Out of Time: A Time Travel Mystery
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Excerpt ~ When the Walls Fell
OUT OF TIME
a novel by Monique Martin
© 2010
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
OUT OF TIME. Copyright © 2010 by Monique Martin. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For more information, please contact writtenbymonique@gmail.com.
Acknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without the help and support of many people. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Robin, John, Trista, Shannon, Rachel, Mary, DJ, Michael, Yvonne and my entire family.
Chapter One
The nightmares had come again.
Simon Cross pushed himself off the bed and away from the cold, sweat-soaked sheets. His heart racing, his breath quick and rough, he forced his eyes to adjust to the dark room as the last vestiges of sleep faded.
He glared down at his bed, as if it were to blame, as if the sheets and pillows had knowingly harbored the nightmare. He felt a surge of panic and escaped from the darkened bedroom.
The moon was nearly full and cast its silvery light through the open curtains giving the living room an unearthly glow. Vague shadows stretched out like the taunting specters of his nightmare. Ignoring everything but his destination, he strode to the liquor cabinet. His hands trembled as he poured a stiff Scotch and downed it in one swig. Without pause, he poured another. His hands gripped the crystal glass as he tried in vain to keep it from clattering on the silver tray.
Disgusted with his weakness, he slammed the bottle down and clamped his eyes shut. His hands still trembled.
“Bloody hell.”
The last time he’d had a nightmare like this was over thirty years ago. Yet, the memory rang with sharp clarity in his mind. His grandfather. The violence. The blood. And above all, the helplessness.
Simon let out a short burst of breath. He tried to convince himself this had merely been another dream. Another dream about her.
Ignoring the stacks of open boxes littering the floor, he tightened his jaw, grabbed the glass of Scotch and prowled across the room. He’d dreamt of her before. He was, after all, only human. She was attractive, intelligent and everything he wanted, but could never have. It was only natural she’d be in his thoughts. But there was nothing natural about this dream. This nightmare. This wasn’t a fool’s late night fantasy, brought on by loneliness and assuaged by a cold shower. This was something unspeakable.
Unconsciously, he clenched and unclenched his free hand. No concrete images remained, just an unwavering sense of horror, of an inevitable evil.
Exactly as it had been before.
He took another drink and concentrated on the warm burning sensation as the liquor seeped down into his chest. There was no avoiding the harbinger of his dream. With the certainty only a condemned man can feel, he knew one absolute truth.
Elizabeth West was going to die.
* * *
Elizabeth had heard it all before. But no matter how many times she listened to Professor Cross’ lectures, she marveled at the way he held the class in the palm of his hand. As always, there wasn’t an empty seat in the classroom. Introduction to Occult Studies was a favorite at the University of California Santa Barbara. Most students were there for the excitement of it, the dark abiding thrill of all things supernatural, like attending a semester-long horror movie. A few, like herself, were there for something more.
When she’d taken his class as an undergraduate, floating along in the sea of the undeclared, she had no idea that four years later she’d be his graduate teaching assistant working toward her Masters in Occult Studies. A meandering path through her Humanities requirements had left her still wanting for something. While all the courses were interesting, none of them sparked her interest. Until she happened upon Professor Cross’ class.
In retrospect, she wasn’t sure if it was the man or the subject that had first drawn her in, and in the end it didn’t matter. It had taken persistence and a thick skin to convince him she was serious about becoming his graduate teaching assistant. At first, she didn’t understand why he’d tried to dissuade her. After attending one Board of Chancellors meeting in his stead, she had a pretty good idea. Occult Studies was nothing more than a curiosity in their eyes. The poor foster child of interdepartmental parents, Occult Studies was hardly recognized as a serious area of academia. Technically it fell under the auspices of Folklore and Mythology, but for Professor Cross it was a life’s work and something very real. His passion inspired her, in more ways than one.
Elizabeth watched him pace slowly behind the lectern, hypnotizing the class with his fluid movements, setting them up for the kill. His keen eyes scanned the classroom, pulling each student under his spell. When his eyes fell upon her, he paused, almost losing his place. He frowned and continued. No one else noticed the minor lapse, but claxons went off in Elizabeth’s 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 third glass of Scotch, or, quite possibly, it was the way that idiot Andrews was looking at Elizabeth. Blatantly appreciating her figure—the curve of her small waist, the way her auburn hair shone like burnished copper. The look in his eyes was positively salacious.
Simon closed his briefcase with more force than necessary and tried to look away. He frowned at the familiar way Elizabeth touched the young man’s forearm. Not that he was jealous. That would be patently absurd. Simon simply didn’t suffer fools gladly, even by proxy. His mood soured as Elizabeth said something undoubtedly utterly charming and won a laugh from the hulking imbecile. Simon gritted his teeth and waited impatiently for the scene to come to an end. Elizabeth smiled one last time and headed back down the stairs. He glared at her in greeting and gestured brusquely that they should leave.
His mood still sour, Simon opened the classroom door and held it for her. Elizabeth smiled her thanks and walked out into the corridor. He followed her out, moving quickly down the crowded hall, keeping his strides long, forcing her to almost jog to keep up. After a few moments of tense silence, he stopped abruptly and turned to glare down at her.
“I don’t need a nursemaid, Miss West.”
Elizabeth cocked her head to the side and frowned. “That’s debatable, but I wasn’t—”
Simon arched an eyebrow in disbelief, challenging her to deny it.
“All right, I was.”
Simon snorted.
“But you’ve got to admit you were in rare form, even for you.”
“Your point?”
“That a little browbeating goes a long way. Lance is a good guy. He was just showing off.”
“For your benefit, I suppose?” Simon said and instantly wished he could take the words back.
Elizabeth laughed. “Hardly. I’m not exactly his type,” she said with a rueful, lopsided smile.
He felt an odd urge to comfort her, to tell her Andrews was a simpleton, but the words died in his throat. How did she do that? One moment she was forthright and confident, challenging him; and the next shy and achingly vulnerable.
“Besides,” she added. “It’d be unethical to date a student.”
That was something he’d told himself daily. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Yes, quite right. Well, we have work to do. Shall we?” he said and gestured down the hall.
“No rest for the wicked,” she said with a grin and started down the corridor.
Simon watched her disappear into the mass of students and took a deep breath. The scent of her perfume lingered in the air. “None indeed.”
* * *
Elizabeth set down her pen and massaged her cramping fingers. She could swear she did more work correcting the papers than the students did writing them. And the tiny desk lamp that passed for light in the room was making her eyes cross.
It had taken Professor Cross a year to acquiesce to her request for an actual desk in his office. At first, he’d done everything he could to keep her out of what she liked to call his inner sanctum. He kept the room dark. Suitable, he’d said, for their work. The room was tiny, another testament to the lack of enthusiasm on the part of the Board. He’d been a professor there for nearly ten years and had labored in obscurity. Although, he seemed just as pleased that they left him alone.
Grant money was scarce, if not non-existent, and so he used his own money to further their research. For all the good it did. It seemed the latest get rich quick scheme in the former Soviet Union was the illegal export of so-called occult artifacts—a lock of genuine Baba Yaga hair or, her personal favorite, werewolf droppings. Capitalism at its best. For all the money spent, not one thing had been authentic. But Professor Cross was undeterred, and so their research trudged on.
Elizabeth rubbed her eyes and stole a glimpse of him in the reflection of the glass covering the Bosch print on the wall, the only decoration in an otherwise impersonal office. He really did look tired. More than that, he looked worried. Bent over his desk, one hand wrapped around his head casting a shadow over his face.
“You look like hell,” she said.
Simon’s eyes snapped up to meet hers. “Thank you,” he said tartly.
“I just meant... Are you all right?”
Elizabeth steeled herself for his curt reply, but something stopped him. He looked at her and the hard light in his green eyes softened. “I’m fine,” he said. “Thank you.”
Then, as quickly as it had disappeared, his natural aloofness re-established itself. He indicated the large stack of graded papers on his desk. “I think that’s enough for one night.”
Elizabeth shook her head. ”I’m okay.”
“You can finish the rest tomorrow and drop them off at my house.”
A yawn squelched any protest she was going to make. “All right. I could use some good sleep for a change. I’ve been having this dream. Very David Lynch. Totally and completely unnerving.”
Simon dropped his pen and quickly retrieved it. “I see.”
Elizabeth shrugged and packed her bag. “I’m gonna sleep like the dead tonight.”
She turned back to say goodnight and found him staring at her again with the oddest expression on his face. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
He seemed to come back to himself. �
��Yes, of course. Goodnight, Miss West.”
“Good night, Professor,” she said and left the office, her footfalls echoing down the empty hallway.
Simon gripped his pen so tightly his knuckles were white with the strain. The mention of her dream brought back the memory of his nightmare from the last few nights. He’d wanted desperately to ask her about her dream, to tell her about his, but felt too foolish. What could he say? I dreamt about you last night. Don’t know any details, but you died a horrible death. Have a good night. Pillock.
He forced himself to put down his pen and pushed away the fresh wave of anxiety that threatened to pull him under. He’d managed for most of the day to forget, to feel safe in having her by his side. He couldn’t say anything, but he couldn’t let her walk away either. Before he knew it, he was on his feet and hurrying out into the hall. She was nearly at the corner when he caught her. May I walk you to your car?”
Elizabeth started and then blinked at him in surprise. “I’m right outside,” she said pointing to the doorway around the bend. “It’s not really far enough for a walking to.”
He hadn’t expected her to refuse and felt like a schoolboy who’d been turned down for a date. “Yes, well then. Good night, Miss West,” he said and turned back toward his office before he could make a bigger fool of himself. He walked into his office and closed the door. The main door to the building closed with a thud, and he put his hand to his forehead. Gibbering dolt. Tongue-tied over a woman half his age.
Moments later, he heard voices outside and looked out his office window. Elizabeth waved goodbye to someone then walked alone into the parking lot.