Last Watch

by Sergei Lukyanenko

  And I closed the door behind me.

  Evening arrived, and I hadn’t slept the night before, which had been divided between airports and airplanes. I ordered another coffee from the bar, glancing regretfully at the beer pumps: One pint would be enough to make me completely dozy now. I phoned Gesar and gave him a summary of what I’d found out during the day.

  “Look for a vampire in Victor’s circle of Moscow acquaintances,” Gesar mused thoughtfully. “Thank you, Anton, all his Moscow contacts have been checked already... All right, we’ll look a little bit harder. We’ll start digging as far back as kindergarten. What are you going to do now?”

  “Go and catch up on my sleep,” I said.

  “Any provisional conclusions?”

  “There’s something going on here, Gesar. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something big.”

  “Do you need any help?”

  I was about to say no, but then I remembered Semyon.

  “Boris Ignatievich, if Semyon isn’t too busy...”

  “Is he missing Scotland?” Gesar chuckled. “All right, I’ll send him over. If he gets a move on, you’ll meet in the morning. Get some rest.”

  I didn’t tell Gesar anything about Egor. I put my cell phone away with a quick glance at the charge indicator. Well, well—the battery was still almost full. In Moscow my phone went flat in a single day, even though I didn’t talk very much. But abroad, it worked quite happily for a week. Were the towers here planted closer together or something?

  Now for another part of the job. An unpleasant part.

  I took out the carving of the wolf and set it on the table.

  Contact, help, advice?

  I grasped the figure with both hands and closed my eyes. Perhaps that wasn’t how it worked?

  “Zabulon!”

  Was that someone’s gaze I seemed to sense?

  As far as I recalled, Zabulon never responded immediately. Not even when his lover called.

  “Zabulon!”

  “Why are you shouting like that, Gorodetsky?”

  I opened my eyes. There was no one there, of course.

  “I need some advice, Dark One.”

  “Ask.”

  It was a good thing that almost no emotion at all is transmitted in this kind of conversation. Zabulon was probably chuckling to himself. A Light One coming to him for help!

  “Zabulon, when the Mirror Magician came to you, did you summon him?”

  That obviously wasn’t the question he’d been expecting.

  “The Mirror? Vitaly Rogoza?”

  “Yes.”

  A pause. No, he knew the answer all right; he was deciding whether to tell the truth or to lie.

  “A Mirror cannot be summoned, Light One. They are children of the Twilight.”

  “Then what has to happen for a Mirror Magician to appear?”

  “One Power has to acquire a significant advantage over the other. And it has to be a sudden imbalance, acquired too quickly. The Mirror came because Gesar was raising Svetlana’s level too rapidly, he brought Olga back into play, and... and he rewrote your future daughter’s destiny to make her the Greatest of the Great.”

  “Is it possible to foresee who will be the next Mirror Magician?”

  “It is. He is an Other whose own fundamental Power is minimal. He must have no love for the Light or for the Dark. Or, on the contrary, he must love the Light and the Dark. A human being, and an Other, who stands at the fork in the road and makes no distinction between Light and Dark. There are individuals like that, but they are rare. In Moscow there are two of them: Victor’s father and... your little friend Egor. But then, he’s already grown up now, isn’t he?”

  “Why did Rogoza come from Ukraine?”

  “Because we’re not the ones who decide who’s going to be a Mirror. I was rather hoping that he would show up, but nobody ever knows anything in advance. A Mirror Magician might come or he might not. He can appear straightaway or he can take days, even months, to reach the place where the equilibrium has been disrupted. Have I satisfied your curiosity?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I expect a courtesy in return. Who killed Victor? And what have Mirror Magicians got to do with it?”

  “You won’t like this information, Zabulon. I think that Victor was killed in order to discredit the Scottish Night Watch. They own the tourist attraction. And as for the Mirror... I’m afraid that the situation here might be destabilized. So badly that a Mirror Magician will turn up. Are there any candidates for the role in Edinburgh?”

  He believed me. At least, I thought he believed me. He answered thoughtfully, “I don’t know. I’ve never tried to find out.”

  “Then that’s all for the time being. If you do find out, please let me know, if you would be so kind.”

  Without bothering to wait for his mocking chuckle, I opened my hand and cut off the contact. The figurine was gleaming with sweat, which made it seem almost alive.

  That was it, time to go back to the hotel. To that cozy deluxe apartment for Light Ones, that kingdom of white and pink and beige, those lace curtains and silk sheets.

  My phone jangled.

  “Hello?” As I pressed the phone to my ear, I caught the waiter’s eye and ran one finger across my open palm, as if I was writing out a bill. The waiter gave a labored smile, glanced at the solitary cup standing in front of me, and scribbled £2 on a piece of paper.

  “Anthony, my friend,” Lermont said in English. His use of “Anthony” told me immediately that there was someone nearby who was not supposed to know I was Russian. “How was my employee feeling when you left the Dungeons?”

  “Just fine.”

  “He’s been killed, Anthony. Do you think you could come over?”

  I hissed something unprintable and scooped the small change out of my pocket, trying to remember how to get where I was going. Right... the castle was there, the ravine and bridge were there... “If I can catch a taxi straightaway, I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “Make it quick,” Lermont told me.

  I found an available taxi immediately; fortunately I didn’t need to resort to magic in order to get someone out of a cab that was already occupied. Edinburgh was remarkably good for taxis in general. I got in, took out a cigarette, and lit it. The driver looked at me rather disapprovingly but didn’t say anything. I cranked the window all the way down. Of course, his next passengers would be nonsmokers... .

  But I felt like smoking.

  Idiot. What an idiot I was! I’d felt alarmed for Egor, concerned for Valeria... But I hadn’t bothered to use my head for what it was really meant for. My visit to the Dungeons had been observed. And now poor Jean, the nervous French student, would never go back home to Nantes... .

  It was my fault.

  But what about Lermont—closing the place down and only leaving one man on duty to watch it! Not an Other, not a Battle Magician who could fight vampires on equal terms, but a frightened kid in makeup and a costume.

  I imagined the young redheaded guy with his face pale from loss of blood instead of makeup, lying there surrounded by those appalling instruments of torture. “It’s a bit creepy here on your own.” And I started swearing wildly under my breath.

  “I’m an asshole, a fool...”

  Lermont was waiting for me at the entrance to the Dungeons. He looked dark-faced and angry, the way only a Light One can be angry.

  “Let’s go,” he said, and tramped off without even looking to see if I was behind him. We walked quickly through a string of empty rooms and came out at the River of Blood. This place again?

  But Foma got into the boat without saying a word. I followed him in. He waved his hand, the mechanism creaked, and the boat moved forward.

  “Haven’t you called the police yet
?” I asked.

  “Not yet. Only our own people... and observers from the Dark Ones.”

  “Where are they?”

  “I asked them to wait a few rooms away. I said I wanted to bring in an independent expert to examine the body. An ordinary human being. No point in anyone knowing about you at this stage... .”

  The boat crept across the small dark space and docked at the other mooring.

  “There,” Foma said morosely.

  I clambered out of the boat and followed Foma into the next room, which contained an exhibition of methods of execution. There was a dummy hanging in a noose from the ceiling, and over there on the guillotine—it wasn’t a dummy on the guillotine. The killer had demonstrated his sense of humor once again.

  To cut a man’s head off with the sham blade of the fake guillotine must have taken superhuman strength—the kind of strength that a vampire has, for instance.

  The white plastic bucket under the guillotine was half full of blood. The severed head was lying beside it. I squatted and picked the head up cautiously. It wasn’t who I was expecting. I felt like screaming at the helpless awareness of my own stupidity.

  “I wish I knew what bastard did this,” said Foma. “That man worked for me for seventeen years.”

  “The bastard was a young redheaded guy,” I said. “He pretended to be French and spoke with a slight accent. He looked twenty years old. And he had a liking for theatrical effects. Very quick-witted, a remarkable actor.”

  Carefully laying the severed head back down on the floor, I looked at Lermont’s dumbfounded face and explained.

  “He made a total fool of me. I was talking to the killer only two steps away from the body. And I didn’t suspect a thing. Not a thing!”

  The head of the murdered guard—black-haired, but with a sprinkling of gray quite appropriate for a man over fifty—stared blindly up at me from the floor.

  “You can only mask your true nature from someone who’s very weak,” said Lermont, drilling into me with his mistrustful eyes. “That’s axiomatic. Try to define my aura.”

  A strange conversation over a dead man whose head had been severed. A strange place, a strange crime, strange ideas...

  Lermont’s aura—a blaze of bright yellow-green discharges, a prickly hedgehog of Power, dimmed. The pointed discharges were drawn in and faded. A few seconds later Lermont was surrounded by the smooth, multilayered aura typical of a human being.

  A ragged, open aura is a sure sign of an Other. It can have sharp needles and prickles, swirling vortices, gaping holes. All these are indications of an open energy pattern and the ability to absorb energy, not just give it out the way human beings do. To absorb, process, and perform miracles.

  A human aura is smooth, multilayered, integrated. People only give out Power, they don’t absorb it. And the smooth membrane of their aura is an attempt to protect themselves, to halt the slow, implacable draining away of life.

  Yes, now Lermont looked like a human being.

  Almost like a human being...

  I looked a bit more carefully and saw the pale needles of his aura. Foma had disguised himself very well, but I had broken through his defense.

  “I see it,” I said, “but I didn’t look at that young guy so carefully. He could have masked himself.”

  “In that case, your redheaded companion is a Higher Vampire. Or a Higher Magician pretending to be a vampire.” Foma nodded in satisfaction. “And he would not be able to put on a mask while disguising his aura at the same time. This is good, Anton, this is really good. We know his physical appearance: young, red-haired—there aren’t all that many Higher Others in the world.”

  “He must have gotten the cloak from somewhere around here,” I said. “And the false fangs. He heard me coming and instead of running away, he calmly came out to meet me... and invented a cover story on the spot.”

  “I think I can guess why he needed the cloak,” Foma said gloomily, glancing at the blood-spattered floor. “He must have gotten blood on himself... . Send me his image, Anton.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to remember the Frenchman as clearly as possible. Then I sent the mental picture to Lermont.

  “Aha,” said the Scot. “Excellent. I’ll check all our files.”

  “Perhaps we ought to inform the Inquisition?” I asked.

  Lermont shook his head. “No, not yet. The events have not exceeded the limits of a crime committed by a solitary Dark One. The Day Watch of Edinburgh has not lodged any protests. We’ll manage without the Inquisition, Anton. For as long as we can.”

  I didn’t argue. There’s not much fun in calling the Inquisition in to help.

  “Is my help still required here?”

  “No—go and get some sleep,” said Lermont. “We won’t inform the police; this is purely our business. My lads will try to find some clues, and I’ll start checking the Higher Others.”

  He grunted as he bent down over the severed head, as if he was hoping to spot some kind of clue carelessly left by the criminal. Lermont could do to lose that belly, I thought as I watched his exertions.

  “Foma,” I asked in a quiet voice. “What is there in here, in the Dungeons of Scotland?”

  “Eh?” he asked without even turning around.

  “What are the Dark Ones looking for here?”

  “It’s a tourist attraction, Mr. Gorodetsky,” Foma said coolly. “Just that, and nothing more.”

  “Well, all right,” I said, and left.

  The killer had not needed to come back. If he had left any clues, they would already have been found—both the ordinary ones and the magic ones.

  But he had come back and killed again. In order to anger the Night Watch even more? Nonsense. In order to put pressure on Lermont? Total nonsense.

  So there was something he hadn’t managed to do the first time around. And so he had to come back again.

  What could Lermont be hiding? This place wasn’t as straightforward as it seemed. I knew that much. For example, the blue moss didn’t grow here. That was already a significant anomaly. The structure of the Twilight is heterogeneous. For instance, in some places it is harder to enter than in others. I had even heard about zones where it is quite impossible to enter the Twilight. But the blue moss was a universal parasite... .

  I walked about a hundred meters away from the place and looked through the Twilight.

  Aha!

  Where I was standing, the moss was flourishing. There were thick garlands of it outside the pubs and cafés. It was thicker on the houses where people lived and thinner on the offices and shops. And there was more moss on the crossroads, where drivers get nervous.

  All perfectly normal.

  But when I looked toward the bridge, the closer to the entrance to the Dungeons, the more blue moss there was! It was drawn in that direction... . And no wonder! The moss got thicker and thicker and then suddenly, ten meters from the doors, it started to dry up, as if it had hit some invisible boundary line.

  Strange. If there was some environmental factor that was harmful to the moss, it ought to have made it fade out gradually. This had to be something else... .

  I reached out one hand to the closest colony of moss—a luxuriant blue clump on the asphalt. I said, “Burn!”

  The Power flowed through me, only I held back the pressure. The moss didn’t burn up immediately. It swelled up and started growing, trying to process this free dose of energy. But the Power increased, and the moss couldn’t cope. It started turning gray and drying up... and finally burst into flames.

  Now I could see it. When you know exactly what to look for, everything becomes extremely clear.

  The Power scattered through space, the vital energy given out by human beings, drained into the Twilight unevenly. Yes, it constantly seeped through the fabric of the universe,
down to the first level, the second, the third... but somewhere in the region of the Dungeons there was a gaping hole—and there was a constant stream of Power gushing down into it. As if someone had cut a hole in a piece of cloth through which water normally filtered slowly...

  Too much food for a brainless parasite. The moss crept toward the tourist attraction, attracted by both the stream of Power and the emotions of the frightened customers. It crept up close—and then dried up.

  I thought I could understand why Foma Lermont had chosen this precise spot to open his attraction. All this energy flowing into one place had to be concealed from rank-and-file Others. The excessive free Power here could be attributed to tipsy tourists, frightened children, the endless carnival that was Edinburgh... .

  I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Foma had put a lot of effort into popularizing Edinburgh for just one reason: to conceal this spot.

  Even Light Ones sometimes have dark secrets. It can’t be helped.

  I walked slowly uphill along one of the streets leading to the Royal Mile. It wasn’t a very touristy kind of street. Dark, with the only light coming from windows. All the shops on it were closed. But I expected it to lead straight to my hotel. I was feeling desperately sleepy. Maybe I ought to take a taxi after all? But it was only a ten-minute walk... .

  I turned on to a narrow street between the houses and found myself standing in something between a small square and a large courtyard. I walked over to a small monument, only one meter high, in the roadway. There was a bronze parrot sitting on a stone chalice with a thin stream of water flowing from it. It was either an undersized street fountain or an oversized drinking fountain. Using my cigarette lighter to examine the plaque below the parrot, I learned that this fountain had been erected by the inhabitants of the city in memory of a beloved parrot who had died of pneumonia at a very advanced age.

  Then suddenly something clicked behind me and I felt a powerful jolt in my shoulder. So powerful that I had to take several steps forward to avoid falling facedown in the chalice of water.

  Something hot trickled down my back.

  What the hell?