Last Watch

by Sergei Lukyanenko

  “Bastards, I’m sweating like a pig, and you sit there scratching your balls!”

  I started making my way back out of the crowd of whirring and clicking cameras. Close beside me I heard a girl speaking to her companion in clear Russian.

  “How awful!... Do you think they always swear like that?”

  An interesting question, that. Always, or just when they’re abroad? Does everybody? Or just ours, the Russians, in the strangely naïve belief that nobody outside Russia knows Russian?

  I’d rather believe that’s the way all street artists talk to one another.

  Buses.

  Tourists.

  Pubs.

  Shops.

  A mime artist wandering around a small square, feeling at nonexistent walls—a sad man in an invisible maze.

  A cool black dude in a kilt, playing a saxophone.

  I realized why I was in no hurry to get to the Dungeons of Scotland. I had to breathe this city into my lungs. Feel it with my skin, my body... with the blood in my veins.

  I decided to wander around in the crowd for a bit longer. And then buy a ticket for the “room of horror.”

  The tourist attraction was closed. The huge sign was still there on the pillars of the bridge. The double doors fashioned in the entrance-to-ancient-dungeons style were open, but the gap was roped off at chest height. A sheet of cardboard hanging on the rope politely informed me that the Dungeons were closed for technical reasons.

  To be quite honest, I was surprised. It was five days since Victor had been killed. Long enough for any police investigation. The Edinburgh Night Watch would have examined everything they needed to without advising the human police about it.

  But the place was closed.

  I shrugged, lifted up the rope, ducked under it, and set off down the narrow stairway. The metal-grid steps echoed hollowly under my feet. Two flights down there were toilets, then a narrow little corridor with ticket offices that were closed. A few lamps were lit here and there, but they were only intended to create a lurid atmosphere for the customers. Standard, dim energy-saving lightbulbs.

  “Is anyone alive down here?” I called out in English, and then realized with a start how ambiguous that was. “Hey... are there any Others here?”

  Silence.

  I walked through a few rooms. The walls were hung with portraits of people with brutal faces, the kind that would have delighted Lombroso’s heart. Framed texts told the stories of criminals, maniacs, cannibals, and sorcerers. There were display cases with crude models of severed arms and legs, vessels full of dark liquids, instruments of torture. Out of curiosity I took a look at them through the Twilight. All newly made—no one had ever been tortured with them; they didn’t carry the slightest trace of suffering.

  I yawned.

  There were strings with rags dangling from them stretched out above my head. I guessed they were supposed to represent cobwebs. Higher up I caught glimpses of a metal ceiling with rather unromantic rivets the size of saucers. The tourist attraction had been built in a strictly utilitarian, technical space.

  There was something bothering me.

  “Is there anyone there? Alive or dead, answer me!” I called out again. And again there was no answer. But what was it that had alarmed me like that? It was something that wasn’t right... when I looked through the Twilight.

  I looked around again, using my Twilight vision.

  There it was! That was what was so odd!

  There was no blue moss—that harmless but unpleasant parasite that grows on the first level of the Twilight, the only permanent inhabitant of the gray reverse side of the world. In a place like this, where people constantly experienced fear, even if it was only circus fear and not the real thing, the blue moss ought to have flourished like crazy. It ought to have been dangling from the ceiling in shaggy stalactites, spread out across the floor in a repulsive, wriggling carpet, covering the walls like thick flocked wallpaper.

  But there wasn’t any moss.

  Was someone cleaning the premises regularly? Burning the moss off (if he was a Light One) or freezing it off (if he was a Dark One)?

  Well, if there was an Other on the staff here, that would be a help to me.

  As if in response to my thoughts, I heard the sound of footsteps. They were quite fast, as if someone had heard me shout and was hurrying toward me from a long way away, through the maze of plasterboard partition walls. A few seconds later the black-painted door from this room into the next one opened.

  And in walked a vampire.

  Not a real one, of course. He had a normal human aura.

  A man in costume.

  A black cloak, rubber fangs in his mouth, pale makeup on his face. A good-quality makeup job. Only, all this didn’t fit too well with the curly red hair. He probably had to wear a black wig when he was working. And another thing that didn’t fit was the plastic bottle of mineral water that my visitor was just about to drink from.

  The young guy frowned when he saw me. His good-natured face turned not exactly angry, but strict and reproachful. He reached up to his mouth and turned away for a second. When he looked at me again, the fangs were gone.

  “Mister?”

  “Do you work here?” I asked. I didn’t want to use magic and break his will. There are always simpler ways of coming to terms with someone. Human ways.

  “Yes, but the show’s closed. Temporarily.”

  “Because of the murder?” I asked.

  The young guy frowned. Now he certainly wasn’t feeling well-disposed.

  “Mister, I don’t know how you got past... This is private property. The place is closed to visitors. Come with me, please, I’ll show you out.”

  He took a step toward me and even reached out one hand to demonstrate that he was prepared to take me out by force.

  “Were you here when Victor Prokhorov was killed?” I asked.

  “Just exactly who are you?” he asked cautiously.

  “I’m a friend of his. I just flew in from Russia today.”

  The young guy’s face dropped. He started backing away, until he came up against the door he’d come in through. He pushed it, but the door didn’t open. I must confess that was my fault.

  Now he was in a total panic.

  “Mister... I wasn’t to blame for anything! We’re all cut up about the way Victor died. Mister... Comrade!”

  He spoke the last word with a Russian inflection. I wondered what old action movie he remembered it from.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I was the one who was confused now. I moved closer to him. Could I really have been lucky enough to come across someone who knew something, who was involved with the murder somehow? Otherwise, what was all the panic about?

  “Don’t kill me, I didn’t do anything!” the young guy babbled. His skin was whiter than his makeup now. “Comrade! Sputnik, vodka, perestroika! Gorbachev!”

  “That last word could certainly get you killed in Russia,” I muttered, and reached into my pocket for my cigarettes.

  It was a very unfortunate thing for me to say. And that movement wasn’t the best of ideas either. The young guy’s eyes rolled up and back, and he fainted on the floor. The bottle of mineral water fell beside him.

  Out of sheer stubbornness, I dealt with him without using any magic. A few slaps to the cheeks and a sip of water soon fixed him up. Then I considerately offered him a cigarette.

  “It’s all right for you to laugh,” he said morosely, after we had sat down in two fake torture chairs, each of which had a hole in the seat and, lurking in the hole, a menacing stake on a crank-and-lever mechanism. “You think it’s funny...”

  “I’m not laughing,” I said mildly.

  “You’re just laughing to yourself.” The young guy drank greedily. Then he held out his hand a
nd introduced himself: “Jean.”

  “Anton. But I thought you were Scottish.”

  Jean shook his ginger curls proudly. “No... French. I’m from Nantes.”

  “Are you studying here?”

  “Just earning a bit of money.”

  “Listen, why are you wearing that idiotic costume?” I asked. “There aren’t any customers anyway.”

  Jean blushed—quickly, the way only redheads and albinos can.

  “The boss put me on guard duty until the show opens up again. I’m just waiting... in case the police suddenly decide they want to check something. It’s a bit creepy here on your own. I feel calmer in the costume.”

  “I almost crapped in my pants when I saw you,” I complained to him, knowing there’s nothing better for easing stress than that kind of low style. “But what were you afraid of?”

  Jean gave me a surly glance and shrugged.

  “It’s hard to say. That guy was killed here, so it’s like we’re to blame or something... but for what, for what? And he was Russian! You can never tell... Everyone knows what that can lead to... We started talking about it here, just joking at first. Then it got more serious. What if his father comes, or his brother, or a friend... and he kills all of us.”

  “So that’s what you’re talking about,” I said brightly. “Well, let me assure you that blood vengeance isn’t really all that common in Russia. But the Scots have it too, by the way.”

  “That’s just what I’m saying,” Jean agreed, missing the point. “It’s barbaric. Primitive! The twenty-first century, the civilized world—”

  “And someone gets his throat cut,” I threw in. “What actually happened to Victor?”

  The young guy glanced at me again. He took a drag on his cigarette and shook his head. “I think you’re lying. You’re not a friend of Victor’s. You’re from the Russian KGB. You’ve been sent to investigate the murder. Right?”

  He really must have been overdoing it on those action movies. This was getting ridiculous.

  “Jean, you know yourself,” I said in a low voice, “that I can’t answer that question.”

  The Frenchman nodded very seriously. Then he carefully stubbed his cigarette out on the floor. “Let’s go, Mr. Russian. I’ll show you the place. Only don’t smoke anymore, there’s nothing but rags and cardboard here, perfect tinder for a blaze—whoosh!”

  He pushed the door and, of course, it opened easily. Jean gave it a thoughtful look and shrugged. We walked through a few more rooms.

  “There it is, the crappy Castle of the Vampires,” Jean said in a gloomy voice. He fumbled at the wall and flicked a switch. The light became a lot brighter.

  Yes, darkness was appropriate here. Without it, the tourist attraction simply looked ludicrous. The River of Blood that people were supposed to sail across to the vampires was a long metal trough about three meters wide. The trough was full of water.

  It wasn’t deep.

  Maybe up to my knee.

  The metal barge wasn’t actually floating on the water, of course. I rocked the side of the boat with my foot and realized that it was standing on rollers of some kind. And under the water I could see the cable that towed the boat from one “mooring” to the other. The total length of the trough was no more than fifteen meters. Halfway along its route the metal tub crept into a room that was separated off by heavy curtains (they were pulled back now). I saw an impressive-looking fan on the ceiling of the room. On one wall there was a crudely painted picture of a castle standing on a cliff.

  I walked to the bow of the barge and glanced into the dark room. Yes, it was an idiotic sort of place to lose your life. Right... in five days any clues could have disappeared, but I could give it a try.

  A glance through the Twilight was no help. I spotted weak traces of Others—Light Ones and Dark Ones—but that would have been the specialists from the Watches who had investigated the crime scene. There were no signs of a vampire trail. But I could sense emanations of death—and they were very clear, as if only an hour or two had elapsed, not five days. Oh, the boy had died a very bad death... .

  “Who does the sound effects?” I asked. “There must be some kind of gasping and groaning... terrifying howls? Your tourists don’t ride in total silence, do they?”

  “It’s a recording,” Jean said sadly. “The speakers are over there, and over there...”

  “And doesn’t anyone in here keep an eye on the tourists?” I asked. “What if someone feels unwell?”

  “We watch them,” Jean admitted reluctantly. “You see that little hole in the wall across there? There’s always someone standing there and watching.”

  “In the dark?”

  “They use a night-vision device,” Jean said, embarrassed. “An ordinary video camera in night mode. You stand there and watch the screen... .”

  “Aha.” I nodded. “And what did you see when Victor was being killed?”

  Either he was feeling calmer now, or he didn’t see any point in pretending, but he didn’t try to deny anything. He just asked, “What makes you so sure I was there?”

  “Because you’re wearing a vampire costume. What if one of the customers is recording in night mode too? That’s what the makeup’s for, right? I think each one of you has his own role to play, and during the show you were wearing that costume and you were somewhere nearby.”

  Jean nodded. “That’s right. I was there. Only I didn’t see anything, believe me. They all just sat there. Nobody attacked any of them, no one went anywhere near them.”

  I didn’t bother to mention that you can’t catch a hungry vampire (and he would have to be very hungry to hunt as brazenly as this) on tape in night video mode. Night mode uses infrared, and a hungry vampire is no warmer than his environment. There might just be a few slight traces on the tape.

  “Was everything being recorded?”

  “Of course not. Why waste the tape?”

  I squatted down and dipped my hand in the water. It was cold and musty. It looked as though nobody had bothered to change it... but then, if the investigation wasn’t over yet, that was only natural...

  “What do you see?” Jean asked curiously.

  I didn’t answer. I was looking at the water through closed eyes. Looking with the Twilight vision that pierces through reality to the essence of things.

  The trough filled up with hazy crystal forms. There were crimson threads showing through the crystal, and an orange sludge swirling on the bottom of the trough.

  There was human blood in the water.

  A lot of blood.

  About four liters.

  That must be where the powerful emanations of death were coming from. Blood preserves its memory longer than anything else in the world.

  If the police had only bothered to make a proper analysis of the water, they would have realized that all of Victor’s blood was simply drained into the channel. And there were no vampires involved in the crime.

  But the police hadn’t been looking for vampires. And maybe they had carried out an analysis. If they hadn’t, it was only because they had no doubt what the result would be. A quick slash of a knife across the throat, and the blood glugs over the side of the boat. Only an Other could come up with the idiotic idea of looking for vampires in a tourist attraction!

  “The case just opened up,” I muttered, getting up off my knees. “Dammit...”

  Yes, it was a vicious killing. And the murderer certainly had a black sense of humor. Only, that was no concern of ours. Let the Edinburgh police conduct the investigation.

  So just why had the boy been killed? A pretty stupid question. There are far more reasons for death than there are for life. He was a young guy, passionate and keen, his father was a businessman and a politician. He could have been killed for something that he’d done or for something his
father was involved in or for no reason at all.

  Yes, Gesar and Zabulon had both been caught out. They’d seen danger where it didn’t exist.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said to Jean. “I’ll be going now.”

  “So you are from the Russian police!” Jean exclaimed happily. “Did you spot anything?”

  I smiled suggestively and shook my head.

  Jean sighed.

  “I’ll show you out, Anton.”

  Not far from the Dungeons I found a nice little pub called the Corncrake and Pennant. Three small adjoining rooms, dark walls and ceilings, old lamps, glass mugs for the beer, pictures in frames, knickknacks on the walls. A bar with ten beer pumps and a vast array of bottles—there were at least fifty sorts of whisky. It was everything that the phrase “a Scottish pub” brings to mind, and exactly what the foreign tourist expects when he hears that phrase.

  Remembering what Semyon had said, I ordered haggis and soup of the day. And I took a pint of Guinness from the woman behind the bar, who was large and well-built with muscular arms from constantly working the beer pumps. I walked through to the end room, the smallest, where I found a free table. A group of Japanese were having lunch at the next table over. And there was a plump, elderly man with a mustache who looked like a local drinking beer at another table. He looked rather dejected, like a Muscovite who has accidentally found himself in Red Square. There was music coming from somewhere too. Fortunately it was melodic and not too loud.

  The soup turned out to be simple meat broth with croutons, and the haggis was nothing more than the local answer to liver sausage. But I drank the soup and ate the haggis, along with the fries that came with it, and felt that I had fulfilled my obligations as a tourist.

  I liked the beer best. As I was finishing off the mug, I phoned home and had a chat with Svetlana. I told her I wouldn’t have to stay away for very long, because everything had been resolved very quickly.

  I got myself another pint of beer before calling the head of the Edinburgh Night Watch. I found Foma Lermont’s number in the phone book and dialed.