Andrei was jerked through the air, the world spun round him – and he landed with a splash right in the middle of the pond, frightening the fat, lazy swans and the sly, brazen ducks. From there he saw the male trainee who had thrown the Shock spell fall, and the other trainee, who was making a phone call, take to his heels.
Andrei swam to the structure meant for the swans and scrambled up onto the wooden platform. The little house smelled of bird droppings. But the boy still preferred to sit there in the middle of the pond until the operations group arrived. The following day his action was described by Geser as the only correct thing that he could have done in the given situation, and the boy was un officially requested to think about working in the Watch. As Vadim Dmitrievich had used to say when he was alive: ‘Dead heroes serve in a different place.’
Considering the nature of the situation, there weren’t many casualties. Only the tutor and one of the trainees, a mathematician by education. Perhaps he hadn’t had enough time to calculate what kind of opposition an untrained fifth-level magician could offer a Higher Vampire.
Or perhaps he simply hadn’t bothered to calculate anything.
CHAPTER 1
I SAID HELLO to Garik, who was discussing something with a colonel of the militia. The colonel was an ordinary man, but he was involved in our work – he knew something about the Watches and helped us to cover up incidents like this one. The bodies had already been taken away, our specialists had finished fiddling about with auras and traces of magic, and now the forensic experts from the militia had started their work.
‘In the Gazelle,’ Garik told me, with a nod. I walked across to our operational vehicle and got in.
A young lad wrapped in a blanket and drinking hot tea from a mug gave me a frightened look.
‘My name’s Anton Gorodetsky,’ I said. ‘You’re Andrei, right?’
The boy nodded.
‘I …’ the boy began in a remorseful voice. ‘I didn’t know …’
‘Calm down. You’re not to blame for anything. Nobody could have foreseen the appearance of a wild vampire in the centre of Moscow in broad daylight,’ I said. But I thought to myself that if the lad had such a natural ability for reading auras, then this sort of thing ought to have been foreseen. But I didn’t want to criticise the dead tutor. Some day this incident would go into the teacher-training manuals, on the pages printed in red to indicate that the knowledge in them had been paid for in blood.
‘But I shouldn’t have shouted like that,’ the boy said. He put down the mug of tea. The blanket slid off his shoulder and I saw a massive bruise on his chest. The vampire had hit him really hard. ‘If he hadn’t heard me …’
‘He would still have sensed your fright and confusion. Calm down. The most important thing now is to catch this undead monster.’
‘And lay him to rest,’ the boy said in a firm voice.
‘Right. And lay him to rest. Have you been studying with us for long?’
‘Three weeks.’
I shook my head. He was a talented young boy, no doubt about it. I just hoped that what had happened wouldn’t put him off working in the Watch …
‘Have you been taught how to record auras?’
‘No,’ the boy admitted. And he shuddered, as if at some unpleasant memory.
‘Then describe the vampire as precisely as you can.’
The boy hesitated and then said:
‘We haven’t been taught. But I’ve tried studying it. It’s the fourth paragraph in the textbook … recording, copying and transmitting an aura.’
‘And you studied the subject?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you transmit the vampire’s aura to me?’
The boy thought for a moment and nodded.
‘I can try.’
‘Go on. I’m opening myself up.’ I closed my eyes and relaxed. Okay, come on, young talent …
At first there was a faint sensation of warmth – like a hairdryer blowing into my face from a distance. And then I sensed a clumsy, rather confused transmission. I locked onto it and took a close look. The boy was trying with all his might, transmitting the aura again and again. Gradually I began building up a complete picture out of the isolated fragments.
‘Just a little bit more,’ I said. ‘Repeat that…’
The coloured threads flared up more brightly and arranged themselves into an intricate pattern. The basic colours, of course, were black and red, non-life and death, the standard vampire aura. In addition to the colour scheme, which was constantly changing and could be very different at different times, there were fundamental features: the subtle pattern of Power, as individual as fingerprints or the pattern of blood vessels in the iris of the eye.
‘Well done,’ I said, pleased. ‘Thank you. It’s a very good impression.’
‘Will you be able to find him?’ the teenager asked.
‘Definitely,’ I assured him. ‘You’ve been a great help. And don’t be upset. Don’t punish yourself… your tutor died a hero.’
That was a lie, of course. In the first place, heroes don’t die. Heroes don’t protect themselves with the Magician’s Shield when they see a vampire attacking, they strike to stun him. An ordinary Grey Prayer would have slowed the vampire down and stopped him, at least for a while. Long enough for the trainees to scatter and run, and the tutor could have gathered his thoughts and erected a decent defence.
But there was nothing to be done about it now. There was no point in explaining to the boy that his first tutor had been a kind, sweet guy, but completely unprepared for real work. That was the whole problem – genuine battle magicians with the smell of blood and fire in their nostrils didn’t often go in for tutoring. The tutors were more often noble-minded theoreticians…
‘Garik, do you need me here?’ I asked. There was already a Dark One I didn’t know loitering about beside Garik and the colonel. Which was only to be expected. The Day Watch had dropped by to get their guy off the hook, if they could, and if they couldn’t, to find out how serious our losses were. Garik shook his head. I ignored the Dark One and walked off casually towards my car, which was parked right under a ‘No Parking’ sign. Anti-theft spells are used by all Others, but applying a spell that lets you be seen by everyone on the road and park wherever you like is a bit more complicated.
Getting an impression of the vampire’s aura was a great stroke of luck. In a situation like that even experienced adult magicians lose their heads. But this kid had managed to do well. I was itching to get back to the office as quickly as possible and pass on the impression for the duty watchmen’s information – then everyone who went out on patrol could look for the bloodsucker. A Higher Vampire, unregistered … No, I couldn’t count on a coincidence like that.
But it was a Higher Vampire!
Trying to set aside my excessive hopes, I got into the driving seat and set off for the office.
The city duty officer was Pavel. I flashed him the impression of the aura, and he was delighted to get it. It’s always a pleasure to hand the patrolmen something serious instead of highly relevant information such as: ‘At Chistye Prudy a wild vampire took out two of our side … His appearance? Male, kind of middle-aged …’
I sat down in front of the computer in my office, looked at the screen and said:
‘This is plain crazy.’
But I launched ‘Comparison’ anyway. The big problem with comparing auras is that you can’t let the system compare them automatically, like you can with fingerprints. The impression of the aura can be passed ‘from head to head’ but not ‘from head to computer’ – no computers like that exist. To get an aura into the database, we have an elderly artist who works with us, Leopold Surikov. Despite being the namesake of a famous Russian artist, Leopold had not been a great success as a painter. And he had turned out to be a pretty weak Other too. But he could receive an impression of an aura and then reproduce the intricate pattern in a drawing, working patiently and painstakingly in the manner of a Chinese or Japanese miniaturist. And then that drawing could be entered into the computer for safe keeping and comparison. All the other Watches who can afford to keep an artist Other on the books work in exactly the same way.