“What about the rain?” I heard Svetlana’s voice ask from the place where she would have been sitting.
There wasn’t any fiery rain either. It took me a moment to realize what that meant.
The Two-in-One wasn’t attacking us with magic in its pure form. Maybe he wasn’t sure that magic would work, or maybe there was some other reason. The rain of of fire falling on us was actual fiery rain—a suspension of gasoline or some other combustible substance that had been ignited in the air above our heads.
And he had destroyed our refuge in the same convoluted way, hadn’t he—by transporting a demolition crane into a tiny enclosed courtyard.
What did that mean?
In the school he had fought us with magic and he was winning. You could say that he actually won. Only the vampiress had scared him off with a straightforward physical attack.
Maybe that was why he had changed his tactics?
Or had he decided that now, when the three of us were together, he might not have the advantage in a battle of magic?
But the most important question was: Where was the Two-in-One? He wasn’t on any of the six levels of the Twilight.
But of course.
He was on the seventh level. In our world.
I canceled my Twilight vision and found myself back in the car. A frightened little boy was sitting in the seat on my right. A terrified little girl was sitting in the seat on my left.
“Stop the car, I’ll get out and take the children,” the young mother said quickly. “Take the car, take everything. Give me—”
“Don’t you see what’s happening?” I asked.
Strangely enough, she stopped talking and looked around.
The Renault—I’d finally figured out the car’s make—was driving through fiery rain. From above we were protected by the shield, but as we moved along, the fire drifted against the windshield. Svetlana had even switched on the wipers, and they were sweeping off the drops of burning gas. In combination with the powdery snow, which glinted in the sunshine, this produced an enchanting, fairy-tale effect.
We overtook the tram that had rumbled past us earlier. Svetlana honked the horn to attract the driver’s attention and, once she had passed the tram, she turned sharp right directly in front of it.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I shouted as we darted past right under the nose of the lumbering heap of metal.
“Taking evasive action!” Svetlana replied.
“Can you see any pursuers?”
“No!”
The boy beside me suddenly broke into merry laughter. There’s just no understanding children—they start bawling or laughing at the strangest of times.
“I’ll have to customize your car a little bit,” I told the woman. “Did you deliberately buy the model without a sunroof?”
“It’s cheaper,” the woman muttered. Her eyes were completely wild.
“We’ll fix that right now,” I said.
I raised my hand and pictured an invisible blade growing out of my fingers. Just a little bit of pure Power . . .
Then I traced out a circle above my head.
The woman started howling when I punched out a section of the roof with a single blow. The young boy cheered, “Hooray!”
I pulled myself up and stuck my head out through the hole, raising the Shield above me. The wind lashed at my face with all its might, but it was often worse on the second level of the Twilight.
We were driving along a different street, but there was still almost nobody around. Even though the weather was nice—for St. Petersburg. Even though we were almost in the center of the city. I thought I saw some people hurrying away from us in a small side street that we passed. The few cars that we encountered hurtled past us, gathering speed, and turned off at the first opportunity.
“They’re somewhere nearby,” I said. “They’re keeping this lousy gas drizzle falling on us, and frightening the people away.”
“Well at least they’re doing that,” Svetlana replied. “Forgive us in the name of all that’s holy,” she said to the woman, “but they’re trying to kill us and we’re hiding. There’s no way we can stop right now and let you out. You can see what’s going on.”
“Yes,” the woman replied. “Some kind of mystical nonsense . . . No, I don’t want to know anything, I don’t want to hear it. I’ve got children! Just let us out!”
“As soon as possible,” said Svetlana.
“Fine, as soon as possible,” the woman agreed meekly.
As I listened to this surreal dialogue I gazed around. The Two-in-One was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t chasing after the car, he wasn’t running along the pavement beside it.
“Dad, check the roofs,” my daughter suddenly said.
It wasn’t the most beautiful or touristy area of St. Petersburg, but the buildings weren’t new either. They were old, dating back at least to the early twentieth century. They were all of different heights, with a variety of weird and whimsical roofs—some were almost flat, some were steep, mansard roofs with dormer windows, and some had little towers and ornamental gables.
“No,” I said. “They’re not chasing us.”
“That’s not possible!” Svetlana exclaimed, making another sharp turn into a narrow side street. “They’re here, they must be here!”
I agreed with that completely. The Two-in-One was somewhere close by. But he wasn’t chasing us.
Was he moving ahead of us, luring us on somewhere?
Was he influencing Svetlana, making her follow the right direction?
That was possible too.
Anything was possible, but if you discarded the improbable, the answer was obvious.
I dived back into the car and rubbed my finger over the leather surface under one of the child seats with my finger. I smiled at the boy, who was following my actions closely.
And then I flung out my arms—the doors flew open and my little neighbors went flying out of the car, together with their seats.
The side street we were driving along really was very, very narrow and both seats slammed into the walls of the buildings.
“Dad!” Nadya yelled in horror.
Svetlana braked sharply and stared blankly at me.
I looked at the woman. She was frowning and rubbing her forehead with two fingers. It didn’t look at all like the behavior of a mother whose two children have just been thrown out of a moving car.
“The car’s not new, and neither are the child seats,” I said. “But there aren’t any marks from the seats on the leather; they’ve only just been put in. Step on it!”
Svetlana shook her head, looking in horror from me to the scene behind us and back. I looked back too—the seats were lying in the snow and a red patch was spreading out beside one of them.
“Anton . . . Anton, I think you made a mistake,” Svetlana said in a quiet voice.
“No I didn’t,” I said stubbornly. “Are those your children?” I asked the woman.
The woman’s chin dropped and she slumped onto the dashboard.
“She’s passed out!” Svetlana exclaimed.
“It’s the shock of the control being broken off!” I replied. “She’s a puppet! They were controlling her!”
“Who?” Svetlana shouted.
“Those . . . children!” I said with a nod toward the car seats in the road. “It’s them, the Two-in-One!”
Svetlana killed the engine.
“I can’t leave it like this! I’ve got to check!”
“The fiery rain has stopped,” Nadya said pensively.
“The gas could just have run out,” said Svetlana, getting out of the car. “I’ll check . . .”
“Stop!” I shouted, jumping out after her and grabbing her hand.
We stood beside the car that blocked off the entire side street. On either side of the road lay two child seats, with a motionless little arm protruding from one of them.
“You killed those children,” Svetlana said in a low voice. “You . . .”
>
I raised my hand and a wave of Power surged down the street. Crude, untargeted energy. The very simplest spell, the Press.
And the most important thing was that it could only be stopped by the same simple method. By a discharge of pure Power.
Svetlana looked at me, biting on her lip. I could tell that she didn’t believe me. That she desperately wanted to stop the Press and go dashing to those child seats, to see how the children were, to try to help them . . .
She didn’t believe me.
But she waited.
The Press crept along the side street in a hazy, murky tidal wave—it’s quite a sluggish spell, not too spectacular. The snow it had passed over was left shiny and glittering, polished to mirror smoothness. Flattened beer cans lay here and there, looking like line drawings. After a slight crunch, the two-dimensional projection of a trash can appeared on the surface of the pavement, pressed down into the asphalt.
I thought in an abstract kind of way that if I really had made a mistake, in a moment the street would look like a horror movie. And this was my last chance to stop the Press.
But I realized that I wasn’t going to stop it.
And at the very second when the Press was about to grind down the seats and the children’s bodies, a vague form suddenly shot up in front of the wave of Power, changing its shape and dimensions as it rose. There was a sudden, opposing impulse of Power—and my spell disappeared.
And so did the seats with the children in them. Standing in their place were the Light Magician Denis and the Dark Magician Alexei.
Or would it be more correct to say their shells?
“How did you guess?” Denis asked. His voice was the same as it always used to be. He used to say “Hello Anton” to me in exactly the same tone at the office. He was a polite young man, but he preferred to address everyone by their first name.
“From a whole set of things!” I shouted.
I could see my breath in the cold, puffs of vapor Nothing came out of Denis’s mouth.
“Denis, if you can hear me,” I said. “If you’re still alive somewhere inside there . . . try to resist! It’s the Twilight. It’s another of its manifestations. You can fight it . . .”
Denis laughed.
“Gorodetsky, you’re acting as if an evil magician had deprived me of my will. That’s not the way it is at all, Gorodetsky. I let him in myself.”
He turned to Alexei, who stepped off the pavement into the road. The two magicians took each other by the hand.
“Now we are united in a single whole!” Alexei added.
It was clear enough. The usual verbal diarrhea of someone possessed: “I let this in myself!” “Now I’m stronger and wiser, and I don’t sweat!” “When I allowed the Dark One to think for me, the world became simple and clear!”
“I’m so glad, Anton,” said Svetlana, taking me by the hand. “I’m so glad that you were right!”
Now there was a ludicrous kind of parallel between the Two-in-One and the two of us, with both pairs holding hands.
Except that our daughter was standing behind us, and she promptly repeated Denis’s question.
“But, Dad, how did you really guess?”
“It’s all very simple, little daughter. They didn’t look at their Mum even once. A genuine magician may be fascinating for a child, but Mum’s even more important than that.”
Nadya laughed.
We stood there looking at each other, waiting to see who would make the first move. Making the first move isn’t always a winning strategy.
“Do we have any grounds for compromise?” Svetlana suddenly asked. “Any possibility of negotiations? After all, there was a time, Two-in-One, when you used to deal with Others without dashing straight into combat.”
Denis and Alexei shook their heads simultaneously.
“Compromises are made with the strong,” Denis replied.
“And that’s not you,” Alexei added.
“But you’re dragging things out,” I said. “Maybe we’re not so very weak after all. Maybe we’ll lose, but what if we manage to kill one of you in the process? How would you like being the One-in-One?”
Alexei opened his mouth as if he was about to say something . . . But he didn’t. He and Denis swung around in a strange way—their entwined arms swiveled unnaturally at the shoulder—and the former Light One and Dark One walked away along the narrow street.
“Looks like I gave them something to think about,” I said. “Or him. Which is right? Christ, I had no idea I was so eloquent.”
I turned around.
The Tiger was standing beside Nadya, holding a paper cup of coffee and sipping it through a straw.
“Hello, Anton,” he said. “Hello, Svetlana. Yes, I probably put them off. Sorry if I interfered, today really is a splendid day to die.”
CHAPTER 2
THE COFFEE BAR WAS SMALL AND HOT, THE TINY LITTLE tables were packed close together, and the lamps on them had plush red shades. As well as coffee the place served cognac and whisky, canapés, and tiny little cakes. It was a pretty niche venue, a place where you could sit for a while with a good coffee and eat something strictly symbolic.
And the coffee here really was good; there were varieties from at least a dozen different places—Nicaragua, Brazil, Kenya, Cuba, Costa Rica . . .
“Do you like this place?” I asked the Tiger.
He nodded and took a drag on his cigarette.
“Yes.”
“I feel guilty,” I said. “Didn’t you pick up that terrible habit from me?”
“Yes, I did,” the Tiger agreed. “And the coffee too.”
I wrinkled up my brow, remembering.
“I wasn’t drinking coffee then.”
“Not right then. But you were thinking how much you would like a cup of coffee . . .”
“Dealing with you gods is hard work,” I said with a forced laugh. I looked at my daughter, who seemed to be the calmest of all of us. She looked completely at home in this coffee shop, where the crowd mostly consisted of young people between fifteen and thirty. I noticed that almost no one here was drinking alcohol, only coffee. It was strange, the way one generation differed from another. The old ways disappeared, and the old myths went with them . . . Not many people outside our country knew that modern-day Russia no longer guzzled vodka at the slightest possible excuse. There was no one smoking in the coffee bar either—except the Tiger of course.
“Like one?” the Tiger asked.
“It’s against the law here to smoke in public buildings,” I replied gloomily. “We’re civilized people and this is the twenty-first century.”
“Here,” said the Tiger, handing me the pack. “No one will notice that you’re smoking. And the smoke won’t harm anyone. Not even you. And they’ll be the most delicious cigarettes you’ve ever smoked.”
“You should work in the tobacco business,” I murmured, taking the pack. I’d never seen one like it before—the cigarettes were called Twilight. The nicotine content was shown as zero and the tar content was -0.6.
“They clean out your lungs as you smoke them,” said the Tiger. “A good marketing idea?”
“I think you’ve become dangerously humanized,” I remarked as I opened the pack. “And I don’t mean the coffee and the cigarettes, I mean your sense of humor.”
“That’s your fault too,” the Tiger told me.
“How come? I’m not funny at all, except maybe when I fall facedown in the salad.”
“Yes, you’re as serious as a tombstone,” the Tiger admitted. “You reduced that situation to a stalemate. I couldn’t kill the boy-Prophet. But there was still a risk that the prophecy would be proclaimed. So I was obliged to remain here, among people, indefinitely, until Innokentii Tolkov dies, and preferably until you, your wife, and your daughter die too.”
“Well thanks for being so candid,” Svetlana sighed.
“I abandoned the idea of accelerating the process,” the Tiger said resentfully. “I had to wait for the natural
course of events. But that meant I had to stay here. Indefinitely.”
“And you started living a human life,” I said, taking out a cigarette and sniffing it. It smelled of tobacco. A pleasant smell, to the nostrils of a smoker. No, I wasn’t going to break the law by smoking in a coffee shop! I regretfully jammed the cigarette back into the pack. “Let me guess . . . you have an apartment?”
“Not just one, I have homes in several different cities,” the Tiger replied. “You should see my bungalow in the Dominican Republic!”
“And you probably have a girlfriend too?” I said. “And maybe not just one?”
The Tiger smiled modestly.
“The mind boggles,” I said. “And then the children will be born with superpowers.”
“No, no,” the Tiger replied hastily. “That’s a very serious step, I’m not ready for that yet.”
“So were you incarnated in a human being then?” I asked, lowering my voice for some reason.
“I don’t understand,” the Tiger said with a frown.
“He means the Twilight,” said Nadya. “Right, Dad?”
I nodded.
“I am not the Twilight,” the Tiger said with a sigh of annoyance. “The Twilight doesn’t have . . .” He pondered for a moment. “A personality? A mind in the human sense? An incarnation? Essentially, I’m a certain part of it. A functional organism. Or mechanism. I exist in my own right.”
“That’s what you’ve become,” I remarked. “You’ve been corrupted by human life. With all its little joys.”
The Tiger nodded.
“Well, good. I’ve got nothing at all against that. You don’t go around killing poor Prophets left and right—and that’s just great! So tell me, who is the Two-in-One?”
“I don’t have any more information than you do,” said the Tiger, slightly offended. “Another part of the Twilight.”
“That is, part of you?” Sveta asked.
“Of the Twilight!” the Tiger replied insistently. “Does your left hand know what your right hand is doing?”
“My head does,” Svetlana told him.
“Unfortunately, I’m not the head,” said the Tiger, taking a sip of coffee. “I had a mission. I came to this world to carry it out . . .”
Sixth Watch Page 28
