A click. A faint flash in the side street. And another bullet went flying into my poor right shoulder! In exactly the same spot!
Well, I could take some comfort in the fact that I already had a wound there in any case. But it was really painful! Why did it hurt so badly if there was already a hole there?
I squatted down so that the fountain shielded me from the gunman. Now there was no doubt that the shots really were coming from the side street.
What was I going to do? Hurl fireballs into the darkness and try to get the camouflaged gunman that way? Scorch everything around me with the White Mirage? Put on a Magician’s Shield and go into open battle … but if I couldn’t see my enemy, then I was facing a magician more powerful than I was!
Or call for help, ring the police, call in Geser and Foma?
Stop.
It didn’t have to be Geser and Foma.
What was that Zabulon had said? Contact, advice, protection?
A bit of protection wouldn’t come amiss right now.
I took the little figure out of my pocket and set it down on the cobblestones of the roadway. I touched it gently with Power and shouted:
‘I! Need! Help!’
It all happened in a split second. The air struck my face so hard that for a moment I thought the invisible gunman had switched to grenades, But it was the figure being transformed – swelling up and softening and turning into a shaggy grey shadow. White fangs glinted in the darkness, yellow wolf’s eyes glittered, and the werewolf leapt straight over the fountain, then immediately jumped to the right. There was the click of a shot, but obviously it missed. Skipping from side to side as precisely as only a creature that is targeted by gunfire can, the beast went dashing into the side street. I heard growling, then there was a rumble and a metallic clang. The clicks of the shots carried on sounding in the same way, at regular intervals of a second or two, but something told me the bullets were going astray, and the gunman was not dangerous any more.
I jumped up and ran after the wolf, covering myself with a Shield just in case. And I finally did what it would have been a very good idea to have done in the first place: I created light. A simple spell that any Light Magician can manage. An appeal to the primordial Power – and there was a bright white light swaying in the air above me.
And I immediately saw the one who had nearly killed me. The one who had not been visible in the Twilight.
A fancy metal tripod similar to a professional stand for a video camera. Standing on a rotating disc on the tripod – a cylinder with gleaming lenses. Attached to the disc by a spring-recoil clamp – a short rifle with a round magazine like that of the old Soviet PPSh and a long ridged silencer on the barrel. A metal-clad cable ran up to the trigger, ending in a clamp with a wire that ran round the trigger.
The robot was still functioning. The cylinder was twitching with a quiet buzzing sound, the clamp was pressing the trigger – and the rifle, now pointing upwards, was firing into the sky. I leaned down, feeling the blood flowing over my shoulder. I put my good hand on the cylinder. On the side I found a little lid with an inscription in Chinese characters – ‘Shooter I’ – followed by a number: ‘285590607’. Below the hieroglyphs a round, smiling child’s face was sketched in a few simple lines.
Humorists.
I prised open the little lid with my fingernail and turned the power switch to ‘off.’
‘Shooter I’ gave a quiet whir of its servomotors and then fell silent.
‘Greetings from the Heavenly Kingdom,’ I said and sat down beside the robot. I looked at the short rod of the aerial, protruding from the cylinder. Yes, the real gunman could be absolutely anywhere. I had been fighting a robot.
And it was very lucky for me that its sights had been slightly off-centre.
‘Would you believe it?’ I said, examining the robot. ‘What are we going to do about this sort of thing? Start inventing spells against technology?’
The wolf walked out of the darkness. He sat down facing me and started licking his paw. I couldn’t see any wound – he had probably burned himself on the hot gun barrel when he knocked the tripod over.
‘If Martian tripods had fleas, they’d look like this,’ I said to the wolf. ‘Have you read War of the Worlds?’
At first I didn’t think he would answer. Not all werewolves are capable of speech when they change into animal form. But the wolf looked up at me gravely and barked:
‘On-ly-seen-the-mo-vie.’
‘Then you know what I mean,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
‘Lick-the-wound.’
‘I’m no shape-shifter to go licking my wounds …’ I said, pressing my palm to my right shoulder and concentrating. I felt sick and the pain pulsed in my hand. A gun wound is a nasty business. Even for a magician. Sveta, now – she’d have healed me in a couple of minutes…
‘Whose-tail-have-you-stepped-on?’ Words were coming more easily to the werewolf now. ‘The-Ei-ffel-Tow-er’s?’
I didn’t realise immediately that he was joking. I shook my head.
‘I see you’re as witty as Petrosian. Thanks for your help. Were you hurt?’
‘My-paw,’ the wolf said indistinctly, starting to lick himself again. ‘The-ma-chine-burned-it.’
‘Change to human form and I’ll heal it,’ I said, standing up. I wasn’t bleeding any more. Casting a camouflage spell on the disabled tripod (everyone would see something quite ordinary and un interesting in its place), I put it under my left arm. It was heavy, with a strong smell of hot metal, sour gunpowder smoke and something oily. But I’d have to carry it, I couldn’t just leave a weapon lying in the centre of the city.
‘La-ter,’ the wolf said evasively. ‘In-a-safe-place. Where-are-you-stay-ing?’
‘In a hotel. You’ll like it. Let’s go. Only stay by my leg all the way and try to look like a good dog.’
The wolf growled, but then immediately hid his fangs. He wasn’t really such a big beast. In the darkness he could pass for an Alsatian.
To be honest, I wasn’t expecting that to be the end of the day’s unpleasantness. But we reached the hotel with no problems. There was a new receptionist looking bored behind the counter, but he didn’t ask any questions: he’d obviously been given instructions and guidance about me. He gave the werewolf a curious look, but didn’t make any comment about him either. I walked up to the desk and said:
‘The key to the Dark suite upstairs, please.’
The receptionist didn’t argue, but he did enquire:
‘Could you not spend the night in a single suite?’
‘I have an allergy to animal hair,’ I replied.
I could hear voices and glasses clinking in the restaurant. Guests relaxing. But I didn’t really feel like joining in a party at which a Bloody Mary was the most popular drink, and its name was taken quite literally.
CHAPTER 5
FIRST I UNLOCKED the wolf’s door, and then mine. The wolf darted into the dark room, turned round and slammed the door shut with his muzzle. Immediately I heard a damp tearing sound, as if someone was ripping wet foam rubber into pieces. The werewolf had begun transforming back into a human.
I walked into my suite, switched on the light and closed the door. I put Shooter I, still smelling of gunpowder smoke, in the corner. I pulled off my bloody T-shirt and threw it in the rubbish bin. I took a look at myself in the mirror.
A handsome devil. One shoulder caked with blood and a terrible crimson scar where the bullets had entered.
But never mind. The important thing now was to patch up the wound. I’d apply an Avicenna spell now, and by morning there wouldn’t be a single trace left. What was a bullet wound to us magicians? Pah! A mere trifle. But I closed the curtains across the windows anyway and switched off the ceiling light. If I got another bullet in the head, no magic would save me.