Day Watch

Hey, you inhabitants of the depths!

The thunder is laughing at you.

To be on equal terms with them-

There is only one way upward!

There is only one way upward…

So that was it… The way upward. And you couldn't get to heaven unless you'd already done your time rattling around in hell. Except that heaven and hell were different for everyone-but then that was what Kipelov was really singing about anyway.

Strange. I'd heard the song before, and the singer's name had stuck in my memory. I'd even included it in the mini-disk I put together for my player. But now it sounded completely new; it had suddenly slashed across my mind like an invisible shard of broken glass.

"Colleague! Please hurry!" Edgar called to me.

I stepped regretfully away from the door.

I'll have to listen to it later… Buy the whole album and listen to it…

The singer's voice faded away behind me:

But if the light flares up in your brain

And dislodges all the submission,

The old days will come alive in your soul,

And a new sin will be committed.

Blood on your hands, blood on the stones,

And over the bodies and the pitiful backs

Of those willing to die as slaves,

You strive upward once again.

It somehow seemed to me that Kipelov knew only too well what he was singing about. About blood. About the lower depths. About the sky. This long-haired idol of the Russian heavy metal set could easily turn out to be an Other. At least, I wouldn't be surprised if he did.

I went up to the next floor with Edgar and Shagron, and we found ourselves in a genuine office space, with a large hall divided into little booths separated off by screens, individual offices at one side and an open area overlooking Tverskaya Street through a huge window of lightly tinted glass. I noticed that the Dark Ones used hardly any desktop PCs: at least the three Watch staff members who were there-they must have been either very late owls or very early larks-were all sitting with their noses stuck in the screens of their notebooks.

"Hellemar!" Edgar called, and one of the three-a werewolf, like the guard on duty downstairs-reluctantly tore himself away from some game on the screen.

"Yes, chief?"

"I want an urgent news update! All movements of reagents or artifacts of great Power. Lost, disappeared, smuggled. All the latest events!"

"What's happened?" the werewolf Hellemar asked. "Is there something dangerous going on?"

"The Light Ones have information that someone's trying to smuggle an artifact into Moscow. Move it, Hellemar!"

Hellemar turned to the other players:

"Hey, you blockheads! Get to work!"

The blockheads instantly dropped what they'd been doing and seconds later I could hear the quiet rustling of keyboards, and on the screens the endless corridors filled with monsters had been replaced by the bright windows of Netscape.

Edgar took me into an office separated off from the large hall by a glass wall and blinds. Shagron went off somewhere for a moment, but he soon came back with a jar of Tchibo and a carton of Fi

"I hope you have sugar here?" Shagron muttered.

"I'll find some." Edgar lowered himself into one armchair and offered me the other: "Have a seat, colleague. You don't mind if I call you simply Vitaly, do you?"

"Of course not. Feel free."

"Excellent. Well, then, Vitaly, I'll do the talking, and you correct me if I get something wrong. Agreed?"

"Certainly" I said readily. Because I had almost no idea what weird stories would surface out of my subconscious for me to tell to these intent agents of the Day Watch.

"Have I understood correctly that you possess no information about the aforementioned artifact?"

"You have," I confirmed.

"A pity," Edgar said with genuine disappointment. "It would have greatly simplified matters…"

As a matter of fact, not only didn't I possess any information about the aforementioned artifact, I didn't possess any information at all about any artifacts that Edgar might be interested in. This was no doubt an area where experienced Others felt like co

"Then let's move on to the next point. You arrived in Moscow from Ukraine, if I understand correctly?"

"Yes. From Nikolaev."

"For what purpose?"

I pondered for about half a minute. Nobody tried to hurry me.

"It's hard to say," I confessed honestly. "Clearly without any particular purpose. I just got fed up sitting at home doing nothing."

"You were only initiated very recently, am I right?"

"Yes."

"Did you just get the urge to see a bit of the world?"

"Probably."

"Then why Moscow, and not the Bahamas, for instance?"

I shrugged. But really-why? Surely not just because I didn't have a passport for foreign travel yet?

"I don't know. The Bahamas are a place to go in summer."

"It's summer now in the Southern Hemisphere. And there are plenty of places to go."

Yes, that was true. I hadn't thought about that.

"All the same, I don't know," I answered. "Later, maybe…"

I had the feeling that Edgar wanted to ask about something else, but at this point Hellemar entered the office without knocking. His eyes were as wide as the cartoon mouse Jerry's when he suddenly spots his eternal pursuer, Tom, just behind him.

"Chief! Berne, Fafnir's Talon! It's been taken from the Inquisition's vault! The whole of Europe 's been in an uproar for over two hours now!"

Shagron couldn't restrain himself-he leapt to his feet. Edgar held back, but his eyes glinted and even without entering the Twilight I could see the orange streaks that sprang up in his aura. But he quickly took himself in hand.

"Is this open information?"

"No. It's restricted. The Inquisition hasn't made any official statements yet."

"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 fu

"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."