The Last Watch (36 page)

‘In the Gazelle,' Garik told me, with a nod. I walked across to our operational vehicle and got in.

A young lad wrapped in a blanket and drinking hot tea from a mug gave me a frightened look.

‘My name's Anton Gorodetsky,' I said. ‘You're Andrei, right?'

The boy nodded.

‘I …' the boy began in a remorseful voice. ‘I didn't know …' ‘Calm down. You're not to blame for anything. Nobody could have foreseen the appearance of a wild vampire in the centre of Moscow in broad daylight,' I said. But I thought to myself that if the lad had such a natural ability for reading auras, then this sort of thing ought to have been foreseen. But I didn't want to criticise the dead tutor. Some day this incident would go into the
teacher
-training manuals, on the pages printed in red to indicate that the knowledge in them had been paid for in blood.

‘But I shouldn't have shouted like that,' the boy said. He put down the mug of tea. The blanket slid off his shoulder and I saw a massive bruise on his chest. The vampire had hit him really hard. ‘If he hadn't heard me …'

‘He would still have sensed your fright and confusion. Calm down. The most important thing now is to catch this undead monster.'

‘And lay him to rest,' the boy said in a firm voice.

‘Right. And lay him to rest. Have you been studying with us for long?'

‘Three weeks.'

I shook my head. He was a talented young boy, no doubt about it. I just hoped that what had happened wouldn't put him off working in the Watch …

‘Have you been taught how to record auras?'

‘No,' the boy admitted. And he shuddered, as if at some unpleasant memory.

‘Then describe the vampire as precisely as you can.'

The boy hesitated and then said:

‘We haven't been taught. But I've tried studying it. It's the fourth paragraph in the textbook … recording, copying and transmitting an aura.'

‘And you studied the subject?'

‘Yes.'

‘Can you transmit the vampire's aura to me?'

The boy thought for a moment and nodded.

‘I can try.'

‘Go on. I'm opening myself up.' I closed my eyes and relaxed. Okay, come on, young talent …

At first there was a faint sensation of warmth – like a hairdryer
blowing
into my face from a distance. And then I sensed a clumsy, rather confused transmission. I locked onto it and took a close look. The boy was trying with all his might, transmitting the aura again and again. Gradually I began building up a complete picture out of the isolated fragments.

‘Just a little bit more,' I said. ‘Repeat that …'

The coloured threads flared up more brightly and arranged themselves into an intricate pattern. The basic colours, of course, were black and red, non-life and death, the standard vampire aura. In addition to the colour scheme, which was constantly changing and could be very different at different times, there were fundamental features: the subtle pattern of Power, as individual as fingerprints or the pattern of blood vessels in the iris of the eye.

‘Well done,' I said, pleased. ‘Thank you. It's a very good impression.'

‘Will you be able to find him?' the teenager asked.

‘Definitely,' I assured him. ‘You've been a great help. And don't be upset. Don't punish yourself … your tutor died a hero.'

That was a lie, of course. In the first place, heroes don't die. Heroes don't protect themselves with the Magician's Shield when they see a vampire attacking, they strike to stun him. An ordinary Grey Prayer would have slowed the vampire down and stopped him, at least for a while. Long enough for the trainees to scatter and run, and the tutor could have gathered his thoughts and erected a decent defence.

But there was nothing to be done about it now. There was no point in explaining to the boy that his first tutor had been a kind, sweet guy, but completely unprepared for real work. That was the whole problem – genuine battle magicians with the smell of blood and fire in their nostrils didn't often go in for tutoring. The tutors were more often noble-minded theoreticians …

‘Garik, do you need me here?' I asked. There was already a Dark
One
I didn't know loitering about beside Garik and the colonel. Which was only to be expected. The Day Watch had dropped by to get their guy off the hook, if they could, and if they couldn't, to find out how serious our losses were. Garik shook his head. I ignored the Dark One and walked off casually towards my car, which was parked right under a ‘No Parking' sign. Anti-theft spells are used by all Others, but applying a spell that lets you be seen by everyone on the road and park wherever you like is a bit more complicated.

Getting an impression of the vampire's aura was a great stroke of luck. In a situation like that even experienced adult magicians lose their heads. But this kid had managed to do well. I was itching to get back to the office as quickly as possible and pass on the impression for the duty watchmen's information – then everyone who went out on patrol could look for the bloodsucker. A Higher Vampire, unregistered … No, I couldn't count on a coincidence like that.

But it was a
Higher
Vampire!

Trying to set aside my excessive hopes, I got into the driving seat and set off for the office.

The city duty officer was Pavel. I flashed him the impression of the aura, and he was delighted to get it. It's always a pleasure to hand the patrolmen something serious instead of highly relevant information such as: ‘At Chistye Prudy a wild vampire took out two of our side … His appearance? Male, kind of middle-aged …'

I sat down in front of the computer in my office, looked at the screen and said:

‘This is plain crazy.'

But I launched ‘Comparison' anyway. The big problem with comparing auras is that you can't let the system compare them automatically, like you can with fingerprints. The impression of
the
aura can be passed ‘from head to head' but not ‘from head to computer' – no computers like that exist. To get an aura into the database, we have an elderly artist who works with us, Leopold Surikov. Despite being the namesake of a famous Russian artist, Leopold had not been a great success as a painter. And he had turned out to be a pretty weak Other too. But he could receive an impression of an aura and then reproduce the intricate pattern in a drawing, working patiently and painstakingly in the manner of a Chinese or Japanese miniaturist. And then that drawing could be entered into the computer for safe keeping and comparison. All the other Watches who can afford to keep an artist Other on the books work in exactly the same way.

Of course, it's slow, laborious work. Two days for even the least intricate aura.

But if the aura was already in the database, you could sidestep the long process, which was what I intended to do. Just to make sure I'd done everything possible – well, how would an unregistered vampire's aura get into the database?

A table appeared on the screen and I started clicking away with the mouse, constantly checking with the traces in my memory as I entered plus and minus signs.

‘Is there an upper arc?'

Of course not. How could an undead vampire have an upper arc in his aura?

The figure showing the number of registered auras was immediately cut by a factor of five. There were far fewer undead in the archive than live Others. Several lines also disappeared and the table immediately became shorter as it was targeted on vampires.

‘How marked is the first lateral barb?'

I entered two plus signs. I could have entered three – the barb was right on the borderline.

The questions followed each other. I answered about twenty of
them
before I let myself glance at the right upper corner of the table.

I saw the figure 3 winking at me.

I'd got a result after all. A small figure like that had to refer to a vampire and members of his clan, the ones he had initiated. There are certain differences between their auras, but they are absolutely minimal, it would take hundreds of questions to get a specific identification.

But three candidates suited me just fine.

I clicked on the figure 3.

And I almost fell off my chair. There was Kostya Saushkin's smiling face looking out at me, with the words LAID TO REST written across it in thick red letters.

I stared dully at the screen for a few seconds, remembering the contents of the aluminium container that Gesar had shown me the previous week, after I had got back from Samarkand …

And then I groaned out loud when it finally hit me.

I clicked again, and shuddered again when I saw Polina, Kostya's mother. But it wasn't the photograph that shocked me, it was the words written across it in red: LAID TO REST.

I started running through her file from the top: ‘Born a human being, with no abilities as an Other. Initiated by her husband under paragraph 7 of the agreement, “The right to self-determination of an Other's family …”' A little further down I picked out the lines: ‘Refused to participate in the lottery, rewarded with a monthly supply of non-preserved donor blood, group 3, rhesus positive'. She was conservative in her feeding habits, did not hunt human beings, always took exactly the same type of fresh blood, unlike some vampires who, once they gave up hunting, started demanding ‘virgin's blood, only group 1 or 2 – groups 3 and 4 give me indigestion'.

The final lines made everything clear.

‘Voluntarily terminated her existence and laid herself to rest on 12.09.2003, shortly after the death of her son, Higher Vampire Konstantin Gennadievich Saushkin (case No. 9752150). Buried on 14.10.2003, at her own request, with the Christian rites of burial, carried out by the Light Other Father Aristarkh.'

I knew Father Aristarkh – he was one of those very rare cases when an Orthodox priest managed to combine his life as an Other with his faith, and also tried to carry out some kind of missionary work among the Dark Ones. I had been speaking to him only a month earlier. Why hadn't I known about Polina Saushkina's suicide – for that was what it was, if you stripped away the shell of words.

I hadn't wanted to know, so I hadn't. All very simple.

A third click of the mouse – and a third file.

Naturally.

‘Gennady Ivanovich Saushkin …'

I groaned and clutched my head in my hands.

Fool! Fool! Fool!

It didn't matter that, according to the file, Saushkin senior was a fourth-level vampire, that he didn't hunt, was not a member of the Day Watch and had never been known to break the law.

Edgar had never been listed as a Higher Other, either. But just look at the way he had managed to withstand the influence of four amulets and only tell me part of the truth.

And I had understood the partial truth exactly the way that suited me. The way that suited my own complexes, fears and feelings.

The boy Andrei, who had been fished out of the pond after his close encounter with Gennady Saushkin, was wrong to blame himself. He was not to blame for his teacher and fellow trainee being killed.

I
was to blame. I had got stuck on the name ‘Saushkin', as if it
was
some kind of impassable barrier. And I hadn't bothered to take even a single step sideways.

I was just about to print out the page when I realised that I couldn't even wait thirty seconds for the printer to purge its printing heads and make itself ready.

I leapt out of my office and dashed up the stairs.

But then I ran into a dead end – Gesar wasn't in. Of course, I realised that he needed to rest sometimes too, but why did it have to be right now? This was really bad luck …

‘Hi, Anton,' said Olga, coming out of the door of the office. ‘Why are you looking so … hyped-up?'

‘Where's Gesar?' I howled.

Olga looked at me thoughtfully for a second. Then she walked up to me, pressed her hand carefully against my lips and said:

‘Boris is sleeping. He hasn't gone home even once since the day you got back from Uzbekistan. An hour ago I used all the female wiles in the book to get him to go to bed.'

Olga was looking great. Her hair had obviously been worked on by a good stylist, her skin was covered with a wonderful gold tan, she was wearing a hint of make-up – just enough to emphasise the beautiful outline of her eyes and the sexy plumpness of her lips. And she smelled of something very expensive: spicy and floral, hot and seductive.

She really had used all her female wiles.

But then, I'd seen her when she looked quite different. And not only seen her – I'd actually been inside that magnificent body myself. The sensation had been instructive, but I couldn't say that I really missed it all that much.

‘And if you, Anton, start yelling and phoning Boris and insisting that he has to come to work immediately, I'll turn you into a bunny rabbit,' Olga said. ‘I just haven't decided yet if it should be a real one or a stuffed toy.'

‘An inflatable one from a sex shop,' I said. ‘Don't try to frighten me, it's impossible anyway.'

‘You think so?' she asked, narrowing her eyes.

‘I do. But if you really want to practise your battle magic that badly – I have someone you can use as a target.'

‘Who?'

‘A Higher Vampire. The one who's been working with Edgar. The one who took out two Light Ones today at Chistye Prudy.'

‘Who?' Olga repeated insistently.

‘Saushkin.'

A faint shadow ran across Olga's face. She took me very gently by the elbow and said:

‘Anton, we all have tragedies in our lives. Sometimes we lose friends, and sometimes we lose enemies, but we still blame ourselves …'

‘Save the psychotherapy for Gesar!' I barked. ‘It's Gennady Saushkin! Saushkin senior! Kostya's father!'

‘We checked him, he's fourth level …' Olga said, and then stopped.