I didn’t realise immediately what those words ‘I knew’ meant. And that impersonal tone, and the feeling that there was no power on its way. He always used to share his power with me, even when I didn’t really need it that badly.
‘Zabulon, am I going to die?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
My defensive canopy was dissolving, and I still couldn’t make sense of what was happening.
He could intervene! Even from a distance! A small part of his strength would be enough for me to resist the pressure and fight out a draw.
‘Zabulon, you said that love is a great power!’
‘Have you not been convinced of that? Goodbye, my little girl.’
It was only then that I understood everything.
Just as my strength melted away and I felt the invisible pressure on my shoulders again, forcing me down into the warm, twilit depths.
‘Igor!’ I shouted, but the splashing of the water drowned out my voice.
He was swimming about fifty metres away, not even looking in my direction. He was crying, but the sea has no place for tears.
And I was being dragged down, down into the Dark abyss.
How could it have happened … how?
I tried to gather power from the beach. But there was almost no Dark there for me to take. That sweet delight and those cries of joy were no use to me.
Only a hundred metres behind us the young teenager who had fallen so hopelessly in love with me was vainly trying to float on the waves and relax the leg that was contorted by cramps. Somehow he must have noticed us going into the water and swum after us, this proud boy called Makar, who had already realised that he couldn’t swim back to the shore now.
Love is a great power … How stupid you all are, you boys, when you fall in love.
There’s Makar, floundering about as his panic grows. I can take his fear and prolong my own agony for a minute or two.
And there’s Igor, swimming in the sea: not seeing anything, not hearing anything, not sensing anything around him, not thinking about anything except that I have killed his love. The stupid Light Magician doesn’t know that there are no winners in duels, especially when the duel has been carefully planned by Zabulon.
‘Igor,’ I whispered as I sank, feeling the pressure force me down, down to the dark, dark seabed.
Forgive me, Dad … I can’t swim across this sea …
Story Two
A STRANGER AMONG OTHERS
PROLOGUE
HE COULD already make out the lights of the station glimmering up ahead, but inside the gloomy, neglected park beside the Zarya factory the darkness remained as dense and chill as ever. The thin crust of ice over the snow crunched under his feet – it would probably thaw out again before midday Train whistles in the distance, incomprehensible announcements over the station’s public address system and the crunching noise of his own feet – these were the only sounds anyone who happened to be out for a walk could have heard if he wandered into the park at that time of night.
But no one had set foot in here at night – or even during the evening – for a long time now. Not even people out walking massive dogs with huge teeth. Because the dogs could not save them from what they might meet in the darkness of night, among the oaks that had grown tall here over the last forty years.
The solitary traveller with a bulky bag over his shoulder was clearly late for a train and so he decided to take a short cut and go through the park. Along the path, with his feet sometimes crunching on the thin ice, sometimes on the gravel. The stars gazed down in amazement at this bold spirit. The round disc of the moon, as yellow as a pool of Advocaat, shone its light through the jagged, naked branches. The fantastic forms of the lunar seas were like the shadows of human fears.
The traveller noticed the gleam of a pair of eyes when he was still thirty metres from the last of the trees. He was being watched from the gaunt, skeletal bushes that stretched along both sides of the path. There was the vague, dark form of something over there, in the scrubby thickets; perhaps not even something, but someone, because this dense patch of darkness was alive. Or at least it could move.
A dull growl – nothing like a roar, more like a low, hollow squawk – was the only sound that accompanied the lightning-swift attack. A wide mouthful of sharp teeth glinted in the moonlight.
The moon had readied itself for fresh blood. For a fresh victim.
But the attacker suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, as if he had run into an invisible barrier, stood there for a moment, and then collapsed onto the path with a ludicrous squeal.
The traveller paused for a second.
‘What are you doing, you blockhead?’ he hissed at his attacker. ‘Do you want me to call for the Night Watch?’
The patch of darkness at the traveller’s feet growled resentfully.
‘It’s lucky for you that I’m late,’ said the traveller, adjusting the bag across his shoulder. ‘What bloody nonsense is this, Others attacking Others …?’ He strode on rapidly across the last few metres of the park and hurried towards the station without looking back.
His attacker crawled off the path, under the trees, and there he transformed into a young man of about twenty, quite naked. The young man was tall, with broad shoulders. The crust of ice crackled under his bare feet, but he didn’t seem to feel the cold.
‘Damn!’ he whispered fiercely and then shivered for the first time. ‘Who the hell was that?’
He was still hungry, still feeling savage, but this strange victim who had escaped had completely robbed him of any desire to carry on hunting. He was frightened now, although only a few minutes earlier he had been certain that everyone should be afraid of him – a werewolf out on the hunt. The heady, intoxicating hunt for human flesh. And the hunt was unlicensed – which made the sensation of risk and his own daring even keener.
Two things in particular had entirely blunted the hunter’s enthusiasm. First, the words ‘Night Watch’ – after all, he didn’t have a licence. And second, the fact that he had failed to recognise his intended victim as an Other. An Other like him.
Not long ago the werewolf and any Others that he knew would have said that was simply impossible.
Still in the form of a naked human being, the werewolf hurried through the low bushes to where he had left his clothes. Now he would have to hide for many, many days, instead of prowling through the park at night hoping to chance upon a victim. He would have to stay hidden away, waiting for sanctions from the Night Watch. Or maybe even from his own side.
His only hope was that this solitary traveller who had not been afraid to cut across the park in the dark, this strange Other – or someone pretending to be an Other – really had been hurrying to catch a train. That he would catch it and leave the city. And then he wouldn’t be able to contact the Night Watch.
Others also know how to hope.
CHAPTER 1
I ONLY calmed down completely when I was able to relax and listen to the regular, hammering rhythm of the wheels. Although even then, not entirely How could I possibly feel calm? But at least I had recovered the ability to think coherently.
When that creature in the park broke through the bushes and threw itself at me I hadn’t been afraid. Not at all. But now I had no idea how I had found the right words to say. Afterwards I must have surprised plenty of people with the way I staggered across the square in front of the station, past the tight ranks of taxis parked for the night. It’s not easy to walk with a steady stride when your knees are buckling under you.