Was it a battlefield? Or a scaffold?
Guardian and judge?
Or executioner?
What difference did it make? He was serving the Light!
The familiar power flooded into his body. Holding his hand inside the flap of his jacket, Maxim walked toward the entrance, toward the Dark Magician who was coming down in the elevator.
Quickly, everything had to be done quickly. It still wasn't quite night yet. Someone might see. And no one would ever believe his story; the best he could possibly hope for would be the madhouse.
Call out. Give his name. Pull out his weapon.
Misericord. Mercy. He was the guardian and the judge. The knight of the Light. And not an executioner!
This courtyard was a battlefield, not a scaffold.
Maxim stopped outside the door into the building. He heard steps. The lock clicked.
He felt so wronged; he could have howled out loud in horror and screamed curses at the heavens for his destiny and his great gift.
The Dark Magician was a child.
A skinny, dark-haired little boy who looked quite ordinary—except for the quivering halo of Darkness that only Maxim could see.
But why? Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. Maxim had killed women and men, young and old, but he'd never come across any children who'd sold their souls to the Darkness. He'd never even thought about it, maybe because he hadn't wanted to accept the idea that it was possible, or maybe because he'd been avoiding making any decisions in advance. He might have stayed at home if he'd known his next victim would be only twelve years old.
The boy stood in the doorway, looking at Maxim with a puzzled expression on his face. Just for a moment Maxim thought the kid was going to turn around 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 passerby; he'd realized 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.»
What Anton? 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 around 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, not just stand there with an offended look on his face, as if he were expecting an apology.
As if there were 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 the thing that 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? Darkness 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 recognized the car.
Then I recognized 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 restaurant 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 recognized the woman—and the Maverick. I could have ended everything 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 toward the entrance of the staircase where I'd once sat by the garbage chute and had a gloomy conversation with a white owl.
The Maverick was on his way to kill Egor. Just the way I'd expected. Just the way 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 Day Watch could celebrate the success of their operation.
But where are you, Zabulon?
The Twilight gave me time. The Maverick was still walking toward the apartment block, moving his feet slowly. I looked around for signs of Darkness. 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 fall; 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 on his chest. At first I thought I was seeing his heart. Then I realized that it was a weapon—the one he used to kill the Dark Ones.
What's going on here, Zabulon? I suddenly felt insulted, 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 him!
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 human beings and 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 gray, mindless flock of sheep. The Dark Ones were the wolves who circled around him, picking off the fattest rams. And he was the guard dog. But he couldn't see the shepherds; he was blinded by his fear and fury. So he rushed about crazily; it was just him against all of them.
He wouldn't believe me, he wouldn't let himself believe me.
I dashed forward, toward 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 power rules 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 afterward!
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. Really bad! He didn't understand the nature of 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, naive 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 gray; 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 Twilight stage where he held court and passed sentence.
Someone had stopped him. Knocked aside and pushed him down onto the asphalt. 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 stealthy approach? While he was busy with his important 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 onto the ground. He had a pistol in his hand!
That wasn't good.
«Stop,» said the man, as if Maxim had been about to run. «Listen to me.»
A chance passerby who'd taken him for an ordinary maniac? But then what about the pistol and the crafty 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 Darkness there. There just wasn't, none at all!
«Who are you?» asked Maxim, almost forgetting about the boy magician, who was slowly backing away toward his rescuer.