Haunt Me

Taste of copper

Ian swiped a trembling palm across the surface of the cracked locker room mirror. The steam smeared into a jagged streak, revealing a face he barely recognized. The "baby face" the promoters loved—the soft jawline and wide, innocent blue eyes—was a lie. In the dim, flickering amber of the single overhead bulb, his pupils were blown wide, swallowing the irises until only a thin, predatory rim of gold remained.

He blinked hard, and the gold vanished, replaced by the bloodshot exhaustion of a kid who hadn't eaten a carbohydrate in three days. But the phantom sensation remained: a tightness in his gums, a heat in his throat that no amount of Newark tap water could quench.

He dressed in the dark. He didn't want to see the scar. He didn't want to see the way the skin over his sternum skipped and fluttered like something was trying to burrow its way out. He pulled a heavy gray hoodie over his head, the fleece scratching against his sensitized skin, and laced his running shoes with fingers that felt like wooden stakes.

He couldn't face Pops. He couldn't face the questions in Chloe’s eyes—the way she’d looked at him on the mats, like he was a stray dog that had just bared its teeth at its master.

Ian slipped out the heavy steel fire door at the back of Ironbound MMA. The Newark night air hit him like a physical blow—humid, thick with the scent of diesel, rotting garbage, and the metallic promise of rain. Under normal circumstances, the city was a cacophony of ugliness.

Tonight, it was a buffet.

He started to run. His legs were heavy, his muscles screaming from the weight cut, but as his heart rate climbed, the fatigue began to melt into a precarious, electric energy. *Thump-thump. Thump-thump.*

*Run, little bird,* the memory of her voice purred. *Run until the cage disappears.*

He turned toward the industrial sector, away from the streetlights and the prying eyes of the late-shift commuters. His sneakers slapped against the cracked pavement in a rhythmic cadence. By the second mile, his heart rate hit 160. The world began to sharpen.

The darkness wasn't dark anymore. It was a spectrum of deep purples and bruised grays. He could see the individual rusted bolts on the railway bridge a hundred yards away. He could hear the frantic, wet heartbeat of a stray cat huddled beneath a dumpster, its terror smelling like burnt sugar.

170 beats per minute.

The "Stain" in his chest began to radiate heat. The scar beneath his hoodie wasn't just itching now; it was burning, a brand glowing against his ribs. He felt the Crimson Redline approaching, that invisible threshold where Ian Gilmore ended and the thing Selene had made began.

He turned into Branch Brook Park, his pace frantic, desperate to outrun the hunger. But the park wasn't empty.

Near a cluster of skeletal oaks, three men stood in the shadow of a rusted gazebo. The smell hit Ian before he saw them: the sour tang of cheap beer, the sharp chemical bite of cigarettes, and beneath it all—the prize. The deep, rhythmic thrum of heat. Adrenaline.

Ian slowed to a halt, his chest heaving. He wasn't panting from exhaustion; he was tasting the air.

"Yo, check this kid," one of the men said, stepping out into the jaundiced light of a distant streetlamp. He was thick-necked, wearing a nylon tracksuit that swished with every predatory step. He held a folding knife with the casual laziness of someone used to using it as a prop. "You lost, college boy? Or you just out here trying to give us your shoes?"

The other two drifted to the flanks. They thought they were circling prey.

Ian looked at them, and for the first time in his life, he didn't feel the cold clinching of his stomach that usually preceded a fight. He didn't feel the professional calculation of a martial artist.

He felt a catastrophic, overwhelming sense of *envy*. He wanted the heat trapped inside their skin. He wanted the salt and the iron.

"Leave me alone," Ian said. His voice was a rasp, a dry rattle in a desert throat.

"Oh, he’s a shy one," the second mugger laughed, stepping closer. He smelled of old sweat and aggression. To Ian’s heightened senses, the man’s carotid artery was a neon sign, pulsing with a vibrant, rhythmic strobe. *Thump. Thump. Thump.*

"I’m giving you a chance," Ian whispered. He felt his heart hammer against the 180bpm ceiling. The Redline.

The lead man lunged, the knife flashing toward Ian’s gut.

In the gym, Ian was fast. Here, in the Red Zone, time simply ceased to be a factor.

He didn't parry; he moved through the space where the man was, an blur of gray fleece and focused violence. He caught the man’s wrist, and the sound of the radius snapping was as clear and satisfying as dry kindling breaking over a knee.

The man didn't even have time to scream before Ian was on the second one.

It wasn't MMA. There were no points, no referees, no rounds. It was surgical dismantling. Ian drove his palm into the second man’s nose, feeling the cartilage collapse, then spun, his leg whipping out in a low, terrifyingly powerful roundhouse that shattered the third man’s kneecap.

Three seconds. Three men on the ground.

Ian stood over the man with the broken nose. The man was clutching his face, blood leaking through his fingers—thick, dark, and steaming in the cool night air.

The smell was an explosion. It was the finest wine, the richest meal, the only breath of air in a drowning world.

Ian’s vision tunneled. The world turned the color of a sunset seen through a glass of Merlot. He knelt, his shadow falling over the sobbing man. His fingers, tipped with nails that felt suddenly, impossibly sharp, gripped the man’s collar.

*Just a taste,* the voice in his head urged, no longer a memory, but a command. *He is nothing. You are the apex. Take what is yours.*

Ian’s lips pulled back, his gums aching with a ferocity that demanded release. He leaned down, his face inches from the man’s throat. He could feel the heat radiating from the skin, the frantic, delicious terror of a dying animal.

A distant siren wailed, a thin, shrill needle of sound that pierced through the crimson fog.

Ian winced, the sound vibrating in his hyper-sensitive skull like a hammer on an anvil. The gold in his eyes flickered. He looked down at the man beneath him—not a carafe of blood, but a person. A terrified, broken person.

"No," Ian wheezed.

He shoved himself away, his hands slick with the man’s blood. He didn't look back. He turned and ran, ignoring the screaming of his own biology, sprinting until his lungs burned with the taste of ozone and his heart felt like it would burst through his ribs.

He didn't stop until he reached the door of his apartment building—a crumbling three-story walk-up that smelled of boiled cabbage and damp wood. He fumbled with his keys, his hands shaking so violently he dropped them twice against the linoleum.

Inside his apartment, he slammed the door and threw the deadbolt. He leaned against the wood, his forehead pressed to the grain, listening to the silence.

The apartment was dark, just the way he’d left it. The single window was shut, the blinds drawn to keep out the Newark neon.

But something was wrong.

The air was heavy. It didn't smell like his stale laundry and cheap protein powder. It smelled of expensive, funeral-parlor lilies. It smelled of ancient dust and cold silk.

Ian reached for the light switch, his heart crawling up into his throat.

*Click.*

The harsh fluorescent light flickered to life.

Sitting in the center of his small, laminate kitchen table was a single black lily, its petals so dark they looked like velvet dipped in ink. Beside it sat a neatly wrapped, vacuum-sealed package.

Ian walked forward, his legs leaden. He looked at the label on the package. *Cervena Venison. Ultra-Rare Cut.*

The meat inside was deep, dark red, almost purple, glistening with a moisture that hadn't come from water.

He looked at the door. The deadbolt was still engaged. The chain was still in place. The window was locked from the inside.

There was no way in. And yet, the scent of her perfume—that chilled, floral musk—was so thick he could almost feel it sliding over his skin like a blindfold.

Ian looked back at the table. Tucked under the stem of the black lily was a small, cream-colored card. He picked it up with trembling fingers. The handwriting was elegant, slanted, and ancient.

*You look so thin, little bird. A predator cannot hunt on an empty stomach. Eat. Grow strong. I will be watching from the front row.*

Ian dropped the card. He looked at the meat, then at his own reflection in the grease-stained window. The gold hadn't fully faded from his eyes.

He wasn't alone. He had never been alone.

He reached out, his hand hovering over the vacuum-sealed blood. His stomach gave a traitorous, agonizing lurch of hunger. He hated her. He feared her.

But as he stared at the red prize on his table, Ian realized with a sickening jolt of terror that he was already reaching for the knife.