Out of Time 01 - Out of Time

mind.
    There was something off about him today. His normally squared shoulders were hunched. His sandy brown hair was slightly unkempt as though he’d dragged his fingers through it too many times. She’d noticed that morning he seemed out of sorts, and chalked it up to overwork. But there really wasn’t a time when Professor Cross wasn’t overworked. Something was definitely wrong. The untrained eye would see only typical Cross—brilliant, terse and otherwise occupied. Elizabeth knew him far too well to believe the simplicity of his façade. Working in close quarters had given her insights into the man that most people never knew. What others saw as detachment, she saw as stoic vulnerability.
    On the rare occasion he’d let his guard down, she’d seen the depths of the man inside. She knew nothing could ever come of it. Aside from the twenty year age difference, he listened to Stravinsky, she listened to Sting. He was from South of London, she was from North of Lubbock. He grew up with a silver spoon, she grew up with a spork. It was hopeless. She was used to dreaming about things she could never have. There was no reason to think this was anything different.
    Simon walked across the stage, powerfully graceful and deceptively smooth. Elizabeth shifted in her seat and needlessly adjusted her skirt.
    Why did he have to be so damn attractive? He was handsome. The overwhelming female enrollment in his class was testimony to that. Tall, a few inches over six feet, slender, but not lanky. Eyes of a deep green, tinged with the sadness of having seen too much of the world. And his voice—a hypnotic, deep baritone with a cut glass English accent. But those weren’t the things she’d fallen in love with. It was something else, something gentle beneath the hard edge, something needful beneath the control.
    “And unlike the overly sentimentalized versions of vampires we see in today’s media,” Professor Cross said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Calmet’s writings spoke to the truth of the beast. An unyielding malevolence.” He paused and leaned on the podium. “Purge Tom Cruise from your malleable little minds.”
    The class snickered, and he waited impatiently for them to settle. “The vampire would suck the blood of the living, so as to make the victim’s body fall away visibly to skin and bones. An insatiable hunger that kills without remorse,” he said and surveyed the classroom.
    Elizabeth knew that look, a forlorn hope of seeing some spark of interest, or God forbid, hear some intelligent discourse on the subject. Instead, a blonde girl sitting in the back row made a sound of disgust.
    Professor Cross frowned. “Must you do that every class, Miss Danzler?”
    She had the good sense to look chagrined. “Sorry, Professor.”
    Before he could retort that perhaps she should consider a field of study other than the occult, as Elizabeth knew he would, a handsome, athletic student sitting next to her bared his biceps and chimed in, “Don’t worry, baby. These are lethal in all dimensions.”
    Professor Cross assumed his well-practiced air of indifference. “Failing that, Mr. Andrews, you could always bludgeon the demon to death with your monumental ego.”
    A wave of stifled laughter traveled across the room. As much as the students enjoyed the dark fascination of Cross’ Occult Studies course, they also loved his unrelenting sarcasm. Sometimes, he went too far of course, and Elizabeth was left to smooth down the ruffled feathers.
    “Sadly, it appears the only thing thicker than your muscles is your skull.”
    This was one of those times.
    The class ended and the students began to pack up. “Don’t forget chapters seventeen and eighteen of Grey’s Lycanthropy of Eastern Europe for next week.”
    Elizabeth left her seat and started toward the back of the classroom. Time for a little damage control.
    Professor Cross gathered his notes from the podium and turned to look for his assistant. Miss West had already left her customary front row seat and was climbing the stairs toward the back of the amphitheater.
    Simon knew what she was doing—smoothing the rough seas he’d left in his wake. It had quickly become their modus operandi. He would enlighten and insult; she would tend to the afflicted. It was a good system and had worked quite well for them for the past two years. However, today Simon found it irritating in the extreme. Perhaps it was the residual anxiety from his nightmare, or that