‘You’re not here,’ they echoed in chorus.
There was no time to program them. I blurted out the first thing that came into my head:
‘Buy some vodka and take a break. Now. Quick march!’
The order clearly fell on fertile ground. The policemen linked arms like kids out looking for fun and dashed off along the underpass towards the kiosks. I felt vaguely uncomfortable, picturing the consequences of my instructions, but there was no time to put things right.
I hurtled out of the underpass, certain I was already too late. But oddly enough, the boy still hadn’t got very far. He was just standing there, swaying slightly less than a hundred metres away That was serious resistance. The Call was so loud now, it seemed strange to me that the occasional passers-by walking down the street didn’t start dancing, that the trolleybuses didn’t swing off the main avenue, forcing their way down along the alley towards their sweet fate …
The boy glanced round. I thought he looked at me. Then he set off again, walking quickly.
That was it, he’d broken.
I followed him, frantically trying to decide what I was going to do. I ought to wait for the team – it would only take them ten minutes to get here, at most.
But that might not turn out so good – for the boy.
Pity’s a dangerous thing. I gave way to it twice that day. The first time in the metro, when I spent the charge of the amulet in a useless attempt to displace the black vortex. And now the second time, when I set out after the boy.
Many years ago someone told me something that I flatly refused to accept. And I still don’t accept it now, despite all the times I’ve seen it proved right.
‘The common good and the individual good rarely coincide …’
Sure, I know. It’s true.
But some truths are probably worse than lies.
I started running towards the Call. What I heard was probably not what the boy did. For him the Call was an enchanting melody, sapping his will and his strength. For me it was just the opposite, an alarm call stirring my blood.
Stirring my blood …
The body I’d been treating so badly all week was rebelling. I was thirsty but not for water – I could quite safely slake my thirst with the dirty city snow without doing myself any harm. And not for strong drink either – I had that bottle of lousy vodka with me and even that wouldn’t do me any damage. What I wanted was blood.
Not pig’s blood, or cow’s blood, but real human blood. Curse this hunt …
‘You have to go through this,’ the boss had said. ‘Five years in the analytical department’s a bit too long, don’t you think?’ I don’t know, maybe it is a bit too long, but I like it. And after all, the boss himself hasn’t worked out in the field for more than a hundred years now. I ran past the bright shop windows with their displays of fake Gzhel ceramics and stage-set heaps of food. There were cars rushing past me along the avenue, a few pedestrians. That was all fake too, an illusion, just one facet of the world, the only one accessible to humans. I was glad I wasn’t one of them.
Without breaking my rapid stride, I summoned the Twilight.
The world sighed as it opened up. It was as if airport searchlights had suddenly come on behind me, casting a long, thin, sharp shadow. The shadow swirled up, gaining volume, the shadow was drawing me into itself – into a dimension where there are no shadows. The shadow detached itself from the dirty tarmac, swirling and swaying like a column of heavy smoke. The shadow was running ahead of me …
Quickening my stride, I broke through the grey silhouette into the Twilight. The colours of the world dimmed and the cars on the avenue slowed, as if they were suddenly heavy.
I was getting close to my goal.
As I dodged into the alleyway, I thought I would just catch the final scene. The boy’s motionless, ravaged body, drained dry, the vampires disappearing.
But I wasn’t too late after all.
The boy was standing in front of a girl vampire who had already extended her fangs, slowly taking off his scarf. He was probably not afraid now – the Call completely numbs the conscious mind. More likely he was longing to feel the touch of those sharp, gleaming fangs.
There was a young male vampire standing beside them. I sensed immediately that he was the leader of the pair: he was the one who was initiating her, he was introducing her to the scent of blood. And the most sickening thing about it was that he had a Moscow registration tag. Bastard!
But then, that only improved my chances …
The vampires turned towards me in confusion, not understanding what was going on. The boy was in their Twilight, I shouldn’t have been able to see him … or them either.
Then the male vampire’s face began to relax, he even smiled – a calm, friendly smile.
‘Hi there …’
He’d taken me for one of his own. And he could hardly be blamed for his mistake: I really was one of them now. Almost. The week of preparation had not been wasted: I had begun to sense them … but I’d almost gone over to the Dark Side myself.
‘Night Watch,’ I said. I held my hand out, holding the amulet. It was discharged, but that’s not so easy to sense at a distance. ‘Leave the Twilight!’
The male vampire would probably have obeyed me, hoping that I didn’t know about the trail of blood he’d left behind him, that the whole business could just be written off as ‘an attempt at unauthorised interaction with a human’. But the girl lacked his self-control, she didn’t have the wit to get it.
‘A-a-a-agh!’ She threw herself at me with a long, drawn-out howl. It was a good thing she still hadn’t sunk her teeth into the boy; she was out of her mind now, like a desperate junkie who’s just stuck a needle in his vein only to have it jerked back out again, like a nymphomaniac after her man’s pulled out just a moment before coming.
That dash would have been too fast for any human, no one could have parried it.
But I was in the same dimension of reality as the girl vampire. I threw up my arm and splashed vodka from the open bottle into her hideously transformed face.
Why do vampires tolerate alcohol so poorly?
The menacing scream became a shrill squeal. The girl began whirling around on the spot, beating her hands against her face as it shed layers of skin and greyish flesh. The male vampire swung round, all set to run.
This was going too easily altogether. A registered vampire isn’t some casual visitor I have to fight on equal terms. I threw the bottle at the girl, reached out my hand and grabbed hold of the cord of the man’s registration tag, which had unravelled on command. The vampire gave a hoarse croak and clutched at his throat.
‘Leave the Twilight!’ I yelled.
I think he realised things were looking really bad now. He flung himself towards me, trying to reduce the pressure from the cord, extending his fangs and transforming as he came.
If the amulet had been fully charged, I could have simply stunned him.
As it was, I had to kill him.
The tag – a seal on the vampire’s chest that gave off a faint blue glow – made a crunching sound as I gave the silent order. The energy implanted in it by someone with far greater skill than me flooded into the dead body. The vampire was still running. He was well fed and strong, other people’s lives were still nourishing his dead flesh. But he couldn’t possibly resist such a powerful blow: his skin shrivelled until it was stretched as taut as parchment over his bones, slime gushed from his eye sockets. Then his spine shattered and the twitching remains collapsed at my feet.
I swung round – the girl vampire could have regenerated already. But there was no danger. She was running across the yard between the buildings, taking huge strides. She still hadn’t left the Twilight, so I was the only one who could see this extraordinary sight. Apart from the dogs, of course. Somewhere off to one side a small dog broke into hysterical barking, transfixed simultaneously by hatred and fear, and all the other feelings that dogs have felt for the living dead for time immemorial.