The Night Watch (Watch 1)

The boy stood in the doorway, looking at him with a puzzled expression. Just for a moment Maxim thought the kid was going to turn round and dash back in, slamming the heavy, code-locked door behind him. Run, then, run!

The boy took a step forward, holding the door so that it wouldn't slam too hard. He looked into Maxim's eyes, frowning slightly, but without any sign of fear. Maxim couldn't understand this. The boy hadn't taken him for a chance passer-by, he'd realised the man was waiting for him. And he'd come to meet him. Because he wasn't afraid? Because he had faith in his Dark power?

'You're a Light One, I can see that,' the boy said quietly but confidently.

'Yes.' He had trouble getting the word out, he had to force it out of his throat. Cursing himself for his weakness, Maxim took hold of the boy's shoulder and said: 'I am the judge.'

The boy still wasn't frightened.

'I saw Anton today.'

Who? Maxim didn't say anything, but the bewilderment showed in his eyes.

'Have you come to see me because of him?'

'No. Because of you.'

'What for?'

The boy was behaving almost aggressively, as if he'd had a long argument with Maxim, as if Maxim had done something wrong and he ought to admit it.

'I am the judge,' Maxim repeated. He felt like turning round and running away. This was all wrong, it wasn't supposed to happen like this! A child couldn't be a Dark One, not a child the same age as his own daughter! A Dark Magician should defend himself, attack, run away, but not just stand there with an offended look on his face, as if he was expecting an apology.

As if there was something that could protect him.

'What's your name?' Maxim asked.

'Egor.'

'I'm really sorry things have worked out this way,' Maxim said quite sincerely. He wasn't getting any sadistic satisfaction from dragging things out. 'Dammit. I've got a daughter the same age as you!'

Somehow that was what hurt the most.

'But if not me, then who?'

'What are you talking about?' The boy tried to remove Maxim's hand. That strengthened his resolve.

Boy, girl, adult, child . . . What difference did it make? Dark and Light – that was the only distinction.

'I have to save you,' said Maxim. He took the dagger out of his pocket with his free hand. 'I have to save you – and I will.'

CHAPTER 7

FIRST I RECOGNISED the car.

Then I recognised the Maverick, when he got out of it.

I suddenly felt desperate. It was the man who'd saved me when I was running away from the Maharajah, when I was in Olga's body.

Maybe I ought to have guessed at the time. Probably, if I'd been more experienced, with more time to think and more presence of mind. All it would have taken was to look at the aura of the woman in the car with him. Svetlana had given a detailed description of her, after all. I could have recognised the woman – and the Maverick. I could have ended it all right there in the car.

But how could I have ended it?

I dived into the Twilight when the Maverick looked in my direction. It seemed to work, and he kept walking towards the entrance to the staircase where I'd once sat by the garbage chute and had a gloomy conversation with a snowy owl.

The Maverick was on his way to kill Egor. Just as I'd expected. Just as Zabulon had planned it. The trap was right there in front of me. The tightly stretched spring had already begun to contract. One more move from me, and the Day Watch could celebrate the success of their operation.

But where are you, Zabulon?

The Twilight gave me time. The Maverick was still walking towards the apartment block, moving his feet slowly. I looked around for signs of the Dark. The slightest trace, the slightest breath, the slightest shadow . . .

There was immense magical tension all around me. The threads of reality that led into the future all came together here. This was the intersection of a hundred roads, the point at which the world decided which way it would go. Not because of me, not because of the Maverick, not because of the kid. We were only part of the trap. We were extras on the set: one of us had been told to say 'Dinner is served', another had to act out a fill, another had to mount the scaffold, proudly holding his head high. For the second time this spot in Moscow was the arena for an invisible battle. But I couldn't see any Others, Dark or Light. Only the Maverick, and even now I didn't think of him as an Other, except that he had a scintillating focus of power at his chest. At first I thought I was seeing his heart. Then I realised that it was a weapon – the one he used to kill the Dark Ones.

What's going on here, Zabulon? I suddenly felt absurdly insulted. Here I am! I'm stepping into your trap, look, I've already raised my foot, it's all just about to happen, but where are you?

Either the great Dark Magician had hidden himself so carefully that I couldn't find him, or he wasn't there at all.

I'd lost. I'd lost even before the game was over, because I hadn't understood my enemy's intentions. There ought to have been an ambush here, the Dark Ones needed to kill the Maverick the moment he killed Egor.

I couldn't let him kill Egor!

I was here, wasn't I? I'd explain to him what was going on, tell him about the Watches and the way they monitored each other, about the Treaty that meant we had to maintain a neutral stance, about humans and the Others, about the world and the Twilight. I'd tell him everything the same way I'd told Svetlana, and he'd understand.

Or would he?

If he really couldn't see the Light!

For him the human world was a grey, mindless flock of sheep. The Dark Ones were the wolves who circled round him, picking off the fattest ones. And he was the guard dog. But he couldn't see the shepherds, he was blinded by his fear and fury. So he hurtled about crazily, just him against all of them.

He wouldn't believe me, he wouldn't let himself believe me.

I raced forward, towards the Maverick. The door was already open, and the Maverick was talking to Egor. Why had the stupid kid come out so late at night when he knew perfectly well what kind of powers rule our world? The Maverick wasn't able to summon his victims to him, was he?

Talk would be useless. Attack him from the Twilight. Pin him down. And explain everything afterwards.

The Twilight screeched with a thousand wounded voices when I crashed into the invisible barrier at full speed. Just three steps away from the Maverick, as I was already raising my hand to strike, I suddenly found myself flattened against a transparent wall. I slid down off it slowly with my ears ringing.

This was bad. He didn't understand the nature of his power. He was a self-taught magician, a psychopath on the side of Good. But when he set out to do his work, he protected himself with a magical barrier. The fact that it was purely spontaneous wasn't any comfort to me.

The Maverick said something to Egor and took his hand out from inside his jacket.

A wooden dagger. I'd heard something about that kind of magic, naïve and powerful at the same time, but this wasn't the right time to try to remember.

I slid out of my shadow into the human world and jumped the Maverick from behind.

When he raised the dagger, Maxim was knocked off his feet. The world around him had already turned grey, the boy was already moving in slow motion, Maxim could see his eyelids moving down for the last time before they would part in terror and pain. The night had been transformed into the twilit stage where he held court and passed sentence.

Suddenly someone had stopped him. Knocked him aside and pushed him down on to the tarmac. At the very last moment Maxim managed to put out his hand, roll over and jump to his feet.

A third character had appeared on the stage. Why hadn't Maxim noticed his sly approach? While he was busy with his vital work, chance witnesses and unwanted company had always been kept away by the power of the Light, the power that led him into battle. Why not this time?

The man was young, maybe a bit younger than Maxim. In jeans and a sweater, with a bag hanging over his shoulder – he shrugged it off carelessly on to the ground. He had a pistol in his hand.

'Stop,' said the man, as if Maxim had been about to run. 'Listen to me.'

A passer-by who'd taken him for an ordinary maniac? But then what about the pistol, and the way he'd crept up without being noticed? A special forces soldier out of uniform? No, he would have shot Maxim and finished him off, he wouldn't have let him get up off the ground.

Maxim peered at the stranger in horror, trying to figure out who he was. He could be another Dark One, but Maxim had never come across two at the same time.

There wasn't any Dark there. There simply wasn't, none at all!

'Who are you?' asked Maxim, almost forgetting about the boy magician, who was slowly backing away towards his rescuer.

'Anton Gorodetsky, Night Watch agent. You have to listen to me.'

Anton caught hold of Egor with his free hand and pushed him behind his back.

'Night Watch?' Maxim was still trying to detect a trace of the Dark in the stranger. He couldn't find it, and that frightened him even more. 'Are you from the Dark?'

He didn't get it. He tried to probe me: I could feel him searching fiercely and determinedly, but clumsily. I don't even know if I could have screened myself against it. I could sense some kind of primordial power in this man, or this Other – both terms could apply here – a wild, fanatical energy. I didn't even try to shield myself.

'The Night Watch? Are you from the Dark?'

'No. What's your name?'

'Maxim,' said the Maverick, walking slowly towards me. Looking at me as if he could sense that we'd already met, but I'd looked different then. 'Who are you?'

'I work for the Night Watch. I'll explain everything, just listen to me. You are a Light Magician.'

Maxim's face trembled and turned to stone.

'You kill Dark Ones. I know that. This morning you killed a female shape-shifter. This evening, in the restaurant, you killed a Dark Magician.'

'Do you do that too?'

Maybe I just imagined it. Or maybe there really was a tremor of hope in that voice. I deliberately stuck the pistol back in its holster.

'I'm a Light Magician. Although not a very powerful one. One of hundreds in Moscow. There are many of us, Maxim.'

His eyes opened wide and I realised I'd hit the target. Now he knew he wasn't a lunatic who'd imagined he was Superman and felt proud of it. He'd probably never wanted anything so much in his life as to meet a comrade-in-arms.

'We didn't spot you in time, Maxim,' I said. Was it really going to be possible to settle everything peacefully, without bloodshed, without an insane battle between two Light Magicians? 'That was our fault. You started a war of your own, and you've created a messy situation, Maxim, but things can still be put right. You didn't know about the Treaty, did you?'

He wasn't listening to me. He couldn't give a damn for some Treaty he'd never heard of. He wasn't alone, that was the only thing that mattered to him.

'You fight the Dark Ones?'

'Yes.'

'And there are many of you?'

'Yes.'