But then something strange had happened. Petka had handed him this dagger and said that the valiant knight had to take his life with this dagger and not humiliate him by taking him prisoner. It was a game, of course, only a game, but Maxim had shuddered inside when he pretended to strike with the wooden dagger. And there had been one brief, agonizing moment when Petka had looked at Maxim’s hand holding the dagger where it had halted, just short of the grubby white T-shirt, and then glanced into his eyes. And then he’d blurted out: “Keep it, you can have it as a trophy.”
Maxim had been happy to accept the wooden dagger. As a trophy and as a present. But for some reason he’d never used it in the game again. He’d kept it at home and tried to forget about it, as if he felt ashamed of the unexpected gift and his own sentimentality. But he’d never, ever forgotten about it. Even when he grew up and got married and his own first child had started to grow, he’d never forgotten about it. The toy weapon always lay in the drawer with the albums of children’s photographs, the envelopes with locks of hair, and all the other sentimental nonsense. Until the day Maxim first felt the presence of Darkness in the world.
It was as if the wooden dagger had summoned him. And it had proved to be a genuine weapon, pitiless, merciless, invincible.
But Petka was gone now. They’d grown apart when they were still young: A year is a big difference for children, but for teenagers it’s a massive gulf. And then life had separated them. They’d still smiled at each other whenever they met and shaken hands, even enjoyed a drink together a few times and reminisced about their childhood. Then Maxim had got married and moved away and they’d almost completely lost contact. But this winter he’d had news of Petka, purely by chance, from his mother—he phoned her regularly, just like a good son should, in the evening. “Do you remember Petya? You were such good friends when you were children, quite inseparable.”
He’d remembered. And he’d realized immediately where an introduction like that was leading.
He’d fallen to his death from the roof of some high-rise, though God only knew what he’d been doing up there in the middle of the night. Maybe he’d deliberately committed suicide, or maybe he’d been drunk—only the doctors had said he was sober. Or maybe he’d been murdered. He had a job in some commercial organization that paid well; he used to help his parents and drive around in a good car.
“He was probably high on drugs,” Maxim had said sternly. So sternly, his mother hadn’t even tried to argue. “I suppose so; he always was strange.”
His heart hadn’t contracted in sudden pain. But for some reason that evening he’d got drunk and killed a woman he’d been trying to track down for two weeks, a woman whose Dark power forced men to leave the women they loved and go back to their lawful wives, an old witch who forced people together and forced them apart.
Petka was gone. The boy he’d been friends with had already been gone for many years, and now Pyotr Nesterov, the man he’d seen once a year or even less often, had been gone for three months. But Maxim still had the dagger Petka had given him.
There must have been some special reason for it, that awkward childhood friendship of theirs.
Maxim toyed with the wooden dagger, rolling it from one hand to the other. Why was he so alone? Why didn’t he have a friend beside him to lift at least part of the burden off his shoulders? There was so much Darkness all around, and so little Light.
For some reason Maxim recalled the last thing Lena had shouted at him as he was leaving: “I’d wish you’d love us, not just take care of us.”
“But isn’t that the same thing?” thought Maxim, mentally parrying the thrust.
No, it probably wasn’t. But what was a man to do when his love was a battle fought against Evil, not for Good?
Against the Darkness, not for the Light.
Not for the Light but against the Darkness.
“I’m the guardian,” Maxim said to himself in a low voice, as if he were too timid to say it out loud. Only schizos talked to themselves. And he wasn’t a schizo, he was normal. He was better than normal; he could see the ancient Evil creeping and crawling into the world.
Was it creeping in, or had it already made its home here a long, long time ago?
But this was madness. He mustn’t, he absolutely mustn’t allow himself to doubt. If he lost even a part of his faith, allowed himself to relax or start searching for non-existent allies, then he was finished. The wooden dagger would no longer be a luminous blade driving out the darkness. The next magician would reduce it to ashes with his magic fire, a witch would cast a spell on it, a werewolf would tear it to shreds.
The guardian and the judge!
He mustn’t hesitate.
The patch of Darkness moving about on the ninth floor suddenly started moving downward. His heart started beating faster: The Dark Magician was coming to keep his appointment with destiny. Maxim climbed out of the car and glanced rapidly around him. As usual, some secret thing inside him had driven everyone away from the scene and cleared the battlefield.
Was it a battlefield? Or a scaffold?
Guardian and judge?
Or executioner?
What difference did it make? He was serving the Light!
The familiar power flooded into his body. Holding his hand inside the flap of his jacket, Maxim walked toward the entrance, toward the Dark Magician who was coming down in the elevator.
Quickly, everything had to be done quickly. It still wasn’t quite night yet. Someone might see. And no one would ever believe his story; the best he could possibly hope for would be the madhouse.
Call out. Give his name. Pull out his weapon.
Misericord. Mercy. He was the guardian and the judge. The knight of the Light. And not an executioner!
This courtyard was a battlefield, not a scaffold.
Maxim stopped outside the door into the building. He heard steps. The lock clicked.
He felt so wronged; he could have howled out loud in horror and screamed curses at the heavens for his destiny and his great gift.
The Dark Magician was a child.
A skinny, dark-haired little boy who looked quite ordinary—except for the quivering halo of Darkness that only Maxim could see.
But why? Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. Maxim had killed women and men, young and old, but he’d never come across any children who’d sold their souls to the Darkness. He’d never even thought about it, maybe because he hadn’t wanted to accept the idea that it was possible, or maybe because he’d been avoiding making any decisions in advance. He might have stayed at home if he’d known his next victim would be only twelve years old.
The boy stood in the doorway, looking at Maxim with a puzzled expression on his face. Just for a moment Maxim thought the kid was going to turn around and dash back in, slamming the heavy, code-locked door behind him. Run, then, run!
The boy took a step forward, holding the door so that it wouldn’t slam too hard. He looked into Maxim’s eyes, frowning slightly, but without any sign of fear. Maxim couldn’t understand this. The boy hadn’t taken him for a chance passerby; he’d realized the man was waiting for him. And he’d come to meet him. Because he wasn’t afraid? Because he had faith in his Dark power?
“You’re a Light One, I can see that,” the boy said quietly but confidently.
“Yes.” He had trouble getting the word out, he had to force it out of his throat. Cursing himself for his weakness, Maxim took hold of the boy’s shoulder and said: “I am the judge.”
The boy still wasn’t frightened.
“I saw Anton today.”
What Anton? Maxim didn’t say anything, but the bewilderment showed in his eyes.
“Have you come to see me because of him?”
“No. Because of you.”
“What for?”
The boy was behaving almost aggressively, as if he’d had a long argument with Maxim, as if Maxim had done something wrong and he ought to admit it.
“I am the judg
e,” Maxim repeated. He felt like turning around and running away. This was all wrong; it wasn’t supposed to happen like this! A child couldn’t be a Dark One, not a child the same age as his own daughter! A Dark Magician should defend himself, attack, run away, not just stand there with an offended look on his face, as if he was expecting an apology.
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 the thing that 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? Darkness 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 RECOGNIZED THE CAR.
Then I recognized 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 restaurant 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 recognized the woman—and the Maverick. I could have ended everything 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 toward the entrance of the staircase where I’d once sat by the garbage chute and had a gloomy conversation with a white owl.
The Maverick was on his way to kill Egor. Just the way I’d expected. Just the way 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 Day Watch could celebrate the success of their operation.
But where are you, Zabulon?
The Twilight gave me time. The Maverick was still walking toward the apartment block, moving his feet slowly. I looked around for signs of Darkness. 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 on his chest. At first I thought I was seeing his heart. Then I realized that it was a weapon—the one he used to kill the Dark Ones.
What’s going on here, Zabulon? I suddenly felt insulted, 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 him!
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 human beings and 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 gray, mindless flock of sheep. The Dark Ones were the wolves who circled around him, picking off the fattest rams. And he was the guard dog. But he couldn’t see the shepherds; he was blinded by his fear and fury. So he rushed about crazily; it was just him against all of them.
He wouldn’t believe me, he wouldn’t let himself believe me.
I dashed forward, toward 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 power rules 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 afterward!
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. Really bad! He didn’t understand the nature of 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 gray; 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 Twilight stage where he held court and passed sentence.
Someone had stopped him. Knocked aside and pushed him down onto the asphalt. 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 stealthy approach? While he was busy with his important 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 onto the ground. He had a pistol in his hand!
That wasn’t good.
“Stop,” said the man, as if Maxim had been about to run. “Listen to me.”
A chance passerby who’d taken him for an ordinary maniac? But then what about the pistol and the crafty 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 Darkness there. There just wasn’t, none at all!
“Who are you?” asked Maxim, almost forgetting about the boy magician, who was slowly backing away toward 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. There was no mistaking the hint.
“Night Watch?” Maxim was still trying to detect a trace of Darkness in the stranger. He couldn’t find it, a
nd that frightened him even more. “Are you from the Darkness?”
He didn’t understand a thing. He tried to probe me: I could feel him searching fiercely and determinedly, but clumsily. I don’t even know if I could have screened myself against it. I could sense some kind of primordial power in this man, or this Other—both terms could apply here—a wild, fanatical energy. I didn’t even try to shield myself.
“The Night Watch? Are you from the Darkness?”
“No. What’s your name?”
“Maxim,” said the Maverick, walking slowly toward me. Looking at me as if he could sense that we’d already met, but I’d looked different then. “Who are you?”
“I work for the Night Watch. I’ll explain everything, just listen to me. You are a Light Magician.”
Maxim’s face trembled and turned to stone.
“You kill Dark Ones. I know that. This morning you killed a female shape-shifter. This evening, in the restaurant, you killed a Dark Magician.”
“Do you do that too?”
Maybe I just imagined it. Or maybe there really was a tremor of hope in that voice. I demonstratively stuck the revolver back in its holster.