That was all. Someone had been here and disappeared, but there was someone else still here, and they wouldn’t be going anywhere.
I leaned down over the motionless body and took a close look. A girl, still very young, about sixteen. With a strange mixture of bliss and torment in her glazed eyes. A fluffy knitted scarf and a matching hat lay beside her. Her jacket was unbuttoned, exposing her neck. And there were four puncture marks clearly visible in it.
Somehow I wasn’t surprised that I was able to see in almost total darkness.
I squatted down beside the girl. Whoever had drunk her blood – not a lot of it, no more than a quarter of a litre – had also drunk her life. Sucked all her energy right out of her. A lousy way to go.
And then people burst into the alley at both ends simultaneously, or rather, not people – Others.
‘Stop there! Night Watch! Leave the Twilight!’
I straightened up, not realising immediately what they wanted from me, and received a hard blow – but not from a fist or a foot. It was something white, as white as a surgeon’s coat. It didn’t really hurt, but it annoyed me. One of the Watchmen was pointing a thick rod at me. There was a red stone on the end of it, and he looked as if he was getting ready to hit me again.
And then I was suddenly thrown one more step up the stairway. Not just one, but two at least.
I left the Twilight. Now I understood what was happening when everything around me slowed down and I could suddenly see in pitch darkness. It was the world of the Others. And I’d been ordered – not asked, but ordered – to return to the world of human beings.
So I did, obeying without objection. Because it was the right thing to do.
‘Identify yourself!’ they demanded. I couldn’t see who they were, because they were shining a torch in my face. I could have made out their faces, but just at that moment I knew that wasn’t the right thing to do.
‘Vitaly Rogoza, Other.’
‘Andrei Tiunnikov, Other, Night Watch agent,’ said the one who had struck me with his battle wand, clearly taking some pleasure in introducing himself.
Now I could tell that I hadn’t been hit with full power, it had just been a warning shot. But if they wanted, they could strike a lot harder, the charge in the wand was strong enough.
‘Well now, Dark One. What do we have here? A fresh corpse, and you standing beside it. Are you going to explain? Or maybe you have a licence? Well?’
‘Andriukha, hold your horses,’ someone called sharply to him from out of the darkness.
But Andriukha took no notice and just gestured in annoyance.
‘Wait!’
He spoke to me again:
‘Well, then? Why don’t you talk, Dark One? Nothing to say?’
I wasn’t saying anything.
Andriukha Tiunnikov was a magician. A Light Magician, naturally, and barely up to the fifth grade.
I’d been that strong yesterday.
He obviously hadn’t charged the amulet himself – I could sense the work of a much more experienced magician. And I thought the two young guys behind his back looked rather more powerful too.
At the other end the alley was blocked off by a girl, standing on her own. She was young and not very tall, but she was the most experienced and dangerous member of the group. She was a shape-shifting battle magician. Something like a Light werewolf.
‘Well, come on, Dark One!’ Andriukha insisted. ‘Still got nothing to say? I see. Show me your registration! And someone let the Day Watch know we have a Dark poacher here.’
‘You’re a fool, Andriukha,’ I said derisively. ‘So pleased with yourself because you’ve caught a Dark poacher! Why don’t you try taking a look at the victim? Who do you think did for her?’
Andriukha broke off and looked down at the dead girl. He seemed to be getting the picture.
‘A va-vampire,’ he muttered.
‘And who am I?’
‘You’re a ma-magician.’ Andriukha was so confused, he’d begun to stammer.
I turned to the girl, because I’d decided she was the one I ought to talk to.
‘When I got here it was all over. I saw the vampire, but he’d already left the alley, he took off into the yard. The girl was already dead, she’s been completely drained, but only a mouthful of her blood has been taken. I’m new in town, just off the train two hours ago, I’m staying at the Cosmos hotel.’
And I couldn’t resist adding:
‘Not the first time vampires have used this alley for poaching, is it?’
Now I could see the traces of the past there, on the ground and on the walls. Now that I’d jumped up several steps at once.
‘Only last time you were luckier, Light Ones. But I must say you did a lousy job cleaning up, the signs are still visible now.’
‘Don’t get any idea we’re grateful to you,’ the girl answered darkly through clenched teeth. ‘And let me take a look at your registration anyway.’
‘By all means.’ I meekly showed them the seal. ‘I trust I’m not needed any longer? I wouldn’t like to get in the way of your superlative detectives in their search for the poacher.’
‘We’ll find you tomorrow,’ the girl told me dryly. ‘If we need you.’
‘Please do!’ I said with a grin. Then I moved one of the Watchmen aside and walked out onto the avenue.
I cast off the guise of an ordinary Dark One about a hundred steps further on.
CHAPTER 2
FOR THE next two days and nights absolutely nothing interesting happened. I wandered round Moscow, making impulse purchases and practising my new abilities, trying not to make them too obvious. I switched on my mobile, without having the slightest idea why – I had nowhere to ring and there was no one to ring me. I bought a minidisc player and spent a couple of hours compiling a disc for it out of the catalogue, looking for both old and new songs that triggered some response in my stubborn memory. I gradually got used to the changes in Moscow, which behind the tinsel glitter of its bright, cheerful neon had remained just as dirty and scruffy as ever. The hotel staff all greeted me, and they seemed to have organised a rota for the right to serve me – I was still living like a man who didn’t even acknowledge the existence of any note worth less than a hundred roubles. But oddly enough, I was still careful to pick up the correct change in shops. Even the little nickel-plated coins that are no good for anything except perhaps as souvenirs for foreigners.
During those two days I only came across Others on three occasions: once in the metro, entirely by chance; once at night, when I ran into a drunken witch trying unsuccessfully to fly up to a third-floor balcony because she’d lost her keys and didn’t have enough power left to go through the Twilight. I gave the witch a hand. And once during the day I was taken for an uninitiated Other by a rather powerful Light Magician – I even remembered his name: Gorodetsky He’d just happened to go into a shop for the same reason I had, to put together a new mini-disc for his player. The magician was surprised when he saw my official seals and left me in peace. He was even about to leave, out of disgust, I think, but they’d just finished burning my disc, so I was the one who left.
I was left wondering why he hated Dark Ones so much.
But then, everybody hates us. Well, almost everybody. And they just don’t want to believe that what we feel about them is mostly indifference – just so long as the Light Ones don’t get in our way. Though they do, all the time. But I suppose we get in their way too.
No one from the Night Watch bothered me, I don’t think they even made an attempt to find me and question me. They must have realised that a Dark Magician has no need to drink human blood. Of course, I could have done it, and given myself a chronic digestive disorder – if I hadn’t been sick in disgust. I was totally absorbed by waiting for the next step up, but that seemed to require an extreme, unambiguous situation, when something inside me forced me to make use of magic. Not just little things, like getting rid of the fat-faced bus ticket inspectors with their shaved heads, or creating a mantle of calm for the impatient people queing for metro cards when I couldn’t be bothered to wait – no, all that was quite literally yesterday’s level as far as I was concerned. In order to learn something new and expose another layer of my concealed memory, in order to take possession of my slumbering knowledge, I needed more serious shocks.