“But who are they?” The kid was beginning to accept it. “Magicians?”
“Yes, but highly specialized ones.”
Tiger Cub appeared below me on the bend of the staircase.
“Hi there, guys!” the girl exclaimed cheerfully, bounding up an entire flight in a single leap.
It was a superhuman leap. Egor winced and took a step backward, gazing watchfully at Tiger Cub. I shook my head: The girl was clearly poised on the very edge of transformation. She was enjoying it, and just at that moment she had good reason to be feeling frisky.
“How are things over there?” I asked.
Tiger Cub sighed loudly and then smiled:
“Oh . . . a laugh a minute. Everybody’s in a panic. You get going, Antoshka, they’re waiting for you . . . So it’s you I’m looking after, right?”
The boy looked her over without saying anything. To be honest, the boss had made a great choice when he decided to get Tiger Cub to protect him. Everyone, from young children to old folks, liked her and trusted her. They do say even some of the Dark Ones have sometimes been charmed by her. But then, that was their mistake . . .
“No one’s looking after me,” the boy answered at last. “My name’s Egor.”
“And I’m Tiger Cub,” said the girl, already inside the apartment. She gave the kid a friendly hug around the shoulders. “Show me around the battlefield! Let’s start preparing our defenses!”
I started down the stairs, shaking my head as I went. In five minutes Tiger Cub would be showing the kid how she got her name.
“Hi,” Bear rumbled as he walked up toward me.
“Hi.” We shook hands quickly. Of all the Watch agents, Bear was the one I was leery of.
Bear was a little bit taller than average, strongly built, with a face that gave absolutely nothing away. He didn’t like to talk a lot. Nobody knew where he spent his time when he wasn’t working, or where he lived, except maybe Tiger Cub. There were rumors that he wasn’t even a magician, but a shape-shifter. They said that first he used to work for Day Watch and then, during some mission, he suddenly switched over to our side. But that was all a load of nonsense. Light Ones don’t become Dark Ones, and Dark Ones don’t turn into Light Ones. But there was something about Bear that made you stop and wonder.
“Your car’s waiting,” the field agent told me without bothering to stop. “The driver’s a real ace. You’ll be there before you know it.”
Bear had a slight stammer, so he kept his sentences short. He was in no hurry; Tiger Cub was already on guard. But I had no time to hang around.
“Are things tough over there?” I asked, walking faster. The answer came from above me now:
“Worse than that.”
I bounded down several steps at a time and dashed out of the entrance. The car was standing there all right—I slowed down for a moment to admire it. A classy maroon-colored BMW, the latest model, with a flashing light carelessly stuck on the roof. Both doors on the side facing the building were open. The driver was leaning out of the car, hastily smoking a cigarette, and I could just make out the bulge of a holster under the flap of his jacket. Standing by the back door was an absolutely monumental middle-aged man. Under his open coat he was wearing a very expensive suit, with a Duma deputy’s badge glinting on his lapel. The man was speaking on his cell phone:
“Who is he anyway? I’ll get there when I can! What! What damned girls? Have you gone crazy? Can’t you do a single thing on your own?”
The deputy squinted at me, cut short his conversation without saying goodbye, and got into the car. The driver took a deep drag, tossed his cigarette away, and grabbed hold of the wheel. The engine howled softly, and I barely had time to get into the front seat before the car moved away. Icy branches scraped across the outside of the door.
“You gone blind, or something?” the deputy barked at his driver, though I was the one to blame for what had happened. But as soon as the owner of the car turned to face me his tone changed: “You need to get to Perovo?”
It was the first time I’d ever taken a ride with a representative of authority. And this guy was either a top man in the militia or a gangland boss. I realized in theory that there was no difference as far as a Night Watch agent’s powers were concerned, but I’d never tried to experiment before.
“Yes, back to where the guys came from. And make it quick . . .”
“Hear that, Volodya?” the deputy said to the driver. “Step on it!”
Volodya stepped on it so hard I started feeling a bit queasy, and I even glanced into the Twilight to see if we were going to get there.
It seemed like we were. Only not just because of our driver’s skill or because, like any Night Watch agent, I have an artificially elevated success coefficient. It looked like someone had gone through the probability field, weeding out all the accidents, traffic jams, and over-zealous traffic cops.
The only person in our department who could have done that was the boss himself. But what for?
“I’m feeling a bit frightened too,” whispered the invisible bird on my shoulder. “When I was with Count . . .”
She stopped short, as if she’d realized she was speaking a bit too freely.
The car drove through a red light at an intersection, following an incredible twisting course, dodging between the saloons and station wagons. Someone at a bus stop waved a hand in our direction.
“Like a sip?” the Duma deputy inquired amiably, holding out a small bottle of Rémy Martin and a throwaway plastic cup. It looked so funny, I poured myself thirty grams without even thinking about it. Even at that speed the car was providing a smooth ride; the cognac didn’t spill.
I handed back the bottle, nodded, took the Walkman earphones out of my pocket, put them in and started the disc. Out came this really, really old song, “Sundays”—my favorite.
It was a small town, no bigger than a child’s toy,
There’d been no plagues or invasions there since long ago.
The cannon rusted in silence on its fortress tower,
And the travelers’ roads passed it by.
And so year after year, no holidays or working days—
The whole town slept,
Dreaming dreams of lands with empty cities
And dead cliffs . . .
We came out onto the main highway. The car just kept on picking up speed; I’d never traveled that fast in Moscow before. Or anywhere else, for that matter . . . If the probability field hadn’t been cleared, I’d have made them slack off, but it was pretty terrifying anyway.
The music sounded among the cold cliffs,
While the town slept . . .
Calling to where?
Calling to whom?
That no one knew . . .
I couldn’t help remembering that a member of the Romanov royal family was an Other. Only he wasn’t initiated; he’d been spotted too late . . . They’d offered him the chance, but he’d refused.
That’s one option.
I wondered how often he heard this music in the night.
All who left their windows open in the hot night
Are gone now.
Gone away to seek a land where life is full of life,
Following the song . . .
“Like some more?” The deputy was Mister Conviviality himself. I wondered what suggestions Bear and Tiger Cub had implanted in his mind. That I was his best friend? That he was eternally in my debt? That I was the president’s illegitimate, but favorite, son?
But that’s all nonsense. There are hundreds of different ways of making people trust you and like you and want to help you. The Light has its own methods, but unfortunately the Darkness has plenty as well. It’s all nonsense.
The question was: What did the boss need me for so badly?
CHAPTER 6
ILYA WAS WAITING FOR ME BESIDE THE ROAD, STANDING THERE with his hands stuck in his pockets, staring up in disgust at the sky through the flurry of fine snowflakes.
“You took y
our time,” was all he said after I’d shaken the deputy’s hand and got out of the car. “The boss is getting impatient.”
“What’s going on here?”
Ilya grinned, but it wasn’t his usual cheerful smile.
“You’ll see . . . let’s go.”
We set off along a trampled path, overtaking women with shopping bags rambling home from the supermarket. How strange it is that we have supermarkets now, just like the genuine article. But people still walk the same old tired way, as if they’d spent an hour standing in line for little blue corpses called chickens . . .
“Is it far?” I asked.
“If it was, we’d have taken a car.”
“How did our playboy make out? Couldn’t he handle it?”
“Ignat tried his best,” was all Ilya said. I felt a brief pang of vengeful satisfaction, as if it were in my interest for handsome Ignat to screw up. If a mission required it, he was usually in someone else’s bed within two hours after his assignment was set.
“The boss has declared a state of readiness for evacuation,” Ilya suddenly said.
“What?”
“At a moment’s notice. If the vortex isn’t stabilized, the Others quit Moscow.”
He was walking ahead of me; I couldn’t look into his eyes. But what reason would Ilya have to lie . . .
“And is the vortex still . . .” I began. Then I stopped. I could see it.
Above the dismal nine-story block facing us, a black tornado was revolving slowly against the background of the dark, snowy sky.
You couldn’t call it a twister or a vortex any longer. It was a tornado. It rose up out of the next building, hidden by the one we could see. And judging from the side angle of the dark cone, it started almost down on the ground.
“Damnation . . . ,” I whispered.
“Watch what you say,” Ilya snapped. “It could easily come true.”
“It’s thirty meters high . . .”
“Thirty-two. And still growing . . .”
I cast a hasty glance at my shoulder and saw Olga sitting there. She’d emerged from the Twilight.
Have you ever seen a bird frightened? Frightened like a human being?
The owl looked ruffled. Can feathers really stand on end? There was an orange-yellow flame blazing in her amber eyes.
The shoulder of my poor jacket was torn into tiny shreds, and the claws continued scraping, as if they wanted to scrape right through to my body.
“Olga!”
Ilya turned back and nodded:
“Now you see . . . The boss says the vortex at Hiroshima wasn’t that high.”
The owl flapped its wings and soared smoothly into the air, without a sound. A woman shrieked behind me—I swung around and saw a stupefied face, glazed eyes following the bird’s flight in amazement.
“It’s a crow,” Ilya said quietly, half-turning his head to glance at the woman. His reactions were far quicker than mine. A moment later the accidental witness was overtaking us, muttering about the narrow path and people who liked to block the way.
“Is it growing fast?” I asked, with a nod at the tornado.
“In bursts. But it’s stabilizing now. The boss called Ignat off just in time. Come on . . .”
The owl made a wide circle around the tornado, then flew lower and over our heads. Olga still looked very self-possessed, but her careless emergence from the twilight showed how agitated she really was.
“Why, what did he do wrong?”
“Nothing really . . . except for being overconfident. He got to know her. Then he started forcing things along and that made the twister start to grow . . . and how!”
“I don’t understand,” I said, confused. “It can only grow that way if it’s being fed with energy by the magician who summoned up the Inferno . . .”
“That’s the whole point. Someone must have tracked Ignat and started shoveling coal in the firebox. This way . . .”
We went into the entrance of the building that stood between us and the vortex. The owl flew in after us at the last moment. I gave Ilya a puzzled look, but I didn’t ask any questions. Anyway, it was clear soon enough what we were there for.
An operations center had been set up in an apartment on the first floor. The heavy steel door, firmly closed in the human world, was standing wide open in the Twilight. Without stopping, Ilya dived into the Twilight and walked through. I fumbled for a few seconds, raising my shadow, and followed him.
It was a large apartment, with four rooms, all very comfortable. But it was also noisy, smoky, and hot.
There were more than twenty Others there, including field operatives and us back-room boys. No one took any notice when I arrived; they just glanced at Olga. I realized that the old Watch members knew her, but no one made any attempt to say hello or smile at the white owl.
What could she have done?
“Go through into the bedroom; the boss is in there,” Ilya said briskly, turning off into the kitchen, where I could hear glasses clinking. Maybe they were drinking tea, or maybe it was something a bit stronger. I glanced in quickly as I passed and saw I was right. They were reanimating Ignat with cognac. Our ladies’ man looked completely wiped out, crushed. It was a long time since he’d suffered this kind of failure.
I walked on by, pushed open the first door I came to, and looked inside.
It was the children’s room. A child of about five was sleeping on a little bed, and his parents and teenage sister were on the carpet beside it. Clear enough. The owners of the apartment had been put into a sound, healthy sleep so they wouldn’t get under our feet. We could have set up the entire operations office in the Twilight, but why waste all that energy?
Someone slapped me on the shoulder and I looked around—it was Semyon.
“The boss is that way,” he told me. “Come on . . .”
It seemed that everyone knew I was expected.
When I entered the next room, I was taken aback for just a moment.
There couldn’t be any more absurd sight than a Night Watch operations center set up in a private apartment.
There was a medium-size magic ball hanging in the air above a dressing table stacked with cosmetics and piled high with costume jewelry. The ball was transmitting a view of the vortex from above. Lena, our best operator, was sitting on an ottoman beside it, silent and intense. Her eyes were closed, but when I came in she raised one hand slightly in greeting.
Okay, so that was normal. Ball operators see space in its totality; there’s no way to hide anything from them.
The boss was reclining on the bed, propped up with pillows. He was wearing a brightly colored robe, soft oriental slippers, and an embroidered skullcap. The room was filled with the sweet fumes of a portable hookah. The white owl was sitting in front of him. It looked like they were communicating nonverbally.
That was all normal, too. In moments of exceptional stress, the boss always reverted to the habits he’d picked up in Central Asia. He worked there at the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth, first disguised as a mufti, then as a Muslim guerrilla leader, and then as a red commissar, and finally he spent ten years as the secretary of a district party committee.
Danila and Farid were standing by the window. Even with my powers I could make out the purple glimmer of the magic wands hidden in their sleeves.
A perfectly standard arrangement. At moments like this the headquarters would never be left unprotected. Danila and Farid weren’t the strongest fighters we had, but they were experienced, and that was often more important than crude strength.
But what was I supposed to make of the final Other who was in the room?
He was squatting modestly and unobtrusively in the corner. As thin as a rake with sunken cheeks, black hair cut short, military style, and big, sad eyes. It was impossible to tell how old he was, maybe thirty, maybe three hundred. He was dressed in a loose-fitting gray suit. A human being would probably have taken the stranger for a member of some small sect. And he wo
uld have been half right.
He was a Dark Magician. And a top-flight one too. When he glanced briefly at me, I felt my protective shell—which wasn’t installed by me!—crack and start to buckle.
I took an involuntary step backward. But the magician had already lowered his eyes to the floor as if to show me that the momentary probing had been accidental . . .
“Boris Ignatievich.” I could hear my voice wheezing slightly.
The boss nodded curtly, then he turned to the Dark Magician, who immediately fixed his eyes on the boss.
“Give him an amulet,” the boss ordered brusquely.
The Dark Magician’s voice was sad and quiet, the voice of someone burdened with all the woes of the world.
“I’m not doing anything forbidden by the Treaty . . .”
“Neither am I. My colleagues must be immune against observers.”
So that was it! We had an observer from the Dark Side in our headquarters. That meant Day Watch had a headquarters somewhere close by, and one of us was there.
The Dark Magician put his hand in the pocket of his jacket. He took out a carved ivory medallion on a copper chain and held it out to me.
“Throw it,” I said.
The magician smiled gently with the same air of melancholic sympathy and flicked his hand. I caught the medallion. The boss nodded approvingly.
“Your name?” I asked.
“Zabulon.”
I hadn’t heard the name before. Either he wasn’t that well known, or he was somewhere right up at the top of Day Watch.
“Zabulon . . .” I repeated, glancing at the amulet. “You no longer have any power over me.”
The medallion grew warm in my hand. I put it on over my shirt, nodded to the Dark Magician, and walked over to the boss.
“You can see how things are, Anton,” the boss said, mumbling slightly, because he didn’t take the mouthpiece of the hookah out of his mouth. “There you are, look.”
I looked out the window and nodded.
The black vortex sprouted out of a nine-story block just like the one we were in. Its slim, flexible stalk ended somewhere around the first-floor level. By reaching out through the Twilight, I could locate the precise apartment.