Sixth Watch (3 page)

“Which Mishka?” I asked.

“Why, Bulgakov, of course!” Ivan said in a tone of voice that made it clear he was talking about someone he was very proud to have known.

But I hadn't known that Ivan was close to the famous writer.
Maybe he'd been responsible for Bulgakov starting to write all sorts of mystical and sci-fi stuff?

“A good likeness?”

“Yes, it definitely has something,” Ivan said, taking me by surprise. “It's quite enthralling, I never expected anything like that from the Brits. He was played by a young guy, a newcomer probably. But he gave it his best shot. I got a real kick out of remembering Mishka! And then I took a look at this other series too . . .”

He was in a mood to talk—and not about vampires. He obviously found his job boring.

Of course, there are all sorts of Other illnesses—from Twilight tonsillitis (don't laugh, it really is very cold in there!) to postincantational depression (caused by abrupt swings in an Other's magical energy level).

And then there are the ordinary human illnesses that he also treated.

But even so, in our office there isn't all that much work for a second-level healer. And we don't visit the doctor very often of our own free will.

“Sorry, got to go and pay the girl a visit,” I said, getting up. “Thanks for the tea . . . So can I discharge her?”

“Of course,” Ivan said with a nod. “I'll wipe her memory clean if you like.”

That was a friendly suggestion. A tremendous suggestion. Wiping someone's memory clean, especially a young girl's, is a shameful kind of business. Even if it's for her own sake. After all, we basically kill something in the person with a purge like that.

“Thanks, Ivan,” I said, nodding. “But I'll probably do it myself. I won't shift the burden onto you . . .”

He nodded.

He understood everything.

I left Ivan in his office (or what do they call what doctors have? A reception area? A duty room?) and walked into the ward.

The girl, Olya Yalova, wasn't asleep. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed and watching the door, as if waiting to see who would come in. It looked so much like clairvoyant prescience that I felt wary and took a look at her aura.

No. Unfortunately not! A human being. Not even the slightest Other potential.

“Hello, Olya,” I said, pulling up a chair and sitting down in front of her.

“Hello,” she said politely. I could tell that she was tense, but trying to look as calm as she could.

In principle, nothing looks more disarming than a young girl dressed in pajamas that are a little bit too big.

Right, let's repeat mentally to ourselves that she's fifteen years old . . .

“I'm a friend,” I told her. “You've got nothing at all to worry about. In half an hour I'll put you in a taxi and send you home.”

“I'm not worried,” the girl said, relaxing. She was only a year older than Nadiushka, at the most, but it was the year that transforms a child into an adult.

Well, okay, not into an adult. Into a nonchild.

“Do you remember anything about yesterday evening?” I asked.

The girl thought for a moment. Then she nodded.

“Yes. I was going”—the pause was almost imperceptible—“to visit someone. And suddenly I heard . . . this sound. Kind of like a song . . .” Her eyes misted over slightly. “I went . . . there's a narrow little street there, with a shop on one side and a yard behind a fence on the other . . . and standing there . . . she was standing there . . .”

“A girl?” I prompted.

Usually a vampire victim who has survived remembers the attack itself, but has absolutely no memory of the attacker. Not even the attacker's sex. It's some kind of defense mechanism the bloodsuckers have developed in thousands of years of hunting people.

But in Olya's case there was a special nuance—the vampire (vam
piress, if I was right) had fed for too long. In that condition vampires tend to lose control of themselves.

The girl paused for a moment and then nodded.

“Yes. A girl . . . I don't remember the face clearly. It was thin, with high cheekbones . . . I think she was young. With short, dark hair and sunken eyes. I walked up to her as if I was dreaming. She waved her hand and I took off my scarf. Then she”—Olya gulped—“she was right there beside me. All of a sudden. And . . .”

She stopped talking. But I kept on asking questions. I wanted to know the details.

The devil is in the details, everyone knows that.

“She bit me on the neck and started drinking my blood,” said Olya. “She drank for a long time. She kept twitching and groaning . . . and . . .” The girl hesitated for a moment. “And pawing my breasts. Not like a boy . . . but even more disgusting. A girlfriend and I fooled around once at training camp . . . Well, I even quite liked it. I'm not a lesbo, don't think that. We were just fooling around. But this was really repulsive. She's not a woman, and not a man. She's not a human being at all, a vampire . . .”

The little-girl/young-woman Olya looked into my eyes very seriously.

“She's dead, right?”

“Yes,” I said, nodding. “It's a special kind of death. Not final. Don't be upset, you won't turn into a vampire.”

“The doctor told me that yesterday,” Olya said with a nod. “Now will you make me forget it all?”

I didn't lie to her. I nodded.

“I suppose I could ask you to let me keep my memory,” Olya said pensively. “But . . . but I won't. In the first place, you're not likely to agree. And in the second place, I don't want to remember this. I don't want to know there are vampires in the world.”

“And there are others who catch them too,” I said.

“That's good,” the girl said with a nod. “But all the same, I don't want to remember this. I can't become one of you, can I?”

I shook my head.

“Then it's better if I forget everything,” the girl decided. “Let me think I spent the time at my girlfriend's place.”

“Just let me ask one more question,” I said. “Was the girl vampire definitely alone? Or was there a male vampire there with her? Maybe he didn't attack, just stood somewhere nearby . . .”

She shook her head.

“Thank you, you've been really helpful,” I said. “All right. Now tell me the way everything should be.”

“I was going to see a boy, you see,” Olya continued. “We were supposed to have sex. The first time. He came out to meet me. And he found me. And when I started walking toward the vampire, he walked beside me and kept asking what I was doing, where I was going . . . And then . . . when he saw her . . . She smiled at Olezhka, and her fangs glinted. And he turned around. And ran away.”

Her frankness was simply astounding. The kind you sometimes see in a train, when total strangers who have been brought together for a day or two on their journey get absolutely plastered, knowing that they'll never see each other again. And people are equally frank when they know they don't have long left to live.

But strictly speaking, that was how things stood here too. The present Olya Yalova would disappear forever—after all, twelve hours of her life would be wiped out. And a new Olya Yalova would appear. Version 1.1. Updated and debugged.

I didn't say anything. It was a good thing the girl had told me about the boy. That meant I would have to . . .

“Don't forget to wipe his memory clean,” the girl went on. “Make him forget we had feelings for each other. And I want to forget that too.”

“Aren't you being a bit too harsh?” I asked.

“He ran away. Do you understand that? He abandoned me! Left me to that monster!”

“Olya,” I said, taking hold of her hand and hoping the gesture looked friendly, or fatherly, and not flirtatious. “A vampire's call, and
its glance and smell, affect everybody, even the very strongest person. You couldn't help going to her. Your friend couldn't help running away. She ordered him to run—and he ran. To be quite honest, I don't think this is the love of your life, but don't be too hard on the boy.”

The girl thought for a minute and then sighed, but apparently in relief.

“All right. Then let him think he was frightened away by a gang of hooligans. And let me think the same thing. That we both ran off, only in different directions. Let him feel ashamed anyway, and let me be a bit angry with him. Say just for a week or two . . .”

“What guileful creatures you women really are!” I couldn't help exclaiming. “More cunning than any vampire!”

Olya finally relaxed completely and smiled a broad, open smile.

“Yes, that's the way we are!”

“Now sleep,” I said.

And, of course, she fell asleep.

I left Olya, snuffling peacefully on the bed, to Ivan's care. He could tidy her up, dress her, put her in a taxi, and send her home. He was a doctor, after all. I also told him about young Oleg, whom Olya was on her way to meet—the authority of a Fourth-Level Other was adequate to dispatch a patrol to find the boy and wipe his memory clean.

And I went to the archives.

A huge section of our documents and the information accumulated by the Watch has been transferred to electronic form. Of course, it can only be accessed on the internal computer network; there's not even an inkling of any access to the Internet.

But by far the greater part of the documents and information remains in paper form.

As well as on papyrus and parchment, and even just a smidgen on clay.

Gesar once told me this is a matter of security—it's far simpler
to put protective spells on physical items than on—how can I put it?—gigabytes and terabytes of information. But I think that's just double-talk.

Most of this information couldn't be transferred into electronic form anyway. Or at least it would be incredibly difficult to do.

Take, for instance, the Witches' Spell Book. Written in children's blood on pages made from the skin of virgins. A revolting thing, I quite agree. But you have to know your enemy . . .

The children's blood, we discovered, can be replaced by old people's blood. Or adults' blood. Or pigs' blood. It makes no difference.

But if you write the spells in the blood of an Other, they stop working when you read them. And the same thing happens with dogs' or cows' blood too.

But chickens' blood and cats' blood are okay!

And what's more, the skin of virgins is not necessary at all; it can be replaced by any kind of skin, any kind of parchment, or any kind of paper. Even toilet paper or emery paper. Witches have so many recipes with blood, skin, tears, and parts of virgins' bodies because most witches are old and hideous. Rejuvenating spells don't work on them; only the camouflaging ones do. That's why witches hate beautiful young girls and do abominable things to them whenever they get a chance. Hang-ups . . .

But blood really is necessary. How and why is something scientists haven't completely figured out yet. But uploading a book like that onto a computer is pointless, it won't work. You can't learn any spells from it.

Or take the healers' recipes. Light magic, no horror involved . . . as a general rule. Looking at the popular recipe for a migraine elixir, we discover that five of the seven ingredients are not written down, but are denoted by smells! That is, you have to sniff the pages of the book!

And yes, you're quite right, if you write in “vanilla,” “chestnut honey,” or “rye bread” instead of including the smells, the elixir won't work.

The healer has to sniff the ingredients as he makes up the recipe, even “powdered chalk,” which doesn't smell of anything much. Even “spring water,” which doesn't have any kind of odor at all.

And by the way, on this point the scientists are almost unanimous: The smell stimulates the Others' hippocampus and the cortex of the temporal regions, and this influences the spell in some way.

But in what way?

And what can we say about magical objects? Or the methods that require tactile contact? They can be described, of course, but the value of the description will only be approximate at best.

So on the computer (which, of course, was where I started) there was only a brief information bar:

VAMPIRES, REANIMATION
(incorrect; the correct term is
RENEWED PSEUDOVITALIZATION
)—the process of restoring the pseudovital functions of vampires after ultimate dispersal (see
DISPERSAL
), final laying to rest (see
LAYING TO REST
), or total physical destruction.

Described by Csaba Orosz (C. Orosz, 1732–1867), index no. 097635249843; Amanda Randy Grew Kaspersen (A. R. G. Kaspersen, born 1881), index no. 325768653166.

I took this printout and went down to the sixth floor, where, after passing the security post (a bit more serious than the security for the infirmary—two Others), I was finally allowed into the premises of the archive.

Helen Killoran was Irish—a rare thing for the Moscow Night Watch. Of course we have heaps and heaps of immigrants from all the republics of the former Soviet Union. We also have a Pole. And a Korean. And the interns on work-experience programs come from all over the place. But they don't stay here for long.

One day, about ten years ago, Killoran came to Moscow too. Black haired, easygoing, punctual, bashful, a nondrinker—basically, she
was nothing at all like an Irish woman as popular culture portrays them. She was a Fifth-Level Other, which didn't embarrass or bother her in the least. Her passion was the past and ancient times. If she hadn't been an Other, she still would have spent her whole life in archives, and to her mind magic was merely the icing on the cake of old documents and artifacts.

Helen Killoran adored systematizing. And for her, Moscow became a paradise that had long ago become unattainable in Europe.

Yes, we have good archives. Nothing there disappears. Everything lies there safe and sound.