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.»
«Empty words,» Kostya snorted. I got the feeling he'd crossed over into the Twilight for an instant and then popped straight back out. The boy was growing up, all right. And he was getting really strong.
«You showed the way you really feel about us yesterday.»
«You're wrong.»
«Ah, drop it…« He put the bottle down, then changed his mind and turned it upside down over the sink. «We don't need your…«
I heard a hoot behind me and swung around. I'd completely forgotten about the owl, but now it had turned its head toward Kostya and spread its wings.
«Agh…« he said. «Agh…«
The owl folded its wings and closed its eyes.
«Olga, we're talking,» I growled. «Just give us a moment…«
The bird didn't respond. Kostya glanced from me to the owl and back again. Then he sat down and folded his hands on his knees.
«What's wrong with you?» I asked.
«Can I go now?»
He wasn't just surprised or frightened; he was in shock.
«Okay. But take this, will you…«
Kostya began hastily grabbing up the bottles and putting them in his pockets.
«Take a plastic bag, you idiot! What if there's someone in the hallway?»
The vampire obediently packed all the bottles into a plastic bag bearing the noble inscription «For the resurrection of Russian culture!» He gave the owl a sideways glance, went out into the hallway, and began hastily putting on his shoes.
«Come around again,» I said. «I'm not your enemy. Not until you cross that line, I'm not.»
He nodded and shot out of my apartment like a bullet. I shrugged and closed the door, then went back into the kitchen and looked at the owl.
«Well? What happened there?»
It was impossible to read anything in those amber-yellow eyes. I threw my hands up.
«How can we work together? Eh? How are we going to collaborate? Do you have any way of communicating? I'm trying to be frank with you, do you hear me? A frank conversation!»
I didn't shift all the way into the Twilight, just reached in there with my thoughts. It's not good to trust anyone you don't know like that, but the boss wouldn't have given me a partner I couldn't trust, would he?
No answer. Even if Olga could communicate telepathically, she wasn't going to.
«What shall we do? We need to look for that girl. Will you accept her image?»
No reply. I sighed and tossed the scrap of my memory at the bird anyway.
The owl stretched its wings and soared across onto my shoulder.
«Ah, so we do hear when we're spoken to? But we don't condescend to reply. All right, have it your own way. What shall I do?»
She still wouldn't speak.
In fact, I knew what to do. There was no hope of success, but that was a different matter.
«And how am I going to wander around the streets with you sitting on my shoulder?»
A mocking glance, definitely mocking. And the bird on my shoulder shifted into the Twilight.
So that was it. An invisible observer. And no ordinary observer—Kostya's reaction to the owl had been very instructive. Apparently I'd been given a partner that the powers of Darkness knew better than the rank-and-file servants of the Light did.
«Agreed,» I said cheerfully. «I'll just grab a bite to eat, okay?»
I took out some yogurt and poured a glass of orange juice. The very thought of what I'd been feeding myself with for the last week—half-raw steaks and meat juices that were not much different from blood—made me feel sick.