“No. Ilya, don’t talk that way.”
“Sorry,” he said flippantly. “So what did you do?”
“I just talked.”
The car finally hurtled out onto the avenue.
“Hold tight,” said Semyon curtly. I was pressed back in my seat. Ilya lolled about behind me, taking out a cigarette and lighting up.
Twenty seconds later I realized that my last drive had been a walk in the park.
“Semyon, has the probability of an accident been deleted?” I shouted. The car hurtled through the night, as if it were trying to overtake the beams of its own headlights.
“I’ve been driving for seventy years,” Semyon said contemptuously. “I drove trucks on the Road of Life during the Siege of Leningrad!”
There was no reason to doubt what he said, but the thought crossed my mind that those journeys had been less dangerous. He hadn’t been moving this fast, and guessing where a bomb’s going to fall is no great trick for an Other. There weren’t many cars around just then, but there were some; the road was terrible, to put it mildly; and our sports car was never meant for conditions like this . . .
“Ilya, what happened over there,” I asked, trying to tear my eyes away from a truck dodging out of our path. “Have you been posted on that?”
“You mean with the vampire and the kid?”
“Yes.”
“We did something stupid, that’s what happened,” said Ilya, and then he swore. “Maybe not really all that stupid . . . We’d done everything right. Tiger Cub and Bear introduced themselves to the kid’s parents as their favorite distant relatives.”
“We’re from the Urals?” I asked, thinking of our course on social contacts and different ways of getting to know people.
“Yes. Everything was going fine. The table was set, the drink was flowing, they were gorging on Urals delicacies . . . from the nearest supermarket . . .”
I remembered Bear’s heavy bag.
“They were really having a great time.” That note in Ilya’s voice didn’t sound like envy, more like enthusiastic approval of his colleagues. “Everything was just hunky-dory. The kid sat with them some of the time; some of the time he was in his room . . . How could they know he was already able to enter the Twilight?”
I felt a cold shudder.
Well, how could they have known?
I hadn’t told them. And I hadn’t told the boss. Or anyone. I’d been satisfied with pulling the kid out of the Twilight and sacrificing a little drop of my own blood. A hero. The solitary warrior in the field.
Ilya went on, not suspecting a thing.
“The vampire hooked him with the Call. Very neatly too; the guys didn’t feel a thing. And firmly . . . the kid never even peeped. He entered the Twilight and climbed up onto the roof.”
“How?”
“Over the balconies. He only had to climb up three floors. The vampire was already waiting for him. And she knew the boy was under guard—the moment she grabbed him, she revealed herself. Now the parents are sound asleep and the vampire’s standing there with her arms around the kid, while Tiger Cub and Bear are going out of their minds.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have anything to say.
“Our stupid mistake,” Ilya concluded. “And a combination of unforeseen circumstances with fatal consequences. Nobody had even initiated the kid . . . How could anyone know he could enter the Twilight?”
“I knew.”
Maybe it was my memories that did it, or maybe I was just frightened by our terrible speed as the car raced along the highway, but I looked into the Twilight.
People are so lucky that they can’t see this—ever! And so unlucky that they will never be able to see it!
A high, gray sky, where there have never been any stars, a sky as glutinous as milk jelly, glowing with a ghastly, wan light. The outlines of everything have softened and dissolved—the buildings, covered with a carpet of blue moss, and the trees, with branches that sway regardless of which way the wind’s blowing, and the streetlamps, with the twilight birds circling above them, barely moving their short wings. The cars coming toward you move really slowly, the people walking along the street are hardly even moving their feet. Everything seen through a gray light filter, everything heard through plugs of cotton wool in your ears. A silent, black and white movie, an eerie, elegant director’s cut. The world from which we draw our strength. The world that drinks our life. The Twilight. Whoever you really are when you enter it, that’s who you are when you come out. The gray gloom will dissolve the shell that has been growing over you all your life, extract the tiny core that people call the soul and test its quality. And that’s when you’ll feel yourself crunching in the jaws of the Twilight; you’ll feel the chilly, piercing wind, as corrosive as snake venom . . . and you’ll become one of the Others.
And choose which side to take.
“Is the boy still in the Twilight?” I asked.
“They’re all in the Twilight . . .” said Ilya, diving in there after me. “Anton, why didn’t you tell them?”
“It never occurred to me. I didn’t think it was that important. I’m not a field operative, Ilya.”
He shook his head.
We find it impossible, or almost impossible, to reproach each other, especially when someone’s really messed up. There’s no need; our punishment is always there, all around us. The Twilight gives us more strength than human beings can ever have; it gives us a life that is almost immortal in human terms. And it also takes it all away when the time comes.
In one sense we all live on borrowed time. Not just the vampires and werewolves who have to kill in order to prolong their strange existence. The Dark Ones can’t afford to do good. And we can’t afford the opposite.
“If I don’t pull this off . . .” I didn’t finish. Everything was already clear anyway.
CHAPTER 8
SEEN THROUGH THE TWILIGHT IT ACTUALLY LOOKED BEAUTIFUL. Up on the roof, the flat roof of that absurd “house on stilts,” I could see different-colored patches of light. The only things that have any color in there are our emotions. And there were plenty of those around.
The brightest of all was the column of crimson flame that pierced the sky—the vampire’s fear and fury.
“She’s powerful,” Semyon said simply, glancing up at the roof and kicking the car door shut. He sighed and started taking off his coat.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’ll go up the wall . . . over the balconies. I advise you to do the same, Ilya. Only you go in the Twilight; it’s easier.”
“And how are you going?”
“The ordinary way. There’s less chance she’ll notice. And don’t you two worry . . . I was climbing mountains for sixty years. I took the fascist flag down from Mount Elbrus.”
Semyon stripped to his shirt, throwing his clothes onto the hood of the car. They were followed by a swift protective spell covering his threads and the fancy wheels.
“Are you sure?” I inquired.
Semyon laughed, jiggled about, did a few squats, and swung his arms around like an athlete warming up. Then he trotted across to the building, with the fine snow settling on his shoulders.
“Will he make it?” I asked Ilya. I knew how to climb the wall of a building in the Twilight. In theory. But an ascent in the ordinary world, and with no equipment . . .
“He ought to,” said Ilya, but he didn’t really sound convinced. “When he swam through the underground channel of the river Yauza . . . I didn’t think he’d make it then, either.”
“Thirty years practicing underwater swimming,” I said gloomily.
“Forty . . . I’ll get going then, Anton. How are you going up, in the elevator?”
“Yup.”
“Okay . . . don’t keep us waiting.”
He shifted into the Twilight and ran after Semyon. They were probably going to climb different walls, but I didn’t really want to know who was going which way. My route was waiting for me, and it w
asn’t likely to prove any easier.
“Why did you ever have to meet me, boss . . .” I whispered as I ran up to the entrance. The snow crunched under my feet; the blood pounded in my ears. I took my pistol out of its holster on the run and took the safety catch off. Eight explosive silver bullets. That ought to be enough, as long as I hit the target. I just had to spot the moment when I had a chance to take the vampire by surprise and not wing the boy.
“Sooner or later someone would have met you, Anton. If not us, then the Day Watch. And they had just as good a chance of taking you.”
I wasn’t surprised he was keeping tabs on me. First, this was a serious business. And second, after all, he was my first mentor.
“Boris Ignatievich, if anything happens . . .” I buttoned up my jacket and stuck the barrel of the pistol into my belt behind my back. “About Svetlana . . .”
“They ran an exhaustive check on her mother, Anton. No. She’s not capable of casting a curse. No powers at all.”
“No, that wasn’t what I meant, Boris Ignatievich . . . I just had this thought. I didn’t pity her.”
“And what does that mean?”
“I don’t know. But I didn’t pity her. I didn’t pay her any compliments. I didn’t make any excuses for her.”
“I understand.”
“And now . . . disappear, please. This is my job.”
“Okay. I’m sorry for turning you out into the field. Good luck, Anton.”
I couldn’t remember the boss ever apologizing to anyone before. But I had no time to be surprised; the elevator had finally arrived.
I pressed the button for the top floor and automatically reached for the little button-earphones. Strange, there was music coming through them. When had I turned on the Walkman?
And what trick will chance play me
All will be decided later, for some he is no one,
For me he is my lord,
I stand in the darkness, for some I am a shadow,
For others I am invisible
I love Picnic. I wonder if Shklyarsky’s ever been tested to see if he’s an Other. He ought to be . . . But then, maybe not. Let him keep singing.
I dance out of time, I’ve done everything wrong,
Not regretting the fact
That today I’m like a shower that never fell,
A flower that never blossomed.
I, I, I—I am invisible.
I, I, I—I am invisible.
Our faces are like smoke, our faces are smoke
And no one will learn how we conquer . . .
Maybe I could take that last line as a good omen?
The elevator stopped.
I jumped out onto the top-floor landing and looked up at the trapdoor in the ceiling. The lock had been torn off, quite literally—the shackle was flattened and stretched. The vampire wouldn’t have needed to do that; she’d probably flown to the roof. The boy had climbed up over the balconies.
So it must have been Tiger Cub or Bear. Most likely Bear; Tiger Cub would have broken the trapdoor out.
I pulled off my jacket and dropped it on the floor with the murmuring Walkman. I felt for the pistol behind my back—it was wedged in firmly. “So technology’s all nonsense, is it?” I thought. “We’ll see about that, Olga.”
I cast my shadow upward, projecting it into the air. I reached up and slid swiftly into it. Once I was in the Twilight, I started climbing the ladder. The thick, clumpy blue moss covering the rungs felt spongy under my fingers; it tried to creep away.
“Anton!”
When I stepped out onto the roof I even hunched over a bit, the wind up there was so strong. Wild, icy gusts—either an echo of the wind in the human world or some fantastic whim of the Twilight. At first I was sheltered from it by the concrete box of the lift shaft, projecting above the level of the roof, but the moment I took a single step I was chilled to the bone.
“Anton, we’re here!”
Tiger Cub was standing about ten meters away. For a moment the sight of her made me envious; there was no way she was feeling the cold.
I don’t know where shape-shifters and magicians get the mass for transforming their bodies. It doesn’t seem to come from the Twilight, but it’s not from the human world either. In her human form the girl weighed maybe fifty kilograms, maybe a bit more. The young tigress poised in combat stance on the icy roof must have weighed a centner and a half. Her aura was a flaming orange and there were sparks wandering lazily over the surface of her fur. Her tail was twitching left and right in a regular rhythm; the right front paw was scraping regularly at the bitumen of the roof. At that spot it was scraped right through to the concrete . . . someone would get flooded come spring . . .
“Come closer, Anton,” the tigress roared, without turning around. “There she is!”
Bear was standing closer to the vampire than Tiger Cub. He looked even more terrifying. For this transformation he’d chosen the form of a polar bear, but unlike the real inhabitants of the Arctic he was snowy white, just like in the pictures and children’s books. No, he had to be a magician, not a reformed shape-shifter. Shape-shifters were limited to only one form, two at most, and I’d seen Bear take the form of a pigeon-toed brown Russian bear (when we arranged a carnival for the Watch’s American guests), and the form of a grizzly, at our demonstration classes on transformation.
The girl-vampire was standing right on the edge of the roof.
She looked worse, a lot worse since the first time I met her. Her features were even sharper now and her cheeks were hollow. During the first stage of the body’s transformation, a vampire requires fresh blood almost constantly. But I wasn’t about to be fooled by the way she looked: Her exhaustion was just her appearance; it was agonizing for her, but it didn’t take away her strength. The burn mark on her face was almost gone; I could just make out a faint trace.
“You!” the vampire’s voice rang out triumphantly—as if she’d summoned me to be slaughtered, not for negotiations.
“Yes, me.”
Egor was standing in front of the vampire; she was using him to shield herself from our operatives. The boy was in the Twilight she’d summoned, so he hadn’t lost consciousness. He stood still, not saying anything, looking from me to Tiger Cub and back. We were obviously the two he was counting on most. The vampire had one arm around the boy’s chest, holding him tight against her, and she was holding her other hand against his throat, with its claws extended. The situation wasn’t that hard to assess. Stalemate. Both sides stymied.
If Tiger Cub or Bear tried to attack the vampire, she’d tear the kid’s head off with a single sweep of her hand. There’s no cure for that . . . not even with our powers. On the other hand, once she killed the boy, there’d be nothing to stop us.
It’s a mistake to drive your enemy into a corner. Especially if you’re going to kill him.
“You wanted me to come. So I’ve come.” I raised my hands to show they were empty and started walking forward. When I was midway between Tiger Cub and Bear the vampire bared her fangs:
“Stop!”
“I haven’t got any poplar stakes or combat amulets. I’m not a magician. And there’s nothing I can do to you.”
“The amulet! The amulet on your neck!”
So that was it . . .
“That’s nothing to do with you. It protects me against someone incomparably superior to you.”
“Take it off!”
Oh, this was bad . . . really bad . . . I grabbed the chain, pulled the amulet off and dropped it at my feet. Now, if he wanted to, Zabulon could try to influence me.
“I’ve taken it off. Now talk. What do you want?”
The vampire twisted her head right around—her neck easily turned the full three hundred and sixty degrees. Oho! I’d never even heard of that one . . . I don’t think our fighters had, either: Tiger Cub growled.
“There’s someone sneaking up here!” The vampire’s voice was still human—the shrill, hysterical voice of a stupid young girl who
has acquired great strength and power by accident. “Who is it? Who?”
She pressed her left hand, the one with the extended claws, into the boy’s neck. I shuddered, picturing what would happen if a single drop of blood was spilled. The vampire would lose control! She pointed to the edge of the roof with her other hand in a ludicrous gesture of accusation, like Lenin on his armored car.
“Tell him to come out!”
I sighed and shouted:
“Ilya, come out . . .”
Fingers appeared on the edge of the roof, and a moment later Ilya swung over the low barrier and stood beside Tiger Cub. Where had he been hiding? On the canopy of a balcony? Or had he been hanging there, clutching the strands of blue moss?
“I knew it!” the girl-vampire said triumphantly. “Trickery!”
It seemed she hadn’t sensed Semyon. Maybe our phlegmatic friend had spent a hundred years training in ninja techniques?
“What right have you to talk about trickery?”
“Every right!” Something human flickered briefly in the vampire’s eyes. “I know how to deceive! You don’t!”
“Fine, fine. You know how, we don’t,” I thought. “Just you keep on believing that. If you believe the only place for ‘white lies’ is in sermons, that’s just fine. If you think that ‘good must have hard fists’ only applies in old poems by a ridiculed poet, you just keep right on thinking that way.”
“What do you want?” I asked.
She paused for a moment, as if she hadn’t given it any thought:
“To live!”
“Too late. You’re already dead.”
“Really? And can the dead rip people’s heads off?”
“Yes. That’s all they can do.”
We looked at each other, and it was strange, so pompous and theatrical—the whole conversation was absurd, after all; we’d never be able to understand each other. She was dead. Her life was someone else’s death. I was alive. But from where she stood, it was all the other way around.