The Day Watch (29 page)

They must have really serious reasons to violate the Treaty!”

Edgar shrugged and explained curtly: “Fafnir’s Talon.”

“But we haven’t got it,” the witch declared emphatically, looking around significantly at everyone there. “Or have we? Shagron?”

Shagron began hastily shaking his head. It looked to me as if he’d had a few run-ins with the witch and not come out on top in them. She was a pretty strong witch.

“Kolya?”

The second magician who had come in replied in a calm voice: “No, and it’s by no means clear that we want it…”

“I’m not asking you,” the witch barked at Edgar and Yura. And then for the first time she glanced at me.

“Anna Tikhonovna,” I said with feeling. “I only learned that the Talon exists yesterday, and I’ve been asleep for most of the time since then.”

“Why are you in Moscow?” she asked sternly.

“I don’t know that myself. Something gave me the urge, told me to come, and so I did. And I was barely off the train before I got caught up in that business with the vampire. Off the boat and into the party, as they say…”

“If I understand anything about anything here,” the magician Yura put in, “then this is predestination. That explains everything-the increased powers, and the missing Talon, and the way the Light Ones acted. They’re simply trying to eliminate him, or at least isolate him, before he can get his hands on the Talon. Because afterward it will be too late.”

“But why didn’t they bring in their enchantress?” Edgar asked, beginning to draw out his vowels slightly again.

Apparently his accent only appeared at moments of agitation, when he was concentrating on something apart from what he was saying.

“And even Gesar only intervened at the critical moment,” Shagron remarked. “And then all he did was cover their retreat.”

“Who knows?” The witch pierced me with her sharp glance again. “Maybe they simply can’t keep up with him?”

“My name’s Vitaly,” I told her. “Pleased to meet you.” After all, who likes to hear himself referred to as “this” and

“him” all the time?

The others just seemed to ignore what I’d said. Yura looked into my eyes and instantly probed me. I didn’t bother to screen myself-but why not?

“Good first-level,” he declared. “With some gaps, though. Just yesterday I would only have been delighted by the appearance of a magician like this among us.”

“But today it upsets you, does it?” the witch snorted.

“Today I refrain from drawing any conclusions. The Light Ones have cut loose, and we’ve been left on our own, without Zabulon. Gesar, plus that enchantress, plus Olga-even if she doesn’t have her full powers-and then Igor, Ilya, Garik, Semyon… We can’t stand against them.”

“But we have the Talon and this… Vitaly,” the witch countered. “And then Zabulon has a habit of appearing just at the crucial moment.”

“We don’t have the Talon,” Yura remarked. “And what guarantee is there that we will have it? In any case, Kolya’s absolutely right: What would we do with the Talon? Of course, I understand, it possesses ancient, mighty Power.

But if we don’t think carefully before we let it loose… We can’t afford to mess things up.”

“Well, we’ll try hard not to,” the witch said ingratiatingly. “Edgar, what have the analysts got?”

As if in response, there was a knock at the door and Hellemar, the lord of the notebooks, appeared in the doorway.

“Got it!” he said triumphantly. “Vnukovo airport! Flight fifteen zero zero from Odessa. It was delayed twice by bad weather conditions, and has only just left. It will land in an hour and twenty minutes. The Talon’s on board.”

“Right,” said Edgar, leaping to his feet. “Set up field HQ at the airport. Keep track of the weather. Cut off the Light Ones. And they can go whistle for an observer.”

“Chief,” Hellemar said with a sour expression, “the Light Ones already set up their field HQ at Vnukovo fifteen minutes ago. Better bear that in mind.”

“We will,” the witch promised. “Now let’s get moving…”

Everyone got up; someone grabbed the phone, someone raked the charged amulets out of the safe, someone else started issuing loud orders to the staff…

And I just wearily set down my empty coffee cup on the desk.

“Do they at least feed people in your headquarters?” I said to nobody in particular. “I’ve been running on empty for twenty-four hours now…”

“You’ll survive,” I was told sharply by Edgar. “Get downstairs and don’t even think of trying any more solo heroics at all.”

But strangely enough, just at that moment I didn’t feel the slightest desire to try any heroics.

We reached Vnukovo with incredible speed. The driver of our comfortable minibus was a lippy young guy the others called Deniska. He was a magician, but he handled a steering wheel even better than Shagron. First we drove around the embankments, then along Ordynka Street and Lenin Prospect, into the South-West district, around the Ring Road… Everything flashed by so fast I barely had time to see anything. Shagron and Edgar had gone off somewhere, Yura and Kolya had disappeared too. I was left with Anna Tikhonovna and a trio of girl witches; every now and then I caught them looking at me curiously. Anna Tikhonovna must have told them to leave me alone, because none of them made any attempt to talk to me. A fat werewolf floundered about heavily in the baggage compartment behind us and growled huskily whenever Deniska threw the minibus into a tight curve

as he overtook someone. The tires squealed, the driveshaft groaned, and the engine hummed like an industrious bumblebee in May.

We were the first to reach the airport. Deniska drove up to the service entrance and two other vehicles came rushing up almost immediately-Shagron’s BMW and another minibus carrying the technicians. The Watch members set to work with fantastic co-ordination; they immediately cast information spells that made us empty space as far as ordinary people were concerned, and a line of technicians carrying notebook computers set off for the entrance. Someone had already chosen a place for the HQ-a spacious office with a plaque on the door that said “Accounts.” The human employees had been herded into the next room-either an office or a boardroom-and put into a blissful trance. I would have chosen the boardroom for the HQ, but Hellemar said there were more telephone lines in the accounts office.

Yura appeared, and I wondered irrelevantly why Edgar was carrying out the duties of senior deputy while the chief was away, even though he was only just on the border of the second level. Yura seemed more powerful to me.

But the affairs of the Day Watch were none of my business, so I just hunkered down in a corner and tried to figure out if I could make a dash to the restaurant for ten minutes. The young technicians were already scraping away at the touch pads of their notebooks.

“The flight’s making its approach, ETA is twenty minutes plus or minus five.”

“Have you located the Light Ones?” Anna Tikhonovna asked.

“Yes. In the overnight transit rooms, beside the lounge. That’s in the next building.”

“What are they doing?”

“Looks like they’re tinkering with the weather,” someone said.

“What’s the point? To stop the plane landing?”

“They won’t do anything that might kill the passengers,” Anna Tikhonovna snorted.

It seemed to me the simplest thing would have been to bring the plane down, and that would have put an end to the whole business. But Light Ones are Light Ones. Even in a situation like this they worry about ordinary human beings. And then, who knew if a plane crash would even damage the artifact from Berne? Maybe it wouldn’t touch it. Power is Power, after all.

“Who’s a weather specialist here?” Anna Tikhonovna inquired.

“Me!” two witches answered in chorus.

“Right then, feel out what’s going on here…”

The witches began feeling things out-that is, scanning the immediate area for weather-changing spells. I could sense dense arrays of sensitive energy impulses that were intangible and invisible, even to many Others. It wasn’t that the Others couldn’t have traced them-most of them simply didn’t know how. Weather magic has always been a specialty of witches and a small number of magicians, and like any other specialized field, it involves plenty of subtle points.

“They’re intensifying the cloud cover,” one of the witches announced. “We need Power…”

One of the reserve magicians immediately picked up an amulet and groped for one of the witches’ hands. They concentrated for a while, and finally all three of them held hands, closed their eyes and sank into something like a light trance.

“Everybody, help them if you can,” Anna Tikhonovna ordered.

I was in no state to help them yet. At least the energy I could have put into the effort was insignificant compared to the Power of the amulet. I’d pretty well drained myself back there on Strastnoi Boulevard…

The Watch continued with its work. The headquarters was really buzzing-nobody seemed to be running, nobody seemed to be agitated, but the air was alive with tension. I even began feeling a bit uncomfortable-I was the only one in the whole headquarters sitting there and doing nothing. And something told me I still wouldn’t be able to do anything for quite a few minutes.

So I sneaked out. I stood up and slid into the Twilight. And then I moved deeper, to the second level.

Falling to the ground from the second floor took me about three minutes, even though I hurried it along as much as I could. It was strange-I’d expected the Twilight to drain me completely but, on the contrary, I felt invigorated, as if I’d just taken a shower and downed a shot of vodka. Amazing.

And by the way, that shot sounded like a good idea.

When I surfaced from the Twilight, I set out for the next building, a long glass-and-concrete slab quite unlike the administrative building, which was crowned by a tall spire-a souvenir of the architectural pomposity of the Soviet

‘50s.

I’d left my jacket in the field headquarters, so I had to sprint for the door. The wind was carrying fine pellets of snow, and I wondered how the plane from Odessa was going to land. Darkness and driving snow-it was a night you wouldn’t put a dog out in. And then the Light Ones would be doing their best to spoil things. But if the plane

didn’t land, where would it go to? Would they redirect it to another Moscow airport? Maybe Bykovo or Domodedovo?

That was an idea. I ought to tell Edgar or Anna Tikhonovna they should send Watch members, just in case…

And then again, they could divert the plane to Kaluga or Tula. If the weather was better there. Which it very well could be-after all, here in Butovo the Light weather magicians were obviously giving it their best shot.

After being outside, the terminal building felt warm and cozy. I went straight up to the second floor, to the bar where Boryansky and I once drank beer while we were waiting for a plane and ate nuts while we listened to a song that had literally dogged our footsteps during that trip: “… the summer has flown by, it’s all behind us now…”

It took me a moment to realize that this was a memory-and I hardly had any of them left. What murky depths of my mind had it surfaced from? I couldn’t tell.

I tried to think exactly who Boryansky was, but I couldn’t even remember his face. And as to where we’d been flying to, and what for… For some reason the only memory that kept on coming back was that then, in those ancient Soviet times, he had a huge bidet in his apartment. Of course, it didn’t work… and anyway, what would a Soviet citizen want with a bidet?

But the bar was still exactly the same as I remembered it. A counter, high stools, gleaming beer taps. And a TV

in the corner. But the video clip they were showing on it was quite different. A young guy with suspiciously red eyes and a girl in a scarlet dress. He was kissing her hand. And the action after that was like a good thriller-complete with slashing wolf’s jaws and all the rest. The moment I really enjoyed was when the young guy, who for some reason was now dressed in the girl’s scarlet dress, came into the ballroom and then split apart into several wolves. And I liked the final shot, when the girl’s red eyes glinted as she surveyed her guests…

Hmm. Well, the guys who made that didn’t know too much about shape-shifting Others. Just as the unfailingly fashionable writer Pelevin didn’t know much about real, gluttonous, dirty werewolves. But the clip was well produced, you couldn’t deny that. The werewolves must have all chipped in to pay the producer and influenced the musicians-and what they’d ended up with was a beautiful, romantic video about themselves. The Russian vampires had done the same thing only just recently.

I remembered the name of the group-Rammstein-for future reference, so that I’d be able to find the song and listen to it a bit more carefully.

I ordered beer and a couple of hamburgers and then sat at one side near the television, with my back to the room.

My stomach already thought my throat had been cut, and I was determined to do something about the situation.

I sensed the Light Ones when I’d just started my second hamburger-literally felt them with my back. And I immediately clammed up-I knew how to do that already, and I knew for certain that they hadn’t spotted me.

I was a powerful Other, after all, even if I was inexperienced, and these two were still apprentices at best: a weak magician, about twenty or twenty-two years old, and a novice soothsayer. I figured I could see the future a lot more clearly than the soothsayer-the whole vast gamut of possible variants-and I could predict more precisely which of them was more probable.

The two Light Ones were talking in low voices; both of them were covered by a skillful spell of inattention-a fairly exotic variety, in fact. It had been cast by someone who was very powerful indeed.

I listened.

“… already here. The boss says things could get rough,” the magician said quietly.

“They’ll stick us in the security cordon anyway,” the soothsayer objected wearily. “Especially after Tiger Cub and Andrei.”

“Oleg, we’ll need all our Power, you understand. All of it. Every last drop. The Dark Ones mustn’t get their hands on the Talon-that would be the end of everything. The end of the Light…”