I WOKE UP WHEN I REALIZED I WAS BEING CALLED. CALLED THE SAME WAY

that vampires call their prey. Still not fully awake, I got up and fumbled for my clothes on the chair.

The Call was sweet and alluring, it enveloped me¡ªcaressing and urging me, it was impossible, absolutely impossible to resist it. Sometimes it sounded like music, sometimes like singing, sometimes like whispering, and in every form it was perfection, the reflection of my own soul.

And then, like a sudden blow just below the knees, came the jerk up onto the next step.

The Call instantly lost its power over me, although it hadn't stopped. I dropped the trousers I was holding and gave my head a quick shake...

Oh, that hurt...

The sweet hypnotic syrup slowly drained out of me. Drained out and disappeared somewhere under the floor. Spent Light energy, faded Power.

I suddenly understood very clearly why vampires' victims smile as they present their necks to be bitten. When the call sounds, they're happy. This is the sweet moment they have been waiting for all their lives, and compared with this, life is as empty and gray as the world of the Twilight.

The Call is a kind of gift. A liberation. Only it was still too soon for me to be set free.

I had no idea why, but this time the new ability I acquired was immunity to the magical Call. I could hear it and understand it, but I remained completely in control of myself. And naturally, I screened my mind off from the caller, so that he wouldn't suspect his victim had been transformed from a sleepwalker into a hunter...

"A hunter?" I asked myself curiously. "Hmm..."

So I was going hunting. Well now, that was interesting.

The Call continued.

"Well, well," I thought. "This is the residence of the Day Watch. Everything here is saturated with magic. The defenses here are quite incredible. But the Call is still effective... was effective?"

The Light Ones had invested a lot of effort in this trick. And in concealing it from prying eyes. It was their good luck that the chief of the Day Watch was out of Moscow¡ªthe Light Ones would never have been able to trick him, no matter how hard they tried.

Meanwhile I calmly got dressed, thinking sadly that my dream of visiting a restaurant and grabbing a bowl of hot, spicy soup and a plate of something like duck in cherry sauce would be postponed again for an indefinite period. I set two or three weak protective spells and left my suite... I mean, my apartment. If they called them apartments here, I might as well maintain the tradition. I had the flat bread-cake of my mini disk-player attached to my belt, of course; I stuck the little beads of the earphones into my ears and pulled my cap down tight onto my head.

"Why not set it on random selection?" I thought, manipulating the controls. "Play a little game with fate."

And once again fate chose me a song from the album by Kipelov and Mavrin. A different one this time.

There is silence above me, A sky full of rain,

The rain goes straight through me,

But there's no more pain.

While stars whispered coldly,

We burned our final bridge.

And everything has tumbled into the abyss

I shall be free

From evil and good,

My soul's been walking the razor's edge.

Mm... well. A rather gloomy prophecy. Just when was it that I burned my final bridge? Or maybe that was what I'd just left my apartment to do, instead of going up to the next floor and inquiring after the fate of some extremely powerful Talon or other? But I was being urged to follow the Call by that certain something that had already been lying concealed somewhere deep inside me for a while.

I'm free! Like a bird in the heavens.

I'm free! I've forgotten the meaning of fear.

I'm free! I am the wild wind's equal.

I'm free! In the real world, not in a dream.

Kipelov's voice was no less enchanting than the Call. It had a hypnotic resonance; it was as convincing as truth itself. And I suddenly realized I was listening to a hymn of the Dark Ones. An embodiment of their ideal of rebellious souls who acknowledge no boundaries or rules;

There is silence above me,

The sky full of fire,

The light goes straight through me,

But I'm free once again,

Free from love,

Free from hate and from rumors,

From a fate foretold in advance

And from earthly shackles,

From evil and from good.

My soul no longer holds a place for you.

Freedom. The only thing that genuinely interests us. Freedom from everything. Even from domination of the world, and it's incredibly sad that the Light Ones just can't understand that and believe it; they just carry on spinning their interminable intrigues, and just to maintain the status quo we have no choice but to obstruct them.

The elevator slid smoothly downward, past the Twilight floors and the ordinary ones. I'm free...

If Kipelov was an Other, he had to be Dark. No one else could sing about freedom like that. And no one but the Dark Ones would hear the song's most profound, true meaning!

The two taciturn warlocks on watch below let me out without any trouble¡ªEdgar had done well to have the image of my registration seal entered in the operational database. I walked out onto Tverskaya Street, into the thickening dusk of another Moscow evening, and set out toward the Call, but free from it. And from everything in the world.

Who wanted me so badly? There are no vampires among the Light Ones¡ªno ordinary vampires, that is. All Others are energy vampires¡ªthey can all draw Power from people. From their fears, from their joys, from their sufferings. The only fundamental difference between us and the Twilight moss is that we're able to think and move about. And we don't use accumulated Power simply for nourishment.

The Call led me along Tverskaya Street, away from the Kremlin, toward the Belorussian railroad station. I walked along, all alone in the evening crowd, as if I'd been singled out, chosen. And I had been chosen¡ªby the Call. Nobody saw me, nobody noticed me. Nobody was interested in me¡ªnot the girls warming themselves up in the automobiles, not their pimps, not the tough-looking young guys in the foreign cars pulled up at the curb. Nobody.

A right turn. Onto Strastnoi Boulevard.

The Call was getting stronger. I could feel it¡ªthat meant the encounter would be soon.

The herds of automobiles tore through the driving, sticky snow, the fine snowflakes dancing whimsical roundelays in the beams of their headlights.

Cold and dusk. Moscow in winter.

The snow settled in an even layer on the paths of the boulevard and on the benches that were empty at this time of year, and on the bushes, and on the railings that separated the roadway from the pedestrian park area.

They tried to grab me halfway toward Karetny Ryad.

The spell of isolation seemed to fall from the sky¡ªordinary people just lost interest in what fate had in store for the boulevard, the cars carried on rushing past, minding their own business, the small number of pedestrians who were nearby faltered for a moment and then wandered away, even if they had been moving toward me.

The Light Ones slid out of the Twilight one after another. Four of them. Two magicians and two shape-shifters, already in battle form. A massive polar bear as white as snow and a tigress with bright ginger stripes.

I was almost flattened when the magicians struck together from both sides. But they had underestimated their quarry¡ªthe blow had been calculated for the old me, the one that would have submitted to the Call.

I had already become someone else.

Mentally parting my hands, I halted the walls that were about to come together and envelop me. I halted them, drew in Power, and pushed them away from myself. Not very hard.

I don't know what a tsunami looks like¡ªI've never seen one¡ª but it was the first thing that came to mind when I examined the result.

The Light magicians' walls, which had appeared so monolithic and impregnable only a second earlier, crumpled like rice-paper partitions. Both magicians were swept away, tossed onto the snow, and dragged about ten meters across the ground, and only the railings fencing the park off from the road prevented them from falling under the wheels of the cars. A cloud of powdery snow flew up into the air.

The Light Ones probably realized that they couldn't take me with just magic, so then the shape-shifters came rushing at me in their animal forms.

I hurriedly drew more Power from wherever I could, and immediately there was a dull thud on the road, followed by the tinkle of broken glass, then another thud, followed by the ear-splitting screech of car horns.

I took the bear's impact on a Concave Shield and sent him tumbling away along the boulevard. At first I simply dodged the tigress.

I'd taken a dislike to her from the very beginning.

I don't know where shape-shifting magicians get the mass for transformation. In her human form this girl couldn't have weighed more than forty-five or fifty kilos. But now she was at least a hundred and fifty kilos of muscles, sinews, claws, and teeth. A genuine combat-killing machine.

The Light Ones like that.

"Hey!" I shouted. "Wait. Maybe we can talk?"

The magicians were back on their feet, and they made another attempt to snare me, but it didn't cost me much of an effort to tie the greedy, trembling threads of energy into knots and fling them back at their owners. Both shots hit their targets again, but this time no one was sent skidding onto his back¡ªI had simply returned their own energy. The bear stood on one side, shifting his weight menacingly from one foot to the other. He was hunching up, as if he were about to stand on his hind legs.

"I wouldn't advise it," I told him, and struck at the attacking tigress.

Not too hard. I didn't want to kill her.

"Just what is the damn problem?" I shouted angrily. "Or is this just the way things are done in Moscow?"

Calling the Night Watch would have been stupid¡ªmy attackers served in the Watch themselves. Maybe I should get help from the Day Watch? Especially since it was no real distance¡ª their office was very near and I could be there in a flash. But would it do me any good?

The magicians weren't about to give up; one was holding a flaming wand charged up to the hilt, and the other had some kind of restraining amulet that looked pretty powerful too.

It took an entire two seconds to deal with the amulet¡ªI had to tear apart the net that was cast over me with an ordinary Triple Dagger¡ªbut the amount of Power that went into that extremely simple spell was enough to reduce the entire center of Moscow to ashes. Then the second Light magician hit me with the Fire of Bethlehem, but his blow only made me angry and, I think, even stronger.

I froze his wand. Simply turned it into a long icicle and put a spell of rejection on it. Fragments of ice spurted out of the Light One's hands like some weird, cold firework display, and at the same time the liberated energy went soaring up into the heavens.

I couldn't really dump on the people around us, could I? I'd already done enough damage with those collisions on the nearby intersections...

The bear stayed put. Apparently he'd realized that, despite their numerical superiority, the balance of Power was far from equal. But the tigress just wouldn't stop. She came for me with all the aggression of a crazed female animal when an enemy gets too close to her young. Her eyes blazed with unconcealed hatred, as yellow as the flames on church candles.

The tigress was taking revenge. Taking revenge on me, a Dark One, for all her old grudges and losses. For Andrei, who had been killed by me. And who knows for what else... And she didn't intend to stop for anything.

I don't want to say she had nothing to avenge¡ªthe Watches have always fought, and I'm not in the habit of mincing words. But I didn't intend to die.

I'm free. Free to punish anyone who gets in my way and refuses to resolve things peacefully. Wasn't that what the song had been trying to tell me?

I struck out at her with the Transylvanian Mist.

The tigress's body was twisted and stretched, and even above the roar of engines and the piercing beeping of horns I heard the crunching of bones quite clearly. The spell crumpled the shape-shifter the same way a child crumples a plasticine figure. The broken ribs tore through the skin and their bloody ends thrust into the snow. The head was squashed into a flat, striped pancake. In an instant the beautiful beast was transformed into a tangled mess of bloody flesh.

With a final, calculated blow, I consigned the tigress's soul to the Twilight.

Once I'd begun, I had no right to stop.

The Light Ones froze. Even the bear stopped stamping his feet.

And what now? I thought wearily.

Maybe I would have had to kill them all, but thank heaven¡ª or hell¡ªit didn't come to that.

"Day Watch!" I heard a familiar voice say. "An attack on a Dark One has been registered. Leave the Twilight!"

Edgar spoke sternly and without any Baltic accent.

But he needn't have said that about the Twilight. Those who were alive hadn't been fighting in the Twilight, and the tigress had nowhere to come back to.

"The Day Watch demands that a tribunal be convened immediately," Edgar said ominously. "And in the meantime be so good as to summon the chief of the Night Watch."

"Why, he'll scatter all of you like kittens," one of the Light magicians said angrily.

"No, he won't," Edgar snapped and pointed at me. "Not with him here. Or haven't you got the point yet?"

I just barely caught the movement as someone shuffled Power in space. Then a swarthy man with pointed features appeared nearby. He was wearing a colorful Eastern robe and he looked totally absurd in the middle of the snowy boulevard.

"I'm already here," he barked, mournfully surveying the scene of the recent battle.

"Gesar!" Edgar said in a more lively voice. "Hello. In the chiefs absence you will have to explain yourself to me."

"To you?" said Gesar, glancing sideways at the Estonian. "You're not worthy."

"Then to him," said Edgar, shrugging his shoulders and shuddering as if he felt cold. "Or is he not worthy either?"

"No, I'll explain myself to him," Gesar said coolly and turned toward me. His gaze was as bottomless as eternity. "Get out of Moscow," he said with almost no emotion at all. "Right now. Catch a train or ride a broomstick, but just clear out. You've already killed twice."

"As I see it," I remarked as amicably as I could, "certain other individuals have attempted to kill me. And all I did was defend myself."

Gesar turned his back to me¡ªhe didn't want to listen. He didn't want to speak to a Dark One who had dispatched one of his best warriors into the Twilight forever.

"Let's get out of here," he said to his people.

"Hey, hey!" Edgar protested angrily. "They're criminals, they're not going anywhere, in the name of the Treaty I forbid it!"

Gesar turned back toward the Estonian. "Yes they are. And you can't do anything about it. They're under my protection."

I was seriously expecting a hike up onto the next step because the powers that I already had were enough for me to realize I couldn't go head to head with Gesar yet. He'd crush me. Not without an effort¡ªafter all, I'd already come a long way up the invisible stairway. My powers were pretty strong. But he'd still crush me.

But nothing happened. Probably the time hadn't come yet for me to fight Gesar.

Edgar gave me a plaintive glance¡ªapparently he'd been hoping for great things from me.

The Light Ones slipped away into the Twilight, taking with them the remains of their dead sister-in-arms, and then they dived deeper, to the second level. It was over.

"I really can't stop him," I admitted guiltily. "Sorry, Edgar."

"A pity," the Estonian said, with just his lips.

They took me to the Day Watch office in the trusty BMW¡ª for the first time in Moscow I was feeling tired.

But still as free as before.

I paid the price for using so much Power¡ªI can barely remember how they drove me back, urged me toward the elevator, led me to the office, sat me in an armchair and stuck a cup of coffee in my hand. I had a painful ache in my overworked muscles, an ache in my entire being, which just a short while ago had been commanding the powers of the Twilight. I'd beaten them off with convincing skill¡ªit would be a long time before the Light Ones forgot this battle. And my attackers hadn't been young novices either¡ªI reckoned that both Light Ones had been first-level magicians at least.

"Give the analysts a kick up the backside," Edgar ordered one of his subordinates. "I want to find out at last what's going on."

I glanced at him, and Edgar realized I was coming around.

"Talk to me!" he said.

"A Call!" I said in a hoarse voice and started to cough. I tried to take a sip of coffee, burned myself, and hissed in pain. "A Call," I said when I could talk again. "They caught me while I was sleeping."

"A Call?" Shagron echoed in surprise. He was sitting in an armchair like mine at the next desk. "The Light Ones haven't used that for about thirty years..."

"They caught you with a Call in the Day Watch building?" Edgar asked suspiciously. "That's really something! And you mean no one else noticed anything?"

"No. It was a very subtle call, aimed with masterly precision and camouflaged as natural background noise from the residential floors."

"And you submitted to it?"

"Of course not." I made another attempt to take a sip of coffee, this time successfully. "But I decided to investigate what the Light Ones were up to."

"And you didn't tell anyone?" Edgar was balancing halfway between disbelief and annoyance. "That was a crazy risk..."

"If I'd gone trailing after the Call with backup, they'd have spotted it in a moment," I explained. "No, I had to go alone and without cover. So I did. They tried to grab me on Strastnoi Boulevard and I had to fight them off. I knocked the tigress down two or three times and tried to persuade her to stop, and it was only after that I hit her really hard."

Edgar stared at me without blinking.

"You're a dark horse, Vitaly," he said.

"Yes, Dark," I confirmed happily. "They don't come any Darker."

"Are you a magician beyond classification?" he asked.

"Alas, no," I said, spreading my hands¡ªbut slowly, so as not to spill the coffee. "Otherwise I wouldn't have let Gesar go."

Edgar drummed his fingers on the desk, squinting sideways impatiently at the door.

"What are those analysts doing..." he muttered.

The door opened and a brisk middle-aged woman, a witch, appeared in the doorway, with two men, both magicians.

"Hello, Anna Tikhonovna," Shagron greeted her hastily. He ought to have been more powerful than the witch, but he seemed to be afraid of her. And he was right, of course. A witch's Power is slightly different in nature from a magician's. And a witch can easily screw things up even for a very powerful magician.

Edgar just nodded.

"Is this him?" one of the magicians asked, looking at me.

"Yes, Yura."

Yura was an old and powerful magician¡ªI realized that straightaway. I also realized that Yura wasn't his real name. Magicians like that keep their real names hidden so incredibly deep, there's no way you can ever get to them.

And that's the right way. If you're really following the path of freedom.

"Have a seat, Anna Tikhonovna," said Shagron, giving up his armchair and going across to join the magicians, who had occupied the broad windowsill.

"Edgar," said the witch. "The Light Ones went for broke. They haven't pulled anything as wild as this since '49. 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¡ªthe 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¡ªbut 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¡ªeven if she doesn't have her full powers¡ªand 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¡ªShagron'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¡ªa spacious office with a plaque on the door that said "Accounts." The human employees had been herded into the next room¡ªeither an office or a boardroom¡ªand 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 arti-fact 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¡ªthat 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¡ªmost 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¡ªnobody seemed to be running, nobody seemed to be agitated, but the air was alive with tension. I even began feeling a bit uncomfortable¡ªI 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¡ªI'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¡ªa 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¡ªit 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¡ªafter 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 Bo-ryansky 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¡ªand 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¡ªcomplete 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¡ªand 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¡ªRammstein¡ªfor 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¡ªliterally felt them with my back. And I immediately clammed up¡ªI 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¡ªthe whole vast gamut of possible variants¡ªand 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¡ªa 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¡ª that would be the end of everything. The end of the Light..."

"Ah, come on," the soothsayer objected sceptically. "How can it be the end..."

The magician corrected himself: "Well, the end of our superiority. We won't be able to put the Dark Ones under pressure for the foreseeable future."

"But is it really possible to do that anyway?" There was a note of very healthy, frank skepticism in the soothsayer's words. "The Light Ones and the Dark Ones have existed side by side for thousands of years. They've been fighting for thousands of years. Look at how long the Watches have been competing with each other. And then there's the Inquisition¡ªit doesn't allow any violations of the balance of Power..."

The Light Ones broke off their conversation for a moment, walked to the front of the line of three people at the bar and gently clouded everyone else's minds, including the barman's.

"Twenty hamburgers and a carton of juice," the magician said and then turned back to his companion.

I pretended my mind was clouded too. Others are basically pretty happy-go-lucky. Especially young ones. The feeling of their own superiority over ordinary people is pretty intoxicating, and it takes years before they can understand that sometimes being human is much simpler and better than being an Other.

"Anyway, there's going to be a fight. Anton told me the Dark Ones have got some sorcerer from out of town, and he laid out

Farid and Danila with an easy sucker punch. And he killed Tiger Cub. The bastard..."

"She had no business attacking a peaceful Dark One," I thought, feeling annoyed. "I wasn't chasing her, she was the one who was after me..."

But the Light Ones were wrong about the sucker punch. I'd paid a heavy price for that fight.

A moment later I realized that something was happening. As if on command, the Light Ones turned their faces toward the airfield and immediately withdrew into the Twilight. A second later, so did I.

Outside the building, one of the Dark Ones was standing on a snow-covered runway with his wand held out in front of him. A long tongue of flame licked at the frozen concrete. Once, twice. The magician was drying out the runway before the plane from Odessa landed. But there were Light Ones hurrying toward him from the terminal building, sinking into the snowdrifts as they ran.

The magician launched a few more tongues of flame and then shifted deeper into the Twilight.

It looked to me like it was Kolya.

My two Light chatterboxes hastily tipped their food supplies into white-and-green plastic bags and set off at a fast trot, trampling the ever-hungry covering of blue moss. It had an easy life here. All those people, all those emotions... A single passenger who was late for a plane was enough to feed this entire ravenous carpet for a day.

I hopped off my stool too, leaving my unfinished beer on the counter. I could barely make out what was happening through the wall of the terminal building¡ªall I could see were the vague shadows of Others with the colored patches of auras above their heads and viscid bursts of Power being discharged. At the same time, I could still see the inside of the terminal hall and the people sitting in plastic chairs, patiently waiting for their flights.

Low, rumbling sounds threaded themselves through the Twi-light¡ªit was a woman's voice announcing that "flight fifteen zero zero from Odessa has landed." I went hurtling down the stairs, maneuvering between the people who were hardly even moving.

Down. Forward. And now to the right.

I leapt over the turnstile and found myself facing the exit to the airfield.

There was a full-scale battle going on out there¡ªI could literally sense the discharges of energy on my skin. All that Power from the amulets, all that skill from the magicians¡ªand it could all have been used for other purposes, instead of fighting each other. The Light Ones were so rigidly dedicated to their righteous struggle! It hadn't even entered their heads simply to reach an agreement with us¡ªthey'd gone rushing straight into the attack.

I could sense that the Dark Ones were having a tough time of it. It looked like the chief of Night Watch, Gesar, had got involved. And there were at least another two very powerful magicians out there now, beside the plane that was taxiing to its stand.

And then four figures burst in through the wall of the terminal. They were all Others, of course. All tall, with broad shoulders, blond hair, and blue eyes. As if they'd been specially picked to match¡ªa standard matching set of twentieth or twenty-first century Vikings. All wearing identical warm winter parkas and carrying identical bags. They weren't wearing hats and their hair looked disheveled, but something told me it wasn't the wind that was responsible for that.

At first I couldn't understand why they had remained in human form. But then I looked at them in the human world and laughed in surprise when I got the idea: An Other's image in the Twilight¡ªhis subconscious dream¡ªcan take all sorts of forms...

They walked quickly across the hall, almost running, moving past me and toward the exit and the bright patch of light in front of the terminal that was the airport parking lot.

Walking past me.

But just as they drew level with me, a dark-blue flower the size of a heavy Ural construction truck sprang up to the right of them. Everyone in the Twilight was thrown to the ground.

As I lay there on my back, I raised my head and saw a blue veil shimmering in midair, looking like a gigantic Aurelia jellyfish. But I could sense that something was about to happen behind that transparent curtain.

And I was right¡ªa portal opened up in the blue haze, right there in the baggage hall, behind that hazy blue curtain. My eyes were stung by a blinding white glow and it was suddenly abnormally light in the Twilight, even though there were still no shadows. That was a really weird sight: unbearably bright light and not a hint of a shadow.

There were two Light Ones. The Night Watch chief and an attractive young woman. An enchantress of very impressive Power.

"You are in my power," Gesar declared loudly, making a short, economical pass with his hands. "Stand up!"

He was talking to the Vikings. The Light Ones hadn't noticed me lying there closer to the portal than anyone else.

One of the Vikings said something angry and abrupt in English. Gesar replied. I regretted gloomily that I didn't understand a single word. Then the Vikings stood up and began obediently walking toward the portal. I was preparing to stand up and had even got on all fours already, but when the third Viking drew level with me, the fourth abruptly withdrew deeper into the Twilight.

Gesar reacted instantly¡ªhe cast a Net over the others and disappeared. The enchantress stayed where she was.

The remaining Vikings were pinned to the ground and so was I¡ªfrom being on all fours I was flattened back against the floor, this time face down, like a squashed frog on a major highway. It felt as if a slab of concrete had dropped on top of me from a passing dump truck¡ªI couldn't catch my breath or move a muscle. And damned if there wasn't some object jabbing unbearably into my chest, some long, slightly curved object.

Lying with my nose pressed to the floor was not at all pleasant; I made an effort and turned my head.

My eyes met the eyes of the Viking lying beside me. I felt a frost more chilly than any Moscow winter. "You!"

"You're an Other!"

"Yes..."

"You serve the Darkness..."

"Probably..."

"Take care of it!"

"What?"

But the Viking had already closed his eyes. The silent dialogue had only lasted a few brief moments.

Take care of what? This damn thing that was poking me in the ribs?

Just to be sure of things, the enchantress dropped another concrete slab on us¡ªthe Vikings began wheezing painfully and something like a groan was torn from my chest.

And then I thought: Ah, what the hell!

I closed my eyes and focused on searching for Power... and I sensed an almost inexhaustible source right there¡ªthe portal that was still open.

Well, well, how simple everything was, really! It would take no more than a few seconds to restore the Power I'd expended on Strastnoi Boulevard. And the fact that it was a Light portal didn't bother me in the least¡ªthe nature of Power is similar in any case.

I began drawing in the Power of the portal. Taking it slow, so that the Light Enchantress wouldn't immediately realize what was going on.

The first thing I tried was to shift the weight off myself slightly¡ªI managed that okay, and I can't say it was really too difficult. Then I enveloped the thing underneath me in a cocoon and stuck it inside my sweater, still fumbling about on the floor. I thought the enchantress was beginning to feel uneasy.

I was all set to stand up, but then Gesar came back; he was radiating white light, just like a peasant's idea of an angel. With one hand he was clutching the shoulder of the Viking who had fled. One step, then another, and he dropped the limp, submissive fugitive beside his comrades, like a rag doll. But what I saw on Gesar's face was not joy, but something else.

"Where's the Talon?"

He glanced briefly at the enchantress, who pulled her head back into her shoulders in alarm¡ªI sensed her scanning all of us at once.

Oh no, my girl! You won't break into my cocoon.

And Gesar won't break into it either. I can tell you that for sure, from the height of the next step up the stairway.

But Gesar wasn't wasting any time. He came straight up to me.

"You again..."

I didn't catch any hint of hate in his voice. Only infinite weariness.

I stood up and dusted my clothes off for some reason.

"Me."

"You amaze me," Gesar confessed, drilling right through me with his glance. "Amaze me one more time. Give back the Talon."

"The Talon?" I asked, raising my eyebrows expressively. "What are you talking about, colleague?"

Gesar gritted his teeth¡ªI distinctly saw the muscles at his temples twitch.

"Cut the comedy, Dark One. You've got the Talon, there's nowhere else it can be. I've stopped sensing it, but that doesn't change matters. Now you're going to give me the Talon and clear out of Moscow forever. That's the second time I've told you¡ªand let me tell you it's the first time I've ever given anybody a second chance to leave in peace. The first time in very, very many years. Am I making myself clear?"

"Nothing could be clearer," I growled, weighing up my own strength and deciding that it was worth going for it.

I mentally reached out toward the enchantress, who wasn't prepared for anything bad to happen, and drew as much Power as I could from her before she realized what was happening. Then I added some from the portal, and all as quickly as possible.

I opened my own portal directly under my own feet, and at the same time I emerged from the Twilight.

The effect would basically have been the same if I'd been standing on the manhole of a sewer and the cover had suddenly disappeared. I just fell through the floor, as far as Gesar and all the others could see. Fell straight through the floor and disappeared.

I hadn't dared try drawing Power from Gesar¡ªsomething had told me it wasn't worth tangling with him yet.

You can create a cocoon that Gesar couldn't see into without special preparation, you can steal energy from an enchantress who's very probably going to be a great enchantress¡ªthat's all pure childish mischief and it will only work once. But it's a bit too soon for you, Vitaly Rogoza, Dark Other, to get involved in an open fight with the chief of the Night Watch.

Just say "thank you" that got you away in one piece.

I said "thank you" and fell straight into a snowdrift from a height of several meters. It was dark all around. Or almost dark. Just the moon overhead. With a forest stretching out on both sides.

I was in a clearing in the forest, a clearing as straight as Lenin Prospect in Nikolaev and very wide, about fifteen meters across. There was a blank wall of forest on my right and a blank wall of forest on my left, and straight ahead, hanging above the silvery strip of untouched snow, there was the moon. Almost full.

It was beautiful, incredibly beautiful¡ªthe moonlit clearing, the night, the snow... I could have just laid there and admired it.

But I started feeling cold.

I scrambled out of the snowdrift with a struggle and looked around. The snow still looked untouched. But somewhere in the distance I could hear the distinctive hammering rhythm of the wheels of a commuter train.

Hmm. Some great magician I was. Lord of the Dark portals.

I'd opened a portal all right, but I hadn't bothered about where it would end. And this was the result: Here I was all alone in the winter forest in nothing but my sweater¡ªno jacket or hat.

Furious with myself, I felt the long, hard object under my sweater, decided not to remove the cocoon yet, and set off toward the moon, across the miraculous virgin snow of the moonlit forest clearing.

I soon realized that walking through snowdrifts was a very dubious pleasure, so I veered toward the forest, having sensibly decided that there ought to be less snow near the trees.

To my own amazement, I was proved right twice over. First, there were indeed no snow drifts at the edge of the forest, and second, I found a narrow path, pretty well trodden. I simply hadn't noticed it before in the shadow.

One of the ancients once said that roads always lead to the people who built them. And anyway, I had no other option. I set off along the path. First I walked, and then I started running to warm myself up.

"I'll run until I get tired," I decided. "And then I'll enter the Twilight... to warm up."

I just hoped I'd have enough strength for running and the Twilight.

I ran for about fifteen minutes: There was absolutely no wind, so I actually did manage to warm myself up a bit. The clearing went on and on, an unbroken stretch of silvery, glittering snow. I wasn't the one who should have been running here; it should have been some knight of old in a doublet with fur on the outside and his enchanted sword on his belt, his faithful tame wolf running a few steps ahead...

Almost as soon as I thought about the wolf, I heard barking from somewhere on my left. Dogs. A wolf's bark is different. And they don't bark in winter.

I stopped and looked. There was a warm orange glow flickering through the trees. In addition to the barking I could hear voices¡ªpeople's voices.

I didn't waste much time thinking. I walked forward a bit until I reached the path branching off toward the campfire and turned onto it.

Soon two dogs came bounding toward me¡ªa white Karelian Laika with a tight coil of a tail, almost invisible against the background of the snow, and a shaggy Newfoundland terrier, as black as pitch. The Laika was yelping in a voice that rang like a sleigh-bell and the Newfoundland was barking gruffly: "Booff! Booff!"

"Petro! Is that you?" someone asked from the campfire.

"No," I replied regretfully. "It's not Petro. But can I warm myself up a bit?"

To be quite honest, the first thing I wanted to do wasn't warm myself up, but find out where I was, so I wouldn't have to go wandering through the forest at random, but could go straight to the suburban railroad.

"Come on over here! Don't worry about the dogs, they won't touch you."

And the dogs didn't touch me. The little Laika ran around me cautiously at a constant distance of about four meters, and the Newfoundland simply came skipping up to my feet, sniffed my shoes, snorted, and ran back to the campfire.

There were more than ten people sitting by the campfire. Hanging on a long chain, thrown over a thick horizontal branch of the nearest pine tree, there was a big pot, with something bubbling promisingly inside it. The people were sitting on two logs. I could see metal mugs in most of their hands and somebody was just opening a new bottle of vodka.

"Oh, look at that!" a young, bearded guy who looked like a geologist said when I emerged from the darkness into the light. "Just a light sweater!"

"I'm sorry," I sighed. "I've got a few little problems."

"Sit down!" said someone who had come over to me. They sat me down almost by force and immediately thrust a mug of vodka into my hand.

"Drink that!"

I didn't dare disobey. It burned my throat, but a few seconds later I'd already forgotten it was the middle of winter.

"Styopa! Didn't you have a spare jacket somewhere?" the bearded guy asked, still giving the orders.

"Yes," someone answered from the opposite log, and then ran off briskly to one side, where there were dark tents pitched in the gaps between the trees.

"And I've got a hat," said a plump girl with braids like a schoolgirl's. "Just a moment..."

"Been out in the cold long?" the bearded guy asked me.

"Not very. Only about twenty minutes. Just don't ask how I got here."

"We won't," he replied. "We'll find a place for you to sleep, and a spare sleeping bag too. And tomorrow we're going to Moscow. You can come with us, if you like."

"Thanks," I said. "I'd be glad to."

"We've got a birthday here," Styopa explained as he came up to me, holding a bluish-green ski jacket. "Here, take this."

"Thanks a lot, guys," I said sincerely, thanking them mostly not for the hospitality, but for not asking any unnecessary questions.

The jacket was warm. Warmer than it looked.

"And whose birthday is it?" I asked.

One of the girls stopped kissing her latest bearded admirer.

"Mine," she told me. "My name's Tamara."

"Happy birthday," I said. It sounded a bit flat. I felt genuinely sorry that I had nothing to give her as a present, and I felt ashamed to hand her a hundred-dollar bill. It would have been too much like my generous tipping in the hotel.

"What's your name?" the first bearded guy asked me. "I'm Matvei."

"Vitaly." I shook the hand that he held out. "A birthday party in the forest in the middle of winter¡ªI've never been at one of those before."

"There's a first time for everything," Matvei remarked philosophically.

The dogs started barking again and dashed off into the dark night.

"Well, is it Petro this time at last?" the birthday girl asked hopefully.

"Is that you, Petro?" Styopa roared in a surprisingly resonant baritone quite unlike his normal speaking voice.

"Yes," said a voice in the forest.

"And have you brought the champagne?"

"Yes," Petro confirmed happily.

"Hoo-ray," all the girls shouted together. "Hooray for Petro, our savior!"

I felt stealthily under my jacket for the case that must conceal the mysterious Fafnir's Talon. I thought that I could relax until morning and soak in the relaxed atmosphere of somebody else's celebration. The people around the campfire made a point of not singling me out¡ªthey filled my mug with vodka as if I were one of them, then handed me a plate of steaming pilaff, as if the light of their fire attracted underdressed travelers out of the forest every day of the week.

It was a great pity there wasn't a single Other among them. Not even an uninitiated one.