. . . Perovo. A large city district. Crowds of people. Light and Dark, all twisted up together into a knot. And a few institutions, casting beams of Dark and Light in all directions. Working there would be like trying to find a grain of sand on the floor of a crowded disco with the strobe lights on.
I wouldn't be much use to anyone, or rather, I wouldn't be any use at all. But I'd been ordered to go, so I had to. Maybe they'd ask me to identify the girl.
'For some reason I was sure we'd get lucky,' I whispered, gazing at the road ahead. We drove past Elk Island Park, a pretty grim place where the Dark Ones gather for their sabbaths. And when they do, the rights of ordinary people aren't always respected. Five nights a year we have to put up with anything. Well, almost anything.
'I thought so too,' whispered Olga.
'I can't compete with the field agents,' I said, shaking my head.
The driver glanced sideways at me. I'd accepted the price without haggling, and he'd seemed happy enough to go in my direction. But a man talking to himself always arouses suspicion.
'I just blew this job,' I told the driver with a sigh. 'That is, I made a mess of it. I thought I could make up for it today, but they managed without me.'
'So what's your hurry?' the driver asked. He didn't look like the talkative type, but he was interested.
'I was ordered to go,' I said.
I wondered who he thought I was.
'So what do you do?'
'I'm a programmer,' I answered. And I was telling the truth too.
'Fantastic,' the driver commented, and laughed. What was so fantastic about it? 'Do you make a living?'
He didn't really have to ask. After all, I wasn't riding the metro. But I answered anyway:
'Enough.'
'I wasn't just asking out of curiosity,' my driver unexpectedly confided. 'My system administrator's leaving me . . .'
My system administrator . . . Well, well!
'I personally see the finger of fate in this. I give a man a lift and he turns out to be a programmer. I think you're already doomed.'
He laughed, like he was trying to make light of his over-confidence.
'Have you worked with local networks?'
'Yes.'
'A network of fifty terminals. It has to be maintained. We pay well.'
I felt myself starting to smile. It was a good offer. A local network. Decent money. And no one sending you out at night to catch vampires, making you drink blood and sniff out trails on the frozen streets . . .
'Shall I give you my card?' The man slipped one hand into his jacket pocket. 'Think about it . . .'
'No thanks. I'm afraid no one just leaves my kind of work.'
'KGB, is it?' the driver asked with a frown.
'More serious than that,' I answered. 'Much more serious. But something like that.'
'Oh, well. . .' the driver said, and paused. 'A pity. And I thought it was a sign from on high. Do you believe in fate?'
He'd slipped into a familiar tone quite naturally. I like that.
'No.'
'Why not?' asked the driver, genuinely surprised, as if he'd only ever met fatalists his whole life.
'There's no such thing as fate. It's been proved.'
'Who by?'
'In the place I work.'
He laughed.
'That's great. So it's not meant to be! Where shall I stop?'
We were already driving down Zelyony Avenue.
I peered hard through the layer of ordinary daily reality, into the Twilight. I couldn't make anything out clearly, my powers weren't strong enough. I sensed it rather than saw it – a cluster of dim lights in the grey gloom. Almost the entire central office was there.
'Over there . . .'
While I was still in ordinary reality I couldn't see my colleagues. I walked over the murky city snow towards the little square buried under snowdrifts between the apartment blocks and the avenue. A few frozen trees, a few lines of footsteps – either kids had been having fun, or a drunk had just staggered across.
'Wave to them, they've spotted you,' Olga suggested.
I thought for a moment and followed her advice. Let them think I could see clearly from one reality into the other.
'A meeting,' Olga said mockingly. 'An emergency briefing.'
I glanced round, just for form's sake, then summoned the Twilight and stepped into it.
The entire central office really was there. The whole of the Moscow department.
Standing in the middle was Boris Ignatievich. Lightly dressed in a suit and a thin fur cap, but wearing a scarf for some reason. I could just imagine him scrambling out of his BMW, surrounded by his bodyguards.
The field operatives were standing beside him. Igor and Garik – they were the ones really suited to the role of front-line fighters. Thick-set, stony faces, square shoulders, dull eyes – impervious. You can tell at a glance what kind of education they've had: eight years of secondary school, technical college and the special forces. And as far as Igor's concerned that's exactly right. But Garik has two full college degrees. The appearance is similar, the behaviour almost identical, but the content's completely different. By comparison, Ilya looks like some refined intellectual, but it would be a mistake to be misled by those round spectacles with the thin frames, that high forehead and naïve expression. Semyon's was another exaggerated character: short, stocky, with a cunning gleam in his eyes, wearing a cheap nylon baseball jacket. A provincial, come up to the big city, from somewhere straight out of the 1960s, from the prize-winning collective farm Lenin's Stride. Absolute opposites. But what Ilya and Semyon had in common was a beautiful tan and dejected expressions. They'd been pulled out of Sir Lanka mid-holiday, and they weren't enjoying the Moscow winter too much. Ignat, Danila and Farid weren't there, although I could sense their fresh trails. But standing right behind the boss, not exactly like they were trying to hide, but not really noticeable unless you looked hard, were Bear and Tiger Cub. I was taken aback to see those two. They're not ordinary front-line fighters, they're really good, and they don't let minor details stand in their way.
There were lots of people from the office there too.
The analytical section, all five of them. The research team – everyone except Yulia, but that wasn't surprising, she's only thirteen. The only ones missing were from the archives section.
'Hi,' I said.
Some nodded, some smiled. But I could see they all had more important things than me on their minds. Boris Ignatievich gestured for me to come closer and then carried on from where he'd got to before I turned up and interrupted him:
'Not in their interest, and we welcome that. We won't get any help from them . . . well, fine, that's just great . . .'
Clear enough. He meant the Day Watch.
'We can search for the girl without interference, and Danila and Farid are already getting close. I'd say, another five or six minutes . . . But we've still been given an ultimatum.'
I caught Tiger Cub's eye. Oh, that was her ominous smile. That's right, her smile. Tiger Cub's a woman, but there was no way 'Tigress' would have stuck.
Our agents don't much like the word 'ultimatum'.
'We don't get to hold on to the Dark Magician,' the boss said, looking round at everyone with a dissatisfied expression. 'Got that? We'll have to find him in order to disarm the vortex. But after that we hand the magician over to the Dark Ones.'
'We hand him over?' Ilya queried.
The boss thought for a second.
'Yes, that's a fair point. We don't eliminate him and we don't prevent him from contacting the Dark Ones. As far as I've been able to tell, they don't know who he is either.'
The operatives' faces were turning sourer by the moment. Any new magician on the territory they monitored was a big headache. Even if he was registered and observed the terms of the Treaty. But a magician this powerful . . .
'I'd prefer a slightly different scenario,' Tiger Cub said quietly. 'Boris Ignatievich, in the course of our work, situations can crop up over which we have no control. . .'
'I'm sorry, but we can't allow such situations to arise,' the boss snapped. Tiger Cub backed off immediately.
I'd have done the same.
'Well, that's about it. . .' The boss glanced at me. 'I'm glad you got here, Anton. There's something I especially wanted you to hear.'
I automatically tensed up.
'You did a good job yesterday. Yes, it's true, the only reason I sent you out to look for the vampires was to test you. And not just to see how good an operative you are, either . . . you've been in a difficult situation for a long time, Anton. Killing a vampire is a lot harder for you than for anyone else here.'
'That's just where you're wrong, boss,' I said.
'I'd be glad if I'm mistaken. I want to thank you on behalf of the entire Night Watch. You destroyed one vampire and captured the image of the female vampire's trail. Captured it very accurately. You still don't have enough experience for investigative work. But you know how to record information clearly. The same thing goes for this girl. It was a completely non-standard situation, but you made a humane decision . . . and that's won us some time. The image of her aura was excellent. I knew immediately where to look for her.'
That really stung. No one was smiling or laughing, no one was smirking at me, but I still felt humiliated. The owl, whom nobody had seen yet, twitched on my shoulder. I took a deep breath of the Twilight air, that cold, tasteless air that isn't air at all. I asked:
'Boris Ignatievich, then what was the reason for sending me round the circle line? If you already knew the right district.'
'I could have been wrong,' the boss replied, a note of surprise in his voice. 'That's another thing . . . you have to understand that when you're working out in the field, you can't afford to rely on any opinion, no matter from how high up. One man in the field is a warrior – if he knows he's alone.'
'But I wasn't alone,' I said. 'And this assignment is absolutely crucial for my partner, you know that better than I do. By sending us to check districts you knew were empty, you deprived her of a chance to redeem herself.'
The boss's face is made of stone, you can't read anything in it if he doesn't want you to.
But even so, I felt like I'd hit the target.
'Your assignment isn't over yet, Anton and Olga,' he replied. 'There's still the female vampire, who has to be neutralised. No one has any right to interfere with us there: she violated the terms of the Treaty. And there's still the boy who showed such exceptional resistance to magic. He has to be found and turned to the Light. Plenty to be getting on with.'
'And this girl?'
'Already detected. The specialists will now try to neutralise the vortex. If that doesn't work, which it won't, we'll have to figure out who cast the curse. Ignat, over to you.'
I turned round. There indeed was Ignat standing not far away. Tall, well built and handsome, with blond hair, the figure of Apollo and the face of a movie star. He moved soundlessly, but even so in ordinary reality he couldn't avoid attention from women.
Real attention.
'That's not my way of working,' Ignat said glumly. 'Not an MO I'm particularly fond of.'