The Day Watch (20 page)

“Then the choice is mine. Now. In the sea. The press.”

His eyes are dark. An eclipse isn’t frightening-it’s only something cutting off the light.

The sea was unnaturally warm. Maybe because the air had turned cold, as if it were already evening? All that was left of the sun was a narrow crescent at the top of the disk-now even a human being could look at it without blinking.

I swam through the warm water without looking back at the shore, where no one had noticed the two camp leaders slip into the sea without paying any attention to the jellyfish that hurried out of their way.

I remembered the first time I ever went to the sea. I was still very little. I still didn’t know that I didn’t belong to the human race, that fate had decided I would be an Other. I was staying at Alushta with my dad, and he was teaching me to swim… I remembered the feeling of delight when the water first submitted to my will…

And I remember how strong the waves were in the sea. Very strong. Or was it just that all waves looked huge to me then? My dad was holding me in his arms, he was jumping up and down in the waves, making me laugh. It was such fun… and I shouted that I could swim across the sea, and my dad said of course I could…

You’ll be really hurt, Dad.

And it won’t be easy for Mom, either.

The shore, full of delighted children and contented adults, had been left far behind. I didn’t even feel the start of the press. It just got harder to swim. The water just stopped supporting me. There was suddenly a weight on my shoulders.

A very simple spell. Nothing fancy. Power against Power.

Dad, I really did believe I could swim across the sea…

I extended a defensive canopy above myself and it took the invisible weight off my shoulders. And once again I whispered, “Zabulon, I appeal to you…”

The strength that I had managed to gather was rapidly melting away. Igor struck again and again, battering my defenses mercilessly.

“Yes, Alisa.”

He has responded after all! He has answered me! Just in time, as always!

“Zabulon, I’m in trouble!”

“I knew already. I’m very sorry.”

I didn’t realize immediately what those words “I knew” meant. And that impersonal tone, and the feeling that there was no Power on its way… He always used to share his Power with me, even when I didn’t really need it that badly…

“Zabulon, am I going to die?”

“I’m afraid so.”

My defensive canopy was dissolving, and I still couldn’t make sense of what was happening. He could intervene!

Even from a distance! A small part of his strength would be enough for me to resist the pressure and fight out a draw.

“Zabulon, you said that love is a great power!”

“Have you not been convinced of that? Goodbye, my little girl.”

It was only then that I understood everything.

Just as my strength melted away and I felt the invisible pressure on my shoulders again, forcing me down into the

warm, twilit depths.

“Igor!” I shouted, but the splashing of the water drowned out my voice.

He was swimming about fifty meters away, not even looking in my direction. He was crying, but the sea has no place for tears.

And I was being dragged down, down into the dark abyss.

How could it have happened… how?

I tried to gather Power from the beach. But there was almost no Darkness there for me to take. That sweet delight and those cries of joy were of no use to me.

Only a hundred meters behind Igor and myself, the young teenager who had fallen so hopelessly in love with me was vainly trying to lie on the waves and relax the leg that was contorted by cramps. Somehow he must have noticed us going into the water and swum after us, this proud boy called Makar, who had already realized that he couldn’t swim back to the shore now.

Love is a great power… how stupid you all are, you boys, when you fall in love …

There’s Makar, floundering about as his panic grows… I can take his fear and prolong my own agony for a minute or two…

And there’s Igor, swimming in the sea: not seeing anything, not hearing anything, not sensing anything around him, not thinking about anything except that I have killed his love. The stupid Light magician doesn’t know that there are no winners in duels, especially when the duel has been carefully prepared by Zabulon…

“Igor…” I whispered as I sank, feeling the pressure force me down, down to the dark, dark seabed.

Forgive me, Dad… I can’t swim across this sea…

Story Two

A STRANGER AMONG OTHERS

Prologue

-«?»—

He could already make out the lights of the station glimmering up ahead, but inside the gloomy, neglected park beside the Zarya factory the darkness remained as dense and chill as ever. The thin crust of ice over the snow crunched under his feet-it would probably thaw out again before noon. Locomotive whistles in the distance, incomprehensible announcements over the radio relay system, and the crunching under his own feet-these were the only sounds anyone who happened to be out strolling could have heard if he wandered into the park at that time of night.

But no one had set foot in here at night for a long time now. Not even people out walking massive canines with huge teeth-dogs could not save them from what they might meet in the darkness of night among the oaks that had grown tall here over the last forty years.

The solitary traveler with a bulky bag over his shoulder was clearly late for a train. He decided to take a shortcut and go through the park, along the path, with his feet sometimes crunching the thin
i.e.
sometimes the gravel.

The stars gazed down in amazement at this bold spirit. The round disk of the moon, as yellow as a pool of Advocaat liqueur, shone its light through the jagged, naked branches. The fantastic forms of the lunar seas were like the shadows of human fears.

•

The traveler noticed the twin gleam of a pair of eyes when he was still thirty meters from the final trees. He was being watched from the gaunt, skeletal bushes that stretched along both sides of the path. There was the vague, dark form of something over there, in the low thickets; perhaps not even something, but someone, because this dense patch of darkness was alive. Or at least it could move.

A dull growl-nothing like a roar, more like a low, hollow squawk-was the only sound that accompanied the lightning-swift attack. A wide mouthful of sharp teeth glinted in the moonlight.

The moon had readied itself for fresh blood. For a fresh victim.

But the attacker suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, as if he had run into an invisible barrier, stood there for a moment, and then collapsed onto the path with a ludicrous squeal.

The traveler paused for a second.

“What are you doing, you blockhead?” he hissed at his attacker. “Do you want me to shout for the Night Watch?”

The patch of darkness at the traveler’s feet growled resentfully.

“It’s lucky for you that I’m late…” said the traveler, adjusting the bag across his shoulder. “What damn nonsense is this, Others attacking Others…” He strode on rapidly across the last few meters of the park and hurried toward the station without looking back.

His attacker crawled off the path, under the trees, and there he transformed into a young man of about twenty,

completely naked. The young man was tall with broad shoulders. The crust of ice crunched under his bare feet, but he didn’t seem to feel the cold.

“Damn!” he whispered fiercely, and then shivered for the first time. “Who the hell was that?”

He was still hungry, still feeling savage, but this strange victim who had escaped had robbed him completely of any desire to carry on hunting. He was frightened now, although only a few minutes earlier he had been certain that everyone should be afraid of him-a werewolf out on the hunt. The heady, intoxicating hunt for human flesh.

And the hunt was unlicensed-which made the sensation of risk and his own daring even keener.

Two things in particular had completely blunted the hunter’s ardor. First, the words “Night Watch”-after all, he didn’t have a license. And second, the fact that he had failed to recognize his intended victim as an Other. An Other like him.

Not long ago the werewolf and any of the Others that he knew would have said that was simply impossible.

Still in the form of a naked human being, the werewolf hurried through the low thickets to the spot where he had left his clothes. Now he would have to hide for many, many days, instead of prowling through the park at night hoping to chance upon a victim. He would have to stay hidden away, waiting for sanctions from the Night Watch, or maybe even from his own side.

His only hope was that this solitary traveler, who had not been afraid to cut across the park in the dark, this strange Other-or someone pretending to be an Other-really had been hurrying to catch a train. That he would catch it and leave the city. And then he wouldn’t be able to contact the Night Watch.

Others also know how to hope.

Chapter one

-«?»—

I ONLY CALMED DOWN COMPLETELY WHEN I COULD RELAX AND LISTEN TO the regular, hammering rhythm of the wheels. Although even then, not completely. How could I possibly feel calm? But at least I had recovered the ability to think coherently.

When that creature in the park broke through the bushes and threw itself at me, I hadn’t been afraid. Not at all.

But now I had no
i.e.
how I had found the right words to say. Afterward I must have surprised plenty of people with the way I staggered across the square in front of the station, past the tight ranks of route taxis parked for the night. It’s not easy to walk with a steady stride when your knees are buckling under you.

What the hell was all this? The Night Watch… What on earth had I meant by saying that? And that beast with the teeth had immediately started whining and crept back into the bushes…

I took another mouthful of beer and tried once again to make sense of what had happened.

So, first I left the house…

Stop.

I put the bottle down on the little table, feeling confused. I must have looked very stupid at that moment, but there was no one to look at me-I was the only person in the compartment.

Stop.

I suddenly realized I couldn’t remember my own house at all.

I couldn’t remember a single thing about my past life. My memories began there, in that chilly winter park, just a few seconds before the attack. Everything before that was hidden in a mysterious darkness. Or rather, not even darkness, but a strange, gray shroud-sticky and viscous, almost completely impenetrable. A dense, gray, swirling twilight.

I didn’t understand a thing.

I cast a confused and frightened glance around the compartment. It was a perfectly ordinary compartment. A little table, four bunks, brown plastic and maroon imitation leather, with lights occasionally sliding by in the night outside the window. My bag lying on the other bunk…

My bag!

I realized I didn’t have the slightest
i.e.
what was in my bag. It had to be my things, and things can tell you a lot.

Or remind you. For instance, they might remind me why I was going to Moscow. For some reason I felt certain the things could help reawaken my failed memory. I must have read about that somewhere or heard about it from someone.

I suddenly had a better
i.e.
and reached under my sweater because I realized my passport was in the left pocket of my shirt. If I started with my name, then maybe I would remember everything else.

As I looked at the yellowish page, with its dark pattern of fanciful curlicues, my feelings were mixed. I looked at the photograph, at the face that I had probably been used to identifying with my own unique personality for about thirty years-or was this the very first day?

The face was familiar in all its minutest features, from the scar on the cheekbone to the premature hint of gray in

the hair. But never mind the face. That wasn’t what interested me just at the moment.

The name.

Vitaly Sergeevich Rogoza. Date of birth-September 28, 1965.

Place of birth-the city of Nikolaev.

Turning over the page, I read the same information in

Ukrainian and also ascertained that my sex was male and that the passport had been issued by an organization with an exceptionally clumsy acronym DO PMC ADIA-the District Office of the People’s Municipal Council of the Administration of the Department of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. The “Family Status” page was an unsullied, virginal blank. I heaved a sigh of relief, or perhaps disappointment.

Then came the eternal burden and curse borne by every ex-Soviet citizen: my residence permit and address.

Apartment 28, 28 Tchaikovsky Street, Nikolaev.

Well, well, there was the number 28 again, twice in a row.

Then the associations really began to click-I remembered that my house stood on the corner of Tchaikovksy Street and Young Guard Street, next to School No. 28 (that number yet again!). I remembered everything quite clearly and distinctly, right down to the charred poplar standing under my window-the victim of chemical experiments conducted by the young kid who lived on the floor above me (he had poured all sorts of garbage out the window onto the long-suffering tree). I remembered a drunken party five years ago in the next house, when someone had casually told the neighbor from downstairs what she could do with herself when she complained about the noise. She’d turned out to be Armenian, the wife of some local bigwig, and later an entire mob of those swarthy Armenians had come bursting in and started battering our faces to a pulp. I’d had to clamber out through the little window in the end room, because the main window wouldn’t open, and climb down the drainpipe. When they noticed that one of the woeful drunks had disappeared from the blockaded apartment, the Armenians stopped waving their fists about and some kind of agreement was eventually reached with them. I also remembered my bitter disappointment when I asked for assistance from some close local acquaintances of mine whom I’d often drunk beer with at the kiosks in the district, and not a single one of them came.