Nightwatch

His neck started to sting too—it was good garlic. A single breath would finish any vampire.

The cat began howling restlessly in the hallway. Egor pricked up his ears and peeped out of the kitchen. No, nothing there. The door was secured with three locks and a chain.

«Stop yelling, Gray!» he told the cat sternly. «Or I'll make you eat garlic too.»

The cat took the threat seriously and dashed off into the parents' bedroom. What else could he do? Silver was supposed to help. Egor frightened the cat again by going into the bedroom, opening the wardrobe, and taking his mother's jewelry box out from under the sheets and towels. He took out a silver chain and put it on. It would smell of garlic, and he'd have to take it off before the evening. Maybe he should empty his moneybox and buy himself a chain? With a crucifix. And wear it all the time. Say he'd started believing in God. Didn't it happen sometimes that someone didn't believe for a long, long time, and then suddenly started believing after all?

He walked across the living room, sat down with his feet up on the couch and looked around the room thoughtfully. Did they have any poplar wood in the house? He didn't think so. And what did poplar wood look like, anyway? Maybe he should go to the botanical gardens and cut himself a dagger out of a branch?

That was all great, of course, but what good would it do? If the music started playing again… that soft, alluring music… What if he took the chain off himself, broke the poplar-wood dagger, and washed the garlic off his own neck?

Soft, gentle music… invisible enemies. Maybe they were already there with him. He simply couldn't see them. He didn't know how to look. And a vampire might be sitting right there, laughing at him, looking at this naive kid preparing his defenses. And he wasn't afraid of any poplar stake, he wasn't scared by the garlic. How could you fight against something invisible?

«Gray!» Egor called. The cat didn't respond to the usual «kss-kss»; he was a fickle character. «Come here, Gray!»

The cat was standing in the doorway of the bedroom. His fur was standing on end and his eyes were blazing. He was looking past Egor, into the corner, at the armchair beside the coffee table. At an empty chair…

The boy felt that familiar chilly shiver run over his body. He jerked forward so violently that he went flying off the couch and landed on the floor. The armchair was empty. The apartment was empty and locked. Everything turned dark, as if the sunlight outside the window had suddenly dimmed…

There was someone there with him.

«No!» Egor shouted, crawling away. «I know! I know you're here!»

The cat gave a hoarse screech and darted under the bed.

«I can see you,» shouted Egor. «Don't touch me!»

The entryway of the building looked gloomy and miserable enough anyway. But viewed from inside the twilight, it was a genuine catacomb. Concrete walls that were simply dirty in ordinary reality were overgrown with a dark blue moss in the Twilight. Disgusting filth. There wasn't a single Other living here to clean up the place… I passed my hand over a really thick bunch—the moss stirred, trying to creep away from the warmth.

«Burn,» I ordered it.

I don't like parasites. Not even if they don't do any particular harm and only drink other creatures' emotions. No one's ever proved the hypothesis that large colonies of blue moss are capable of unbalancing the human psyche and causing depression or mania. But I've always preferred to play it safe.

«Burn!» I repeated, transmitting a small amount of power through my hand.

A hot, transparent flame spread across the layer of tangled blue felt. A moment later the entire entrance was ablaze. I stepped away toward the elevator, pressed the button, got into the elevator. The cabin was a lot cleaner.

«Ninth floor,» Olga prompted. «Why waste your powers like that?»

«That's just small change…«

«You might need everything you've got. Let it grow.»

I didn't answer. The elevator crawled slowly upward—the Twilight elevator, the double of the ordinary one that was still standing on the first floor.

«Suit yourself,» said Olga. «The uncompromising passion of youth…«

The doors opened. The fire had already reached the ninth floor and the blue moss was blazing wildly. It was warm, a lot warmer than it usually is in the Twilight. There was a slight smell of burning.

«That door there…« said Olga.

«I can see.»

I could sense the boy's aura by the door. He hadn't even taken the risk of coming out today. Excellent. The little goat was tethered with a strong rope; all we had to do was wait for the tiger.

«I suppose I'll go in,» I said. I pushed the door.

The door didn't open.

That couldn't happen!

In the real world all the locks on the door could be closed, but the Twilight has its own laws. Only vampires need an invitation to enter someone else's home; that's the price they pay for their excessive strength and their gastronomic attitude to human beings.

In order to lock a door in the Twilight, you had to know at least how to enter it.

«Fear,» said Olga. «Yesterday the boy was in a state of terror. And he'd just been in the Twilight world. He locked the door behind him… and without knowing it, he locked it in both worlds at the same time.»

«Come deeper. Follow me.»

I looked at my shoulder—there was no one there. Summoning the Twilight while you're in the Twilight is no simple trick. I had to raise my shadow from the floor several times before it acquired volume and hung there, quivering in front of me.

«Come on, come on, you're doing fine,» whispered Olga.

I entered the shadow, and the Twilight grew thicker. Space was filled with a dense fog. Colors disappeared completely. The only sound left was the beating of my heart, slow and heavy, rumbling like a drum being beaten at the bottom of a ravine. And there was a whistling wind—that was the air seeping into my lungs, slowly stretching out the bronchi. The white owl appeared on my shoulder.

«I won't be able to stand this for long,» I whispered, opening the door. At this level, of course, it wasn't locked.

A dark-gray cat flitted past my feet. For cats there is no ordinary world or Twilight—they live in all the worlds at once. It's a good thing they don't have any real intelligence.

«Kss-kss-kss,» I whispered. «Don't be afraid, puss…«

Mostly to test my own powers, I locked the door behind me. There, kid, now you're protected a little bit better. But will it do any good when you hear the Call?

«Move up,» said Olga. «You're losing strength very fast. This level of the Twilight is a strain even for an experienced magician. I think I'll move up a level too.»

It was a relief to step out of it. No, I'm not an operational agent who can stroll around all three levels of the Twilight just as he likes. But I don't really need to do that kind of thing.

The world turned a little bit brighter. I glanced around. It was a cozy apartment, not much polluted by the products of the Twilight world. A few streaks of blue moss beside the door… nothing to worry about, they'd die, now that the main colony had been exterminated. I heard sounds too, from the direction of the kitchen. I glanced in.

The boy was standing by the table, eating garlic and washing it down with hot tea.

«Light and Darkness,» I whispered.

The kid looked even younger and more helpless than the day before, thin and awkward, but you couldn't call him weak; he obviously played sports. He was wearing faded blue jeans and a blue sweatshirt.

«The poor soul,» I said.

«Very touching,» Olga agreed. «It was a very clever move by the vampires to spread that rumor about the magical properties of garlic. They say it was Bram Stoker himself who thought it up…«

The boy spat into his hand and started rubbing garlic onto his neck.

«Garlic's good for you,» I said.

«Yes. It protects you. Against flu viruses,» Olga added. «Oh, how easily the truth is lost, and how persistent lies are… But the boy really is strong. The Night Watch could do with another agent.»

«But is he ours?»

«He's not anyone's yet. His destiny's still not been determined; you can see for yourself.»

«But which way does he lean?»

«There's no way to tell, not yet. He's too frightened. Right now he'd do absolutely anything to escape from the vampires. He's ready to turn to the Dark or the Light.»

«I can't blame him for that.»

«No, of course. Come on.»

The owl fluttered into the air and flew along the corridor. I walked after it. We were moving three times faster than human beings now: One of the fundamental features of the Twilight is the way it affects the passage of time.

«We'll wait here,» Olga a

I sat in a soft armchair beside a low table and squinted at the newspaper lying there.

There's nothing more amusing than reading the press through the Twilight.

«Profits on Loans Are Down,» said the headline.

In the real world the phrase was different: «Tension Mounts in the Caucasus.»

I could pick up the newspaper now and read the truth. The real truth. What the journalist was thinking when he wrote about the subject he was covering. Those crumbs of information that he'd received from unofficial sources. The truth about life and the truth about death.

Only what for?

I'd stopped giving a damn about the human world a long time ago. It's our basis. Our cradle. But we are Others. We walk through closed doors and we maintain the balance of Good and Evil. There are pitifully few of us, and we can't reproduce—it doesn't follow that a magician's daughter automatically becomes an enchantress, and a werewolf's son won't necessarily be able to change his form on moonlit nights.

We're not obliged to like the ordinary, everyday world.

We only guard it because we're its parasites.

I hate parasites!

«What are you thinking about now?» asked Olga. The boy appeared in the living room. He dashed across into the bedroom—very quickly, bearing in mind that he was in the everyday world. He started rummaging in the wardrobe.

«Nothing much. Just feeling sad.»

«It happens. During the first few years it happens to everyone.» Olga's voice sounded completely human now. «Then you get used to it.»

«That's what I'm feeling sad about.»

«You should be glad we're still alive. At the begi