As if there was 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 what 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? Dark 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 RECOGNISED the car.
Then I recognised 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, when I was 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 recognised the woman – and the Maverick. I could have ended it all 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 towards the entrance to the staircase where I’d once sat by the garbage chute and had a gloomy conversation with a snowy owl.
The Maverick was on his way to kill Egor. Just as I’d expected. Just as 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 the Day Watch could celebrate the success of their operation.
But where are you, Zabulon?
The Twilight gave me time. The Maverick was still walking towards the apartment block, moving his feet slowly. I looked around for signs of the Dark. 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 at his chest. At first I thought I was seeing his heart. Then I realised that it was a weapon – the one he used to kill the Dark Ones.
What’s going on here, Zabulon? I suddenly felt 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 Egor!
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 humans and the 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 grey mindless flock of sheep. The Dark Ones were the wolves who circled round him, picking off the fattest ones. And he was the guard dog. But he couldn’t see the shepherds, he was blinded by his fear and fury. So he hurtled about crazily, just him against all of them.
He wouldn’t believe me, he wouldn’t let himself believe me.
I raced forward, towards 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 powers rule 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 afterwards.
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. He didn’t understand the nature of his 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, naïve 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 grey, 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 twilit stage where he held court and passed sentence.
Suddenly someone had stopped him. Knocked him aside and pushed him down on to the tarmac. 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 sly approach? While he was busy with his vital 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 on to the ground. He had a pistol in his hand.
‘Stop,’ said the man, as if Maxim had been about to run. ‘Listen to me.’
A passer-by who’d taken him for an ordinary maniac? But then what about the pistol, and the 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 Dark there. There simply wasn’t, none at all!
‘Who are you?’ asked Maxim, almost forgetting about the boy magician, who was slowly backing away towards his rescuer.
‘Anton Gorodetsky Night Watch agent. You have to listen to me.’
Anton caught hold of Egor with his free hand and pushed him behind his back.