I hurriedly drew more power from wherever I could; there was a dull thud on the road, followed by the sound of broken glass, then another thud, followed by the ear-splitting screech of car horns.
I’d taken the bear’s impact on a ‘concave shield’ and sent him tumbling away along the boulevard. At first I simply dodged the tigress.
I’d taken a dislike to her from the very beginning.
I don’t know where shape-shifting magicians get the mass for transformation. In her human form this girl couldn’t have weighed more than forty-five or fifty kilos. But now she was at least a hundred and fifty kilos of muscle, sinew, claws and teeth. A real killing machine.
The Light Ones like that.
‘Hey!’ I shouted. ‘Wait. Maybe we can talk?’
The magicians were back on their feet, and they made another attempt to snare me, but it didn’t take much of an effort to tie the greedy, trembling threads of energy into knots and fling them back at their owners. I hit both targets again, but this time no one was sent skidding off – I had simply returned their own energy The bear stood to one side, shifting his weight menacingly from one foot to the other. He was hunching himself up, as if he was about to stand on his hind legs.
‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ I told him, and struck at the attacking tigress.
Not too hard. I didn’t want to kill her.
‘Just what is the bloody problem?’ I shouted angrily. ‘Or is this just the way things are done in Moscow?’
Calling the Night Watch would have been stupid – my attackers were on the Watch themselves. Then maybe I should get help from the Day Watch? Especially since it was so close; their office was round the corner and I could be there in no time. But would it do me any good?
The magicians weren’t about to give up; one was holding a fully charged flaming wand and the other had some kind of restraining amulet that looked pretty powerful too.
It took all of two seconds to deal with the amulet – I had to tear apart the net it cast over me with an ordinary ‘triple dagger’ – but the power that went into that very simple spell would have been enough to reduce the entire Moscow city centre to ashes. And then the second Light Magician hit me with the Fire of Bethlehem, but that only made me angry and, I suspect, even stronger.
I froze his wand. Simply turned it into an icicle and put a spell of rejection on it. Fragments of ice spurted from the Light One’s hands like some bizarre, cold firework display, and the liberated energy soared up into the sky.
I couldn’t really just dump it on the people around us, could I? I’d already done enough damage with those collisions at the nearby crossroads.
The bear stayed put. Apparently he’d realised that, despite their numerical superiority, the balance of power was far from equal. But the tigress just wouldn’t stop. She came for me with all the aggression of a crazed female animal when an enemy gets too close to her young. Her eyes blazed with unconcealed hatred, as yellow as the flames on church candles.
The tigress was taking revenge. Taking revenge on me, a Dark One, for all her old grudges and losses. For Andrei, who had been killed by me. And for who knows what else … And she wouldn’t stop for anything.
I don’t want to say she had nothing to avenge – the Watches have always fought, and I’m not in the habit of mincing words. But I didn’t intend to die.
I’m free. Free to punish anyone who gets in my way and refuses to resolve things peacefully. Wasn’t that what the song had been trying to tell me?
I struck out. With the Transylvanian Mist.
The tigress’s body was twisted and stretched, and even above the roar of engines and the piercing beeping of horns I heard the snap of bones quite clearly. The spell crumpled the shape-shifter the same way a child crumples a plasticine figure. The broken ribs tore through the skin and their bloody ends thrust into the snow. The head was squashed into a flat, striped pancake. In an instant the beautiful beast was transformed into a tangled mess of bloody flesh.
With a final, calculated blow, I consigned the tigress’s soul to the Twilight.
Once I’d begun, I had no right to stop.
The Light Ones froze. Even the bear stopped stamping his feet.
‘And what now?’ I thought wearily.
Maybe I would have had to kill them all, but thank heaven – or hell – it didn’t come to that.
‘Day Watch!’ I heard a familiar voice say. ‘An attack on a Dark One has been registered. Leave the Twilight!’
Edgar’s voice was stern, without a trace of his Baltic accent.
But he needn’t have said that about the Twilight. Those who were alive hadn’t been fighting in the Twilight, and the tigress had nowhere to come back to.
‘The Day Watch demands that a tribunal be convened immediately,’ Edgar said ominously. ‘And in the meantime be so good as to summon the chief of the Night Watch.’
‘Why, he’ll scatter you all like kittens,’ one of the Light Magicians said angrily.
‘No, he won’t,’ Edgar snapped and pointed at me. ‘Not with him here. Or haven’t you got the point yet?’
I barely caught the movement as someone shuffled power in space. And then a dark-skinned, sharp-featured man appeared, wearing a brightly-coloured eastern robe; he looked totally absurd in the middle of the snowy boulevard.
‘I’m already here,’ he barked, mournfully surveying the scene of the recent battle.
‘Gesar!’ Edgar said in a more spirited voice. ‘Good day. In our chief’s absence you will have to explain yourself to me.’
‘To you?’ said Gesar, glancing sideways at the Estonian. ‘You’re not worthy.’
‘Then to him,’ said Edgar, shrugging his shoulders and shuddering as if he felt cold. ‘Or is he not worthy either?’
‘No, I’ll explain myself to him,’ said Gesar coolly, turning towards me. His gaze was as bottomless as eternity. ‘Get out of Moscow,’ he said, almost entirely without emotion. ‘Right now. Catch a train or ride a broomstick, but just clear out. You’ve already killed twice.’
‘As I see it,’ I remarked as amicably as I could, ‘certain other individuals have attempted to kill me. And all I did was defend myself.’
Gesar turned his back to me – he didn’t want to listen. He didn’t want to speak to a Dark One who had dispatched one of his finest warriors into the Twilight for ever.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said to his people.
‘Hey hey!’ Edgar protested angrily. ‘They’re criminals, they’re not going anywhere, in the name of the Treaty I forbid it!’
Gesar turned back towards the Estonian:
‘Yes they are. And you can’t do anything about it. They’re under my protection.’
I was seriously expecting to be hoisted up onto the next step. Because my current powers were enough for me to realise I couldn’t go head to head with Gesar yet. He’d crush me. Not without an effort – after all, I’d already come a long way up the invisible stairway. My powers were pretty strong. But he’d still crush me.
But nothing happened. Probably the time hadn’t yet come for me to fight Gesar.
Edgar gave me a plaintive glance – apparently he’d been hoping for more from me.
The Light Ones slipped away into the Twilight, taking with them the remains of their dead sister-in-arms, and then they dived deeper, to the second level. It was over.
‘I really can’t stop him,’ I admitted apologetically. ‘Sorry, Edgar.’
‘A pity,’ the Estonian said, basely forming the words.
They took me to the Day Watch office in the trusty BMW – for the first time in Moscow I was feeling tired.
But still as free as before.
I paid a price for using so much power – I can barely remember how they drove me back, urged me towards the lift, led me to the office, sat me in an armchair and stuck a cup of coffee in my hand. I had a painful ache in my overworked muscles, an ache in my entire being, which just a short while ago had been commanding the powers of the Twilight. I’d beaten them off with convincing skill – it would be a long time before the Light Ones forgot this battle. And my attackers hadn’t been young novices either – I reckoned that both Light Ones had been first-grade magicians at least.