Stronger Together chapter 234

After Odin left the meeting mostly broke up. People fractured into  smaller groups and began discussing strategies and other business and I  slipped out the front door with Raven trailing close behind. I smiled at  her slightly as she climbed into the drivers seat of the car. I'd been  planning to call a cab, but with Rae here we could just take the quick  way. " So, you know where we're going?" I had exactly one lead right now  and since I knew for a fact that right now was basically the only time  we could be sure Loki and Cowl wouldn't be working the location, I  wanted to check it out.

Raven  rolled her eyes. "You're as subtle as a brick to the head, my love.  Yes, I know where we're heading, that's why I came with you. I'm not  letting you out of my sight again after your last disappearing act. I'm  coming along as backup." I smiled at that an leaned over to kiss my girl  softly. She radiated a feeling of smugness at my easy capitulation, and  I didn't have the heart to tell her that I was going to call for Kara  anyway once I was out. So she pulled out and we headed to soldier field  at a sedate pace.

I  turned to stare at her. "This is the big one you know." She nodded. I  looked away, staring out the window with a sigh. "I don't know how I  know either. I can just tell. This is where things get messy. Where we  find out what we're made of, and I'll be honest with you Rae, I don't  know if I can do it." She didn't respond, because she knew I didn't need  that, I just needed her to listen. "I've done some crazy shit since  coming here. I killed fucking Fenrir and Drakul and Remus and Romulus  and a host of others. I've put down monsters and nasties I couldn't have  imagined before, and I did it without any casualties."

Her  voice broke through my reverie. "But those were the warm up." I turned  to look at her, expecting to meet her gaze, but she just looked out  through the windshield. "I get it. Deep down you still think of this as a  book." I opened my mouth to respond but she cut me off. "No, I'm not  saying you take it for granted or think it's not real. It's the  narrative. You keep moving forward, fighting the good fight, because  this is a book and you have Harry with you and you just know we're going  to win. Somewhere deep down inside you still believe in your hero. S0  what's different this time?"

I  felt a jolt of fear go through me as I put it into words, but now that  she'd asked I had to say it. "Because this is the end. The rules are  different. This is the last chapter, the final scene, and if everything  was going to go to shit it would be now. There's a monster at the end of  this book, and I don't know if it's as friendly as it's name sake.  There are no guarantees anymore. I mean, I guess there never were, but I  always felt like they were there and it gave me the confidence to do  what needed doing." I shrugged. "or maybe I was delusional the whole  time and it's just now wearing off. Either way, I have a bad feeling  about what's coming."

That  was ignoring Lucifer and his involvement at the gates, because honestly  who knew what that nonsense was about. It was Odin's problem. Raven  nodded solemnly at the declaration, but was unable to follow up as we  arrived at our destination. The car pulled up outside soldier field, and  I almost immediately knew we were in the right place. I glanced at Rae.  "You feel that?" It was mostly a rhetorical question because my breath  fogged the air as I spoke, but she nodded anyway, eyes scanning for our  as of yet unseen foe. A foe that I deeply suspected that we already  knew.

She  didn't appear though, so we trekked out onto the field to see what was  waiting for us, and when we got there we found...chaos. As we suspected  Maeve was here, but unlike we'd been imagining Maeve wasn't lying in  wait and gloating, prepared to explain to us in classic bad guy fashion  why we were ants and would inevitably die or whatever her schtick would  have been. She was fighting. And more importantly, she was losing. As we  crunched out onto the frozen grass we could see a massive battle still  underway between Maeve and another entity, a black shape moving too fast  to track and at angles that made my brain hurt.

Maeve  was pissed, full on winter lady rage mode and hurling fucking glaciers  and the shape, but the slippery bastard stepped nimbly between the  blasts when he didn't just smash the things with his bare hands. I say  he because when we got closer I slipped into my lightning aspect and was  finally able to track the shape of a young man, black hair and blue  eyes that sparkled with glee as he soundly crushed the winter lady in  open combat. The strange thing was when I opened my magic eye to see  what he was doing mystically I got nothing at all in terms of feedback  from the spell. It was like it wasn't even functioning.

Which  was weird. Magic eye sometimes didn't find much but it always saw some  magic. Magic was everywhere and in everything, but even more  specifically it was always in people. Life was magic and magic eye  always got something from people. But not this guy. His body  was...strange. Off in some odd way. Whatever it was though Maeve was  fucking terrified of it, because while her attacks all aimed to kill  they were more specifically geared to keep the young man the fuck away  from her person. Whatever he was she definitely did not want him  touching her.

But  sadly for her she wasn't managing that very well. She threw spike after  spike of ice and froze the ground but the young man seemed to be  everywhere, bounding off ice and sometimes even thin air, his fingers  razor sharp with unnatural black claws and his bared arms flowing with a  set of shifting tattoos that seemed to be the source of them. The claws  cut through ice and magic like butter and his body shifted in mid air  in odd and impractical ways. I expected the deadlock to stay in effect  for a while, but unfortunately for Maeve that wasn't to be.

One  of those claws extended weirdly as the young mans arm twisted a full  one hundred eighty degrees and seemingly dislocated itself, just  managing to scrape her. When the inky black substance touched her skin  it seemed to burn a gash open in her flesh like a super heated knife. I  winced at the action but before I could even process it something even  weirder happened. A black mist was pulled free from the gash. The mist  seemed almost thick enough to be a liquid but where it came out the skin  seemed to be torn like it was rooted into her flesh as a solid.

She  screamed and threw herself back pulling up a massive wall of thick ice  and then turning to bolt away at top speed. She seemed to be almost  staggering as she ran, and I debated following, but turning my back on  the crazy guy with the evil looking black shadow much tats seemed like  it would be asking for trouble. I cursed and turned to face the guy,  Raven at my side, and I was glad she hadn't tried to chase Maeve alone. A  cornered rat is the most dangerous and all that, especially one  possessed by Nemesis.

The  young man had slowed enough for me to drop my aspect but he looked  blissful as he stood there, seemingly soaking in his victory. Almost  shuddering with joy as he did...whatever he was doing. When we got  within a certain range though his eyes snapped open and jerked down to  fix on us. His head cocked to one side like a bird, and his irises  locked onto my face, burning gold against a black sclera. His lips  pulled back from shockingly white teeth into a wide grin. "Oh, hello.  What can I do for you both today? Sorry if I interrupted your evening, I  had to deal with that, shame she got away but hey I got a hit so alls  well that ends well."

I  just kind of stared at him. "I...don't know how to respond to that. Who  are you? If you were fighting Maeve I won't say you're an ally  necessarily, but you probably aren't an enemy." That was actually a  gross oversimplification of the situation, but if it helped this weird  and slightly intimidating being interact with us peacefully I was down  to try out the power of friendship. Raven seemed to pick that up and  nodded along, she wasn't big into talking to strangers and was probably  waiting to try to kill him if he attacked anyway.

He  stuck out a hand, and the black claws melted away as he extended the  appendage. "I'm Aiden, I don't know her, but she had some of the body  jacker inside her and I wanted a snack. I chased her down because taking  it out of people hurts so much that asking never works. That one was  stronger than usual though. I haven't run into any trouble since I ate  the fifth one I think." I looked at him confused and he smiled back  guilelessly. "Ah sorry, so the body jacker is this weird evil brain  voice that tries to control people, sometimes directly and sometimes  with more subtle methods."

He  gestured to his tattoo. "I used to be a normal guy actually, but the  body jacker tried to take me over. I didn't listen to it's orders or  suggestions so it just grabbed my body. Taking control of someones body  like that means you have to put yourself against them though. It tried  to me but I ate it first. I ripped out a big chunk of it and it escaped,  and the chunk turned into my tattoos. Now every time I'm near someone  with a piece of it in them I can feel it. I can eat the pieces to get  stronger, so I tend to hunt them down. My tattoos keep getting stronger  though, which is cool." He just cheerfully filled me in on the details  and I had to try not to let my jaw drop.

I  only knew of one being or force described as a body jacker that could  be living inside Maeve. Nemesis. If I understood that story right Aiden  had been a normal mortal and Nemesis tried to grab him to use. He'd  ignored it like Cat Sith tried to do and it had just tossed subtlety and  tried to brain eat him. Except whoever this guy was he'd managed to  brain eat Nemesis instead. He had kept it's powers and turned into some  kind of...natural predator of the possessing entity, one that could  track and remove it in a way no one else could. I was in fucking shock.  He hadn't been in the books so either he was new or just hadn't showed  up yet in the story. Either way he was here now and we needed him.

I  smiled at him and took the offered hand. "I'm Cameron, and we were here  looking for an associate of your body jacker. Tell youi what? How about  we team up and help each other out? Any power you can absorb is yours  and we really need as many people as we can get on this." Aiden looked  pensive for a second then grinned brightly. Looked like I had a new team  member.