Day Watch

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 spi

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. Both 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 begi

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.