored, and he was burning through stamina he couldn't afford. He needed something better, something that would—
The memory surfaced without warning: watching Thalia Grace fight in his mind's eye, her spear moving in patterns he'd seen illustrated in the books. He'd never seen her actually fight, but he'd read the descriptions so many times they were burned into memory.
And suddenly his body knew what to do.
His hand moved in the pattern. The dagger traced the arc. When the Stymphalian bird dove again, he didn't dodge. He stepped into its path and struck, the blade finding the gap between bronze feathers, punching through into flesh beneath.
The bird exploded into golden dust.
Blood spattered his face. His body absorbed it automatically, hungrily, and the sensation of wings burned across his shoulder blades. Not real wings—they didn't manifest physically—but the knowledge of flight, the muscle memory of aerial combat, the understanding of air currents and thermals integrated into his nervous system.
He stood there, chest heaving, covered in golden dust and monster blood, while the playground erupted in screams behind him. Parents were grabbing children, running, shouting about a "crazy kid with a knife."
The little girl with blonde curls wasn't running. She stood by the swing set, staring at him with too-knowing eyes, and something in her expression said she'd Seen. Capital S. Seen the monster, seen him fight it, seen things normal mortals couldn't.
Future demigod, probably. Someone who'd end up at Camp Half-Blood eventually, if she survived long enough.
She waved again. Then her mother grabbed her hand and pulled her away.
Alaric let his dagger vanish into a portal. Walked away before police arrived, melting into the crowd like the ghost he'd become.
That night, he found a fire escape to sleep on—safer than the ground, easier to see threats approaching. His body ached. The feather-graze on his shoulder throbbed despite healing. But he was alive.
Nine monsters killed. Nine bloodlines absorbed. Blood potency around 4.5%.
And he'd saved those kids.
The thought shouldn't matter as much as it did. He was supposed to be preparing for Percy's story, getting strong enough to make a difference in the big picture. But that little girl's smile kept replaying in his mind, and he couldn't bring himself to regret it.
"You're still you," he whispered to the Manhattan skyline.
This time, he almost believed it.
Somewhere in the city below, Grover Underwood's satyr senses would be going haywire. Multiple demigod signatures mixed with monster essence, concentrated in one location, powerful enough to be noticed. The satyr network would start investigating soon.
But that was a problem for tomorrow.
Tonight, Alaric closed his mismatched eyes and dreamed of flying.
Author's Note / Promotion:
Your Reviews and Power Stones are the best way to show support. They help me know what you're enjoying and bring in new readers!
Can't wait for the next chapter of [ Percy Jackson: Broken Fates ]?
You don't have to. Get instant access to more content by supporting me on Patreon. I have three options so you can pick how far ahead you want to be:
🪙 Silver Tier ($6): Read 10 chapters ahead of the public site.
👑 Gold Tier ($9): Get 15-20 chapters ahead of the public site.
💎 Platinum Tier ($15): The ultimate experience. Get new chapters the second I finish them (20+ chapters ahead!). No waiting for weekly drops, just pure, instant access.
Your support helps me write more .
👉 Find it all at patreon.com/fanficwriter1