I’d have done the same.
‘Well, that’s about it …’The boss glanced at me. ‘I’m glad you got here, Anton. There’s something I especially wanted you to hear.’
I automatically tensed up.
‘You did a good job yesterday. Yes, it’s true, the only reason I sent you out to look for the vampires was to test you. And not just to see how good an operative you are, either … you’ve been in a difficult situation for a long time, Anton. Killing a vampire is a lot harder for you than for anyone else here.’
‘That’s just where you’re wrong, boss,’ I said.
‘I’d be glad if I’m mistaken. I want to thank you on behalf of the entire Night Watch. You destroyed one vampire and captured the image of the female vampire’s trail. Captured it very accurately. You still don’t have enough experience for investigative work. But you know how to record information clearly. The same thing goes for this girl. It was a completely non-standard situation, but you made a humane decision … and that’s won us some time. The image of her aura was excellent. I knew immediately where to look for her.’
That really stung. No one was smiling or laughing, no one was smirking at me, but I still felt humiliated. The owl, whom nobody had seen yet, twitched on my shoulder. I took a deep breath of the Twilight air, that cold, tasteless air that isn’t air at all. I asked:
‘Boris Ignatievich, then what was the reason for sending me round the circle line? If you already knew the right district.’
‘I could have been wrong,’ the boss replied, a note of surprise in his voice. ‘That’s another thing … you have to understand that when you’re working out in the field, you can’t afford to rely on any opinion, no matter from how high up. One man in the field is a warrior – if he knows he’s alone.’
‘But I wasn’t alone,’ I said. ‘And this assignment is absolutely crucial for my partner, you know that better than I do. By sending us to check districts you knew were empty, you deprived her of a chance to redeem herself.’
The boss’s face is made of stone, you can’t read anything in it if he doesn’t want you to.
But even so, I felt like I’d hit the target.
‘Your assignment isn’t over yet, Anton and Olga,’ he replied. ‘There’s still the female vampire, who has to be neutralised. No one has any right to interfere with us there: she violated the terms of the Treaty. And there’s still the boy who showed such exceptional resistance to magic. He has to be found and turned to the Light. Plenty to be getting on with.’
‘And this girl?’
‘Already detected. The specialists will now try to neutralise the vortex. If that doesn’t work, which it won’t, we’ll have to figure out who cast the curse. Ignat, over to you.’
I turned round. There indeed was Ignat standing not far away. Tall, well built and handsome, with blond hair, the figure of Apollo and the face of a movie star. He moved soundlessly, but even so in ordinary reality he couldn’t avoid attention from women.
Real attention.
‘That’s not my way of working,’ Ignat said glumly. ‘Not an MO I’m particularly fond of.’
‘You can choose who you sleep with on your own time,’ the boss barked. ‘But when you’re working, I make all your decisions for you. Even when you go to the lavatory.’
Ignat shrugged. He glanced at me as if looking for sympathy and growled to himself:
‘That’s discrimination …’
‘We’re not in the States,’ the boss said, his voice becoming dangerously polite. ‘Yes, it’s discrimination. Making use of the most appropriate available member of staff without taking his personal inclinations into account.’
‘Couldn’t I take that assignment?’ Garik asked quietly.
That released the tension immediately. Garik’s incredibly bad luck with women was no secret. Someone laughed.
‘Igor and Garik, you carry on looking for the female vampire.’ The boss almost seemed to have taken the suggestion seriously. ‘She needs blood. She was stopped at the last minute, so she’s going insane with hunger and frustration. Expect new victims at any moment. Anton, you and Olga look for the boy.’
That was clear enough.
Again, the most pointless and least significant assignment.
Somewhere in the city there was an Inferno waiting to erupt, somewhere in the city there was a wild, hungry female vampire, and I had to go looking for a kid who might, potentially, possess great magical powers.
‘Permission to proceed?’ I asked.
‘Yes, of course,’ said the boss, ignoring my quiet hint of revolt. ‘Proceed.’
I swung round and left the Twilight as a sign of protest. The world flickered as it filled with colours and sounds. I was left standing there on my own in the middle of the square. To any outsider watching it would have looked really crazy. And then there were no footprints … I was standing in a snowdrift, surrounded by a shroud of virgin snow.
That’s how myths are born. Out of our carelessness, out of our tattered nerves, out of jokes that go wrong and flashy gestures.
‘It’s okay,’ I said and set off straight for the avenue.
‘Thank you …’ a gentle voice whispered affectionately in my ear.
‘For what, Olga?’
‘For not forgetting about me.’
‘It really is that important to you to succeed in this, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is,’ the bird answered after a pause.
‘Then we’ll try really hard.’
I skipped over the snowdrifts and some stones lying around – a glacier must have passed that way, or maybe someone had been playing at Zen gardens – and came out on to the avenue.
‘Have you any cognac?’ asked Olga.
‘Cognac … yes. Why?’
‘Good cognac?’
‘It’s never bad. If it’s genuine cognac, that is.’
Olga sniffed scornfully.
‘Then why don’t you offer a lady coffee with cognac?’
I pictured to myself an owl drinking cognac out of a saucer and almost laughed out loud.
‘Certainly Shall we take a taxi?’
‘Don’t push it, kid!’
Hmm. Just when had she been locked into that bird’s body? Or maybe it didn’t stop her reading books?
‘There’s such a thing as television,’ the bird whispered.
Dark and Light! I’d been certain my thoughts were safely concealed.
‘Experience of life is an excellent substitute for vulgar telepathy … a long experience of life,’ Olga went on slyly. ‘Your thoughts are closed to me, Anton. And anyway, you’re my partner.’
‘I wasn’t really …’ I gave up. It was stupid to deny the obvious. ‘And what about the boy? Are we just dropping the assignment? It’s not all that serious …’
‘It’s very serious,’ Olga exclaimed indignantly. ‘Anton, the boss has admitted that he made a mistake. He’s given us a headstart, and we’ve got to make the most of it. The girl vampire is focused on the boy don’t you see? For her he’s like a sandwich she never got to eat, it was just taken right out of her mouth. And he’s still on her leash. Now she can lure him into her lair from any side of the city. But that gives us an advantage. Why go looking for a tiger in the jungle, when you can tether a goat out in a clearing?’
‘Moscow’s just full of goats like that …’
‘This boy is on her leash. She’s an inexperienced vampire. Establishing contact with a new victim is harder than attracting an old one. Trust me.’
I shuddered, trying to shake off a foolish suspicion. I raised my hand to stop a car and said sombrely:
‘I trust you. Absolutely and completely.’