The Night Watch (Watch 1)

Just in time: the Dark Magician came out of the doors and immediately dived into the Twilight. He made it look easy, but I saw how he managed it. The auras of people near him flared up, scattering dark sparks in all directions.

If I'd been in the human world, I'd have seen people's faces distorted by a sudden pain in their hearts, or emotional distress – which is far more painful.

The Dark Magician gazed around, looking for my trail. He knew how to extract power from people around him, but his general technique wasn't exactly great.

'Take it easy,' I said, pressing the barrel of the pistol against the magician's spine. 'Take it easy. You've already found me. And I bet you're really pleased.'

I held his wrist tight with my other hand so that he couldn't make any passes. All these jumped-up young magicians use a standard set of spells, the simplest and most powerful. And they require the precise co-ordination of both hands.

The magician's palm was suddenly damp.

'You, you . . .' He still couldn't believe what had happened. 'You're Anton! You're outside the law!'

'Maybe so. But what good will that do you now?'

He turned his head. In the Twilight his face was distorted, it had lost that attractive, genial look. He hadn't reached the stage of the complete Twilight makeover, like Zabulon, but even so, his face was no longer human. The jaw hung down too low, the mouth was wide, like a frog's, the eyes were close-set and dull.

'You're a real ugly specimen, my friend,' I said forcing the barrel into his back again. 'This is a pistol. It's loaded with silver bullets, although that's not strictly necessary. It'll work just as well in the Twilight world as in the human one – more slowly, but that won't save you. You'll be able to feel the bullet ripping through the skin and parting the fibres of your muscles, smashing the bone, tearing the nerves apart.'

'You won't do that!'

'Why?'

'Because then there'd be no way you could get out of this!'

'Is that so? But right now there's still some kind of chance, is there? You know, the urge to squeeze this trigger is getting stronger all the time. Let's go, scumbag.'

I helped the magician along with a few kicks as I led him into the narrow passage between two kiosks. The thick growth of blue moss covering their walls started twitching. The Twilight flora was keen to taste our emotions – my fury and his fear – but the mindless plants also had a strong instinct for self-preservation.

The Dark Magician had plenty of that, too.

'Listen, what do you want from me?' he shouted. 'They gave us a briefing and told us to look for you! I was only following orders! I honour the Treaty, watchman!'

'I'm not a watchman any longer!' I said, shoving him against the wall, into the tender embrace of the moss. Let it suck out a little bit of his fear, or we wouldn't be able to have a proper talk. 'Who's leading the hunt?'

'The Day Watch.'

'More specifically?'

'The boss, I don't know his name.'

That was almost certainly true. But I knew the name.

'Were you sent to this particular station?'

He hesitated.

'Answer,' I said, aiming the barrel at the magician's stomach.

'Yes.'

'Alone?'

'Yes.'

'That's a lie. But it's not important. What were you ordered to do once you found me?'

'Observe.'

'Another He. But an important one this time. Think again and try a different answer.'

The magician didn't say anything. The blue moss must have done too good a job.

I squeezed the trigger and the bullet sang sweetly as it travelled across the metre of space between us. The magician had enough time to see it – his eyes opened wide in terror – which made them look a bit more human – and he jerked away, but too late.

'That's just a flesh wound to be going on with,' I said. 'Not fatal.'

He writhed on the ground, pressing his hand against the ragged hole in his stomach. In the Twilight his blood was almost transparent, but maybe that was an optical illusion. Or maybe it was a peculiarity of this particular magician.

'Answer the question!'

I swept my free hand through the air and set the blue moss around us on fire. Enough already, now we were going to work with fear, pain, despair. Enough mercy and compassion, enough polite conversation.

This was the Dark, after all.

'We were ordered to report in and if possible to kill you.'

'Not detain me? Just kill me?'

'Yes.'

'I'll accept that answer. Your means of communication?'

'By phone, that's all.'

'Let me have it.'

'It's in my pocket.'

'Throw it.'

He reached clumsily into his pocket, found the phone and threw it as best he could – the wound wasn't deadly, and the magician's resistance was still high, but the pain he was going through was hellish.

Just the kind he deserved to suffer.

'What's the number?' I asked, catching the phone.

'It's on the emergency call key.'

I glanced at the screen.

From the initial numbers, the phone could have been absolutely anywhere. It was another mobile.

'Is that the field headquarters? Where is it?'

'I don't. . .' He paused, glancing at the pistol.

'Remember,' I encouraged him.

'They told me they'd be here in five minutes.'

All right!

I took a look back over my shoulder, at the needle blazing brightly in the sky. It fitted perfectly.

The magician moved.

No, I hadn't deliberately provoked him by looking away. But when he took a wand out of his pocket – a short, crude device he obviously hadn't made himself, some cheap trash he'd bought – I felt relieved.

'Well?' I asked when he froze, not daring to raise his weapon. 'Go for it!'

The young magician didn't move, he didn't say a word.

He knew if he tried to attack, I'd empty the entire clip into him. And that would be fatal. But they were probably taught how to behave in a conflict with Light Ones. So he also knew it would be hard for me to kill someone 'who was unarmed and defenceless.

'Stand up to me,' I said. 'Fight! You son of a bitch, it never bothered you to destroy people's lives or attack defenceless people, did it? Well? Bring it on!'

The magician licked his lips – his tongue was long and slightly forked. I suddenly realised what Twilight form he would eventually assume, and I felt sick.

'I throw myself on your mercy, watchman. I demand compassion and justice.'

'If I leave now, you'll be able to contact your base,' I said. 'Or you'll extract enough strength from people walking by to fix yourself up and get to a phone. Isn't that right? We both know it is.'

The Dark One smiled and repeated:

'I demand compassion and justice, watchman!'

I tossed the pistol from one hand to the other, looking into that smirking face. They were always ready to demand. But never to give.

'I've always had problems understanding our side's double standard of morality,' I said. 'It's a difficult thing to come to terms with. It only comes with time, and that's something I haven't got much of. Coming up with all those excuses for when you can't protect everybody. When you know that every day someone in a special department signs licences for people to be handed over to the Dark Side. It's tough, you know.'

The smile disappeared from his face. He repeated the same words, like an incantation.

'I demand compassion and justice, watchman.'

'I'm not in the Watch any more,' I said.

The pistol jerked and the breech clattered slowly, lazily spitting out the cartridge cases. The bullets slid through the air like a small swarm of angry wasps.

He only screamed once, then two bullets shattered his skull. When the pistol clicked and fell silent, I reloaded the clip slowly, mechanically.

The body on the ground in front of me was mangled and mutilated. It had already begun to emerge from the Twilight and the Twilight mask on the young face was dissolving.

I waved my hand through the air, grasping and clutching at an imperceptible something flowing through space. The outside layer of it. A copy of the Dark Magician's human appearance.

Tomorrow they'd find him. The wonderful young man everybody loved. Brutally murdered. How much Evil had I just brought into the world? How many tears, how much bitterness and blind hate? Where did the chain of future events lead?

And how much Evil had I killed? How many people would live longer and better lives? How many tears would never be spilled, how much malice would never be hoarded? How much hate would never even be born?

Maybe I'd stepped across the barrier that should never be crossed.

And maybe I'd understood where the next boundary was, the one that had to be crossed.

I put the pistol back in its holster and left the Twilight.

The sharp needle of the Ostankino Television Tower was still boring into the sky.

'Now let's try playing without any rules,' I said. 'Without any at all.'

I managed to stop a car immediately, without even needing to give the driver an attack of altruism. Maybe that was because now I was wearing such a charming face, the face of the dead Dark Magician.

'Get me to the TV Tower,' I said as I climbed into the battered model-six Lada. 'As fast as you can, before they close the doors.'

'Going out for a bit of fun?' the driver asked with a smile. He was a rather dour-looking man in glasses.

'You bet,' I answered. 'You bet.'

CHAPTER 5

THEY WERE still letting people in. I bought a ticket, paying the extra charge for the right to visit the restaurant, and set off across the green lawn round the tower. The last fifty metres of the path were covered by a feeble sort of canopy. I wondered why they'd put it there. Maybe the old building sometimes shed chunks of concrete.

The canopy ended at a booth where they checked ID. I showed mine and walked through the horseshoe frame of the metal detector – which wasn't working anyway. There were no more checks, that was all the protection this strategic target had.

I was beginning to have serious doubts. I had to admit it was a strange idea to come here. I couldn't sense any concentration of Dark Ones nearby. If they really were here, then they were very well shielded, which meant I'd have to deal with second- and third-grade magicians. And that would be suicide, pure and simple.