The Day Watch (36 page)

“Good luck,” said Alita, heading for the door. “I’ll call around tomorrow, okay, Vitaly?”

“No,” I said gloomily. “You won’t.”

I knew for certain that I was right. But as yet I didn’t understand why.

Alita shrugged and walked away. Anna Tikhonovna slipped out after her. Hmm… maybe the old hag had sent the girl after all? But then she’d decided to do her own thing and not tried to get anything out of me. If I was right, I had to feel sorry for Alita. Anna Tikhonovna would extract her very soul, squeeze it out and hang it up to dry.

She’d regret she’d ever been born.

I reached for my cell phone and dialed Shagron’s number, too fast even to be surprised that I knew it.

“Shagron? This is your guest from the South. Can you give me a lift? Uh-huh, I’m on my way.”

“Okay, I’ll get going too,” said Edgar. “Don’t drag it out. The Inquisition gets very touchy when someone’s late.”

I put my coat on, locked my door, and went down in the elevator. The vampires on watch looked at me a lot more calmly this time-either their immediate superiors had had a heart-to-heart talk with them, or they’d realized the truth for themselves. But then, what was the truth? It refused to reveal itself even to me. There were only sudden, brief glimpses of one piece of the mosaic when the curtain was raised for an instant and then descended again, and that impenetrable, misty shroud obscured my sight.

Shagron’s BMW was snorting out exhaust fumes about twenty meters away, right under the No Stopping sign. I got in on Shagron’s right.

“Good morning.”

“I hope it’s a good one,” Shagron barked. “Shall we go?”

“Yes, if we’re not waiting for anyone else, let’s go.”

Shagron slid into the dense stream of traffic without saying another word.

Driving around snow-covered Moscow in rush hour is a really special experience. Occasionally Shagron pacified the over-keen nearby drivers through the Twilight. Otherwise they would have been cutting in front of us, forcing us over into the next lane, and then squeezing us out of the gaps that suddenly opened up. I put my safety belt on just in case. Shagron muttered something with his teeth clenched. He was probably swearing.

After my sleepless night I had an almost irresistible yearning for a blissful doze, especially since the seats in this quality German automobile encouraged just that. If I’d tried listening to music, I’d have been sure to be lulled into sleep. But I didn’t feel like listening to music just then, so I stayed in this world filled with the roar of dozens of engines, the quiet hum of the air-conditioner, the shrill honking of car horns, and the swish of dirty gray slush under our mudguards.

If we’d gone by metro, we would have got there a lot sooner. But as it was, half an hour later we were still crawling along jam-packed Ostozhenka Street toward Vernadsky Prospect. The traffic jam was getting bigger, sprouting a tail that reached back toward the center of Moscow.

“Hell’s bells,” Shagron hissed angrily. “We could get stuck in this.”

“Let’s open a portal,” I said with a shrug.

Shagron gave me a strange look. “Vitaly! We’re on our way to a session of the Tribunal under the patronage of the Inquisition! Your portal would collapse two kilometers away from where we’re going!”

“Ah, yes,” I said light-heartedly. “That’s right. I forgot.” Actually, I could easily have guessed that for myself.

Magical interventions and any use of magic were forbidden while the

Tribunal was at work. The Other-I inside me helpfully informed me that there had been violations in the past, but only during times of violent upheaval that was the direct cause of the violations themselves.

But then, this was a time of change too. The end of the millennium. A turning point. I remembered how terrified people had been in the summer, when they were waiting for the eclipse, how badly the earthquake in Turkey had frightened them… But it was all right, we’d survived.

Only, of course, in surviving we’d become slightly different. All of us, Others and people, especially people.

“Shi-it!” Shagron yelled, jolting me out of my reverie.

I didn’t even have time to glance out through the windshield. There was a deafening crash, and in the same instant I was thrown forward and my ribs were squeezed together painfully as the safety belt bit into my chest; with a repulsive, shrill squeak, a fat, round cushion sprouted from the driving wheel, and Shagron’s face and chest slid up around it until he crashed into the spot where the windscreen met the roof. There was an unpleasant sort of jangling sound outside the car and a fine shower of crumbs of glass shot up in the air, falling silently on the snow, but drumming an irregular tattoo against the bodywork of the cars around us. Then, to add insult to injury, we were rammed from behind. Someone had run straight into our trunk.

There were two or three seconds that felt like the launch of a space shuttle, and then I stopped being twisted and tossed about. The blissful moment of dynamic equilibrium had arrived.

Shagron slid back down off the steering wheel into his seat, leaving a trail of blood on the balloon. I thought his arm was broken too. The fool hadn’t fastened his belt… How long would he be regenerating now?

All around us there were car horns blaring.

With mixed feelings, I unclasped my belt, pushed the door open, and got out onto the road covered in compressed snow and sprinkled with broken glass.

The hood of our car had been rammed at a slight angle by a red Niva. The trunk had been crumpled so it looked as if someone had taken a bite out of it; there was the front end of a well cared for Japanese jeep sticking into it.

Well, it had been well cared for. In fact, the jeep hadn’t suffered all that badly: One headlight on the impact bar had been broken, and the bar itself was bent a bit. He’d obviously had enough time to brake.

“You stupid or something, jerk?” someone from the jeep yelled as he dashed at me. He seemed to consist of dark glasses, a shaved head, a barrel-like torso squeezed into something crimson and black, and stylish shoes that were size forty-something plus. This individual’s eyes were as pale as the aura of a young infant… or the aura of that kid Egor in the metro.

Couldn’t he see that the Niva had rammed us?

And then the crimson outfit of this barrel-shaped individual suddenly flared up in a dull bluish flame, and the individual squealed like a hog under the knife.

I recognized a transatlantic spell popularly known as Spider Flame. And then, before I could recover my wits from the attack by the scarlet-clad individual, someone took me by the collar and swung me around.

If there was one person I hadn’t expected to see, it was him. The Light magician and music lover Anton Gorodetsky.

“Who are you?” he whispered furiously. “Who are you, may the Darkness take you? Only don’t lie!”

His eyes were even paler than the eyes of the individual from the jeep, who was now furiously dancing something like a jig.

Something seemed to click inside my head. And my lips whispered the words of their own accord: “The mirror of the world…”

“The mirror…” the Light One echoed. “Damn you! Damn everything!”

I felt like replying that curses were the province of the Dark Ones, but I restrained myself. And I was right. Anton’s aura was a blaze of crimson and purple. I was certainly more powerful than Gorodetsky… but just then he seemed to be supported by some incomprehensible force that was neither Light nor Darkness, but no less powerful. And if there had been a duel, I couldn’t have told you which way it would go.

Anton let go of the collar of my jacket, swung around, and wandered off blindly, squeezing his way between the cars, ignoring the horns and the curses hurled at him through the wound-down windows. Traffic police sirens began howling somewhere quite close. The traffic jam had completely blocked Ostozhenka Street, except for a narrow channel in the oncoming stream of traffic, through which a few lucky drivers were squeezing their cars one by one, swearing and beeping their horns.

I looked at my watch. I had fifteen-no, now it was fourteen minutes left to get to the university. And I knew for sure that I couldn’t use any transport magic.

But first things first-how was Shagron?

I walked round the Niva with its door hanging open and approached the BMW from the driver’s side. Shagron was unconscious, but in the first instant of danger his immediate reflex response had been to set up a protective membrane and slip into the Twilight. And now he was regenerating, like a pupa, and the greedy Twilight could do nothing to him.

He would survive. He’d recover, and fairly quickly too. Most likely in the ambulance, if it could get here through the traffic jam. Shagron was too powerful a magician to be seriously hurt by something as minor as a traffic accident.

All right then, till we meet again, Shagron. I don’t think the Inquisition will charge you with anything. It was force majeure, after all.

And just then I saw my salvation. A young guy deftly maneuvering his way along the very
e.g.
of the road on a feeble little orange motorbike. There was someone who didn’t have to worry about traffic jams…

Of course, it was the wrong season for that kind of transport. But even so…

I slid into the Twilight.

In the Twilight the mini-motorbike looked a bit like the little hump-backed horse in the fairy tale. A small animal with handlebars for horns and one big headlight-eye.

“Get off,” I told the young guy.

He obediently got off the saddle and stood there.

Leaping over the hood of a beige-colored Opel, I took hold of the handlebars. The mini-motorbike’s engine was idling and snorting devotedly.

Okay then, forward. The young guy was standing there frozen like a dummy on the sidewalk, clutching the dollars I’d stuffed in his hand. I twisted the grip that controlled the gas toward me and just avoided scraping the polished side of the nearest car as I set off, squeezing my way through the traffic toward the
e.g.
of the jam and the Garden Ring Road. It was fairly simple to get the hang of the tiny Honda, even though it was meant for the warm asphalt of Japan, and not the icy roads of Moscow. And I managed to maneuver between all the cars pretty smartly too. But the bike couldn’t give me any real speed-thirty kilometers an hour at most. I realized I still wouldn’t get there in time, even if I abandoned the laboring Honda and dived into the nearest metro station-it was still a long way from the University metro station to the spire-topped central building of the university itself. Of course, I could take over any driver’s mind on the way, but what guarantee was there that we’d escape the morning traffic jams? I remembered vaguely that in the area of the university the main roads were immensely wide, but I still wasn’t certain. If I rode the Honda farther, I would retain my mobility almost all the way to my destination. But on the other hand, I only had a very general
i.e.
of the route. I was no Muscovite, unfortunately.

Maybe I should just rely on the inner helper who had never let me down so far? I could, of course. But what if this was the very moment he chose to let me down? The most critical moment of all? That was the way things usually happened.

I listened for an inner voice. The cold wind lashing my face was full of exhaust fumes. Moscow was breathing carbon monoxide…

My faithful assistant was obviously asleep.

I skipped past the Garden Ring Road and the Park of Culture metro station. But when I saw the Frunzenskaya station up ahead, I decided to go underground. Time was pressing.

Before I even reached the steps at the entrance to the metro, the bike had already been stolen. The motor gave a brief grunt as it was started up, and some quick-thinking individual drove the reliable little Japanese machine away, disappearing into the side streets as quickly as possible. Ah, people, people… The Light Ones take care of you, protect you, cherish you, but you’re still the same old trash you always were. Animals with no conscience or compassion. Elbow everyone aside, steal, sell, stuff your belly, and the world can go to hell. It’s so repulsive…

I simply jumped over the turnstiles-in the Twilight, an invisible shadow. I had no time to buy a ticket and stick it in the slot of the magnetic reader. That was okay: The country wouldn’t go bankrupt because of me.

I slid down the escalator too, without leaving the Twilight. Jumped up onto the slow-moving handrail and went hurtling downward, barely managing to set one foot after the other in the sticky gray jelly. A train was just about to leave the platform; while I was still figuring out if it was going in the right direction, the doors closed. Never mind, that was no hindrance to me. But traveling back into the center certainly wasn’t what I wanted.

I jumped into the carriage straight through the closed door-in the Twilight. Then gently moved aside the astonished passengers as I seemed to appear out of nowhere.

“Oh!” someone exclaimed.

“Tell me, is this Moscow?” I blurted out for some reason. Probably out of a boisterous sense of sheer stupid mischief.

No one answered. Well, all right. At least now there was noticeably more free space around me. I took hold of the handrail and closed my eyes.

Sportivnaya station, Sparrow Hills station, still closed-the train was barely crawling along; every now and then, in the cracks between the metal doors that didn’t quite meet, I caught glimpses of electric lights and the gray half-light of early morning. Dawn already…

Finally, here was the University station. The escalator, very long and very crowded. I had to wait again. That was it. I was definitely late.

Up at the top it was almost light. Finally realizing that I wouldn’t get there for the beginning of the session, I suddenly felt completely calm and stopped hurrying. Completely. I took the button headphones out of my pocket, switched on the player with Anton Gorodetsky’s disk in it, and walked off to stop a car.

“It’s time,” the Inquisitor announced quietly. “All those who have not arrived on time will answer for it later in strict accordance with the terms of the Treaty.”