Or should I really go after the little guy?
«Anton!»
It was Igor and Garik, our inseparable duo of operatives, running down the alley from the avenue.
«The girl got away!» I shouted.
Garik kicked out at the vampire's shriveled corpse as he ran, sending a cloud of rotten dust flying up into the frosty air. He shouted:
«The image!»
I sent him the image of the girl-vampire running away. Garik frowned and started moving faster. Both operatives dashed off in pursuit. Igor shouted as he ran:
«Clear up the trash!»
I nodded, as if they needed an answer, and emerged from my own Twilight. The world blossomed. The operatives' silhouettes melted away, and their invisible feet even stopped leaving tracks in the snow lying in the human dimension of reality.
I sighed and walked over to their gray Volvo parked at the curb. There were a few primitive implements lying on the backseat: a heavy-duty plastic bag, a shovel, and a small sweeping brush. It took me about five minutes to scrape up the vampire's feather-light remains and put the bag in the trunk. I took some dirty snow from a decaying heap left by a careless yard-keeper, scattered it in the alley, and trampled it a bit, working the final dusty, rotten remains into the slush. No human burial for you, you're not human…
That was all.
I went back to the car, got into the driver's seat, and unbuttoned my jacket. I felt good, very good, in fact. The senior vampire was dead, the guys would pick up his girlfriend, and the boy was alive.
I could just imagine how delighted the boss would be!
Chapter 2
«Sloppy work!»
I tried to say something, but the next remark stung like a slap to the cheek and shut me up.
«You screwed up!»
«But…«
«Do you at least understand your own mistakes?»
The boss had cooled off a bit, and I took the risk of raising my eyes from the floor and saying cautiously:
«It seems to me…«
I like being in that office. It stirs the kid in me to see all those amusing little trinkets standing on the shelves in the bulletproof glass cupboards, hanging all over the walls, tossed carelessly on the desk, jumbled up with the computer floppies and business papers. Every item there—from the old Japanese fan to the jagged piece of metal with a deer welded onto it, the symbol of some auto plant—had its own history. If you were lucky and the boss was in the mood you could hear some very, very interesting stories.
Only I don't seem to find him in that kind of mood too often.
«Okay.» The boss stopped striding round the office, sat down in a leather armchair, and lit up. «Let's hear it.»
His voice had turned businesslike, matching his appearance. To the human eye he looked about forty years old, and he belonged to that narrow circle of businessmen that the government likes to rely on so much.
«What do you want to hear?» I asked, at the risk of provoking yet another impartial assessment.
«The mistakes. Your mistakes.»
Right then… Okay.
«My first mistake, Boris Ignatievich,» I said with a perfectly innocent air, «was that I failed to understand the nature of the mission correctly.»
«Oh, really?» the boss replied.
«Well, I assumed my goal was to track down a vampire who had begun actively hunting in Moscow. To track him down and… er… neutralize him.»
«Go on, go on…« the boss encouraged me.
«In actual fact the basic purpose of the mission was to determine my suitability for operational activity, for field work. Starting with my incorrect understanding of the mission, that is, following the principle 'separate and protect'…«
The boss sighed and nodded. Anyone who didn't know him too well might even have thought he was ashamed.
«And did you contravene this principle in any way?»
«No, and that's why I botched the mission.»
«How did you botch it?»
«Right at the beginning…« I squinted sideways at a stuffed white polar owl standing on a shelf behind the glass. Had it really moved its head? «Right at the beginning I drained the amulet in a futile attempt to neutralize a black vortex…«
Boris Ignatievich frowned. He brushed his hair back with his hand.
«Okay, let's start with that. I've studied the image, and if you haven't touched it up…«
I shook my head indignantly.
«I believe you. Well, a vortex like that can't be removed with an amulet. Do you remember the classification?»
Damn! Why hadn't I flicked through my old notes?
«I'm sure you don't. But it doesn't matter. There is no class for this vortex. There's no way you could possibly have dealt with it…« The boss leaned over across the desk and continued in a mysterious whisper: «… and you know what…«
I was all ears.
«There's no way I could have either, Anton.»
This confession was unexpected, and I couldn't think of anything to say. Maybe no one had ever actually said out loud that the boss could do anything, but that was what everyone who worked in the office believed.
«Anton, a vortex as strong as that can be removed only by the person who created it.»
«We have to find him…« I said uncertainly. «I feel sorry for the girl…«
«This isn't about her. Not just about her.»
«Why?» I blurted out and then hastily corrected myself. «We have to stop the Dark Magician, don't we?»
The boss sighed.
«He might have a license. He might be entitled to cast the curse… This isn't even about the magician. A black vortex as powerful as that… You remember the plane that crashed last winter?»
I shuddered. We had not done anything wrong, but there was a loophole in the law: A pilot who was under a curse had lost control, and his airliner had crashed into a residential area of the city. Hundreds of perfectly innocent lives…
«Vortices like that can't act selectively. The girl's doomed, but it won't just be a brick that accidentally falls off some roof onto her head. More likely a building will explode, there'll be an epidemic, or someone will drop an atom bomb on Moscow by mistake. That's the real problem, Anton.»
The boss suddenly swung around and cast a withering glance at the owl. It folded its wings away quickly and the gleam in its glass eyes faded.
«Boris Ignatievich,» I said, horrified. «I'm at fault…«
«Of course you are. There's only one redeeming fact, Anton.» The boss cleared his throat. «When you gave way to pity, you acted quite correctly. The amulet couldn't completely detach the vortex, but it has postponed the Inferno for a while. And now we have a day to work with… maybe even two. I've always believed that ill-considered but well-intentioned actions do more good than actions that are well-considered but cruel. If you hadn't used the amulet, half of Moscow would already be lying in ruins.»
«What are we going to do?»
«Look for the girl. Protect her… as well as we can. We'll be able to destabilize the vortex again once or twice. And in the meantime we'll have to find the magician who cast the curse and make him remove the vortex.»
I nodded.
«Everybody will be involved in the search,» the boss said casually. «I've recalled all the guys from vacation, Ilya will be back from Ceylon by morning and the others will be here by lunch. The weather's bad in Europe. I've asked our colleagues in the European office to help, but by the time they can disperse the clouds…«