The Last Watch:

by Sergei Lukyanenko

  He swung the steering wheel sharply as he overtook a Jaguar sports car and shouted through the open window:

  ‘Use your brakes, you stupid ass! And he wants to swear at me!’

  ‘He’s embarrassed in front of his girlfriend,’ I explained, glancing at the Jaguar as it disappeared behind us. ‘Letting some old Volga cut him up like that.’

  ‘A car’s not the right place for showing off to a girl – the bed’s the place for that. The consequences of a mistake there are more upsetting, but less tragic … Ah, I tell you what, if things get tight, call Gesar and ask him to send me to help. We’ll call in to see Kevin, drink some whisky. From his own distillery, by the way!’

  ‘All right,’ I promised. ‘The moment the pressure comes on, I’ll ask for you to come.’

  After the ring road the traffic was calmer. Semyon stepped on the gas (I’ll never believe that he has the standard ZMZ-406 engine under the hood of his hurtling Volga) and fifteen minutes later we were approaching Domodedovo airport.

  ‘Ah, what a wonderful dream I had last night!’ Semyon exclaimed as he drove into the parking lot. ‘I’m driving round Moscow in this battered old van, with one of our people sitting beside me … Then suddenly I see Zabulon standing in the middle of the road, dressed like a hobo for some reason. I step on the gas and try to knock him down! But he just waves his hand and puts up a barrier. We go flying up into the air, and somersault right over Zabulon. And we drive on.’

  ‘So why didn’t you turn back?’ I needled him.

  ‘We were in a hurry to get somewhere.’ Semyon sighed.

  ‘You should drink less, then you wouldn’t be bothered by dreams like that.’

  ‘They don’t bother me at all,’ said Semyon, offended. ‘On the contrary, I enjoyed it. Like a scene out of some parallel reality … Oh, hell!’

  He braked sharply.

  ‘More like its lord and master …’ I said, looking at the head of the Day Watch. Zabulon was standing in the parking bay that Semyon was just about to drive into. He gestured for us to come closer. I said, ‘Maybe that dream was a hint? Will you have a go?’

  But Semyon was not inclined to try any experiments. He drove forward very smoothly. Zabulon stepped aside and waited until we’d halted between a dirty Zhiguli and an old Nissan. Then he opened a door and got into the back seat.

  It was no surprise that the door’s locking device didn’t work.

  ‘Evening, watchmen,’ said the Higher Dark Magician.

  Semyon and I exchanged glances. Then we looked at the back seat again.

  ‘Almost night,’ I said. Semyon might have a thousand times more experience than me, but as the one with the greater Power I would have to do the talking.

  ‘Yes, night,’ Zabulon agreed. ‘Your time. Off to Edinburgh?’

  ‘To London.’

  ‘And then to Edinburgh, to investigate the case of Victor Prokhorov.’

  There was no point in lying. Lying never helps anyway.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘Do you object, Dark One?’

  ‘I’m all in favour,’ Zabulon replied. ‘I’m almost always in favour, strangely enough.’

  He was wearing a suit and a tie, only the tie knot was lowered slightly and the top button of his shirt was unfastened. He looked just like a man who was in business, or who worked for the state. But the mistakes in that assumption started with the word ‘man’.

  ‘Then what do you want?’ I asked.

  ‘I want to wish you a pleasant journey,’ Zabulon replied coolly. ‘And success in investigating the murder.’

  ‘Why are you so interested?’ I asked after an awkward pause.

  ‘Leonid Prokhorov, the father of the deceased, was identified as an Other twenty years ago. A powerful Dark Other. Unfortunately,’ Zabulon said with a sigh, ‘he did not wish to undergo initiation. He remained a human being. But he maintained good relations with us and sometimes helped us in small matters. It’s just not acceptable when your friend’s son is killed by some petty bloodsucker in a raving fit. Find him, Anton, and roast him on a slow fire.’

  Semyon had not been present at my conversation with Gesar. But, to judge from the puzzled way he was scratching his clean-shaven chin, he knew something about Leonid Prokhorov.

  ‘I intend to do that anyway,’ I said cautiously. ‘You have nothing to worry about there, Great Dark One.’

  ‘But what if you need some help?’ Zabulon asked, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. ‘You never know who you might run up against. Take this …’

  An amulet appeared in Zabulon’s hand. It was a figure carved in bone, a snarling wolf. The little figure had a distinct aura of Power.

  ‘This is contact, help, advice. All together.’ Zabulon leaned over the back of the seat and breathed hotly into my ear: ‘Take it … watchman. You’ll say thank you to me.’

  ‘I won’t say that.’

  ‘Take it anyway.’

  I shook my head.

  Zabulon sighed.

  ‘Very well, let us have the foolish theatrical effects … I, Zabulon, do swear by the Dark that in presenting my amulet to Light Magician Anton Gorodetsky I do not entertain any evil intent and do not intend to harm his health, soul or mind, nor do I demand anything in exchange. If Anton Gorodetsky accepts my help, this does not impose any obligations on him, the Power of Light or the Night Watch. In gratitude for his accepting this help, I grant permission for the Night Watch of Moscow to make three interventions using Light Magic up to the third level of Power inclusive. I do not demand and shall not demand any gratitude in response. May the Dark be my witness!’

  A small dark sphere like a miniature black hole appeared, spinning on his palm beside the carved figure. A direct confirmation of his oath by the Primordial Power.

  ‘Even so, I don’t think I would—’ Semyon began.

  At that moment the cellphone in my pocket rang and switched itself into loudspeaker mode. I never used its multitude of various functions: speaker phone, organiser, games, built-in camera, calculator, radio. I only used the built-in music player. But this time the conference-call function came in handy …

  ‘Take it,’ said Gesar. ‘He’s not lying about this. We’ll work out what he is lying about later.’

  The connection broke off.

  Zabulon laughed and carried on holding out the carved figure. I raked it off the Dark Magician’s hand without saying a word and put it in my pocket. I didn’t have to swear any oaths.

  ‘Well then, good luck,’ Zabulon continued. ‘Ah, yes! If it’s not too much trouble, bring me a little magnet from Edinburgh for the refrigerator.’

  ‘What for?’ I asked.

  ‘I collect them,’ Zabulon said, with a smile.

  And then he disappeared, dropped straight down to some deep level of the Twilight. Of course, we didn’t follow him.

  ‘What a show-off,’ I said.

  ‘For the refrigerator,’ Semyon muttered. ‘Yes, I can just imagine what he keeps in his refrigerator … A little magnet … Bring him a little jar of strychnine. Mix it into some of that Scottish haggis and bring that back for him.’

  ‘“Haggis” is a brand of nappies,’ I said. ‘They’re good, we used them for our daughter.’

  ‘Haggis is a kind of food too,’ said Semyon, shaking his head. ‘Although, as far as taste goes, there’s probably not much difference.’

  CHAPTER 2

  IT’S HARD TO get any pleasure out of flying these days. Boeing 737s and Tupolev 154s crashing, Swiss air-traffic controllers getting lost in thought and all sorts of Arab terrorists on the loose don’t exactly put you in the right mood to sit back in your comfortable seat and enjoy yourself. And although the duty-free cognac is cheap, the female flight attendant is attentive, and the food and wine are perfectly good, it’s not easy for a man to relax.

  Fortunately, I am not a man. The probability lines had been checked by Svetlana and Gesar. I can feel out the future for a few hours ahead myself if need be. We w
ould get there with no problems, make a nice soft landing at Heathrow, and I would have time to make the connection for the plane to Edinburgh …

  So I could sit there calmly in my business-class seat (I didn’t believe that this was a sudden fit of generosity from my boss, there simply hadn’t been any other seats available), sip the decent Chilean wine and glance compassionately at the woman trying to look younger than her real age who was sitting across the aisle from me. She was very frightened. Every now and then she crossed herself and whispered a silent prayer.

  Eventually I couldn’t stand it any longer. I reached out to her through the Twilight – and stroked her head gently. Not with my hands, with my mind. With the kind of affection that only human mothers can provide, the affection that instantly removes all anxieties. I touched the hair that had been dyed so often.

  The woman relaxed and a minute later she fell sound asleep.

  The middle-aged man beside me was a lot calmer, and he was also pretty drunk. He briskly opened up the two little bottles of gin that the flight attendant had brought, mixed their contents with tonic in the harsh proportion of one to one, drank the result and then started dozing. He looked like a typical Bohemian – jeans, cotton sweater and a short beard. A writer? A musician? A theatre director? London is a magnet for everyone – from businessmen and politicians to Bohemians and rich playboys …

  I could relax too, look out of the window at the dark expanses of Poland and do a bit of thinking.

  Before Zabulon had shown up everything had seemed fairly simple. The boy Victor had run into a vampire who was either hungry or stupid (or both at the same time). He had been killed. Once the vampire had sated his hunger, he had realised exactly what he had done, and he had gone into hiding. Sooner or later, using the old tried and tested police methods, the Night Watch of Edinburgh would check all the local and visiting bloodsuckers, find out if they had alibis or not, put someone under surveillance and catch the killer. Gesar, suffering from some kind of guilt complex over Victor’s father, who had refused to become a Light Other, had decided to speed up the good work. And at the same time give me a chance to pick up some experience.

  Logical?

  Absolutely. Nothing odd about it.

  Then Zabulon turns up.

  And we are shown our noble Leonid Prokhorov, the might-have-been Light Magician, in a different light! It turns out that he is also a might-have-been Dark Magician! He has helped the Day Watch, and so Zabulon is burning with desire to punish his son’s killer!

  Did such things happen?

  Apparently they did. Apparently the man had decided to play for both teams at once. We Others cannot serve the Light and the Dark at the same time. But for people it’s simpler. That’s the way most of them live anyway.

  Then … then Victor’s killing might not be a coincidence. Zabulon could have found out that Prokhorov was helping us and taken his revenge by killing Prokhorov’s son. But not with his own hands, of course.

  Or the other way round. It was a sad thought, but Gesar could have given the order to eliminate Victor. Not for revenge, of course not! But the Great Magician would always find a morally acceptable form for justifying what he wanted to do.

  But stop! Then why would Gesar send me to Edinburgh? If he was guilty, then he had to understand that I wouldn’t try to conceal his guilt!

  And if Zabulon was guilty, then he had even less reason to help me. For all his dainty manners, I would be only too glad to get rid of him!

  So it wasn’t the Great Ones …

  I took a little sip of wine and set down the glass.

  The Great Ones weren’t responsible, but they suspected each other. And they were both relying on me. Gesar knew I wouldn’t pass up any opportunity to do Zabulon a bad turn. And Zabulon understood that I could even go against Gesar.

  Excellent – I couldn’t have asked to be dealt a better hand. A Great Light One and a Great Dark One, both significant figures in the worldwide struggle between the Light and the Dark, and both on my side. I could get help from them. And Foma Lermont, the Scot with a surname that echoed so sweetly in the Russian heart – he would help me too. And that meant the vampire had nowhere left to hide.

  And that made me feel good. Evil goes unpunished far too often.

  I got up and squeezed cautiously past the man next to me into the aisle. I looked up at the sign. The toilet at the front of the plane was occupied. Of course, the easiest thing would have been to wait, but I felt like stretching my legs. I moved aside the curtain separating business class from economy and walked towards the tail of the plane.

  As that well-known ironic phrase puts it, ‘economy-class passengers get there at the same time as first-class passengers, only for a lot less money’. Well, there wasn’t actually any first class on our plane, but the business class wasn’t bad at all – fine wide seats, lots of space between the rows. And then again, the flight attendants were more helpful, the food was better, the drink was more abundant.

  Not that the economy-class passengers were having it tough, either. Some were sleeping or dozing lightly, many of them were reading newspapers, novels or guidebooks. A few people were working on their laptop computers and others were playing games. One highly original individual was piloting a plane. As far as I could see it was a fairly realistic flight-simulator, and the player was actually flying a Boeing 767 from Moscow to London. Maybe that was his own cranky way of fighting his fear of flying?

  And, of course, lots of passengers were drinking. No matter how often we’re told that alcohol is particularly harmful when flying at altitude, some people are always keen to give their flight above the clouds a little extra lift.

  I walked all the way back to the tail. The toilets there were occupied too, and while I stood and waited for a few minutes I examined the backs of the passengers’ heads. Bouffant hairstyles, girlish braids, short crew cuts, gleaming bald patches, amusing kids’ punk cuts. Hundreds of heads thinking about their business in London …

  The door of the toilet opened and a young guy slipped out and squeezed past me. I stepped towards the toilet.

  Then I stopped.

  And turned round.

  The guy was about twenty years old. Broad in the shoulders, a little bit taller than me. Some young men start to grow rapidly and broaden out after the age of eighteen. This used to be attributed to the beneficial influence of the army, which ‘made men out of boys’. But in reality, it’s simply a matter of the way the hormones work in any particular organism.

  Common or garden physiology.

  ‘Egor?’ I said uncertainly.

  Then I took a hasty glimpse through the Twilight.

  Yes, of course. Even if he’d been wearing an iron mask I would still have recognised him. Egor, Zabulon’s decoy, who was intercepted and cunningly exploited by Gesar. Once he had been a unique boy with an indeterminate aura.1

  Now he had grown into a young man. With that same indeterminate aura. A luminous glow that was usually colourless but was sometimes tinted red, or blue, or green, or yellow. Like the sand on the fourth level of the Twilight … look closer and you’ll see all the colours in the world. A potential Other, still capable, even as an adult, of becoming either kind. Light or Dark.

  I hadn’t seen him for six years!

  What a coincidence!

  ‘Anton?’ He was as bewildered as I was.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

  ‘Flying,’ he replied stupidly.

  But I was up to the challenge, and I asked an even more idiotic question.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘London,’ said Egor.

  Then suddenly, as if he had just realised how funny our conversation was, he laughed. As nonchalantly and light-heartedly as if he held no grudges against the Night Watch, Gesar, me and all the Others in the world …

  A second later we were slapping each other on the shoulder and muttering nonsense like ‘Well, would you believe it…’, ‘I was thinking just recently …’, ‘Wh
at a surprise!’ Pretty much the standard response for two guys who have been through something pretty important and rather unpleasant together, quarrelled with each other and then, after years have passed and life has changed, discovered that their memories of those times are basically pretty interesting.

  But, at the same time, two guys who don’t feel warmly enough about each other to embrace and shed an emotional tear at their meeting.

  The passengers nearby looked round at us, but with obvious goodwill. A chance meeting of old friends in such an unexpected place as a plane always arouses sympathy in everyone who witnesses it.

  ‘Is there some special reason why you’re here?’ Egor asked anyway, with a note of his old suspicion.

  ‘Did you fall out of your tree?’ I said indignantly. ‘I’m on an assignment!’

  ‘Really?’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Are you still working in the same place?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Nobody was taking any notice of us any more. And we were left hovering uncertainly, not knowing what to talk about next.

  ‘I see you still haven’t been initiated,’ I said awkwardly

  Egor went tense for a moment, but he answered with a smile:

  ‘Ah, damn the lot of you! Why would I bother with that … you know yourself that I’m barely even seventh level. That’s pointless, whichever way I go, Light or Dark. So I just sent both sides to hell.’

  I felt a sudden tightness in my chest.

  Coincidences like this definitely didn’t happen!

  ‘Where are you flying to?’ I repeated, making Egor burst into laughter again. He was probably regarded as the life and soul of any party – he laughed so easily and infectiously. ‘No, I know you’re going to London, but what for? To study? A holiday?’

  ‘A summer holiday in London?’ Egor snorted. ‘Why not in Moscow? One stone jungle is the same as any other … I’m going to the festival.’

  ‘In Edinburgh?’ I asked, knowing what the answer would be.

  ‘Yes, I graduated from the circus college.’