Day Watch

by Сергей Лукьяненко

"Your source?"

  The werewolf hesitated. "The source is unofficial. But reliable."

  "Hellemar," Edgar said with a hint of emphasis, "your source?"

  "One of our men in the Prague information agency," Hellemar confessed. "An Other. Dark. I caught him in a private chat room."

  "I see, I see…"

  I wanted very much to ask a few questions, but naturally all I could do for the time being was stare stupidly and keep quiet as I absorbed the important but, alas, incomprehensible things they were saying.

  "And how do the Light Ones know about this?" Shagron asked in puzzlement.

  "Who can tell?" said Edgar, twitching his eyebrows in a funny manner. "They have a wide network of informers…"

  "Status 'Aleph," Edgar said abruptly to Hellemar. "Call in the staff…"

  About half an hour later the office hall was crowded. Of course, all the individuals there were Others. And all Dark.

  But I still didn't understand a thing.

  When Anton got back to suite six hundred twelve, Ilya was sitting in an armchair and massaging his temples, and Garik was striding nervously to and fro across the carpet between the window and the divan. Tolik and Tiger Cub were sitting on the divan, and Bear was hovering in the doorway of the bedroom.

  "… he spotted me, by the way," Bear was saying gloomily. "Your 'cloud' didn't help."

  "The Estonian?"

  "No, the Estonian didn't spot me. And neither did Shagron, of course. But the other one did, almost straightaway."

  "But that's nonsense, guys. He can't be more powerful than the Estonian, can he?" said Garik.

  "But why can't he, really?" Ilya asked without raising his head. "A couple of hours ago I thought I knew all four of the Dark Ones in Moscow I wouldn't be able to handle one-on-one. But now I'm not sure of anything."

  Anton slumped back against the refrigerator. The question his tongue was poised to ask had remained unspoken so far- the conversation was more interesting than Anton had thought it would be at the beginning.

  And then Tiger Cub got in before him: "Ilya! Why don't you fill us in? About the artifact."

  Ilya abruptly stood up and began: "To keep it short, Fafnir's Talon has been removed from the Inquisition's vault in Berne. Two…"-he glanced at his watch-"no, already three hours ago now. The Swiss department is in a panic. The Inquisition is fuming and thundering, but so far it hasn't issued an official communique. The details are unknown; all we do know is that the Talon is at the seasonal peak of its Power. In the Dark phase, of course. Simple calculations indicate that liberating even part of the Power accumulated by the Talon in the territory of Central Russia is likely to result in powerful discharges, up to and including a localized Inferno breakthrough. And that's the way things stand…"

  "And Zabulon's not in Moscow…" Tolik drawled with slow emphasis.

  "You mean the Dark Ones are behind this?" asked Tiger Cub.

  "Well, we aren't, are we?" Ilya asked and his shoulders twitched as if he were suddenly feeling chilly.

  "Does Gesar know about this?" she asked.

  "Of course," Ilya said. "He was the one who told me. He ordered me not to worry, but just keep on working away…"

  Ilya sat down again.

  "I don't even know what to think," he said in a voice that somehow sounded tough and helpless at the same time. "To be quite honest, when I heard about a Shahab's Ring killing a Light One, I suspected the Talon was already here. There's no point in setting up a Ring with such monstrous Power-it's just a waste, a sheer, unnecessary waste. I'd understand if it was to protect the Talon, but for a lousy heap of bucks… it's simply idiotic…"

  "A Dark One wouldn't have left the Talon in his suite without someone to watch it," Garik put in.

  "Of course not. It would be stupid," said Tiger Cub.

  "Yes, it would," Ilya agreed. "But we had to check."

  "And what can we do now?" Tiger Cub asked gloomily. "Now Andriukha's dead, and we can't even punish his killer?"

  "Katya," Ilya said, looking at her sympathetically, "it's sad, but that's the way it is. And now we've been hit with a problem that makes Andrei's death seem almost unimportant. Our analysts have been following the approximate balance between global nexuses of Power since four o'clock this morning. If the Talon is moved, the balance is bound to be disrupted."

  "And have they come up with anything?"

  "Yes. About an hour ago it became clear that the Talon is either already in Moscow or due to appear here at any moment."

  "Hang on," Tolik put in again, "so the recurrences of poaching and unmotivated aggression by Dark Ones are due to the influence of the Talon?"

  "Probably."

  "But the first incident took place on Saturday!" Tiger Cub protested in surprise.

  Ilya massaged his temples again; it was obvious now that he was very tired. "The Talon is a very powerful thing, Tiger Cub.

  The lines of probability extend far into the future. And the Dark Ones are more powerfully influenced by Dark artifacts than we are. So the small fry have already started running wild…"

  "If it's such a powerful thing, how come the Inquisition has mislaid it?"

  "I don't know," Ilya retorted, "I wasn't there. But I'm quite sure of one thing: If it's possible to do something, sooner or later someone's going to do it."

  "Our people are coming," Garik remarked, off the point.

  He was right-someone from the service section had arrived. Obviously Andrei Tiunnikov's body had to be taken away after the poor unfortunate had stumbled into a matrix of Power that was still way beyond his level.

  "And what about this Dark One?" Anton finally asked. "Do you think he's connected with the thieves?"

  "Not necessarily." Ilya watched morosely as Tiunnikov's body was zipped into a black polythene bag. "He could be distracting us. Or he might not even be aware of what he's doing. That's what it actually looks like most of all. The Talon is controlling him, or the person who now possesses it. And the Dark One has definitely become more powerful since our clash with him last Saturday in the alley near the All-Union Exhibition."

  "Then shouldn't we be following him?" Tolik suggested. "If he's connected with the Talon, isn't he bound to lead us to the thieves?"

  "If he is connected, he'll lead us to them."

  "And if he doesn't?"

  Ilya sighed. "Then we'll have more surprises and emergencies. And that Dark One will be there all the time, just on the edge of our field of vision. He's bound to be."

  "Wait," Garik said tensely. "What if he's predestined for the Talon?"

  "That's what I'm afraid of…"

  Anton shook his head sharply. After the events of a year and a half earlier, for a while he'd thought he could regard himself as an experienced and hardened watchman. But now he felt like an apprentice among virtuosos again. And he didn't like having to admit it.

  The phone rang-the local hotel phone. It felt strange to hear the ring of an ordinary phone after the trilling of all the cells.

  "Hello?" Tolik picked up the receiver, listened for a moment, and turned to Ilya. "For you. It's Semyon."

  Ilya took the receiver and held it to his ear, then immediately ran a piercing glance over all of them.

  "Mount up, guys. The boss is already in the office."

  Anton thought with a vague feeling of weariness that now he would see Svetlana again. And again he would feel the gulf between them widening with every second.

  I didn't stay in the Day Watch office for long after it livened up. I was dozing off where I sat, so I was simply sent off to catch up on my sleep. I didn't object, because I'd been on my feet for more than twenty-four hours and I couldn't keep my eyes open. As I slipped into sleep I could hear the faint strains of Kipelov's singing coming from somewhere:

  Hey, you inhabitants of the skies!

  Which of you hasn't plumbed the depths?

  Chapter three

  –«¦»-

  I WOKE UP WHEN I REALIZED I WAS BEING CALLED. CALLED THE
SAME WAY that vampires call their prey. Still not fully awake, I got up and fumbled for my clothes on the chair.

  The Call was sweet and alluring, it enveloped me-caressing and urging me, it was impossible, absolutely impossible to resist it. Sometimes it sounded like music, sometimes like singing, sometimes like whispering, and in every form it was perfection, the reflection of my own soul.

  And then, like a sudden blow just below the knees, came the jerk up onto the next step.

  The Call instantly lost its power over me, although it hadn't stopped. I dropped the trousers I was holding and gave my head a quick shake…

  Oh, that hurt…

  The sweet hypnotic syrup slowly drained out of me. Drained out and disappeared somewhere under the floor. Spent Light energy, faded Power.

  I suddenly understood very clearly why vampires' victims smile as they present their necks to be bitten. When the call sounds, they're happy. This is the sweet moment they have been waiting for all their lives, and compared with this, life is as empty and gray as the world of the Twilight.

  The Call is a kind of gift. A liberation. Only it was still too soon for me to be set free.

  I had no idea why, but this time the new ability I acquired was immunity to the magical Call. I could hear it and understand it, but I remained completely in control of myself. And naturally, I screened my mind off from the caller, so that he wouldn't suspect his victim had been transformed from a sleepwalker into a hunter…

  "A hunter?" I asked myself curiously. "Hmm…"

  So I was going hunting. Well now, that was interesting.

  The Call continued.

  "Well, well," I thought. "This is the residence of the Day Watch. Everything here is saturated with magic. The defenses here are quite incredible. But the Call is still effective… was effective?"

  The Light Ones had invested a lot of effort in this trick. And in concealing it from prying eyes. It was their good luck that the chief of the Day Watch was out of Moscow -the Light Ones would never have been able to trick him, no matter how hard they tried.

  Meanwhile I calmly got dressed, thinking sadly that my dream of visiting a restaurant and grabbing a bowl of hot, spicy soup and a plate of something like duck in cherry sauce would be postponed again for an indefinite period. I set two or three weak protective spells and left my suite… I mean, my apartment. If they called them apartments here, I might as well maintain the tradition. I had the flat bread-cake of my mini disk-player attached to my belt, of course; I stuck the little beads of the earphones into my ears and pulled my cap down tight onto my head.

  "Why not set it on random selection?" I thought, manipulating the controls. "Play a little game with fate."

  And once again fate chose me a song from the album by Kipelov and Mavrin. A different one this time.

  There is silence above me,

  A sky full of rain,

  The rain goes straight through me,

  But there's no more pain.

  While stars whispered coldly,

  We burned our final bridge.

  And everything has tumbled into the abyss

  I shall be free

  From evil and good,

  My soul's been walking the razor's edge.

  Mm… well. A rather gloomy prophecy. Just when was it that I burned my final bridge? Or maybe that was what I'd just left my apartment to do, instead of going up to the next floor and inquiring after the fate of some extremely powerful Talon or other? But I was being urged to follow the Call by that certain something that had already been lying concealed somewhere deep inside me for a while.

  I'm free! Like a bird in the heavens.

  I'm free! I've forgotten the meaning of fear.

  I'm free! I am the wild wind's equal.

  I'm free! In the real world, not in a dream.

  Kipelov's voice was no less enchanting than the Call. It had a hypnotic resonance; it was as convincing as truth itself. And I suddenly realized I was listening to a hymn of the Dark Ones. An embodiment of their ideal of rebellious souls who acknowledge no boundaries or rules;

  There is silence above me,

  The sky full of fire,

  The light goes straight through me,

  But I'm free once again,

  Free from love,

  Free from hate and from rumors,

  From a fate foretold in advance

  And from earthly shackles,

  From evil and from good.

  My soul no longer holds a place for you.

  Freedom. The only thing that genuinely interests us. Freedom from everything. Even from domination of the world, and it's incredibly sad that the Light Ones just can't understand that and believe it; they just carry on spinning their interminable intrigues, and just to maintain the status quo we have no choice but to obstruct them.

  The elevator slid smoothly downward, past the Twilight floors and the ordinary ones. I'm free…

  If Kipelov was an Other, he had to be Dark. No one else could sing about freedom like that. And no one but the Dark Ones would hear the song's most profound, true meaning!

  The two taciturn warlocks on watch below let me out without any trouble-Edgar had done well to have the image of my registration seal entered in the operational database. I walked out onto Tverskaya Street, into the thickening dusk of another Moscow evening, and set out toward the Call, but free from it. And from everything in the world.

  Who wanted me so badly? There are no vampires among the Light Ones-no ordinary vampires, that is. All Others are energy vampires-they can all draw Power from people. From their fears, from their joys, from their sufferings. The only fundamental difference between us and the Twilight moss is that we're able to think and move about. And we don't use accumulated Power simply for nourishment.

  The Call led me along Tverskaya Street, away from the Kremlin, toward the Belorussian railroad station. I walked along, all alone in the evening crowd, as if I'd been singled out, chosen. And I had been chosen-by the Call. Nobody saw me, nobody noticed me. Nobody was interested in me-not the girls warming themselves up in the automobiles, not their pimps, not the tough-looking young guys in the foreign cars pulled up at the curb. Nobody.

  A right turn. Onto Strastnoi Boulevard.

  The Call was getting stronger. I could feel it-that meant the encounter would be soon.

  The herds of automobiles tore through the driving, sticky snow, the fine snowflakes dancing whimsical roundelays in the beams of their headlights.

  Cold and dusk. Moscow in winter.

  The snow settled in an even layer on the paths of the boulevard and on the benches that were empty at this time of year, and on the bushes, and on the railings that separated the roadway from the pedestrian park area.

  They tried to grab me halfway toward Karetny Ryad.

  The spell of isolation seemed to fall from the sky-ordinary people just lost interest in what fate had in store for the boulevard, the cars carried on rushing past, minding their own business, the small number of pedestrians who were nearby faltered for a moment and then wandered away, even if they had been moving toward me.

  The Light Ones slid out of the Twilight one after another. Four of them. Two magicians and two shape-shifters, already in battle form. A massive polar bear as white as snow and a tigress with bright ginger stripes.

  I was almost flattened when the magicians struck together from both sides. But they had underestimated their quarry-the blow had been calculated for the old me, the one that would have submitted to the Call.

  I had already become someone else.

  Mentally parting my hands, I halted the walls that were about to come together and envelop me. I halted them, drew in Power, and pushed them away from myself. Not very hard.

  I don't know what a tsunami looks like-I've never seen one- but it was the first thing that came to mind when I examined the result.

  The Light magicians' walls, which had appeared so monolithic and impregnable only a second earlier, crumpled like rice-paper partitions. B
oth magicians were swept away, tossed onto the snow, and dragged about ten meters across the ground, and only the railings fencing the park off from the road prevented them from falling under the wheels of the cars. A cloud of powdery snow flew up into the air.

  The Light Ones probably realized that they couldn't take me with just magic, so then the shape-shifters came rushing at me in their animal forms.

  I hurriedly drew more Power from wherever I could, and immediately there was a dull thud on the road, followed by the tinkle of broken glass, then another thud, followed by the ear-splitting screech of car horns.

  I took 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 muscles, sinews, claws, and teeth. A genuine combat-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 cost me much of an effort to tie the greedy, trembling threads of energy into knots and fling them back at their owners. Both shots hit their targets again, but this time no one was sent skidding onto his back-I had simply returned their own energy. The bear stood on one side, shifting his weight menacingly from one foot to the other. He was hunching up, as if he were 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 damn 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 served in the Watch themselves. Maybe I should get help from the Day Watch? Especially since it was no real distance- their office was very near and I could be there in a flash. But would it do me any good?

  The magicians weren't about to give up; one was holding a flaming wand charged up to the hilt, and the other had some kind of restraining amulet that looked pretty powerful too.