Chapter 3: The Outcast Network
The soup kitchen smelled like institutional cooking and desperation. Alaric pushed through the door, following the faint metallic scent his hellhound senses had picked up six blocks away—celestial bronze, unmistakable once you knew what to look for. The afternoon crowd was thin: a few homeless men hunched over bowls, volunteers moving between tables with practiced efficiency, and in the far corner, two teenagers who radiated wrongness.
Not monster wrongness. Demigod wrongness.
The girl was maybe thirteen, with dark skin and hair pulled back in a braid that had seen better days. She clutched a kitchen knife like it might actually do something against the creature skittering across the ceiling tiles. The boy beside her—Latino, stocky, wearing clothes held together with duct tape and hope—held what looked like a bronze pipe wrench, his knuckles white.
The creature had too many legs. That was Alaric's first coherent thought as his enhanced vision tracked it through the shadows. Spider-like, but wrong. Each leg ended in a blade instead of a foot, and its body pulsed with a sickly green luminescence.
Nobody else in the soup kitchen seemed to notice it. The volunteers kept serving. The homeless kept eating. The Mist was thick here, hiding the monster from mortal eyes, but the two teenagers saw it perfectly.
They were terrified.
The creature dropped from the ceiling.
Alaric moved before conscious thought caught up. His hand jerked and golden light erupted, portals tearing open around him. A spear materialized—wobbling slightly, the shaft bent—and he threw it. The weapon tumbled end over end, completely missing the creature but buying him a second to close the distance.
The monster's attention snapped to him. Eight blade-legs clicked against linoleum as it pivoted, and up close Alaric could smell sulfur and something like burning hair. His borrowed instincts screamed arachne spawn, which meant it was fast and venomous and—
It lunged.
He dove left, summoning a shield that cracked the instant a blade-leg hit it. The shield bought him nothing except a face full of wooden splinters, but Maya—the girl with the kitchen knife—finally moved. She slammed her palm against the ground and the floor erupted.
Vines burst through the linoleum in a surge of green. They wrapped around three of the creature's legs, holding it in place for exactly two seconds. Long enough for Carlos to throw his wrench.
The bronze tool hit the creature's cluster of eyes with a wet crunch. It shrieked—a sound like tearing metal—and Alaric summoned another spear, better this time, straighter. He drove it through the creature's thorax and pinned it to the floor.
It thrashed. The spear bent. He grabbed a second weapon—a sword, rusty but serviceable—and just started stabbing. Over and over, until the creature stopped moving and began dissolving into golden dust.
Blood spattered his hands. His body absorbed it automatically, hungrily, and knowledge flooded in: wall-crawling, enhanced reflexes, minor venomous bite. The arachne spawn bloodline settled into his cells like it had always belonged there.
When Alaric looked up, Maya and Carlos were staring at him.
Not at the dissolving monster. At him.
"What," Maya whispered, "the hell was that?"
The soup kitchen continued around them, oblivious. Volunteers served food. Homeless men ate. The Mist had covered everything—the monster, the fight, the impossible golden dust—and left three teenagers standing in a corner looking like they'd seen a ghost.
Alaric forced a smile. Tried for self-deprecating and probably landed somewhere near manic. "That was me having a really weird week."
Carlos's grip on his wrench hadn't loosened. "Your hands are glowing."
Were they? Alaric looked down. Faint golden traces still flickered around his fingers where the portals had opened. He shook them out and the light faded. "Yeah. That happens sometimes."
"And you just... drank its blood." Maya's voice was flat. Shocked, maybe, or horrified. Hard to tell which.
"Absorbed," Alaric corrected, because precision mattered in lies. "I absorb essence through blood contact. It's—look, I'm like you. Demigod. Just with a really specific set of weird powers that I'm still figuring out."
"You're like us?" Carlos's laugh was sharp. "Man, I can fix broken machines. Maya makes plants grow. You just killed a monster with magic weapons and then ate it."
"Absorbed," Alaric repeated. Then, softer, "And yes. I'm like you."
He offered his hand. Scarred palm up, open, non-threatening. The kind of gesture that said I'm not a threat even though they'd just watched him kill something twice his size.
Maya looked at Carlos. Carlos looked at Maya. Some silent conversation passed between them—the kind that happened when you'd been surviving together long enough to develop shorthand—and finally Maya reached out.
Her hand was callused. Rough from weeks of living rough, nails bitten down to the quick. When she clasped his palm, her grip was surprisingly strong.
"I'm Alaric," he said. "And yeah, that was weird. But I promise I'm on your side."
"Maya." She released his hand and gestured to the boy. "That's Carlos."
"You guys live here?" Alaric asked, already knowing the answer but needing them to say it.
Carlos snorted. "Live is a strong word. We crash here. The soup kitchen lets us help with cleanup in exchange for not calling the cops about two runaways squatting in the storage room."
"How long?"
"Three months," Maya said quietly. "Since the last monster found my foster home. Since I..." She trailed off, glancing at the floor where vines still poked through broken linoleum. "Since I figured out I wasn't normal."
"Five months for me." Carlos slumped into a chair, exhaustion catching up now that the adrenaline was fading. "Chimera killed my foster parents. I ran. Been running since."
The casual way they said it—like losing everything was just another Tuesday—made something twist in Alaric's chest. These were kids his apparent age, surviving on luck and desperation, one bad encounter away from ending up as monster food.
"There's a safe place," he said. "A camp. Long Island. It's called Camp Half-Blood, and it's specifically for demigods like us."
Maya's eyes narrowed. "How do you know about it?"
Good question. Great question, actually. Time to deploy the cover story he'd been building.
"Prophetic dreams," Alaric said, letting uncertainty color his voice. Making it sound like a confession instead of a lie. "I have them sometimes. See things that are going to happen, or places I've never been. The camp showed up in one of my dreams a few days ago. I've been trying to find other demigods to help get there, because I'm pretty sure I'll die if I try to make it alone."
Not entirely false. The dying alone part, anyway.
"Prophetic dreams." Carlos didn't sound convinced. "That's your power? On top of the weapon thing and the blood drinking?"
"Absorbing," Alaric corrected for the third time. "And I don't think they're connected. The dreams started before the other stuff. I'm still figuring out what I can do."
Technically true. He was absolutely still figuring out his powers, even if the dreams were from reading a book series in a previous life.
Maya studied him for a long moment. Her eyes were dark brown, sharp with intelligence that came from months of survival-based learning. "This camp. You see it clearly? In the dreams?"
"Pine tree at the top of a hill," Alaric said, pulling details from memory. "Golden Fleece in its branches. Strawberry fields. Cabins arranged in a horseshoe. A big house with blue trim. Centaur named Chiron running things."
The specificity sold it. Maya's shoulders relaxed incrementally.
"And this place is safe?" Carlos asked. "From monsters?"
"Magical barrier. Nothing gets through without permission."
"Sounds like bullshit," Carlos said. But his voice held hope underneath the skepticism.
"Sounds like exactly what we need," Maya countered. She looked at Alaric again. "You really think we can make it there?"
"I think we have a better chance together than alone."
That, at least, was completely honest.
They talked over lukewarm soup that tasted like institutional sadness. Maya had been unclaimed for three months, her plant powers manifesting gradually until she could make flowers bloom with a touch. Carlos's gift was more subtle—mechanical intuition, an instinctive understanding of how machines worked and what was wrong with them. Both had lost their foster families to monsters. Both had been surviving day-to-day, terrified of what came next.
"I tried finding other demigods," Carlos said, stirring soup he wasn't eating. "Figured there had to be more. But every time I found someone who felt... off, right, like us, monsters would show up and I'd have to run."
"They're attracted to demigod scent," Alaric explained. "The more powerful you are, the stronger you smell to them. Groups make it worse because the scents combine."
"How do you know that?" Maya asked.
"Prophetic dreams," Alaric lied smoothly. "And some trial and error. I've been hunting monsters for a few days, figuring out how they work."
"Hunting them?" Carlos's eyebrows rose. "On purpose?"
"Seemed smarter than waiting for them to hunt me."
Maya laughed—short and sharp, but genuine. "You're either really brave or really stupid."
"Can't it be both?"
That got a smile from Carlos. The tension around the table eased slightly, and for a few minutes, they were just three teenagers sharing a meal. Trading stories about foster care nightmares and close calls with monsters. Finding common ground in shared trauma.
Alaric felt something warm and painful settle in his chest. These were real people. Not characters from a book, but actual kids who'd been dealt a shit hand and were trying to survive. And he could help them.
"This matters," he thought. "This is why you're here."
The door slammed open.
Grover Underwood burst into the soup kitchen in full panic mode, reed pipes clutched in both hands, his eyes wild. The volunteers looked up, mildly concerned, but the Mist must have made him look relatively normal because nobody screamed about the goat legs.
Alaric saw them clearly. Saw the way Grover's hooves clacked against linoleum, the way his nostrils flared as he scented the air, the tension in every line of his body.
Their eyes met.
Grover froze.
Alaric watched the satyr's expression cycle through confusion, recognition, and something approaching horror. Grover's hand drifted toward his pipes—not to play music, but to hold them defensively. Like a weapon.
"You," Grover breathed. "You're the—the scent I've been tracking for three days. The weird one. The one that smells like..."
He trailed off. His gaze swept over Maya and Carlos, then back to Alaric, and calculation replaced horror. Three demigods in one place. Three potential successes to report to camp.
Alaric stood slowly. Kept his hands visible, non-threatening. Let all his summoned weapons dismiss in shimmers of golden light.
"We've been waiting for you," he said, pitching his voice to carry sincerity. "Our protector. Someone to help us get to safety."
It was a gamble. Banking on Grover's desire to succeed, to prove himself after previous failures. Offering him three found demigods on a silver platter, complete with a convenient explanation for why they'd been gathered in one place.
Grover's suspicion warred with hope across his face. "You... you were waiting?"
"Prophetic dreams," Alaric said. "I knew someone would come. A satyr. I dreamed about you specifically—the pipes, the nervous energy, the determination to protect demigods even when it's dangerous. That's you, right? You're Grover Underwood."
He wasn't supposed to know that. Shouldn't know that. But framing it as prophetic knowledge sold the lie, and Grover's expression shifted from suspicion to cautious wonder.
"You saw me?" The satyr's voice cracked. "In dreams?"
"For the past week. I knew you'd find us eventually." Alaric gestured to Maya and Carlos. "That's why I gathered these two. Figured it was safer to wait here than wander around separately."
The logic was thin but serviceable. Grover wanted to believe it—wanted to believe he'd successfully found three demigods instead of stumbling onto something weird and potentially dangerous. Alaric watched the satyr's face as hope won.
"Okay," Grover said finally. His posture relaxed, pipes lowering. "Okay, if you're really demigods, and you really want to get to camp, then... then I can help. I'm supposed to escort demigods to safety. That's my job."
"Then let's go," Alaric said. "Before something else finds us."
As if on cue, a howl echoed from several blocks away. Distant but closing. Grover's ears perked up, and his face went pale.
"Hellhounds," he whispered. "Three of them. Maybe four." He looked at Alaric with new respect mixed with fear. "You weren't kidding about attracting monsters."
"Told you we needed protection." Alaric grabbed his makeshift bag—just a pillowcase full of scavenged supplies—and started for the door. "Come on. We need to move now."
Maya and Carlos followed without argument. Grover bleated nervously but took the lead, already planning the route to Long Island, already coordinating transport via Iris message to whatever satyr network existed.
They left the soup kitchen behind, four figures disappearing into Brooklyn's evening streets.
That night, they camped in an abandoned warehouse near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Grover had called in favors to arrange transport for tomorrow—something about borrowing a van from a sympathetic naiad—but for now they had concrete floors and the kind of quiet that came from exhaustion.
Maya and Carlos fell asleep almost immediately, curled up near each other for warmth and comfort. Grover took first watch, sitting by the warehouse entrance with his pipes ready.
Alaric lay awake, staring at the ceiling.
He'd saved three lives today. Two demigods who would've died without camp. One satyr whose confidence he'd restored by giving him found demigods to escort. The timeline was already changing—Maya and Carlos didn't exist in the books, weren't part of Percy's story, but they existed now and that mattered.
"This is real," he thought. "These people are real. I'm making actual differences."
The responsibility of it settled over him like a weight. Not crushing, exactly, but present. Undeniable. He had power and knowledge that others didn't, and that meant he had to use it. Had to try. Even if he didn't know what ripple effects he was creating, even if changing things meant stepping into unknown territory.
Because the alternative was letting kids like Maya and Carlos die alone in soup kitchens. Letting tragedies play out because he was too scared to intervene.
And Alaric refused to be that person.
His crimson eye caught the dim light filtering through broken windows. The glow was faint but present, a reminder of what he was becoming. Ten bloodlines absorbed now. Blood potency creeping upward. Each monster he killed made him a little less human and a little more... something else.
But tonight, that power had saved lives.
So maybe it was worth it.
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