Yes. Of course. I believe it, she's a very good person, kind. There's weariness there, but no bitterness or spite. When you're with a girl like that you feel like a different person. You try to be better, and that's a strain. Men prefer to be friends with her kind, flirt a bit, share confidences. They don't often fall in love with girls like that, but everybody loves them.
Apart from one certain person, someone who has hired a Dark Magician.
A black vortex is actually a fairly ordinary phenomenon. If I looked closely, I could make out another five or six of them hanging above other passengers' heads. But they were all blurred and pale, barely even spinning. The results of perfectly ordinary, non-professional curses. Someone yelling after someone else: «I hope you die, you bastard.» Someone had put it more simply and forcefully: «Go to hell, will you!» And a little black whirlwind had moved across from the Dark Side, draining good fortune and sucking in energy.
But an ordinary, amateurish, formless curse lasts no more than an hour or two, twenty-four hours at most. And its consequences may be unpleasant, but they're not fatal. That black twister hanging over the girl was the genuine article, stabilized and set in motion by an experienced magician. The girl didn't know it yet, but she was already dead.
I automatically reached for my pocket, then remembered where I was and frowned. Why don't cell phones work in the subway? Don't the people who have them ride underground?
Now I was torn between my principal assignment, which I had to carry through, even without any hope of success, and the doomed girl. I didn't know if she could still be helped, but I had to track down whoever had created this vortex…
Just at that moment I got a second jolt. But this time it was different. There was no cramp or pain; my throat just went dry and my gums went numb, the blood started pounding in my temples, and my fingertips started itching.
This was it!
But the timing couldn't have been worse.
I got up—the train was already braking as it pulled into a station. I walked past the girl and felt her eyes on me, following me. She was afraid. There was no way she could see the black vortex, but it was obviously making her feel anxious, making her pay close attention to the people around her.
Maybe that was why she was still alive?
Trying not to look in her direction, I lowered my hand into my pocket and fingered the amulet—a smooth rod carved out of cool onyx. I hesitated for a moment, trying to come up with some other course of action.
No, there was no other way.
I squeezed the amulet tight in the palm of my hand, feeling a prickly sensation in my fingers as the stone started warming up, giving out its accumulated energy. The sensation was no illusion, but you can't measure this heat with any thermometer. It felt like I was squeezing a coal taken out of a fire… it was covered with cold ash, but still red hot at the center.
When I'd drained the amulet completely, I glanced at the girl. The black twister was shuddering, leaning over slightly in my direction. This vortex was so powerful that it even possessed a rudimentary intelligence.
I struck.
If there'd been any Others in the carriage, or even anywhere in the train, they'd have seen a blinding flash that could pierce metal or concrete with equal ease…
I'd never tried striking at a black vortex with such a complex structure before. And I'd never used an amulet with such a powerful charge.
The effect was totally unexpected. The feeble curses hanging over other people's heads were completely swept away. An elderly woman who'd been rubbing her forehead looked at her hand in amazement: Her vicious migraine had suddenly disappeared. A young guy who'd been gazing dully out the window shuddered. His face relaxed and the look of hopeless misery disappeared from his eyes.
The black vortex above the girl was tossed back five meters; it even slipped halfway out of the carriage. But it maintained its structure and came zigzagging back through the air to its victim.
This was real power!
With real perseverance!
They say, though I've never actually seen it myself, that if a vortex is pushed even two or three meters away from its victim, it gets disoriented and attaches itself to the nearest person it can find. That's a pretty lousy thing to happen to anyone, but at least a curse meant for someone else has a much weaker effect, and the new victim has a good chance of escaping.
But this vortex just came straight back, like a faithful dog running to its master in trouble.
The train was stopping. I threw one last glance at the vortex—it was back in place, hanging there above the young woman's head; it had even started spinning faster… and there was nothing, absolutely nothing I could do about it. The target I'd been hunting all over Moscow for a week was somewhere close, right here in the station. My boss would have eaten me alive… and maybe not just in the figurative sense…
When the doors parted with a hiss, I gave the woman a final glance, hastily memorizing her aura. There wasn't much chance of ever finding her again in this massive city. But even so, I would have to try.
Only not right now.
I jumped out of the carriage and looked around. It was true, I was a bit short of field-work experience; the boss is absolutely right about that. But I didn't like the method he'd chosen for training me at all.
How in hell's name was I supposed to find the target?
Not one of the people I could see with my normal vision looked even slightly suspicious. There were plenty of them still jostling each other here—it was the circle line, after all, the Kursk station; there were passengers who'd just arrived on the main line, street traders making their way home, people in a hurry to change trains and ride out to the suburbs… But if I closed my eyes I could observe a more fascinating picture. Pale auras, the way they usually are by evening, and in among them the bright scarlet blob of fury, the strident orange glow of a couple obviously in a rush to get to bed, the washed-out, brownish-gray stripes of the disintegrating auras of the drunks.
But there wasn't a single trace of the target, apart from the dryness in my throat, the itching in my gums, the insane pounding of my heart. The faint taste of blood on my lips. A mounting sense of excitement.
The signs were all circumstantial, but at the same time they were too obvious to be ignored.
Who was it? Who?
The train started moving behind me. The feeling that the target was near didn't get any weaker, so we had to be still close to each other. The train going in the opposite direction appeared. I felt the target tremble and start moving toward it.
Forward!
I crossed the platform, weaving between the new arrivals staring up at the indicator boards, then set off toward the back of the train—and my sense of the target began to get weaker. I ran toward the front of the train—there it was again… closer…
It was like that children's game: First I was «cold,» then I was «hot.»
The people were boarding the cars. I ran along the train, feeling the sticky saliva filling up my mouth, my teeth starting to ache, my fingers starting to cramp up… The music was roaring in my earphones.
In the shadow of the moon
She danced in the starlight,
Whispering a haunting tune
To the night…
How appropriate. The song was absolutely perfect.
But it was a bad omen.
I jumped in through the closing doors and froze, concentrating on what I could feel. Had I guessed right or wrong? I still couldn't get a visual fix on the target…