Twilight Watch

Edgar came out of the conductor's compartment, saying something, shook the captain of the train by the hand and came toward us-still with a satisfied smile on his face.

I looked at Kostya. And read everything in his eyes.

He knew that I knew.

"Where are you hiding the book?" I asked. "Quick. This is your last chance. Your only chance. Don't destroy yourself."

And at that moment he struck. Without any magic-unless you can call a vampire's inhuman strength magic. The world exploded in a white flash, the teeth in my mouth crunched and my jaw suddenly went numb. I was sent flying down the corridor and flew up against a passenger who'd come out at the wrong moment for a breath of air. I probably had him to thank for the fact that I didn't lose consciousness-in fact, it was the passenger who flaked out instead of me.

Kostya stood there, rubbing his fist, and his body flickered, moving rapidly into the Twilight and back out again, slipping between the worlds. That ability the vampires have that had once astounded me so much… Ge

"Kostya!" Edgar exclaimed, coming to a halt.

Kostya slowly turned his head toward Edgar. I couldn't see, but I sensed him bare his fangs.

Edgar flung his hands out in front of him and the corridor was blocked off by a dull, translucent wall that looked like a layer of rock crystal. Maybe the Inquisitor still hadn't realized what was going on, but his instincts were in good order.

Kostya made a low, howling sound and pressed his hands against the wall. The wall held. The car lurched and swayed over the points and behind my back a woman launched into a slow, measured wail. Kostya lurched backward and forward, trying to break through Edgar's line of defense.

I raised my hand and directed a Gray Prayer at Kostya-an ancient spell against non-life. The Gray Prayer tears to shreds any organic matter raised from the grave that possesses no consciousness of its own and only lives through the will of a sorcerer. It slows vampires down and weakens them.

Kostya swung around when the fine gray threads wrapped themselves around him in the Twilight. He took a step toward me, shook himself-and the spell was torn apart before my eyes. I'd never seen such crude but effective work before.

"Don't get in my way!" he bellowed. Kostya's features had lengthened and sharpened, his fangs were all the way out now. "I don't want… I don't want to kill you…"

I managed to get up and crawl over the felled passenger into a compartment. On the top bunks, two men of impressive dimensions started squealing-outdoing the woman who was yelling outside by the door of the washroom. There were glasses and bottles rolling around on the floor underneath me.

In a single bound Kostya appeared in the doorway. He cast a glance at the men and they fell silent.

"Surrender…" I whispered, sitting up on the floor beside the table. The way my jaw moved felt strange-it didn't seem to be dislocated, but every movement was agony.

Kostya laughed. "I'll finish you all off… if I want to. Come with me, Anton. Come! I don't want to hurt anyone. What's this Inquisition to you? Or these Watches? We'll change everything."

He was speaking absolutely sincerely. Actually pleading.

Why do you always have to become stronger than anyone else before you can permit yourself weakness?

"Come to your senses…" I whispered.

"You fool! You fool!" Kostya growled, taking a step toward me. He reached out his hand-the fingers already ended in claws. "You…"

A half-full bottle of Posolskaya vodka, with its contents lazily draining out, rolled right into my hand.

"It's time we drank to Bruderschaft," I said.

Kostya managed to dodge away, but a few splashes still got him in the face. He howled and threw his head back. Even if you're the Highest Vampire of them all, for you alcohol is still poison.

I stood up, grabbed a full glass off the little table and drew my hand back. I shouted, "Night Watch! You're under arrest! Put your hands above your head! Withdraw your fangs!"

At precisely that moment three Inquisitors appeared in the doorway. Either Edgar had summoned them, or they'd sensed something was wrong. They grabbed hold of Kostya, who was still wiping his bloody face. One of them tried to press a gray metal disk against his neck-something charged up to the hilt with magic…

And the next moment Kostya showed what he was capable of.

A kick sent the glass flying out of my hand and flattened my back against the window. The frame gave a loud crack. And then where Kostya had been standing there was nothing but a gray blur-the punches and kicks followed each other faster than any movie hero could have thrown them. There were splashes of blood and scraps of flesh flying in all directions, as if someone was grinding up a piece of fresh meat in a blender. Then Kostya jumped into the corridor, glanced around, and dove out through the window, as if he hadn't even noticed the twin panes of thick glass.

The glass didn't notice him either.

I caught one last glimpse of Kostya outside the window, tumbling down the embankment-and then the train hurtled on.

I'd heard about that vampire trick, but I'd always thought it was pure fantasy. Even in the textbooks the phrase "walking though walls and panes of glass in the real world" was marked with a prudish "n.p."-for "not proven."

Two of the Inquisitors were lying in a shapeless heap in the compartment-so badly mutilated there was no point in trying to find any kind of pulse.

The third one had been lucky-he was sitting on a bunk, squeezing shut a wound in his stomach.

There was blood slopping down over his feet.

The passengers on the upper bunks weren't yelling any more-one had covered his head with a pillow, the other was staring down with glassy eyes and giggling quietly.

I climbed down off the table and staggered out into the corridor.

Chapter 5

AS THE HERO OF A CERTAIN HOARY OLD JOKE PUT IT, "BUT NOW LIFE IS returning to normal!"

The passengers in the captain's car were sitting in their compartments and staring vacantly out the windows. For some reason people walking through the car lengthened their stride and only looked straight ahead. In one closed compartment there were two bodies packed in black plastic sacks and the wounded Inquisitor, who was lying down after a colleague had treated him with healing spells for about fifteen minutes. Another two Inquisitors were standing on guard at the door of our compartment.

"How did you guess?" Edgar asked.

He'd fixed my jaw in about three minutes, after he'd helped his wounded comrade. I hadn't asked what the problem was- simple bruising, a crack or a break. He'd fixed it, and that was all I cared about. But my two front teeth were still missing, and it felt weird to feel the place with my tongue.

"I remembered something about the Fuaran…" I said. In the commotion of the first few minutes after Kostya bolted, I'd had time to think of what to tell him. "The witch… you know, Arina… said that according to the legends, for the spells in the Fuaran to work, you had to have the blood of twelve people. Just a drop from each one would do."

"Why didn't you tell me earlier?" Edgar asked sharply.

"I didn't figure it was important. At the time I thought the whole story of the Fuaran was pure fantasy… And then Kostya mentioned that his cocktail was made from the blood of twelve people, and it clicked."

"I see. Witezslav didn't have twelve people handy," Edgar said with a nod. "If only you'd told me right away… if only you'd told me…"