The Day Watch Part 21

"That's just the point," Tolik exclaimed gloomily. "When he came in, he looked exactly like an ordinary magician, maybe third or fourth level. Like me and Anton."

Anton didn't say anything-strictly speaking, Tolik was incorrect, but in essence he was right. Gesar had called Anton a second-level magician, but Anton's powers had only risen to that level on a few occasions. It would be more honest to admit that for the time being he was still third level.

"But as soon as I tried to probe him," Tolik went on, "that was it. A blank wall. He's definitely more powerful than me. Anton. Did you try to probe him?"

"No."

"Looks like he's first level..." Tolik, said with a sigh. "If it comes to it, we'll have to call in Ilya..."

"I'm afraid we might even have to call in Olga and Sveta and the boss," Anton remarked. n.o.body answered him.

n.o.body liked the i.e. of asking the Higher Magicians for help.

Tiger Cub started squirming about, making herself more comfortable on the seat. "There's no way he's not connected with these murders. I can understand the first time-he arrived in Moscow, went out for a walk, and accidentally stumbled across a poacher. But this time? What was he doing on Pervo-maiskaya Street?"

"But did he definitely arrive on Sat.u.r.day?" Tolik asked.

"Definitely," Tiger Cub a.s.sured him. "I didn't like the look of him, you know? I even found the train he was on and scanned the conductress for memories. He almost never came out of his compartment, but he was on the train all right."

"And do we have anything on him?"

Anton thought he caught a hint of concealed hope in Tolik's question: "Compromising material, you mean? Not a thing. Not a single violation. He doesn't need any licenses, he's not a vampire or a shape-shifter. And he was only initiated fairly recently, just seven years ago... Like me."

Tolik nodded thoughtfully. "There aren't many Others in Nikolaev. So the Watches are small as well, only twenty or thirty agents..."

"Okay, when we get back, I'll dig a bit deeper," Anton promised. "Did you lock up your station wagon, eh?"

"What's going to happen to it?" Tolik asked with a shrug. "Yes, we'll have to phone the boss after all. Or will we be able to handle this on our own?"

He was obviously feeling uncomfortable. Tolik had been in charge of the IT department for more than a year now, since Anton made the move to operational work. But no member of the Night Watch has the right to let his qualifications slip-and the time had come around for Tolik's month of field duty.

And on the very first day there was an unpleasant incident like this...

"We'll probably have to tell him," Anton decided.

"Then there's no point in putting it off..." Tolik sighed.

Tiger Cub eagerly held out her cell phone, but before Tolik could even touch it the phone started chirping the tune of "Midnight in Moscow."

Anton was about to take the phone, but he restrained himself. You never know... It was obviously one of their own calling, but he couldn't sense the tense, nervous energy of a work call. Maybe it was simply some member of the Watch calling Tiger Cub? Everybody had a personal life, even the members of the Watch.

Tiger Cub took the call. Most of the time she just listened, and once she said, "I don't know."

"It's Garik," she explained in a voice filled with quiet alarm. "Andriukha's disappeared."

"Tiunnikov?"

"Yes. Garik thought he was with us."

"The last time I saw him was this afternoon," Tolik told her. "He was planning to go and catch up on his sleep."

"His phone's not answering. Garik can't sense him either-and he's Andriukha's mentor..."

Anton turned toward Tiger Cub: "After Sat.u.r.day he was like a man possessed. What did that Dark One say to him in the alley?"

Tiger Cub shrugged. "Nothing specialI've told you a hundred times already. He called him a detective. But Andriukha really had screwed up-it was obvious straightaway that the Dark One was no vampire. I explained that to him myself."

"He doesn't have to be a vampire," Tolik declared in a bored, didactic voice. "This Dark One could quite easily be the organizer of the whole grisly mess. And it goes without saying that his organizational talents are clearly above average!"

"One of Zabulon's p.a.w.ns," Anton mused. "Yes, it's possible. Perfectly possible."

"Aim a bit higher. Not a p.a.w.n, not even a knight or a rook. A bishop. A serious piece. Maybe even a queen..."

"Tolik, don't exaggerate. Without Zabulon there's no way the Dark Ones can match us. And Zabulon's not in Moscow."

"That's what the Dark Ones say. But who knows what the truth is..."

"Zabulon hasn't shown his face much at all recently," Anton put in.

"That's just it. He's been keeping quiet, planning an operation... The lousy thing is that I can't imagine what its objectives are. What do we have so far? Two suspicious killings, with absolutely no i.e. of how they're connected."

"If they are connected at all," said Anton, but even he didn't seem to believe his own words.

"No, say what you like, but they're connected," Tolik insisted stubbornly. "I can sense it. And the link is that magician from out of town."

"Why bother thinking about it?" Tiger Cub asked. "Since Svetlana appeared we've had a substantial advantage.

The Dark Ones have yielded one position after another-remember how the boss put the pressure on Zabulon at the last round of negotiations? And Zabulon gave way-what other choice did he really have? It looks as if the Dark Ones have launched an operation to restore the balance. But the timing's terrible-just before Clean Week..."

"For the Dark Ones that's the best possible time," Anton growled. "They know we won't start anything serious without a good reason. But so far there doesn't seem to be any reason."

"Be careful what you say..." Tolik told him in a pained voice.

The Zhiguli flew on along Leningradsky Prospect, overtaking the advancing dawn.

They drove the rest of the way to the office without saying another word. Either no one wanted to predict the worst, or they all felt they were in for something serious.

Garik was standing outside the entrance, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. And Ilya was there beside him, short of sleep and squinting out from behind his spectacles.

"Right," Tolik said cheerlessly. "Brace yourselves."

Ilya and Garik quickly got into the car, squeezing Tiger Cub from both sides, and Anton immediately realized why they'd got in like that, and what the pale, furious, and therefore very restrained Garik would say next...

"The Cosmos Hotel. Andriukha's dead, guys..."

Tolik slammed the accelerator to the floor, but even the most powerful car isn't fast enough to overtake death.

Tiger Cub jerked feebly, squeezed tight between her friends, and then froze.

"How did it happen?" Anton asked in a dull voice.

"That Dark One-Vitaly Rogoza-just phoned. He said he'd found the body of an Other in his room."

"I'll personally bite his throat out," Tiger Cub promised in a hoa.r.s.e voice. "And don't you try to stop me!"

"I phoned Bear just in case," Ilya said in a very neutral tone. "I think he's already in the Cosmos."

Anton got the i.e. that his colleagues had understood everything in advance and come to terms with the fact that a fight was inevitable. He secretly stroked the pistol in the holster under his armpit-the weapon that had never been any real use to him even once.

I had a nagging feeling that the events of the night were still far from over. I felt I was just beginning to be able to foresee the immediate future. Not in detail-far from it, in fact-more as a tangled ball of probability threads. But I had begun to sense where the thickest strands were leading.

Alarm, trouble, disaster, danger-that was what the night had in store for me. At first I thought I would wait for the Dark Ones downstairs, beside their BMW outside the entrance, but then I realized I shouldn't do that. I shouldn't enlighten them as to... well, as to my total ignorance. Let them think that I really was playing a game. The chief of the Day Watch was out of town, and the others didn't seem to be any compet.i.tion for me...

But just who was I? Wasn't I aiming too high? Was Moscow so short of powerful magicians? Even if they didn't work in the Watches? I couldn't keep being led on up the steps forever, could I?-there are no infinite stairways.

Some way would be found to keep me in check-the Moscow magicians had plenty of experience, many of them had an entire century of it. And I didn't really know what I could do and what I couldn't. I was still an unknown quant.i.ty. And how did I know my Power wouldn't evaporate just as miraculously as it had appeared?

So you take your time, Vitalik, don't try to force things along. Better think about what bad things this fading night could bring you. But better not drag things out, lengthen that stride...

I walked quickly, as far as Sholkovskoe Shosse, darted into an underpa.s.s, and then started hitching a lift on the opposite side of the road.

What I like about Moscow is that even in the dead of night or early in the morning, all you have to do is raise your hand and an automobile will immediately pull in at the curb. In Nikolaev you can stand there for half an hour and no one will even think of stopping. But here everything is decided by money. Everyone needs it.

The Exhibition of Economic Achievements, fifty rubles. The standard rate.

I got into the sporty Volkswagen and set off toward problems that I could almost feel already.

When I reached the hotel, I immediately sensed that my room's defenses had been compromised. The defenses had worked just as they were intended to do, and that was my main problem. Without looking at anyone, I went up to the sixth floor, walked to my suite, put the key in the lock, and froze for a moment, looking at the door.

Okay, whatever was about to happen, I had to go through it.

He was lying in the middle of the lounge with his arms flung out to the sides. There was an expression of childish surprise and resentment on his face, as if he'd opened a wrapper and instead of the candy he'd been hoping for he'd found an angry hornet that had instantly sunk its stinger into his carelessly exposed finger.

He had stumbled into my Shahab's Ring. Not complex magic, but very powerful. And, naturally, he hadn't known the word that was needed. He was the unfortunate young detective, Andriukha Tiunnikov, a Light One from the Night Watch, who had been trying to prove that I'd murdered the girl on Sat.u.r.day.

If he'd been more experienced, he would never have stuck his nose into the area enclosed by the Ring. I hadn't even set it around the whole room-only the safe with the bag in it.

This was the very last thing I needed-the Light Ones regarded the deaths of ordinary people as poaching, but the killing of an Other was a different matter altogether. It already smacked of a tribunal.

But I had simply closed off my own territory, closed it off in a way that Others understood! This is mine! Keep out!

No entry!

Only he hadn't kept out. And he'd met his end in the Twilight... The infantile b.o.o.by! Had he been trying to impress his bosses?

I had to own up. Otherwise they'd ask in a way I couldn't refuse to answer.

I reached for the phone-not my cell, but the ordinary phone that was standing on the table. The number obligingly surfaced from my memory.

"Night Watch? Vitaly Rogoza, Other, Dark. If I'm not mistaken, I have your employee, Andrei Tiunnikov here. He's dead. You'd better come... Cosmos Hotel, suite six hundred twelve."

Strangely enough, the Light Ones weren't the first to arrive. The moment the first Others reached my floor-there were two of them-I felt as if I were suddenly flooded with energy from someone. The pair were Dark magicians and they were both brimful of a Dark Power that reminded me in some ways of the Twilight, except that it was even denser and darker. A long tongue of Twilight ran straight down through the floors of the hotel, gradually growing thinner as it approached the ground and seeming to run on beyond it, to somewhere lower, somewhere underground.

There was a knock at the door, emphatically correct.

"Yes, yes," I replied, without getting up out of my armchair. "It's open, come in!"

They came in. My acquaintance from the apartment on Per-vomaiskaya Street, s.h.a.gron. And another one, also a magician, as far as I could tell. A bit overweight, like s.h.a.gron, with dark hair. And powerful. More powerful than his partner. But even so, despite my expectations, it was s.h.a.gron who started talking. It seemed that the accepted thing among members of the Watches was for the most important member of a team to keep quiet-Anton had preferred to listen too.

"Good morning, colleague."

"What's good about it? You must be joking, colleague."

I deliberately p.r.o.nounced the word "colleague" in the same tone as s.h.a.gron. But he wasn't so easily provoked, and that was where he had the advantage over me. In experience. All I had to rely on were cheap wisecracks like that, plus moments of sudden illumination and the mystical stairway that obligingly offered me one step after another, and then arranged a kick up the backside at the appropriate moment.

"I'm not joking, colleague, simply greeting you. It's a pity you didn't wait for us back there... you know where I mean. I'd been counting on having a word with you."

"I didn't want to get in your way," I confessed, and it was more than half-true. A normal response from an Other-Dark or Light.

"I was counting on help. Help from a brother-in-arms. But you chose to disappear."

That "I" was strictly a Dark way of speaking. In s.h.a.gron's place, any Light One would definitely have said "We,"

and been perfectly sincere. And he'd have meant exactly what s.h.a.gron had meant, no less sincerely, of course.

"Okay. Let me introduce you. This is Edgar, our colleague from Estonia, recently a member of the Moscow Watch. What have you got here?"

"What I've got here is yet another body," I confessed. "A Light Other. A Watch member. But then you already know all about it, don't you, colleague Edgar?"

"There's not much time? The Light Ones will be here any minute? Is that what you wanted to say?" Edgar asked, casting aside diplomacy and addressing me in a familiar fashion. I realized there was no point in arguing with this dark-haired Estonian.

"Last Sat.u.r.day evening, when I'd just arrived, this Light One was in charge of the operation dealing with a poaching vampire..."

"A vampiress," Edgar corrected me with a frown. "And then?"

"By sheer chance I just happened to be there beside the victim. They found me beside the corpse and recognized me as a Dark One. Clearly out of inexperience-I can't see any other reason-Tiunnikov accused me of what the vampire... that is, the vampiress... had done. I put him in his place, and I admit I did it quite sharply, but he'd asked for it. And that's really the whole story... When I left my room today, I left some protective spells. And when I came in, there he was. He was already beyond my help."

The last phrase simply burst out on its own-I hadn't been planning to say it. It felt like I was beginning to talk nonsense again.

"This snot-nosed kid was in charge of the operation?" s.h.a.gron asked incredulously. "When there were Light Ones with far more experience-the tigress, the magicians..."

"Tiunnikov was in training, that's perfectly normal," Edgar barked at his partner, and then suddenly glanced at me.

"But you set up a Shahab's Ring so strong that it killed the Light Ones' trainee on the spot?"

The question was almost rhetorical. Apparently I'd cast a simple spell, but put too much Power into it. Maybe...

I sensed the approach of the Light Ones at the same time as Edgar, just as they were nearing the hotel. A few seconds later s.h.a.gron picked them up too.