The Last Watch (38 page)

‘Yes, I realised.'

When I opened the bathroom door I discovered that the light bulb had burned out. Maybe he had left it switched on when he'd left. I couldn't be bothered to search my pockets for a flashlight, so I called on the Primordial Power and lit up a magical light above my head. What I saw made me shudder.

No, it wasn't any kind of horror. A bath, a sink, a tap slowly dripping, towels, soap, a toothbrush, toothpaste …

‘Look,' I said, making the light brighter.

Olga walked up and glanced over my shoulder. She said thoughtfully:

‘That is curious.'

There was writing on the mirror. Not in blood, but in three-coloured toothpaste, so that the words naturally reminded me of the Russian flag. Someone's finger – and somehow I was sure that it was Gennady Saushkin's – had traced out three words in large capital letters on the glass surface of the mirror:

THE LAST WATCH

‘No mystery story ever manages without words on the walls or the mirror,' said Olga. ‘Although the writing ought to be in blood, of course …'

‘This toothpaste suits the purpose too,' I replied. ‘Red, blue and white. The traditional colours of the Inquisition are grey and blue.'

‘I know,' Olga said thoughtfully. ‘Do you think it was deliberate? Vampire, Inquisitor, Healer?'

‘I can't see the line between deliberate intention and coincidence,' I admitted.

I walked along the short corridor and glanced into the sitting room. The light worked there.

‘It's very nice,' said Olga. ‘The house is so run-down, but they did a nice repair job in here.'

‘Gennady's a builder by profession,' I explained. ‘He did everything at home himself, and he helped me out once … well, I didn't know who he was then. He was very well thought of at work.'

‘Of course he was, as a non-drinker,' Olga agreed and walked into the bedroom.

‘He's a perfectionist too,' I said, continuing to praise Gennady as if we hadn't come here to lay the vampire to rest, and as though I was recommending him to Olga to refurbish her apartment.

I heard a muffled sound behind my back and turned round.

Olga was being sick. She was slumped against the doorpost, with her face turned away from the bedroom, and was puking straight onto the wall. Then she looked up at me, wiped her mouth with her hand and said:

‘A perfectionist … Yes, so I just saw.'

I definitely didn't want to see what Olga had taken such a violent dislike to. But I walked to the door of the bedroom anyway, on legs that had turned to rubber in advance.

‘Wait, I'll get out of the way,' Olga muttered, moving aside for me.

I glanced into the bedroom. It took me several seconds to make sense of what I saw.

Olga needn't have bothered to move. I didn't even have time to turn round, I just puked up my lunch straight into the bedroom, through the doorway. If shaking hands through a doorway is bad luck, then what about puking through one?

¹
This story is told in the first part of the book
The Night Watch
.

CHAPTER 2

GESAR WAS STANDING
at the window, watching the city deck itself out in its evening lights. Standing there silently, with only his hands, which were clasped behind his back, moving – as if he were weaving some kind of cunning spell.

Olga and I didn't say anything either. Anyone might have thought that it was all our fault …

Garik came in and lingered just inside the door.

‘Well?' Gesar asked without turning round.

‘Fifty-two,' Garik said.

‘What do the specialists say?'

‘They've examined three. They all have the same injuries. The throat has been bitten and the blood has been drunk. Boris Ignatievich, can we carry on with this somewhere else? The stench is so terrible that the spells can't handle it … And it's all around the house already … as if a sewer had burst …'

‘Have you called a truck?'

‘A van.'

‘All right, take them away,' said Gesar. ‘To some waste ground, well away from the city. Let them be inspected there.'

‘And then?'

‘And then …' Gesar said pensively. ‘Then bury them.'

‘Are we not going to send them back to their families?'

Gesar thought it over. Then suddenly he turned to me.

‘Anton, what do you think?'

‘I don't know,' I replied honestly. ‘Disappeared without trace or killed … I don't know which is better for the families.'

‘Bury them,' Gesar ordered. ‘When the time comes we'll think about it. Perhaps we'll start quietly exhuming them and sending them back to their families. Invent a story for each one. Do they all have documents?'

‘Yes, they were lying in a separate pile. All neat and tidy, the work of a perfectionist.'

Yes, Gennady had always been neat and tidy. He used to lay down polythene sheeting when he drilled holes in the wall, and then carefully cleaned the floor after himself …

‘How could we have failed to notice him?' Gesar asked in a voice filled with pain. ‘How did we fluff it? A vampire killed more than fifty people right under our very noses!'

‘Well, none of them are Moscow locals,' Garik said. ‘They're from Tajikistan, Moldova, Ukraine …' He sighed. ‘Working men who came to Moscow looking for a job. Not registered in Moscow, of course. They lived here illegally. They have places along the main roads, where they stand for a day or two, waiting to be hired. And he's a builder, right? He knew everyone and they knew him. He just drove up and said he needed five men for a job. And he chose them himself, too, the bastard. Then he drove them away. And a week later he came back for some more …'

‘Are people really still so sloppy?' Gesar asked. ‘Even now? Fifty men died, and nobody missed them?'

‘Nobody,' Garik said, with a sigh. ‘That dead piece of filth … he probably didn't kill them all straight away … he killed one and the others waited for their turn – for a day, two, three. In this
room
. And he put the ones he'd drunk in two polythene bags so they wouldn't stink and stacked them in the corner. The radiators on that side are even switched off. He must have started in the winter …'

‘I really feel like killing someone,' Gesar hissed through his teeth. ‘Preferably a vampire. But any Dark One would do.'

‘Then try me,' said Zabulon, casually moving Garik aside as he entered the Saushkin family's sitting room. He yawned and sat down on the divan.

‘Don't provoke me,' Gesar said quietly. ‘I might just take it as an official challenge to a duel.'

A deadly silence fell in the apartment. Zabulon screwed up his eyes and gathered himself. As usual, he was wearing a suit, but without a tie. And for some reason I got the idea that he had chosen the black suit and white shirt deliberately, as a sign of mourning.

Olga and I waited, watching these two Others who were responsible for what happened on a sixth of the world's land surface.

‘Gesar, it was a figure of speech,' Zabulon said in a conciliatory tone of voice. He leaned back on the divan. ‘You don't think I was aware of this … excess, do you?'

‘I don't know,' Gesar snapped. But from the tone of his voice it was clear that he knew perfectly well that Zabulon had nothing to do with this business.

‘Well, let me tell you,' Zabulon said just as peaceably, ‘that I am every bit as outraged as you are, or perhaps even more so. And the entire community of Moscow vampires is outraged and demands the execution of this criminal.'

Gesar snorted. And Zabulon finally couldn't resist making a jibe.

‘You know, they don't like the idea of their food base being undermined …'

‘I'll give them a food base,' Gesar declared in a low, grave voice. ‘I'll keep a lid on the conserved blood for five years.'

‘Do you think the Inquisition will support you?' Zabulon asked.

‘I think so,' said Gesar, finally turning round and looking him in the eye. ‘I think so. And you will support my request.'

Zabulon lost the game of stare-me-down. The Dark One sighed, turned away, looked at me and shrugged, as if to say: ‘What am I to do with him, eh?' He took out a long, frivolous pink cigarette and lit it. Then he said:

‘They've gone completely wild …'

‘Then you make sure they
don't
go wild.'

‘Their children can't grow up without this, you know that. Without fresh blood they never reach sexual maturity.'

Naturally, Zabulon was not in the least concerned for the fate of vampire children. He just wanted to make fun of Gesar. As far as that was at all possible.

‘Children? We'll allow the children fresh blood,' Gesar said after thinking for a moment. ‘We wouldn't want thirty … er … Anton?'

‘Thirty-two.'

‘We wouldn't want thirty-two bloodsucking teenagers. Fresh blood. But donor blood! We are suspending the issue of licences for five years.'

Zabulon sighed and said, ‘All right. I've been thinking it was time to tighten their rein myself. I asked the secretary of the community to keep an eye on the Saushkins … they proved to be a rotten little family.'

‘I ought to have insisted on seven years,' said Gesar. ‘You agreed to five too easily.'

‘But what's to be done now? We've already agreed,' said Zabulon, puffing out a cloud of smoke. He turned to me. ‘Anton, did you come to see Gennady after Kostya was killed?'

‘No,' I answered.

‘But why didn't you? As an old friend and neighbour … ai-ai-ai …'

I didn't answer. Eight years earlier I would have blown my top.

‘We've decided this matter,' said Gesar. He frowned as he looked out into the corridor, where they had started carrying out the bodies. The whole entrance and stairway had been put under a light spell that completely removed any desire the inhabitants of the building might have had to glance out of their doors or look out of their windows. But then, in view of the fact that no one had come to see what the woman from my old apartment had been screeching about, people around here must all have been exceptionally incurious anyway.

It kept getting harder and harder for me to love them. I had to do something about that.

‘What else?' Zabulon asked. ‘As far as help in catching Saushkin is concerned, there's no problem. My watchmen are already out hunting for him. Only I'm afraid they might not deliver him in one piece …'

‘You're not looking too good, Zabulon,' Gesar suddenly said. ‘Why don't you go to the bathroom and wash your hands and face?'

‘Really?' Zabulon asked curiously. ‘Well, since you ask …'

He got up and then halted in the doorway for a moment to make way for two watchmen who were carrying a half-decomposed corpse in a plastic sack. Apart from blood, there's a lot of water in a human body. If you leave a bloodless body to rot inside a plastic cocoon, the result is extremely unpleasant.

Zabulon, however, was not appalled by the sight.

‘I beg your pardon, madam,' he said, letting the remains past. Then he strode cheerfully off to the bathroom.

‘Were there women as well?' Gesar asked.

‘Yes,' Olga replied briefly.

Gesar didn't ask any more questions. Apparently even our iron boss's nerves had given way.

That night the lads who were carrying out the bodies would get totally juiced. And although it was a breach of the rules, I wouldn't try to stop them. I'd sooner go out on patrol duty myself.

Zabulon came back a minute later. His face was wet.

‘The towel's dirty, I'll dry off like this,' he said, with a smile. ‘Well?'

‘Your opinion?' Gesar asked.

‘I had this friend once, she liked to draw a New Year's tree on the mirror with toothpaste for the festive season. And the words “Happy New Year”, and little numbers.'

‘Very funny,' Gesar said fastidiously. ‘Have you heard anything about such an organisation?'

‘About a “Last Watch”?' Zabulon asked, clearly emphasising the capital letters in his intonation. ‘My dear enemy, even among the Dark Ones there are any number of sects, groups and mere clubs that I have never even heard of. But there are some that I
have
heard of. And the names that you come across! “Children of the Night!”, “Watchmen of the Full Moon”, “Sons of the Wind”. And, by the way, I recall one group of children – human children, not Others – who love to play at vampires. Perhaps we ought to bring them here? To make them realise that a vampire is not really an imposing gentleman in a black cloak who lures maidens into an ancient castle? It's not that Gothic at all …'

‘Zabulon, have you heard anything about the “Last Watch”?'

‘No.'

‘Gorodetsky has suggested' – Gesar paused and looked at me – ‘that it's what the three Others who tried to get their hands on the artefact in Edinburgh call themselves. The Dark One, the Inquisitor and the Light One.'

‘The Dark One is Saushkin, the Inquisitor is Edgar,' Zabulon said, nodding. ‘But who is the Light One?'

‘I don't know. We've checked all the Higher Ones, they're clean.'

‘Well, Saushkin wasn't a Higher One …' Zabulon said with a shrug. ‘Although … it's easier for vampires. And then, what about Edgar? Gorodetsky?'

‘I didn't have time to study his aura thoroughly,' I replied. ‘There was a battle going on … and he was also hung with amulets from head to toe. Give me five minutes in a quiet situation, and I'll know everything there is to know about him …'

‘Nonetheless,' Zabulon insisted, ‘I know what happened on the Plateau of Demons. In general terms. So tell us about it.'

‘In battle he behaved like a Higher One,' I stated after seeing Gesar nod reluctantly in consent. ‘There were three of us … well, two, if you don't count Afandi, although he tried his best too. We had a set of protective amulets from Gesar, all very well chosen. But he was almost a match for us. I even think that he might have been able to continue the fight and have a chance of winning. But when Rustam left, Edgar had no reason to carry on fighting.'