The Twilight Watch:

  He looked into my eyes for a few seconds. And then he started to smile. With that special vampire smile, as though there are no fangs in his mouth yet, but you can already feel them on your throat.

  'Ah yes . . . Drink the blood of young virgins and children, kill them . . . The old, classical recipe. That's how dear old Witiezslav became a Higher One . . . Do you mean to say that you never once looked in my file?'

  'No,' I replied.

  He actually went limp, and his smile became pitiful and confused.

  'Not once?'

  'No,' I said, already beginning to realise I'd made a mistake somewhere along the line.

  Kostya made a clumsy gesture with his hands and began talking in nothing but conjunctions, interjections and pronouns:

  'Why that . . . it's . . . look . . . but you . . . and I . . . yes . . . and you . . .'

  'I don't like looking in a friend's file,' I said, and added awkwardly: 'Not even a former friend's.'

  'And I thought you'd looked at it,' said Kostya. 'Right. This is the twenty-first century, Anton. Look . . .' He reached into his jacket pocket and took out his flask. 'A concentrate of donor's blood. Twelve people give blood – and there's no need to kill anyone. Of course, haemoglobin has nothing to do with it! The emotions a person feels when he gives blood are far more important. You can't imagine how many people are mortally afraid, yet they still go to the doctor and give blood for members of their family. My own personal formula . . . "Saushkins's prescription". Only it's usually called "Saushkin's cocktail". That must be in the file.'

  He looked at me triumphantly . . . and probably couldn't understand why I wasn't smiling. Why I didn't mumble guiltily: 'Kostya, forgive me, I thought you were a low son of a bitch and a murderer . . . but you're an honourable vampire, a good vampire, a modern vampire . . .'

  Yes, that's what he was. Honourable, good and modern. He hadn't wasted his time in the Haematological Research Institute.

  But why had he told me about the formula? About the blood from twelve people?

  I knew why. As far as he was concerned, I couldn't have known what was in the Fuaran! There was no way I could have known that the spell required precisely the blood of twelve people!

  Witiezslav didn't have the blood of twelve people with him. He couldn't have worked the spell in the Fuaran and increased his powers.

  But Kostya had his flask.

  'Anton, what's wrong with you?' Kostya asked. 'Say something!'

  Edgar came out of the conductor's compartment still talking, shook the chief conductor's hand and came towards us with a satisfied smile on his face.

  I looked at Kostya. And read everything in his eyes.

  He knew that I knew.

  'Where are you hiding the book?' I asked. 'Quick. This is your last chance. Your only chance. Don't destroy yourself.'

  At that moment he struck. Without any magic – unless you can call a vampire's inhuman strength magic. The world exploded in a white flash, the teeth in my mouth crunched and my jaw suddenly went numb. I was sent flying down the corridor and crashed into a passenger who'd come out at the wrong moment for a breath of air. I probably had him to thank for the fact that I didn't lose consciousness – in fact, it was the passenger who flaked out instead of me.

  Kostya stood there, rubbing his fist, and his body flickered, moving rapidly into the Twilight and back out again, slipping between the worlds. That ability the vampires have that had once so astounded me . . . I remembered Gennady, Kostya's father, walking towards me across the courtyard, Kostya's mother Polina, with her arm round the shoulders of the vampire who was still a little kid . . . we're law-abiding . . . we don't kill anyone . . . what a surprise – to have a Light Magician as a neighbour . . .

  'Kostya!' Edgar exclaimed, coming to a halt.

  Kostya slowly turned his head towards Edgar. I couldn't see, but I sensed him bare his fangs.

  Edgar flung his hands out in front of him – and the corridor was blocked off by a dull, translucent wall that looked like a layer of rock crystal. Maybe the Inquisitor still hadn't realised what was going on, but his instincts were in good order.

  Kostya made a low, howling sound and pressed his hands against the wall. The wall held. The carriage lurched and swayed over the points and behind my back a woman launched into a slow, measured wail. Kostya lurched backwards and forwards, trying to break through Edgar's line of defence.

  I raised my hand and directed a 'grey prayer' at Kostya – an ancient spell against non-life. The 'grey prayer' tears to shreds any organic matter raised from the grave that possesses no consciousness of its own and lives only through the will of a sorcerer. It slows vampires down and weakens them.

  Kostya swung round when the fine grey threads wrapped themselves around him in the Twilight. He took a step towards me, shook himself – and the spell was torn apart before my eyes. I'd never seen such crude but effective work before.

  'Don't get in my way!' he bellowed. Kostya's features had lengthened and sharpened, his fangs were all the way out now. 'I don't want . . . I don't want to kill you . . .'

  I managed to get up and crawl over the felled passenger into a compartment. On the top bunks, two men of impressive dimensions started squealing, outdoing the woman who was yelling outside by the door of the washroom. There were glasses and bottles rolling around on the floor underneath me.

  In a single bound Kostya appeared in the doorway. He cast a glance at the men – and they fell silent.

  'Surrender . . .' I whispered, sitting up on the floor beside the table. The way my jaw moved felt strange – it didn't seem to be dislocated, but every movement was agony.

  Kostya laughed:

  'I can finish you all off . . . if I want to. Come with me, Anton. Come! I don't want to hurt anyone! What's this Inquisition to you? Or these Watches? We'll change everything!'

  He was speaking utterly sincerely. Actually pleading.

  Why do you always have to become stronger than anyone else before you can permit yourself weakness?

  'Come to your senses . . .' I whispered.

  'You fool! You fool!' Kostya growled, taking a step towards me. He reached out his hand – the fingers already ended in claws. 'You . . .'

  A half-full bottle of Posolskaya vodka, with its contents draining out lazily, rolled right into my hand.

  'It's time we drank to Brüderschaft,' I said.

  Kostya managed to dodge, but a few splashes still got him in the face. He howled and threw his head back. Even for the Highest Vampire of them all, alcohol is still poison.

  I stood up, grabbed a full glass off the little table and drew my hand back. I shouted:

  'Night Watch! You're under arrest! Put your hands above your head! Withdraw your fangs!'

  At precisely that moment three Inquisitors appeared in the doorway. Either Edgar had summoned them, or they'd sensed something was wrong. They grabbed hold of Kostya, who was still wiping his bloody face. One of them tried to press a grey metal disk against his neck – something charged up to the hilt with magic . . .

  Then Kostya showed what he was really capable of.

  A kick sent the glass flying out of my hand and flattened my back against the window. The frame gave a loud crack. And then where Kostya had been standing there was nothing but a grey blur – the punches and kicks followed each other faster than any movie hero could have thrown them. There were splashes of blood and scraps of flesh flying in all directions, as if someone was grinding up a piece of fresh meat in a blender. Then Kostya jumped into the corridor, glanced around – and dived through the window as if he hadn't even noticed the twin panes of thick glass.

  The glass didn't notice him either.

  I caught one last glimpse of Kostya outside, tumbling down the embankment – and then the train hurtled on.

  I'd heard about that vampire trick, but I'd always thought it was pure fantasy. Even in the textbooks the phrase 'walking through walls and panes of glass in the real world' was marked with a prudish 'n.p.' ??
? for 'not proven'.

  Two of the Inquisitors were lying in a shapeless heap in the compartment, so badly mutilated there was no point in trying to find any kind of pulse.

  The third one had been lucky: he was sitting on a bunk, squeezing shut a wound in his stomach.

  There was blood slopping down over his feet.

  The passengers on the upper bunks weren't yelling any more – one had covered his head with a pillow, the other was staring down with glassy eyes and giggling to himself.

  I picked my way across the compartment and staggered out into the corridor.

  CHAPTER 5

  AS THE HERO of a certain hoary old joke put it: 'Now life is returning to normal!'

  The passengers in the chief conductor's car were sitting in their compartments, and staring vacantly out of the windows. For some reason people walking through the carriage lengthened their stride and only looked straight ahead. In one closed compartment there were two bodies packed in black plastic sacks and the wounded Inquisitor, who was lying down after a colleague had treated him with healing spells for about fifteen minutes. Another two Inquisitors were standing on guard at the door of our compartment.

  'How did you guess?' Edgar asked.

  He'd fixed my jaw in about three minutes, after helping his wounded comrade. I hadn't asked what the problem was – simple bruising, a crack or a break. He'd fixed it, that was all I cared about. But my two front teeth were still missing, and it was weird to feel the gap with my tongue.

  'I remembered something about the Fuaran . . .' I said. In the commotion of the first few minutes after Kostya bolted, I'd had time to think of what to tell the inquisitor. 'The witch . . . you know, Arina . . . said that according to the legends, for the spells in the Fuaran to work, you had to have the blood of twelve people. Just a drop from each one would do.'

  'Why didn't you tell me earlier?' Edgar asked sharply.

  'I didn't think it was important. At the time I thought the whole story of the Fuaran was pure fantasy . . . And then Kostya mentioned that his cocktail was made from the blood of twelve people, and it clicked.'

  'I see. Witiezslav didn't have twelve people handy,' Edgar said with a nod. 'If only you'd told me straight away . . . if only you'd told me . . .'

  'You knew about the formula of the cocktail?'

  'Yes, of course. The Inquisition has discussed "Saushkin's cocktail". The stuff doesn't work any miracles, it won't increase a vampire's strength beyond the natural limits. But it does allow a vampire to rise to his maximum potential without killing anyone . . .'

  'Rise or sink?' I asked.

  'If there's no killing involved, then rise,' Edgar replied coolly. 'And you didn't know . . . would you believe it . . .'

  I said nothing.

  Yes, I hadn't known. I hadn't wanted to know. What a hero. And now two Inquisitors were wearing black polythene and no one could do anything to help them . . .

  'Let's drop it,' Edgar decided. 'What point is there now . . . He's flying after us.'

  I glanced at the compass, and had to agree it looked that way. The distance between us and Kostya, or rather, the book, hadn't changed, although the train was travelling at seventy or eighty kilometres an hour. He had to be flying after us. He wasn't making a run for it after all.

  'There has to be something he wants in Central Asia . . .' said Edgar, perplexed. 'The only thing is . . .'

  'We should summon the Great Ones,' I said.

  'They'll come,' Edgar said casually. 'I've informed them of everything, put up a portal . . . they're deciding what to do.'

  'I know what they're deciding,' I muttered. 'Zabulon's demanding that Kostya be handed over to him. Together with the Fuaran, of course.'

  'No one's going to get their hands on the book, don't you worry.'

  'Apart from the Inquisition?'

  Edgar ignored that.

  I made myself more comfortable. Felt my jaw.

  It didn't hurt.

  But I was upset about the teeth. I'd have to go to a dentist or a healer. The trouble was that even the very best Light healers couldn't fix your teeth without any pain. They simply couldn't do it . . .

  The pointer of the compass quivered, but maintained its direction. The distance hadn't changed – ten to twelve kilometres. So Kostya must have undressed and transformed into a bat . . . or maybe some other creature? A gigantic rat, a wolf . . .That wasn't important. He'd transformed, probably into a bat, and was flying after the train, clutching a bundle containing his clothes and the book in his claws. Where had he been hiding it, the bastard? On his body? In a secret pocket in his clothes?

  He was a real bastard all right . . . but he had some nerve! The sheer insolence of it – to join in the hunt for himself, to come up with theories, give advice . . .

  He'd duped everyone.

  But in the name of what? The desire for absolute power? The chances of victory weren't all that good, and Kostya had never been particularly ambitious. He had ambition, of course, but without any crazy ideas about ruling the world.

  Why wasn't he making a run for it now? He had the blood of three Inquisitors on his hands. That was something that would never be forgiven, even if he gave himself up and confessed, even if he gave back the book. He ought to run, after first destroying the book that the tracking spell was linked to. But no, he was still carrying the book and following the train. That was just plain stupid . . . Or was he hoping for negotiations?

  'How were you expecting to identify Witiezslav among the passengers?' I asked Edgar.

  'What?' he answered after a pause, lost in thought. 'A simple trick, the same thing you used: alcohol intolerance. We were going to get dressed up in white coats and carry out a medical inspection of the entire train. Supposedly looking for people with atypical pneumonia. We would have given everyone a thermometer well soaked in medical spirit. Anyone who couldn't take it in his hands or was burned would have been a suspect.'

  I nodded. It might have worked. Of course, we'd have been taking a risk, but taking risks was our job. And the Great Ones would have been somewhere close at hand, on call, ready to strike with all their might if necessary.

  'The portal's opening . . .' Edgar grabbed hold of my hand and pulled me down onto the bunk. We sat beside each other, with our legs pulled in. A trembling white radiance filled the compartment. There was a low exclamation – Gesar had banged his head against a bunk as he emerged from the portal.

  Then Zabulon appeared. In contrast with my boss, he had a mellow smile on his face.

  Gesar rubbed the top of his head, looked at me dourly and barked:

  'You might as well have put up a portal in a Zaporozhets automobile . . . What's the situation?'

  'The passengers have been pacified, we've washed away the blood, the wounded agent is receiving treatment,' Edgar reported. 'The suspect Konstantin Saushkin is moving parallel with the train at a speed of seventy kilometres an hour.'

  'No point calling him a suspect any more . . .' Zabulon said caustically. 'Ah, what a talented boy he was . . . what promise he had.'

  'You don't seem to have much luck with promising young colleagues, Zabulon,' Edgar said in a quiet voice. 'Somehow they don't stay around for very long.'

  The two Dark Magicians glared at each other with hostility. Edgar had old scores to settle with Zabulon, ever since that business with Fafnir and the Finnish sect. No one likes to be used as a pawn.*