YOU AGAIN?

Daemon

“Same place tonight?” Seymour asked with an expectant grin.

“Why not?” I replied, replaying the most memorable and outrageous highlights of the previous night in my mind.

The club where we had partied until dawn had certainly left an impression. Although those memories could have pricked our consciences, we skilfully dismissed their weak efforts to dampen our spirits. In fact, when we finally left the place in the early hours of the morning, our little party had grown noticeably larger than when we’d arrived.

We were joined by two tall, stunning brunettes so strikingly similar they could have been twins. The girls’ uncanny resemblance killed the usual spirit of competition between Seymour and me over who had secured the more attractive partner. We exchanged nothing more than a nod and headed in different directions as we left the club, each keeping an arm around our companion’s waist and addressing her exclusively with terms of endearment like ‘babe’ and ‘sweetheart’, because we had already mixed them up twice.

Well, sometimes life nudges you to stop competing over something utterly pointless and simply savour the unexpected gifts you receive.

It was six in the evening when Seymour practically hustled me out of the restaurant, having just concluded a gruelling, contentious debate with a contractor regarding specific contract terms.

“I was starting to think we’d never get him to budge,” my friend muttered as we headed toward the parking lot.

“Yeah, problem clients,” I agreed.

The warm season had finally settled in, and it was practically begging us to go out and paint the town red. After spending several hours stuck at a table, I was especially eager to feel the pulse of the city at night again: to hear music, soak up the atmosphere, and forget, if only for a few hours, about contracts, numbers, and people who somehow believed their problems should become ours.

Seymour quickened his pace. Apparently, he was already halfway to the club in his head. Considering how much money we had spent there the night before, they ought to have been rolling out the red carpet for us by now.

I smirked at my own thoughts. Life seemed almost indecently simple at times like these. We had money. We had each other. An entire night lay ahead of us, and there wasn’t a single obligation in sight capable of ruining our mood.

I had no idea how quickly that feeling was about to change.

A light breeze swept past, carrying something unfamiliar. I stopped.

“What is that?”

I drew a deep breath, trying to figure out exactly what had caught my attention. A sudden rush of euphoria made my head swim.

“What are you talking about?” Seymour asked.

He had already opened the car door and was now staring at me in confusion.

The light, intoxicating scent vanished almost at once, which meant its source had to have been somewhere nearby only moments ago. I looked around, trying to catch whatever trace remained, and then another gust of wind brought the scent back.

It was exquisite. Unlike anything I had ever smelt before. It seemed to slip beneath my skin, setting every cell in my body on alert and demanding that I find its source immediately.

“That…” I breathed and found myself staring straight into my friend’s bewildered face.

Seymour shrugged, and for the first time I began to question my own sense of smell. For a second, I wondered whether I had imagined the whole thing.

Then another gust of wind swept through, and every doubt disappeared. The scent returned — much stronger this time.

I spun around and started walking quickly in the opposite direction.

“Hey! Where are you going?”

Seymour slammed the car door and hurried after me.

I was in a hurry. The scent drawing me forward grew richer with every step, which meant I was going in the right direction. It was so obvious that I didn’t even stop to wonder why I was obeying what felt like some kind of spell.

I nearly broke into a run, practically shoving my way through the crowd.

“What the hell is going on?” my friend demanded when he caught up with me, grabbing my forearm.

“That scent…” I muttered absently, not even waiting for the traffic light.

Cars screeched to a halt. Someone leant on the horn in irritation.

“Daemon, what scent? Calm down!”

Seymour apologised with frantic hand gestures to the angry drivers while I kept moving.

“I have to find it…” I repeated like a mantra, even though I had no idea who or what I was supposed to find or why I felt I had to.

The scent became so powerful that there was no longer any doubt it was real. It filled my lungs, made my head spin, and somehow, inexplicably, calmed me at the same time. It felt as though I had been searching for this sensation all my life and had only just recognised it.

I reached the corner and stopped dead. Seymour didn’t have time to stop and crashed into me, sending me stumbling forward several more steps.

A girl stood across the street in a flowing turquoise dress, stroking a stray cat. The cat arched its back with obvious pleasure, purring loudly as it basked in her affection.

I froze. For some reason, there was something almost breathtaking about the utterly ordinary scene.

Seymour peered around my shoulder, carefully taking in the situation.

“You ran like a maniac to catch up with a cat?!” he exclaimed.

His voice reached me as though from somewhere beneath the surface of deep water. I felt as if I was drowning.

The girl laughed and straightened, brushing the long black hair away from her face. She cast a glance in our direction, and I came violently back to the surface, turning away at once. My head throbbed. The sounds around me became deafening, and my heart hammered against my ribs as though it was trying to break free.

I grabbed Seymour by the arm and practically dragged him around the corner.

“What the hell are you doing?” he protested, straightening his shirt.

If only I’d known…

If someone had told me at that moment that, in a matter of seconds, my life would be divided into before and after, I probably would have laughed in their face. We like to think of fate as something grand and mysterious, while in reality, it rarely announces itself before it arrives. Sometimes it slips into your life in the most ordinary way imaginable — in a turquoise dress, carrying a scent that makes you lose your mind — never suspecting that its mere appearance has just turned someone’s world upside down.

My body doubled over as though a powerful electric current had shot through me. I braced both hands against the wall, desperately trying to keep my balance, but my legs gave way beneath me, and I crashed to my knees, gasping for air.

“What’s wrong with you?!”

Panicked, Seymour crouched beside me and caught me by the elbows.

“I don’t know…” I rasped.

Seymour shielded me from curious onlookers, then shook me like a rag doll. He forced me into something resembling an upright position and began dragging me in the opposite direction.

“Pull yourself together!” he hissed, gripping my forearm hard as I stumbled and tangled my feet on the way back to the parking lot. “This is not the place for this!”

Yeah. I knew that myself. The problem was, my body had stopped listening to me.

Breathing was becoming difficult. Every breath took effort, while my mind seemed incapable of processing what was happening. I tried to convince myself that all I had to do was leave, get in the car, go home, and sort everything out calmly. But something else had already begun stirring inside me.

I needed to go back to that girl. I needed to bury my face in her hair and breathe in that intoxicating scent. With every passing second, the urge grew stronger, turning into an almost painful need that pushed every other thought aside.

Despite considerable effort, Seymour managed to prevent my attempts to retreat and forcefully placed me into the backseat of his car. Twenty minutes later, we pulled into the courtyard of my building. My friend practically hauled me to the elevator, and that was where things got even worse. Seymour’s fingers were trembling as he pressed the button for the seventeenth floor. I could barely stay on my feet. My breathing was ragged, and I could hardly recognise my own reflection in the elevator mirror: my face looked unfamiliar, eyes were feverishly bright, and sweat had broken out across my skin.

My friend held me upright, refusing to let me collapse onto the elevator floor. When the doors opened, we made our slow way to the apartment. At the door, Seymour rummaged through my pockets and found the key. I leant against the wall, gradually sliding down it as my legs finally gave out completely. At last, he managed to drag me inside. I collapsed onto the couch and stopped fighting the fangs pushing through my gums.

Seymour finally gave in to panic as he watched my body seize with spasms.

“What the hell is happening to you? Why are you shifting?”

I gave a low, guttural growl and slid from the couch onto the floor. My muscles tensed painfully. The heat became unbearable. I clawed at the carpet with my newly lengthened claws, trying desperately to drown out the agony tearing through my body. Everything was happening too fast. I was still trying to hold on to reality, but consciousness was already slipping away, like water running through my fingers.

The last thing I heard before I finally lost touch with reality was Seymour dictating my apartment address over the phone.