«I have to check,» I whispered. My passes were clumsy; I lost track twice and had to start again. Finally the seal responded. Permanent registration, no known violations…
«Is everything okay?» asked Gennady. «Can we go now?»
«Don't worry about it. We knew you'd become an Other someday.»
«Go on,» I said. It was against the rules, but that was the last thing I was bothered about.
«Yes…« Gennady paused for a moment before he left the Twilight. «I've been in your home… Anton, I return to you your invitation to enter…«
Everything was just as it should be.
They walked away, and I sat down on a bench, beside an old granny warming herself in the sunshine. I lit a cigarette, trying to sort out my thoughts. The granny looked at me and said:
«Nice people, aren't they, Arkasha?»
She was always getting my name wrong. She only had two or three months left to live, I could see that quite clearly now.
«Not exactly…« I said. I smoked three cigarettes, then trudged off into the house. I stood in the doorway for a moment, watching the gray «vampire's trail» fade away. I'd just learned how to see it that very day…
I moped into the evening. I leafed through my notes, which meant I had to withdraw into the Twilight. For the ordinary world, the pages of those standard exercise books were a pure, unsullied white. I wanted to call our group's supervisor or the boss himself—I was his personal responsibility. But I felt I had to make the decision myself.
When it was dark already I couldn't stand it any longer. I went up to the next floor and rang the bell. When Kostya opened the door, he shuddered. But he actually looked perfectly ordinary, like all of his family…
«Call your folks, will you,» I asked.
«What for?» he muttered.
«I want to invite you all for tea.»
Gennady appeared behind his son's back, appeared out of nowhere; he was far more skillful than me, the newly fledged adept of the Light.
«Are you sure, Anton?» he asked doubtfully. «There's no need. Everything's okay.»
«I'm sure.»
He paused and then shrugged.
«We'll come around tomorrow. If you invite us. Don't rush things.»
By midnight I was feeling absolutely delighted they'd refused. At three I tried to get to sleep, reassured in the knowledge that they couldn't enter my home and never would be able to.
In the morning, still not having slept a wink, I stood at the window, looking out at the city. There weren't many vampires. Very few, in fact. There wasn't another within a radius of two or three kilometers.
How did it feel to be an outcast? To be punished, not for committing a crime, but for the potential ability to commit it? And how did it feel for them to live… well, not live, some other word was required here… alongside their own guard?
On the way back from classes I bought a cake for tea.
And now here was Kostya, a fine, intelligent young man, a student at the physics faculty of Moscow University, who had the misfortune to have been born a living corpse, sitting beside me and raking the spoon around in the sugar bowl like he was too shy to take any. What could have made him so bashful?
At first he used to come around almost every day. I was his direct opposite; I was on the side of the Light. But I let him into my home, and he didn't have to pretend with me. He could simply sit and talk, or he could plunge into the Twilight and boast about the new abilities he'd developed. «Anton, I actually transformed!»—«And now my fangs have started to grow, r-r-r-r!»
And the strange thing was, it was all quite normal. I laughed as I watched the young vampire's attempts to transform himself into a bat—that's a trick for a top-flight vampire, but he's not one of them and, may the Light grant, he never will be. Just sometimes I would scold him: «Kostya… you mustn't ever do that. Do you understand?» And that was quite normal too.
«Kostya, I was doing my job.»
«You shouldn't have.»
«They were breaking the law. Do you understand? Not just our law, mind you. It's not just the Light Ones who have accepted it, all the Others have. That young guy…«
«I knew him,» Kostya suddenly said. «He was fun to be around.»
Damn.
«Did he suffer?»
«No.» I shook my head. «The seal kills instantaneously.»
Kostya shuddered and squinted down at his own chest for a second. If you enter the Twilight, you can see the seal even through a vampire's clothes, and if you don't, you'll never find it. I don't think he actually moved across. But how should I know what the seal feels like to a vampire?
«What was I supposed to do?» I asked. «He'd already killed. Killed entirely innocent people, who had absolutely no defenses against him. He initiated a girl… by crude force; she should never have become a vampire. Yesterday he almost killed a boy. Just for the sake of it. Not because he was hungry.»
«Do you know what our hunger's like?» Kostya asked after a pause.
He was growing up. Right in front of my eyes…
«Yes. Yesterday I… almost became a vampire.»
Just a moment's silence.
«I know. I could feel it… I was hoping.»
Hell and damnation! While I was conducting my hunt, they'd been hunting me too. Or rather, lying in ambush for me, hoping the hunter would turn into the hunted beast.
«No,» I said. «Sorry, no way.»
«Okay, so he was guilty,» Kostya went on stubbornly. «But why did you have to kill him? He should have been tried. A tribunal, an attorney, a proper charge, the way the law says things should be done…«
«The law says that human beings must not be involved in our business!» I roared. And for the first time that tone of voice failed to make any impression on Kostya.
«You were a human being for too long!»
«And I don't regret it for a moment!»
«Why did you kill him?»
«If I hadn't, he would have killed me!»
«Initiated you!»
«That's even worse!»
Kostya didn't answer that. He put down his tea and stood up. A perfectly ordinary, rather insolent, and morally pained young man.
Except that he was a vampire.
«Wait.» I stepped across to the refrigerator. «Take this; they issued it to me, but I didn't need it.»
I pulled out the two-hundred-gram bottles of donor's blood from between the bottles of Borzhomi mineral water.
«No thanks.»
«Kostya, I know this is a constant problem for you. It's of no use to me. Take it.»
«Are you trying to bribe me?»
I started getting angry.
«Why would I need to bribe you? It's just stupid to throw it out, that's all. It's blood. People gave it to help someone.»
Kostya suddenly laughed. He reached out, took one of the bottles, and opened it, tearing off the tinfoil cap with practiced ease. He raised the bottle to his lips, laughed again, and took a swallow.
I'd never seen them feed. And never really wanted to.
«Stop that,» I said. «Don't be ridiculous.»
Kostya's lips were covered with blood, and there was a fine trickle of it running down his neck. Not just running down, but soaking into the skin.
«Do you find the way we feed ourselves disagreeable?»
«Yes.»
«So you find me disagreeable as well? All of us?»
I shook my head. We'd never talked about this before. It had been easier that way.
«Kostya, in order to live, you need blood. And, sometimes at least, human blood.»
«We don't live.»
«I meant in the more general sense. In order to move, think, speak, dream.»
«What do you care about a vampire's dreams?»
«Listen, son. There are plenty of people living in the world who need regular blood transfusions. There are at least as many of them as there are of you. And then there are all the emergencies. That's why people give blood, that's why it's such an honorable and respected thing to do… I know about your kind's contributions to the development of medicine and the way you promoted the giving of blood. Kostya, if someone needs blood in order to live… to exist—that's no big deal. And whether it goes in through the veins or the stomach is irrelevant too. The important thing is how you get hold of it.»