Day Watch

I listened for an i

My faithful assistant was obviously asleep.

I skipped past the Garden Ring Road and the Park of Culture metro station. But when I saw the Frunzenskaya station up ahead, I decided to go underground. Time was pressing.

Before I even reached the steps at the entrance to the metro, the bike had already been stolen. The motor gave a brief grunt as it was started up, and some quick-thinking individual drove the reliable little Japanese machine away, disappearing into the side streets as quickly as possible. Ah, people, people… The Light Ones take care of you, protect you, cherish you, but you're still the same old trash you always were. Animals with no conscience or compassion. Elbow everyone aside, steal, sell, stuff your belly, and the world can go to hell. It's so repulsive…

I simply jumped over the turnstiles-in the Twilight, an invisible shadow. I had no time to buy a ticket and stick it in the slot of the magnetic reader. That was okay: The country wouldn't go bankrupt because of me.

I slid down the escalator too, without leaving the Twilight. Jumped up onto the slow-moving handrail and went hurtling downward, barely managing to set one foot after the other in the sticky gray jelly. A train was just about to leave the platform; while I was still figuring out if it was going in the right direction, the doors closed. Never mind, that was no hindrance to me. But traveling back into the center certainly wasn't what I wanted.

I jumped into the carriage straight through the closed door- in the Twilight. Then gently moved aside the astonished passengers as I seemed to appear out of nowhere.

"Oh!" someone exclaimed.

"Tell me, is this Moscow?" I blurted out for some reason. Probably out of a boisterous sense of sheer stupid mischief.

No one answered. Well, all right. At least now there was noticeably more free space around me. I took hold of the handrail and closed my eyes.

Sportivnaya station, Sparrow Hills station, still closed-the train was barely crawling along; every now and then, in the cracks between the metal doors that didn't quite meet, I caught glimpses of electric lights and the gray half-light of early morning. Dawn already…

Finally, here was the University station. The escalator, very long and very crowded. I had to wait again. That was it. I was definitely late.

Up at the top it was almost light. Finally realizing that I wouldn't get there for the begi

"It's time," the Inquisitor a

Everyone present got to their feet. Dark Ones and Light Ones alike. The members of the Watches and the judges. Gesar and Zabulon, whom everyone had thought was away from Moscow. The Inquisitor Maxim and the Inquisitors who were there as observers, shrouded in their long, loose gray robes. Everyone who had gathered in the turret of the main building of Moscow University. The small, five-sided chamber of the invisible Twilight story stood on top of the agricultural museum and was used exclusively for holding the infrequent sessions of the Inquisition's Tribunal. In the postwar years it had been quite common to include Twilight structures in buildings-it had been cheaper than putting up with the constant opposition from the state security forces and militia, who were always sticking their noses into other people's business. There was an excellent view from there of the scarlet glow of dawn creeping out from behind the horizon and the incredible shimmering streaks of light that had been dancing above the university building, slowly fading, ever since Jean Michel Jarre's concert for Moscow's a

Maxim, wearing an ordinary business suit-not loose robes like the other Inquisitors-waved his hand, unfurling in the Twilight a gray canvas covered with letters of red flame. Thirty voices began chanting together: "We are the Others. We serve different powers. But in the Twilight there is no difference between the absence of Darkness and the absence of Light…"

The immense city and the entire vast country were unaware that almost everyone who decided the fate of Russia was gathered here now, and not in the Kremlin. In a neglected, crowded chamber under the spire of the Moscow University building, with wooden chairs, light armchairs, and even sun loungers set in the old, thick dust-everyone had brought what they could manage. No one had bothered to bring a table, so there wasn't one.

The Others are not very fond of cheap rituals: A court is action, not spectacle. And so there were no gowns, wigs, and tablecloths. Only the gray robes of the observers, but no one really remembered why the Inquisitors sometimes wore those.

"We limit our rights and our laws. We are the Others…"

The scarlet letters of the Treaty blazed in the semi-darkness, the embodiment of Truth and Justice. And the voices rang out:

"We are the Others."

Thirty voices:

"Time will decide for us."

After the Treaty had been read, the Tribunal proper began, by tradition, with the least important cases.

Without getting up off his rotating piano stool, a judge, one of the Inquisitors clad in the loose robes, a

Not even the accused, but the guilty party. Guilt had already been proven. The witnesses would only help to determine the circumstances and the degree of guilt. And the court would give its verdict. Pitiless and just.

"Unfortunately, not all the witnesses are present. We are missing Vitaly Rogoza, an Other registered in Nikolaev in Ukraine and temporarily registered here in Moscow, who is absent for reasons unknown; and also Andrei Tiu

The trial was brief and strict: "Victoria Manguzova, Dark Other, registered in Moscow, is guilty of the offense of unlicensed hunting. The verdict is dematerialization. Are there any objections or proposed amendments to the verdict from the Watches?"

There were no objections from the Dark Ones and, of course, not from the Light Ones either.

"The sentence will be carried out immediately," said the Inquisitor. He looked at the Light Ones-verdicts were traditionally carried out by members of the Watches.

Ilya stood up and adjusted his spectacles. He looked intently at the female vampire, who howled, because she knew there was no escape. There was neither hate nor joy in the magician's glance. Nothing but concentration. He reached out his hand and touched the registration seal on the vampire's chest through the Twilight. A moment later Victoria slumped onto the floor. She didn't crumble to dust as an older vampire would have done; her body still hadn't lived out its time yet. But the force that replaces life in vampires, drawn over the years from human beings, had dissolved irretrievably into the Twilight. The room had turned a little bit colder. Ilya frowned and dispatched the body into the Twilight with another restrained gesture.

Forever.

Thus is the verdict of the Others applied.

"Case number two. The killing of an uninitiated Other by a Dark Other, a shape-shifter. Bring in the guilty party…"