I was sick of it.
A passionate heart, clean hands, a cool head … Surely it was no accident that during the Revolution and the Civil War, almost all the Light Ones had attached themselves to the Cheka? And most of those who didn’t had died. At the hands of the Dark Ones, or even more often at the hands of those they were defending. At the hands of humans, because of human stupidity, baseness, cowardice, hypocrisy, envy. A passionate heart and clean hands. But keeping a cool head was more important. That was essential. I didn’t really agree with all the rest. Why not a pure heart and hot hands? I like the sound of that better.
‘I don’t want to protect you,’ I said into the quietness of the forest morning. ‘I don’t want to! Women and children, old men and morons – none of you. Live however you want, get what you deserve! Run from vampires, worship Dark Magicians, kiss the goat under its tail! If you deserved it – take it! If my love means less than your happy lives, then why should you be happy?’
They can become better, they must, they’re our roots, they’re our future, they’re our responsibility. Little people and big people, road-sweepers and presidents, criminals and cops. They carry within them the Light that can erupt in life-giving warmth or death-dealing flame …
I don’t believe it!
I’ve seen all of you. Road-sweepers and presidents, criminals and cops. Seen mothers killing their children, fathers raping their daughters. Seen sons throwing their mothers out of the house and daughters putting arsenic in their fathers’ food. Seen a husband smiling as he sees his guests out, then closes the door, and punches his pregnant wife in the face. Seen a smiling wife send her drunken husband out for another bottle and turn to his best friend for a passionate embrace. It’s very simple to see all this. All you have to do is look. That’s why they teach us not to look before they teach us to look through the Twilight.
But we still look anyway.
They’re weak, they don’t live long, they’re afraid of everything. We mustn’t despise them and hate them, that would be wrong. They must only be loved, pitied and protected. That is our job, our duty. We are the Watch.
I don’t believe it!
Nobody can be forced to commit a vicious act. You can’t push anybody into the mud, people always step into it themselves. No matter what the circumstances are, there are no justifications and there never will be any. But people look for justifications and they find them. All people have been taught to do that, and they’ve all proved diligent pupils.
Yes, of course, there have been, there still are, and there always will be those who have not become Others, but managed somehow to remain human. But there are so few of them, so very few. Or perhaps we’re simply afraid to look at them more closely. Afraid to see what we might discover.
‘Am I supposed to live for your sake?’ I asked. The forest didn’t answer, it was already prepared to accept anything I said.
Why must we sacrifice everything? Ourselves and those we love?
For the sake of those who will neither know nor appreciate it.
And even if they did find out, all we’d get for our efforts would be an incredulous shake of the head and insults.
Perhaps it would be worth just once showing humankind who exactly the Others are. What one single Other is capable of when he’s not shackled by the Treaty, when he breaks free of the Watches.
I actually smiled to myself as I imagined the scene. The overall picture, not just my place in it: I’d be stopped soon enough. So would any Great Magician or Great Sorceress who decided to violate the Treaty and reveal the Others to the world.
What chaos it would be!
Aliens landing at the Kremlin and the White House wouldn’t even come close.
Impossible, of course.
Not my path.
In the first place, because I didn’t want to take over the world or throw it into total anarchy.
The only thing I wanted was for them not to force the woman I loved to sacrifice herself. Because the path of the Great Ones is genuine sacrifice. The appalling powers they develop change them utterly.
None of us is quite human. But at least we remember that we used to be human. And we can still be happy and sad, can love and hate. The Great Magicians and Sorceresses move beyond the bounds of human emotions. They probably feel emotions of their own, but we can’t understand them. Even Gesar, a magician beyond classification, isn’t a Great One. And Olga somehow failed to become a Great One.
They’d screwed something up. Failed to pull off some grand scheme in the struggle against the Dark.
And now they were willing to hurl a new recruit into the breach.
For the sake of humans who couldn’t give a damn for the Light or the Dark.
They were driving her through all the hoops an Other is supposed to jump through. They’d already raised her powers to the third grade, now they were working on her mind. Very very fast.
There had to be a place for me somewhere in this insane pursuit of an unknown goal. Gesar made use of everything that came to hand, including me. Whatever I did – hunting vampires, chasing down the Maverick, talking to Sveta in Olga’s body – all that had just been playing into the boss’s hands.
Whatever I did now was bound to have been foreseen too.
My only hope was that not even Gesar was capable of foreseeing everything.
That I could find the only way that would ruin his great plan for Sveta’s powers.
And avoid causing Evil in the process. Because if I did, it would be the Twilight for me.
But in any case, I’d be doing Sveta a huge favour.
I caught myself standing with my cheek pressed against the trunk of a scrawny pine tree. Standing there, hammering my fist against the wood. In fury or in grief, I couldn’t tell which. I held my scratched and bloody hand. But the sound didn’t stop. It was coming from somewhere in the forest, from the very edge of the magical barrier around the house. Blows in the same rhythm, a rapid, nervous drumbeat.
I lowered my head and ran between the trees, like an adult still playing at paintball. I already had a pretty good idea of what I’d see.
There was a tiger leaping around in a small clearing. Or rather, a tigress. Her black and orange coat gleamed in the rays of the rising sun. The tigress didn’t notice me, right then she wasn’t capable of noticing anything. She ran between the trees, the sharp daggers of her claws ripping at the bark. White scars appeared on the pine trees. Occasionally she stopped, rose up on her hind legs and started slashing at the trunks with her claws.
I set off slowly back to the house.
We all of us let off steam the best way we can. We all of us have to struggle, not just against the Dark, but against the Light too. Because sometimes it blinds us.
But don’t feel sorry for us: we’re proud, very proud. Soldiers in the world war between Good and Evil, eternal volunteers.
CHAPTER 4
THE YOUNG man walked into the restaurant as confidently as if he came there every day for breakfast. But that wasn’t so.
He went straight over to the table where the short, swarthy-faced man was sitting, as if they’d known each other for a long time. But that wasn’t true either. With his last step he sank smoothly to his knees. He didn’t slump, he lowered himself calmly, without losing his dignity or bending his back.
The waiter who was walking past swallowed and turned away. He’d seen all sorts of things in his time, let alone petty incidents like a mafia underling kowtowing to his boss. Only the young man didn’t look much like an underling, and the older man didn’t look much like a mafia boss.