“An unexpected question,” said the vampiress. “What an inquisitive little man! You see, this”—she adjusted the flaps of her coat and pulled up her jeans—“isn’t clothing. I don’t keep any clothes.”
“It’s all you,” Kesha whispered. “You are . . .”
“I’m naked.” Eve laughed. “But just how hard do you think it is to give your body the appearance of clothes, kid, if you can assume the form of a beast that flies? I am my own clothes. Any kind at all.”
Eve’s silhouette trembled, changing color and form. Now she was wearing a long white dress with a string of pearls around her neck and glittering shoes that looked as if they were made of crystal. Plump young breasts bulged up out of the plunging neckline.
“I’m not embarrassing you, am I boys?” she asked with a sly smile.
“No,” I said. “Unfortunately, I know the true shape of your kind—so I can’t be seduced by you in furs, or in silk, or naked. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it, Anton,” Eve replied very seriously. “In my kind, sexual appetite passes after two or three hundred years. It’s supplanted by the feeding instinct—that’s more ancient, you know. Sex for me is drinking blood.”
“I know,” I said. “Well then, you’ve answered three questions that aren’t important . . .”
“They are very important, even if you didn’t realize it,” said Eve. “But beside the point. What did you really want to ask me?”
“I wanted to ask you about the two who attacked us. And about the prophecy of universal death.”
“I understand,” Eve said with a nod. “But these are serious questions and they require a genuine price to be paid.”
“What price?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“The true price is always the same, Watchman. Blood.”
I really didn’t want to say this, especially in front of Kesha. But I’d been thinking about it for half a day.
“I’ll give you permits,” I said.
“What kind?” Eve inquired.
“For feeding.”
Eva shrugged.
“Permits? For me? Anton, I have a whole heap of those permits. Some of them are on birch bark, and some are even on clay tablets. But after all, if I want to drink someone, surely you don’t think that your Watchmen could catch me? You hunt newly turned vampires for weeks, and you don’t catch all of them.”
I didn’t answer that. She was right—and I knew it perfectly well.
“But what if I want something a bit more interesting?” Eve suddenly asked. “To drink a pregnant woman? Or a three-year-old child? Some celebrity, a writer or a musician, one of those who sow the seeds of reason, goodness, the eternal values. I know you take people like that out of the vampire lottery.”
“We don’t take them out,” I said firmly.
Eve laughed.
“But really? Will you give me a permit? On one side of the scales—the death of all mankind. Of Others, people, animals . . .”
“Thank you for the information,” I said. “I didn’t know about the animals.”
For a while we just looked at each other. But my pitiful attempt to get a rise out of Eve was a failure. In fact, she suddenly gave me a sympathetic sort of look.
“Don’t squirm, Watchman. I can just hear your banal clichés being rent asunder. I’m not interested in the blood of children and mothers, or of your musicians and writers either . . . After Dostoyevsky, everybody else’s blood is rather thin, somehow.”
“Such literary pretensions,” I snarled.
“The fact that I am dead and I feed on human blood doesn’t mean that I can’t admire genuine literature,” Eve replied. “I’ve read the fashionable ones, and the talented ones. No, relax, Anton, I don’t want your intelligentsia, to put them in a frame and hang them on the wall.”
“Then what do you want?” I asked.
“Blood. But it’s a very long time since I’ve just drunk whatever comes along. I collect interesting bloods, Anton.”
“Tell me what you want.”
“The blood of a Higher Light One—for an answer to any question.”
“And are you sure you can answer the question?” I asked.
“I’m sure.”
“How much blood do you want?”
“Uncle Anton!” Kesha exclaimed. “Don’t agree! What are you doing?”
“Shut up,” I said. “And remember everything. You’re the witness.”
Kesha tried to jump up, but he sank back down again. His lips started trembling. He kept looking from me to Eve and back again.
“Don’t try to stop him, boy,” said Eve. “There’s no coercion here, it’s all voluntary. I don’t intend to drink you dry, Anton. And I don’t intend to turn you. Especially since that’s very, very difficult with an Other, and virtually impossible with a Higher Light One. I’m not a killer.” She smiled cunningly, and her eyes glinted as if they were alive. “Not just a killer. I’m a collector.”
“How much?” I repeated.
“A swallow or two. Three at the very most, if it turns out that I like it.”
“Drink,” I said, rolling up my sleeve.
“No, no!” Eve exclaimed indignantly. “That’s sacrilege. Pardon me, but I didn’t just drop in for a quick tipple. Either the neck or the femoral artery. We won’t embarrass the boy, will we? The neck.”
“Get sucking, I didn’t invite you here to make conversation.”
“Ah, Anton, Anton!” Eve said and laughed again. “I really do like you! All that wonderful bravado and crudity, that disguised vulgarity . . .”
She got up and walked toward me, and I got up too. I caught her smell—fresh, sweet, and intoxicating all at once. Eve’s eyes glittered, and a light half smile played on her lips. Right now she seemed genuinely beautiful.
“I see you haven’t eaten for a long time,” I said. “Your pheromone glands are full.”
“If I wanted,” Eve whispered, “all the men in this building would come running to me. And the boy would pass out from his lust. Don’t you want to kiss me?”
“I do,” I said, “but I know what I would really be kissing, so I’ll abstain.”
“I can do no more than ask,” she purred, and set her head on my shoulder with a smooth, gliding movement.
I felt a prick on my neck.
Kesha gave a quiet shriek.
“Don’t turn away,” I said. “Count out loud. The bag of muscle on her neck will swell up with every suck.”
My neck turned slightly numb. It didn’t hurt anymore.
“One,” said Kesha.
Eve raised her hand and stroked my head.
I didn’t feel anything. No pain. No weakness. There was just a woman standing there . . . an attractive woman who had laid her head on my shoulder . . .
And was drinking my blood.
“Two,” Kesha said in an anguished voice.
Eve straightened up with an equally smooth, elegant movement. She licked her mouth with her long, pink tongue. And wiped the remaining blood off her lips with the back of her hand.
“Kesha, give me a napkin,” I said, holding out my hand. Kesha jumped up, almost knocking over his chair, and handed me a bundle of crumpled napkins—in bright cheerful colors, with a laughing Santa Claus on them. I pressed the napkins against my neck.
“It will clot on its own,” said Eve. “I injected the enzyme, Light One.”
“Thank you. And why only two swallows? Didn’t you like it?”
“Alcohol and foul tobacco, the effluvia of the big city,” said Eve. “I’m joking, Anton. It’s very interesting blood. With a familiar aftertaste, just as I expected, but interesting. I’ll remember it. I wanted to put you in your place.”
“Well, I don’t object to that,” I said.
“And remember for the future,” said Eve. “In such . . . old ones as me, the sucking bag can hold up to one and a half or two quarts of blood. I could have killed you in two swallows. Or three. And it all would have been within the l
imits of what you permitted; the boy would have been a witness. Not drinking you dry, not turning you, three swallows. And if you couldn’t live with one quart of blood in your veins, that would have been your problem, you fool.”
She looked insistently into my eyes.
“A stupid fool,” I agreed. “Thank you. I’ll remember that.”
“Now you can ask your question,” said Eve. “Any question. If I can’t give you any useful information . . . well, then you’ll ask another one. Fair enough?”
“Fair enough,” I said. “What happened to the Watchmen who were guarding Nadya, why did they attack the Inquisitor, why did they attack my family, where does their Power come from, and how can they be destroyed?”
“Why, you cheat!” Eve exclaimed, wagging her finger at me. “One question, remember? But I’m a kind vampire, Anton. I’ll answer.”
I sat down. Evidently the effect of the hormones that Eve had injected into my artery had worn off—I started feeling weak. Not a quart maybe. But she had sucked out half a quart of blood for sure. In two gulps. All the vampires I knew could suck in only three and a half or, at the most, five ounces at a time.
“The Watchmen were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Eve, leaning down over me. “They don’t exist anymore. An ancient god has manifested himself in their bodies.”
“The vampire god.”
“There weren’t any other gods then, Light One. An ancient god. The Two-in-One. The God of Light and Darkness. The first one born of the Twilight, the first to acquire reason—and he made us, the vampires, his servants. Servants and priests, keepers of the great equilibrium.”
“What equilibrium?”
“Don’t interpret the boundaries of the question so widely, Watchman. The ancient god has incarnated himself, and that is very sad, Watchman, because we betrayed him. We vampires stopped doing what we were supposed to do. We changed, we took different paths. Many stopped drinking blood and started drinking life . . . directly.”
I looked into the eyes of the one who called herself Eve, and saw a bottomless abyss. I saw the black sky of the childhood of humankind. I saw warriors drinking the blood of their enemies, and shamans drinking the blood of warriors. I saw the Two-in-One emerge from the gloom and walk toward a campfire—and seal the most ancient of human covenants with blood . . .
“The Two-in-One is offended, the Two-in-One is insulted,” Eve whispered. “People have forgotten him, people have betrayed him, they have taken other paths. And even vampires have accommodated themselves to the situation, become mired in depravity and gluttony; they have forgotten their duty to people. The Two-in-One will not forgive. The Two-in-One will destroy all of us. All the Others. For that he has to destroy the main danger: your daughter. And her parents. Because you won’t hand her over for slaughter. The Inquisitor took his duty too seriously, he tried to stop them, although I think he knew what was happening. Well . . . perhaps he chose a quick and easy death? Who knows? But he couldn’t stop the Two-in-One. Only the Sixth Watch is capable of destroying the Two-in-One. Only the Sixth Watch! But the Sixth Watch is dead.”
“What is the Sixth Watch?” I whispered.
“That’s a different question,” Eve said with a smile.
“You’ll die too, won’t you?” I said. “Then why all these games? Answer me, just answer me! We have a common interest here.”
“Perhaps I won’t die,” Eve said with a shrug. “I’m the last of those who remember the Covenant of Blood. I’m the last of those who saw the previous incarnation of the Two-in-One . . . I’m joking, Light One. I shall be killed too. But I accept it, this world is becoming too cruel.”
“For vampires?
“No,” said Eve, shaking her head. “Simply too cruel. And I don’t like pointless cruelty, Gorodetsky.”
“I need one more answer,” I said. “Bite me again.”
“But I don’t need a double for the collection,” Eve said in an offended tone. “No, Anton, for me you’re spent material.”
She paused.
“Although you do have something you could offer me.”
“You’re not getting Nadya,” I said. “Don’t even think about that.”
“Yes, I know, I know. I didn’t even bother to ask, to avoid provoking your aggression unnecessarily. But you have something to offer me apart from your daughter.”
“All right,” I said after a momentary hesitation. “I’m sure Svetlana will understand and agree . . .”
“I have the blood of a Higher Light Healer in my collection,” said Eve. “Of course, Svetlana is the mother of an Absolute Enchantress, and that lends her a certain special piquancy, but . . . Probably, after all, no. I mean the boy.”
“Why, you’re out of your mind!” I said sincerely. I looked at Kesha and gestured to him reassuringly.
“By no means. A Higher Light Other, a Prophet—that’s a great rarity.”
“He’s not a Higher Other, he’s First Level.”
“Oh! See, you’ve already started haggling!” Eve said contentedly. “He’s First Level now, but he would have become a Higher One. It’s a pity he won’t have time now. But Prophets are such a rarity, especially Light ones. I’m willing to settle for him.”
“Eve, he’s a child.”
“He’s fourteen and a half; what kind of child is that?” Eve asked in surprise. “He has a passport. In a civil war he could command a regiment. Children are only excluded from the vampire lottery until the age of twelve. And I’m sorry, Light One, but he has the right to decide for himself!”
“I accept,” Kesha said quickly.
“He does not accept,” I growled.
“Why not?” Kesha asked with a shrug. He was pale, but didn’t seem frightened at all. “We need the information, right? She won’t kill me, she won’t turn me into a vampire. So she’ll drink a bit of my blood; what will I lose by that? It’s all a bit perverted, of course, but at least she’s a woman. Was a woman. Anyway, I regard donating blood as a useful activity, and we already know that twenty percent of donated blood goes to vampires anyway, don’t we?”
Eve was openly reveling in this, shifting her gaze from me to Kesha and back.
I was thinking.
If it had all been sham bravado, if I could have seen that the boy was genuinely afraid . . .
But he wasn’t afraid. Or rather, he wasn’t any more afraid than I had been. He was feeling a bit disgusted. But he accepted the situation with absolute clarity.
And the stakes just happened to be the apocalypse.
“Not more than one and a half ounces a swallow,” I said. “No more than three swallows.”
“All right,” Eve agreed. She walked over to Kesha, who jumped up and froze in front of her.
“And don’t you smother him with your pheromones,” I added.
“I won’t,” Eve agreed lightly. “What’s this now, are you young people so careless about hygiene? Your neck’s dirty.”
“I’m fat, so I sweat easily,” Kesha replied. “If you don’t like it, take a towel and wipe it.”
Eve clapped her hands.
“Bravo! Bravo! Anton, what a wonderful young fellow he is, don’t you think? He takes his example from you.”
She leaned her head over and nestled it against Kesha’s neck.
I got up and walked around the table, moving closer to them.
She took a swallow—the bag of muscle on her neck swelled up. She paused for a moment and sighed deeply and passionately, staying glued to the boy. She swallowed a second time. Paused for a moment. Took a third swallow.
“Get off him,” I said.
Eve stood there without stirring a muscle. She squinted at me with one eye—it was sinister, misted over . . .
“Get off him, Lilith,” I whispered in her ear. “Or I’ll disembowel your rotten paunch, I swear by the Light—”
The vampire who called herself Eve sprang away from Kesha and stared at me in hatred. It wasn’t the threat that had frightened her, bu
t the name.
“Close the wounds!” I ordered her. “We’re playing fair here, remember?”
Lilith spat bloody saliva into her palm and ran her hand over Kesha’s neck. When she took her hand away, the blood had stopped flowing. Kesha sat down heavily on a chair. I gave him the rest of the napkins, and he pressed them against his wounds.
“I’ll remember you,” Lilith promised, staring daggers at me.
“You shouldn’t take other people for fools, ‘Eve,’” I said. “And now answer the question . . .”
“The boy gave the blood,” said Lilith. “He’s the one who should ask.”
“Ask what the Sixth Watch is and how to organize it,” I said.
“Is that your question?” Lilith asked Kesha.
Kesha didn’t answer.
He shook his head.
“My question’s a different one.”
I ought to have yelled at him, stopped him. Explained that there wasn’t any question more important than this right now. But I couldn’t.
He had conquered his fear. He had given his blood.
This was the most ancient and most powerful magic in the world.
Kesha looked at me and I nodded.
“Tell me, what is the relationship between the Two-in-One, the Twilight, and the Tiger?” Kesha asked.
“That’s quite a number of questions,” said Lilith. “That’s very many questions, you impudent little boy! And I won’t—”
“It really is only one question, and you know it. The price was my blood, and you took what was given, you cannot return what you took, and I demand what was promised,” said Kesha. “Speak.”
“How do you know the words of the demand?” Lilith asked after a short pause.
“I’m a Prophet,” said Kesha. “I simply knew that I would speak precisely those words to you.”
“You won’t like my answer,” said Lilith. “I will tell you what you want, but not what you need, and you have nothing left to trade with me.”
“Speak,” I said. “You gave your promise.”
“The Twilight is alive, but it has no reason, the Twilight only wants to live,” said Lilith, spreading her hands as if she was amazed at her own words. “The Tiger is the Keeper of the Twilight, he is rational, but he has no will. The Tiger is powerful. But the Two-in-One has reason and will, and the Two-in-One is also a creation of the Twilight. If the Tiger stands in his way, he will sweep the Tiger aside. Everything living will be killed, because the Others are not only parasites, they are the guardians of life. If the Others die, every living thing will die. If all living things die, the Twilight will die. If the Twilight dies, the Tiger will die, the Two-in-One will die, and absolutely everything around this little lump of dirt will die. I have given my answer.”