"Kenyon, Sherrilyn - Dark-Hunter 03 - Dragonswan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kenyon Sherrilyn)

"Yes," she said reasonably, but with every word she spoke after that, her voice crescendoed into mild hysteria.







"What I don't remember is how the hell I got here!" she shouted, sending several birds into flight.
Sebastian winced.
She glared at him. "You told me there wouldn't be any Rod Serling voice-overs, yet here I am in the middle of a Twilight Zone episode. Oh, and let me guess the title of it, Night of the Terminally Stupid!"
"It's not as bad as all that," Sebastian said, trying to decide the best way to explain this to her. He didn't blame her for being angry. In fact, she was taking all this a lot better than he had dared hope. "I know this is hard for you."
"Hard for me? I don't even know where to begin. I did something I've never done in my life and then I wake up and you tell me you have supposedly time-warped me into the past, and I'm not sure if I'm insane or delusional or what. Why am I here?"
"I..." Sebastian wasn't sure what to answer. The truth was pretty much out of the question. Channon, I practically kidnapped you because you are my mate and I don't want to be alone for the next three to four hundred years of my life.
No, definitely not something a man told a woman on their first date. He would have to woo her. Quickly. And win her over to wanting to stay here with him.
Preferably before a dragon ate one of them.
"Look, why don't you just think of this as a great adventure. Instead of reading about the history you teach, you can live it for a couple weeks."
"What are you? Disney World?" she asked. "And I can't stay here for a couple weeks. I have a life in the twenty-first century. I will be fired from my job. I will lose my car and my apartment. Good grief, who will pick up my laundry?"
"If you stayed here with me, it wouldn't be a problem. You'd never have to worry about any of that again."
Channon was aghast at him. Oh, God, please let this


be some bizarre nightmare. She had to wake up. This could not possibly be real.
"No," she said to him, "you're right. I wouldn't have to worry about any of that in Saxon England. I'd only have to worry about the lack of hygiene, lack of plumbing, Viking invasions, being burned at the stake, lack of modern conveniences, and nasty diseases with no antibiotics. Good grief, I can't even get a Midol. Not to mention, I'll never find out what happens next week on Buffy!"
Sebastian let out an elongated, patient breath and gave her an apologetic look that somehow succeeded in quelling a good deal of her anger.
"Look," he said quietly, "I'll make a deal with you. Spend a few weeks with me here, and if you really can't stand it, I'll take you home as close to the departure time as I can manage. Okay?"
Channon still had a hard time grasping all this. "Do you swear you're not playing some weird mind game with me? I really am here, in Saxon England?"
"I swear it on my mother's soul. You are in Saxon England, and I can take you back home. And no, I'm not playing mind games with you."
Channon accepted that, even though she couldn't imagine why. It was just a feeling she had that he would never swear on his mother's soul unless he meant it.
"Can you really take me back to the precise moment I left?"
"Probably not the precise moment, but I can try."
"What do you mean, try?"
He flashed his dimples, then turned serious. "Time-walking isn't an exact science. You can only move through the time fields when the dawn meets the night, and only under the power of a full moon. The problem is on the arrival end. You can try to get someplace specific, but you have only about a ninety-five percent chance of success. I might get you back that day, but it could also be a week or two after."





"And that's the best you can do?"
"Hey, just be grateful I'm old. When an Arcadian first starts time-walking, we only have about a three percent chance of success. I once ended up on Pluto."
She laughed in spite of herself. "Are you serious?"
He nodded. "They're not kidding about it being the coldest planet."
Channon took a deep breath as she digested everything he'd told her. Was any of this real? She didn't know, any more than she knew whether or not he was being honest about returning her. He was still very guarded. "Okay, so I'm stuck here until the next full moon?"
"Yes."
Oh, good grief, no. Had she been the kind of woman to whine, she'd probably be whining. But Channon was always practical. "All right. I can handle this," she said, more for her benefit than his. "I'll just pretend I'm a Saxon chick and you..." Her voice trailed off as she recalled what he'd said about time-traveling. "Just how old are you?"
"My people don't age quite the same way humans do. Since we can time-walk, we have a much slower biological clock."
Oh, she really didn't like the way he said humans, and if he turned fangy on her, she was going to stake him right through the heart. But she would get back to that in a minute. First, she wanted to understand the age thing. "So you age like dog years?"
Sebastian laughed. "Something like that. By human age, I would be four hundred sixty-three years old."
Channon sat flabbergasted as she looked over his lean, hard body. He appeared to be in his early thirties, not his late four hundreds. "You're not joking with me at all, are you?"
"Not even a little. Everything I have told you since the moment I met you has been the honest truth."