Egor didn’t say anything.
“The Twilight changes the person who has entered it. It’s a different world, and it makes people into Others. But who you become depends entirely on you. The Twilight is a raging river flowing in all directions at once. Decide who you want to be in the Twilight world. But make up your mind quickly; you don’t have much time.”
Now the boy understood. His pupils contracted and his skin turned slightly paler. An excellent stress response; he really would make a good operational agent . . .
“Who can I become?”
“You? Anybody you like. Your choice still hasn’t been made. And you know what the basic choice is? Good or Evil. Light or Darkness.”
“And are you good?”
“First and foremost I’m an Other. The difference between Good and Evil lies in your attitude toward ordinary people. If you choose the Light, you won’t use your powers for personal gain. If you choose the Darkness, that will be what you do most of the time. But even a black magician is capable of healing people and finding people who have been lost without trace. And a white magician can refuse to help people.”
“Then I don’t see what the difference is!”
“You will. You’ll understand when you choose one side or the other.”
“I’ll never choose!”
“It’s too late, Egor. You’ve already been in the Twilight, and you’re already changing. In a couple of days the choice will have been made.”
“If you chose the Light . . .” Egor got up and poured himself some more tea. I noticed it was the first time he hadn’t been afraid to turn his back on me. “Then who are you? A magician?”
“A magician’s apprentice. I work in the office of the Night Watch. Someone has to do it.”
“And what can you do? Show me, I want to check.”
There it was, straight out of the textbook. He’d been in the Twilight, but that hadn’t convinced him. Petty fairground tricks are far more impressive.
“Watch.”
I held my arm out toward him. Egor froze, trying to understand what was going on. Then he looked at his cup.
The steam had stopped rising from his tea. The tea was crackling as it turned into a cylinder of muddy-brown ice with tea leaves frozen into it.
“Oh,” said the boy.
Thermodynamics is the simple part of manipulating matter. I allowed the Brownian motion to start up again, and the ice boiled. Egor shrieked and dropped his cup.
“Sorry.” I jumped up and grabbed the cloth from the sink, then squatted down to wipe up the puddle on the linoleum.
“Magic’s nothing but trouble,” said the boy. “That was a good cup.”
“Just a moment.”
My shadow bounded toward me. I entered the Twilight and looked at the broken pieces. They still remembered the whole, and it hadn’t been the cup’s destiny to get broken so soon.
Still in the Twilight, I raked the shards together with my hand. A few of the smallest pieces, which had fallen under the stove, eagerly moved a bit closer.
I emerged from the Twilight and put the white cup on the table.
“Now you only need to pour more tea into it.”
“Fantastic.” Apparently this little trick had made a big impression on the kid. “And can you do that with any kind of thing?”
“Almost any kind.”
“Anton . . . what if the thing was broken a week ago?”
I couldn’t help smiling.
“No, sorry, then it’s too late. The Twilight gives you a chance, but you have to take it quickly, very quickly.”
Egor’s face darkened. I wondered what it was he’d broken a week ago.
“Now do you believe me?”
“Is that magic?”
“Yes. The most primitive kind. It takes almost no effort to learn.”
I probably shouldn’t have said that. The boy’s eyes lit up. He was already figuring out his prospects. His profit.
Light and Darkness . . .
“But an experienced magician, he can do other stuff too?”
“Even I can.”
“And control people?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, we can do that.”
“And do you? How come terrorists seize hostages? You could creep up in the Twilight without being seen and shoot them. Or make them shoot themselves! How come people die of diseases? Magicians can cure them, you told me so yourself.”
“That would be Good,” I said.
“Of course! But you’re the magicians of the Light!”
“If we do any deed that is unconditionally good, it gives the Dark Magicians the right to do an evil deed.”
Egor looked at me in amazement. Too much had happened over the last twenty-four hours for him to take it all in. But he was handling it pretty well.
“Unfortunately, Egor, Evil is stronger by its very nature. Evil is destructive. It’s much easier for Evil to destroy than it is for Good to create.”
“Then what do you do? This Night Watch of yours . . . Do you fight against the Dark Magicians?”
I mustn’t answer. I knew that with a devastating clarity, just as I knew I should never have confided in the boy. I should have put him to sleep and withdrawn deeper into the Twilight, but not tried to explain anything to him, not a single thing!
I wouldn’t be able to prove anything to him!
“Do you fight against them?”
“Not exactly,” I said. The truth was worse than a lie, but I had no right to tell a lie. “We keep an eye on each other.”
“Getting ready to fight?”
I looked at Egor, thinking what a really bright kid he was. But still a kid. And if I told him now that the great battle between Good and Evil was approaching, that he could be one of the new Jedi of the Twilight world, then he’d be ours.
Only not for long.
“No, Egor. There aren’t very many of us.”
“The Light Others? You mean there are more Dark ones?”
Now he was all set to leave home, abandon mom and dad, put on his shining armor and set out to die for the cause of Good . . .
“There aren’t many Others in general. Egor, the battle between Good and Evil has been going on for thousands of years, with the balance shifting all the time. Sometimes Good has won, but if you only knew how many people, who had no idea the Twilight world even exists, were killed in the process. There aren’t many Others, but every one of them can get thousands of ordinary people to follow him. Egor . . . if the battle between Good and Evil breaks out, half the people in the world will be killed. That’s why almost fifty years ago a treaty was signed. The Great Treaty between Good and Evil, Darkness and Light.”
His eyes were open really wide.
I sighed and went on:
“It’s a short treaty. I’ll read it out to you—in the official Russian translation. You already have a right to know.”
I closed my eyes and peered into the darkness. The Twilight swirled into life behind my eyelids. A gray banner unfurled, covered with blazing red letters. The treaty must not be recited from memory; it may only be read:
WE ARE THE OTHERS,
WE SERVE DIFFERENT FORCES,
BUT IN THE TWILIGHT THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
THE ABSENCE OF DARKNESS AND THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT.
OUR STRUGGLE IS CAPABLE OF DESTROYING THE WORLD.
WE HAVE CONCLUDED A GREAT TREATY, A TRUCE.
EACH SIDE SHALL LIVE ACCORDING TO ITS OWN LAWS,
EACH SIDE SHALL HAVE ITS OWN RIGHTS.
WE DELIMIT OUR OWN RIGHTS AND OUR OWN LAWS.
WE ARE THE OTHERS.
WE ESTABLISH THE NIGHT WATCH,
SO THAT THE FORCES OF LIGHT MAY MONITOR THE FORCES OF DARKNESS.
WE ARE THE OTHERS.
WE ESTABLISH THE DAY WATCH,
SO THAT THE FORCES OF DARKNESS MAY MONITOR THE FORCES OF LIGHT.
TIME WILL DECIDE FOR US.
The boy’s eyes were even bigger and rounder.
??
?Light and Darkness live at peace?”
“Yes.”
“Those . . . the vampires . . .” He kept coming back over and over again to the same subject. “They’re Dark Ones?”
“Yes. They’re people who have been totally transformed by the Twilight world. They acquire immense powers, but they lose the gift of life itself. And they can continue existing only by using the energy of other beings. Blood’s the most convenient form for transferring it.”
“And they kill people!”
“They can exist on donor’s blood. It’s like processed foods; it doesn’t taste so good, but it is still nutritious. If the vampires just went out hunting . . .”
“But they attacked me!”
He was only thinking about himself right now . . . That wasn’t good.
“Some vampires break the law. That’s why we need the Night Watch, to police the observance of the Treaty.”
“Then . . . vampires don’t just go around hunting people, right?”
I felt a breath of wind against my cheek from invisible wings. The claws dug into my shoulder.
“Now what are you going to tell him, Night Watch agent?” Olga whispered from out of the depths of the Twilight. “Will you risk telling him the truth?”
“Yes, they go hunting,” I said. Then I added the thing that had struck me as most terrible of all five years earlier. “If they have a license. Sometimes . . . sometimes they need living blood.”
He didn’t ask immediately. I could read everything the boy was thinking in his eyes, everything he wanted to ask. And I knew I’d have to answer all the questions.
“Then what do you do?”
“We make sure there’s no poaching.”
“Then they could have attacked me . . . under that treaty of yours? With a license?”
“Yes,” I said.
“They could have drunk my blood? And you would have just walked by and looked the other way?”
Light and Darkness . . .
I closed my eyes. The Treaty blazed brightly in the gray mist. Stark words, the product of thousands of years of war, costing millions of lives.
“Yes.”
“Go away . . .”
The boy was as tense as a coiled spring. On the brink of hysteria, on the brink of insanity.
“I came to protect you.”
“Don’t bother!”
“The girl-vampire’s on the loose. She tried to attack . . .”
“Go away!”
Olga sighed.
“Now you’ve done it!”
I stood up. Egor shuddered and moved his stool farther away from me.
“You’ll understand someday,” I said. “We have no other option . . .”
I didn’t believe the words I was saying. And it was pointless to argue now. It was getting dark outside; pretty soon it would be hunting time . . .
The boy followed me, as if he wanted to make sure I left the apartment and didn’t hide in the cupboard. I didn’t say another word, just opened the door and went out into the stairwell. The door slammed shut behind me.
I walked up one flight and squatted down by the landing window. Olga didn’t say anything and neither did I.
You can’t just go and reveal the truth like that out of the blue. It’s not easy for a normal person even to admit that we exist. But to come to terms with the Treaty . . .
“There was nothing we could have done,” said Olga. “We underestimated the boy, both his powers and his fear. We were discovered. We were obliged to answer his questions and to tell the truth.”
“Are we drawing up a report?” I asked.
“If you only knew how many reports like that I’ve drawn up . . .”
There was a smell of decay from the garbage chute. Outside the noisy street was slowly descending into the evening dusk. The streetlamps were already beginning to flicker. I sat there, toying with my cell phone and wondering if I ought to call the boss now or wait for him to call. Boris Ignatievich was probably observing me.
He was bound to be.
“Don’t expect the boss to be able to give you too much help,” said Olga. “He’s up to his ears already with that black vortex.”
The phone in my hands started trilling.
“Guess who?” I said as I opened it up.
“Woody Woodpecker. Or Whoopi Goldberg.”
I wasn’t in the mood for jokes.
“Yes?”
“Where are you, Anton?”
The boss sounded tired, worn out. I’d never heard him sound like that before.
“On a landing in a big, ugly apartment block. Beside the garbage chute. It’s quite warm here, pretty comfortable really.”
“Did you find the boy?” the boss asked, sounding entirely uninterested.
“Yes . . .”
“Good. I’ll send you Tiger Cub and Bear. There’s nothing for them to do here anyway. And you come to Perovo. Immediately.”
I was just reaching for my pocket when the boss added:
“If you haven’t got any money . . . or even if you have, stop a militia car and get them to bring you here as fast as they can.”
“Do you really mean that?” I asked.
“Absolutely. You can leave right away.”
I looked out the window into the darkness.
“Boris Ignatievich, it’s not a good idea to leave the kid alone. He really is potentially very powerful . . .”
“I know that . . . Okay. The guys are on their way. There’s no danger to the boy once they’re there. Wait for them to arrive, then come straight here immediately.”
He hung up. I folded away my cell phone and squinted sideways at my shoulder.
“What do you make of that, Olga?”
“It’s strange.”
“Why? You said yourself they wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
“It’s strange that he wanted you to go, not me . . .” Olga said thoughtfully. “Maybe . . . no, it can’t be that. I don’t know.”
I took a look through the Twilight and spotted two little specks right on the horizon. The field operatives were hurtling along so fast they would reach me in about fifteen minutes.
“He didn’t even ask the address,” I commented gloomily.
“He didn’t want to waste any time. Didn’t you feel him take the coordinates?”
“No.”
“You need more training, Anton.”
“I don’t work in the field.”
“You do now. Let’s go downstairs. We’ll hear the Call.”
I got up—that spot on the stairs had begun to feel really comfortable, just like home—and set off down the staircase. I was miserable; I had a really bad feeling about this. A door slammed behind my back. I turned around.
“I’m afraid,” Egor said, coming straight to the point.
“Everything’s fine.” I started walking back up. “We’re guarding you.”
He chewed on his lips, shifting his gaze from me to the gloom of the staircase and back again. He didn’t want to let me back into the flat, but he couldn’t bear to be alone any longer.
“I think someone’s watching me,” he said eventually. “Are you doing that?”
“No. Most likely it’s the vampire.”
The boy didn’t even shiver. I hadn’t told him anything new.
“How does she attack?”
“She can’t come in through the door unless she’s invited. That’s one thing about vampires that the fairy tales have right. You’ll feel like you want to go out yourself. In fact, you already want to go out.”
“I won’t go out!”
“When she uses the Call, you’ll go. You’ll understand what’s happening, but you’ll still go anyway.”
“Can you . . . can you tell me what to do? Anything?”
Egor had given in. He wanted help, any help he could get.
“I can. Trust us.”
He hesitated only for a second.
“Come in.” Egor stepped back from the door. “Only . . . Mom will b
e back from work any moment.”
“What of it?”
“Are you going to hide? What should I tell her?”
“That’s no problem,” I said dismissively. “But I . . .”
The door of the next apartment opened cautiously, just a crack, on the chain. A wrinkled, old woman’s face peeped out.
I touched her mind, lightly, just for an instant, as carefully as possible so as not to do any more damage to a reason that was already shaky . . .
“Ah, it’s you . . .” the old woman said with a beaming smile. “You, you . . .”
“Anton,” I prompted her politely.
“And there was I wondering who the stranger was, wandering up and down,” said the old granny, taking off the chain and coming out onto the landing. “The times we live in, the outrageous things people get up to, they just do whatever they like . . .”
“It’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right. Why don’t you watch TV, there’s a new series just starting.”
The old woman nodded, shot me a friendly glance, and disappeared into her apartment.
“What series?” asked Egor.
I shrugged.
“I don’t know. There must be something. Isn’t there always some soap opera or other?”
“And how do you know our neighbor?”
“Me? Her? I don’t.”
The boy said nothing.
“Just one of those little things,” I explained. “We are the Others. And I won’t come in, thanks; I have to go away now.”
“What?”
“There’ll be different guards here to look after you, Egor. And don’t worry—they’re far more professional than I am.”
I took a glance through the Twilight; two bright orange lights were just approaching the entrance of the building.
“I . . . I don’t want them,” said the boy, panicking immediately. “I want you to stay!”
“I can’t. I have another assignment.”
Down below the entrance door slammed and there was a clatter of footsteps on the stairs. The action heroes disdained the elevator.
“I don’t want them!” Egor grabbed hold of the door as if he’d decided to shut himself in. “I don’t trust them!”
“You either trust all of the Night Watch or you don’t trust anybody,” I told him strictly. “We’re not supermen in red and blue cloaks who work alone. We’re just employees. The police of the Twilight world. What I say goes for the Night Watch.”