Day Watch

"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.

It took an entire two seconds to deal with the amulet-I had to tear apart the net that was cast over me with an ordinary Triple Dagger-but the amount of Power that went into that extremely simple spell was enough to reduce the entire center of Moscow to ashes. Then the second Light magician hit me with the Fire of Bethlehem, but his blow only made me angry and, I think, even stronger.

I froze his wand. Simply turned it into a long icicle and put a spell of rejection on it. Fragments of ice spurted out of the Light One's hands like some weird, cold firework display, and at the same time the liberated energy went soaring up into the heavens.

I couldn't really dump on the people around us, could I? I'd already done enough damage with those collisions on the nearby intersections…

The bear stayed put. Apparently he'd realized that, despite their numerical superiority, the balance of Power was far from equal. But the tigress just wouldn't stop. She came for me with all the aggression of a crazed female animal when an enemy gets too close to her young. Her eyes blazed with unconcealed hatred, as yellow as the flames on church candles.

The tigress was taking revenge. Taking revenge on me, a Dark One, for all her old grudges and losses. For Andrei, who had been killed by me. And who knows for what else… And she didn't intend to stop for anything.

I don't want to say she had nothing to avenge-the Watches have always fought, and I'm not in the habit of mincing words. But I didn't intend to die.

I'm free. Free to punish anyone who gets in my way and refuses to resolve things peacefully. Wasn't that what the song had been trying to tell me?

I struck out at her with the Transylvanian Mist.

The tigress's body was twisted and stretched, and even above the roar of engines and the piercing beeping of horns I heard the crunching of bones quite clearly. The spell crumpled the shape-shifter the same way a child crumples a plasticine figure. The broken ribs tore through the skin and their bloody ends thrust into the snow. The head was squashed into a flat, striped pancake. In an instant the beautiful beast was transformed into a tangled mess of bloody flesh.

With a final, calculated blow, I consigned the tigress's soul to the Twilight.

Once I'd begun, I had no right to stop.

The Light Ones froze. Even the bear stopped stamping his feet.

And what now? I thought wearily.

Maybe I would have had to kill them all, but thank heaven- or hell-it didn't come to that.

"Day Watch!" I heard a familiar voice say. "An attack on a Dark One has been registered. Leave the Twilight!"

Edgar spoke sternly and without any Baltic accent.

But he needn't have said that about the Twilight. Those who were alive hadn't been fighting in the Twilight, and the tigress had nowhere to come back to.

"The Day Watch demands that a tribunal be convened immediately," Edgar said ominously. "And in the meantime be so good as to summon the chief of the Night Watch."

"Why, he'll scatter all of you like kittens," one of the Light magicians said angrily.

"No, he won't," Edgar snapped and pointed at me. "Not with him here. Or haven't you got the point yet?"

I just barely caught the movement as someone shuffled Power in space. Then a swarthy man with pointed features appeared nearby. He was wearing a colorful Eastern robe and he looked totally absurd in the middle of the snowy boulevard.

"I'm already here," he barked, mournfully surveying the scene of the recent battle.

"Gesar!" Edgar said in a more lively voice. "Hello. In the chiefs absence you will have to explain yourself to me."

"To you?" said Gesar, glancing sideways at the Estonian. "You're not worthy."

"Then to him," said Edgar, shrugging his shoulders and shuddering as if he felt cold. "Or is he not worthy either?"

"No, I'll explain myself to him," Gesar said coolly and turned toward me. His gaze was as bottomless as eternity. "Get out of Moscow," he said with almost no emotion at all. "Right now. Catch a train or ride a broomstick, but just clear out. You've already killed twice."

"As I see it," I remarked as amicably as I could, "certain other individuals have attempted to kill me. And all I did was defend myself."

Gesar turned his back to me-he didn't want to listen. He didn't want to speak to a Dark One who had dispatched one of his best warriors into the Twilight forever.

"Let's get out of here," he said to his people.

"Hey, hey!" Edgar protested angrily. "They're criminals, they're not going anywhere, in the name of the Treaty I forbid it!"

Gesar turned back toward the Estonian. "Yes they are. And you can't do anything about it. They're under my protection."

I was seriously expecting a hike up onto the next step because the powers that I already had were enough for me to realize I couldn't go head to head with Gesar yet. He'd crush me. Not without an effort-after all, I'd already come a long way up the invisible stairway. My powers were pretty strong. But he'd still crush me.

But nothing happened. Probably the time hadn't come yet for me to fight Gesar.

Edgar gave me a plaintive glance-apparently he'd been hoping for great things from me.

The Light Ones slipped away into the Twilight, taking with them the remains of their dead sister-in-arms, and then they dived deeper, to the second level. It was over.

"I really can't stop him," I admitted guiltily. "Sorry, Edgar."

"A pity," the Estonian said, with just his lips.

They took me to the Day Watch office in the trusty BMW- for the first time in Moscow I was feeling tired.

But still as free as before.

I paid the price for using so much Power-I can barely remember how they drove me back, urged me toward the elevator, led me to the office, sat me in an armchair and stuck a cup of coffee in my hand. I had a painful ache in my overworked muscles, an ache in my entire being, which just a short while ago had been commanding the powers of the Twilight. I'd beaten them off with convincing skill-it would be a long time before the Light Ones forgot this battle. And my attackers hadn't been young novices either-I reckoned that both Light Ones had been first-level magicians at least.

"Give the analysts a kick up the backside," Edgar ordered one of his subordinates. "I want to find out at last what's going on."

I glanced at him, and Edgar realized I was coming around.

"Talk to me!" he said.

"A Call!" I said in a hoarse voice and started to cough. I tried to take a sip of coffee, burned myself, and hissed in pain. "A Call," I said when I could talk again. "They caught me while I was sleeping."

"A Call?" Shagron echoed in surprise. He was sitting in an armchair like mine at the next desk. "The Light Ones haven't used that for about thirty years…"

"They caught you with a Call in the Day Watch building?" Edgar asked suspiciously. "That's really something! And you mean no one else noticed anything?"

"No. It was a very subtle call, aimed with masterly precision and camouflaged as natural background noise from the residential floors."

"And you submitted to it?"