Chapter 4: The Road to Camp
The van Grover "borrowed" died three times before they even cleared Manhattan. Each time, Carlos would sigh, pop the hood, and perform minor miracles with celestial bronze and prayer. The engine would cough back to life, Grover would bleat something grateful, and they'd limp forward another few miles before the next breakdown.
Alaric sat in the back, watching shadows through the rear windows, his hellhound senses screaming warnings. They were being followed. Had been since Brooklyn. Something big. Something patient. Something that knew exactly where they were going.
"We should've taken the subway," Maya muttered from beside him. She'd claimed the seat near the door—easy escape route if things went bad. Smart.
"Subway has its own problems," Alaric said. His enhanced hearing picked up the engine's death rattle two seconds before it actually died. "And at least in the van we can see what's coming."
The van shuddered. Stopped.
"Seriously?" Grover's voice cracked three octaves. "We're on the highway!"
They were. Specifically, they were on an overpass heading toward Long Island, surrounded by afternoon traffic that somehow managed to ignore the smoking van blocking the middle lane. The Mist was working overtime, probably making them look like a normal breakdown to mortal eyes.
Carlos popped the hood again. "Give me two minutes."
He didn't get them.
The Fury descended like a nightmare made flesh. Wings of shadow erupted from her back—not feathered, but formed from darkness itself, each beat disturbing the air with visible ripples. Her eyes burned like coals pressed into a human face, and when she smiled, her teeth were too sharp.
"The blood-drinker," she hissed. Her voice carried over the traffic noise impossibly well, aimed directly at Alaric like a thrown knife. "I can smell you from here. Taste what you've consumed. Lord Hades sends his regards and a warning."
Grover nearly crashed the van swerving away from her flight path. The wheels hit the guardrail, metal screaming, and Alaric braced himself against the seat as they skidded to a stop.
The Fury hovered directly over his side of the vehicle. Close enough that he could see the tendons standing out in her neck, the way her shadow-wings blurred at the edges like smoke.
"You reek of death," she continued, "but do not belong to death. You're something new. Something wrong. And my lord wishes you to know that he is... interested."
Alaric's hand moved before conscious thought. Golden portals erupted through the van's roof—three of them, tearing circular holes in the metal. Swords burst through, followed by a spear, all of them garbage-tier but sharp enough to make a point.
The Fury batted them aside like annoying flies. One sword hit the pavement and shattered. The spear bent double. The third sword she caught mid-flight and snapped with one hand.
"Is that your answer?" Her smile widened. "Disappointing."
She dove.
Carlos reacted first. His hand found the bronze wrench still clutched from the engine repairs, and he threw it with desperate strength. The tool hit her wing—not hard, just a glancing blow—but the celestial bronze exploded on contact.
The wrench didn't shatter. It detonated. Bronze shrapnel erupted in a sphere of killing metal, and the Fury shrieked as fragments shredded her shadow-wings. She tumbled sideways, flight faltering, giving them exactly three seconds.
"Maya!" Alaric shouted. "Weeds! Everything growing near the road!"
She slammed both palms against the van's floor. Her power surged outward, invisible to the eye but tangible to anyone with divine blood. The roadside vegetation—weeds, mostly, the scraggly plants that grew in highway margins—exploded upward.
Vines thick as Alaric's wrist erupted from the concrete. They wrapped around the Fury's legs, her waist, her wings, dragging her groundward with vegetative fury. She screamed and thrashed, shadow-wings burning through the vines, but it bought them enough time.
"GO!" Grover bleated. "GO GO GO!"
The van's engine coughed. Carlos had apparently fixed it during the chaos, because the vehicle lurched forward, tires squealing. They shot down the highway at speeds that definitely violated several laws, weaving through traffic that parted around them like water.
In the rearview mirror, Alaric watched the Fury tear free from Maya's vines. She hovered there, backlit by afternoon sun, her burning eyes locked on their retreating vehicle. But she didn't follow.
She'd delivered her message. That was enough.
They abandoned the van at a rest stop ten miles later. The engine finally gave up completely, exhaling its last breath in a cloud of acrid smoke. Grover coordinated frantically via Iris message—calling in more favors, arranging alternate transport—while Alaric, Maya, and Carlos collapsed behind a dumpster.
The adrenaline crash hit hard. Maya's hands shook. Carlos stared at his palms like they belonged to someone else. And Alaric... Alaric felt the monster blood singing in his veins, felt the absorbed instincts urging him to fight, to hunt, to feed.
He shoved them down. Focused on breathing.
"You fought a Fury," Maya whispered. Awe colored her voice. "And didn't die."
"We fought a Fury," Alaric corrected. "Your vines are what saved us."
"My vines just grew fast." She looked at him with something approaching wonder. "Your weapons exploded out of nowhere. Through the van's roof. That's... that's not normal."
"Nothing about any of us is normal." Carlos held up his hands. "I made a wrench explode. That's never happened before. Usually I just... fix things."
"Stress activation," Alaric said. The explanation came easy—half-remembered from the books, half-fabricated on the spot. "Your divine powers get stronger when you're in danger. Fight-or-flight kicks in and suddenly you can do things that were impossible five minutes ago."
"Is that what happened to you?" Maya asked. "Your powers got stronger?"
"Something like that."
They sat in silence for a moment. The dumpster blocked them from casual view, creating a bubble of relative privacy. Somewhere nearby, Grover bleated into the Iris message rainbow, negotiating transport with increasing desperation.
"Thank you," Carlos said finally. "For back there. You didn't have to fight. Could've let the Fury take you and the rest of us would've been fine."
"She wasn't after you," Alaric pointed out. "She wanted me specifically. You two just helped because..."
He trailed off. Because why? They barely knew him. Had every reason to be terrified of him after watching him absorb the arachne spawn's blood yesterday. But they'd still thrown themselves into danger.
"Because we're a team," Maya finished. She offered her hand, palm up, echoing the gesture from the soup kitchen. "Right? That's what you said. We're in this together."
Alaric clasped her hand. Then Carlos's. And something happened.
Golden light flickered between them. Not bright—barely a glow, really—but present. Visible. The Gate of Babylon responding to something it recognized, cataloguing the connection like it catalogued weapons.
"Bonds," Alaric realized. "It's storing bonds, not just weapons. Marking them as important."
The light faded. Maya and Carlos stared at their hands, then at him.
"What was that?" Carlos asked.
"I have no idea," Alaric admitted. Completely honest this time. "My powers are... still revealing themselves. New things keep happening."
"Cool things," Maya said. Small smile playing at her lips. "Weird things, but cool."
"Terrifying things," Carlos corrected. "But yeah. Cool."
They grinned at each other—three teenagers sitting behind a dumpster at a highway rest stop, covered in monster dust and van exhaust, alive against all odds. It shouldn't have felt like victory. But somehow, it did.
Grover appeared around the dumpster's edge, looking harried. "Okay. Good news and bad news. Good news: I got us transport the rest of the way. Bad news: it's a flower delivery truck driven by a very confused satyr who thinks I'm insane for traveling with three demigods simultaneously. We need to leave now before he changes his mind."
They stood. Grabbed their meager belongings. Followed Grover to the flower truck that would carry them the remaining distance.
As they piled into the back—surrounded by roses and lilies, the scent almost overwhelming—Alaric caught Maya watching him. Calculating. Wondering.
"You're not telling us everything," she said quietly. "About your powers. About what you are."
"No," Alaric agreed. "I'm not."
"But you're on our side."
"Yes."
She held his gaze for a long moment. Then nodded. "Good enough for now."
The truck started moving. Through the back window, Alaric watched the rest stop disappear behind them, along with the highway and the smoking van and the place where a Fury had called him by a title he didn't understand: blood-drinker.
The sun was setting. Golden light painted Long Island in amber and shadow, and somewhere ahead lay Camp Half-Blood. Sanctuary. Safety. The place where Percy Jackson's story would begin in less than three weeks.
Where Alaric's real work would start.
They crossed Thalia's pine at sunset.
Alaric felt the boundary like a physical thing—magic pressing against his skin, assessing him, trying to categorize what he was and failing. His monster blood writhed uncomfortably. The absorbed instincts that usually hummed in the background went suddenly quiet, suppressed by the camp's protective enchantments.
It felt like surfacing from water. Like taking a breath after being submerged too long.
Grover led them through, his relief palpable. Maya and Carlos stumbled slightly, their own divine blood resonating with the magic, and then they were inside. Protected. Safe.
Camp Half-Blood spread before them in the dying light.
Strawberry fields stretched to the left, plants heavy with fruit. The cabins formed a horseshoe around a central green, each one distinct—Poseidon's low and gray, Athena's bright and proud, Hermes's ramshackle and crowded. The Big House sat at the hill's base, blue trim gleaming. And everywhere, demigods moved with purpose: training at the arena, swimming in the lake, gathering for dinner.
It was real. All of it. Not illustrations from a book, but actual buildings, actual people, actual life.
Chiron trotted out to meet them. The centaur's white stallion body gleamed in the sunset, and his ancient eyes swept over the group with assessment that missed nothing. They lingered on Alaric longer than the others.
"Welcome to Camp Half-Blood," Chiron announced. His voice carried easily, drawing the attention of nearby campers. "A sanctuary for heroes."
But his gaze never left Alaric. Those ancient eyes saw too much—saw the mismatched irises that glowed faintly in the dimming light, saw the way monster instincts were being suppressed but not eliminated by the camp's magic, saw something that shouldn't exist standing before him.
Alaric forced himself to smile. Innocent. Harmless. Just another unclaimed demigod seeking safety.
Chiron's expression remained unreadable.
In the gathering crowd, a figure caught Alaric's attention. Nineteen, maybe twenty. Scarred face, veteran's posture, eyes that assessed new arrivals with tactical precision. Luke Castellan. The books' descriptions didn't do him justice—didn't capture the charisma bleeding from every line of his body, or the darkness lurking beneath the confident exterior.
Their eyes met across the distance.
Luke's expression darkened. Something in Alaric's appearance—the glowing eyes, the monster scent that even the barrier couldn't fully suppress—triggered recognition. Not of who Alaric was, but of what he represented.
Wrongness. Threat. Something that didn't belong.
Alaric looked away first. Kept his expression neutral. Followed Grover toward the Hermes cabin because that's where unclaimed demigods went, and he was officially unclaimed.
But he could feel Luke's gaze following him. Tracking him. Marking him as someone to watch.
"So it begins," Alaric thought.
Maya touched his elbow, her expression concerned. "You okay?"
"Yeah," he lied. "Just... taking it all in."
Camp Half-Blood bustled around them. Demigods laughed and trained and lived, completely unaware that their world was about to change. That in three weeks, Percy Jackson would arrive. That the Lightning Thief plot would begin. That everything was balanced on a knife's edge.
And Alaric stood at the center of it, carrying secrets that could save or damn them all.
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