I walked to class and dumped my bag onto the floor next to my chair taking a heavy seat. I pulled out my notebook, and by the time I looked up, it was to see that Professor Michelson was indeed not teaching today’s class. It was the man from the club, the one who put me in the elevator with no buttons.
I scanned the room and for a moment it felt like time stood still. We could have been the only two inside the room the way it pulsed inside its own vacuum. There was no one else coming except for a handful of students who seemed non-pulsed by the missing status of our teacher. I didn’t know what to make of this man who spoke eloquently of Greek vases and exploding volcanos with the passion and vision, as if he might have witnessed it himself in person which I knew was completely impossible.
Class ended and the students filed out one by one. Dorian never showed and now it was down to me and one other student who was rambling on about the paper we had to write I wanted to yell and scream at him that if he hadn’t figure out how to write a paper by now he was in the school. I barely kept my cool as I gathered my belongings gearing myself up to demand answers.
“Miss Wilder, I presume.” My new teacher stood in the front of the room. I glanced around, we were indeed alone. He dropped a binder into his leather messenger bag lifting the flap over the side before hefting it onto his shoulder.
“I apologize, sir. I don’t believe I caught your name though your face is oddly familiar to me.” He approached my desk slowly as if hunting his prey.
“Sebastián Knight. I have my doctorate in Greek studies, but much of my life’s work has been restoration the last few…decades.”
I shook my head. “No. That’s not where I know you from at all.” The night materializes in my mind. His suit, his growly smile, and the gentle push inside the elevator as if he were trying to save me from something.
“I suggest you edit that memory, Miss Wilder.” His accent deepened as did my resolve. The flash came again, this time washed and duller. The images blurred and I fight to hold onto them. He smiled and the pain radiated through my shoulders.
“No, I don’t think I want to do that. I think what I want are answers.”
“Be careful of the questions you ask little lamb.”
“You’re related to my classmate, aren’t you? The one who isn’t here, Dorian.” I hold onto the flash of recognition like it’s the edge of a cliff and I don’t want to fall off.
“Jane.” He said in that bossy tone of voice I’ve come to dislike heartily. He was always telling me to do something, wasn’t he?
“Why can’t you tell me? What are you hiding?”
And just like that the pressure releases like a value. The steam pops out in dangerous licks of hot water, but my chest isn’t constricted and I don’t feel any pain. Professor Knight, Sebastián, Mr. Knight or whatever the heck he wants to be called placed his hand on my shoulder squeezing me gently.
“Jane, my lamb.” I nodded eagerly waiting for his next instruction somehow okay with all of this weirdness. “Stay away from Dorian. Stay away from the club.” I heard what he said, but I don’t want to do it and some other awful revelation emerges.
“Hey, wait, are you the reason, I haven’t had a date since New Year’s?”
He released his grip on my shoulder immediately breaking our connection. I felt dizzy, a little woozy and irritated. “Are you?” I demanded again.
“Jane, stay away. I can’t be held responsible if you keep showing up flaunting your…”
“My what?” I demanded.
“Your scent.” He growled as if I was supposed to understand at all what that meant. Yeah, sure, okay. I’d change my deodorant, but I was still going to go back to the club and get the answers I needed. He didn’t have to like it, but he also wasn’t the boss of me.
He turned and huffed stomping out of the lecture hall leaving me there alone. I wondered if he’d be back to teach next week. This semester wasn’t going according to plan at all, but I knew one person who would enjoy my about face on going out, Nina.
8 Relentless.
BASH
“Well, would you take a look at what the cat dragged in.” Dorian moved up next to me and I glanced at the door. A group of young women walked in looking bright-eyed and curious. Colin, one of my bouncers on the main floor had his arms around two of them. He must have hawked the nearby campus and given out the coveted invites to my exclusive club thinking I wouldn’t notice. I might have been dead the last few hundred years, but I wasn’t an idiot. The girls looked like prey in a perfect storm. They were feeder fish for the piranhas, gazelles for the lions, and inside these walls, I was their king.
Human blood was as unique as any other shifter. Cinnamon. Vanilla. Sometimes Citrus depending on age. The younger the fruitier palate. Older and they became more refined like an Italian pinot. I knew my food well like any uncompromising connoisseur and what assaulted my senses woke an age-old hunger enough to make the sanest of us all feral.
I’d already warned off Jane, but she was as stubborn as she was psychically inclined, as I was coming to learn.
“You know we don’t take innocents like this, get them out of here before I lose my patience.” I flicked my wrist and with it went my brother’s body into the wall. He slammed against it hard scaring the girls and slumped down to the floor in a heap of limbs. Colin
