Riding on the same carriage with the head was a great honor, but Nathan understood that the chief just did not want to find an ice sculpture instead of the commissar. Brennon climbed inside, and the coachman started off.

"A little more - and they will refuse to take to the streets," Nathan said quietly, "Today, detectives asked about amulets against evil spirits."

"And what did the consultant say?"

"He said that this is not evil spirits."

"Then what?"

"Undead."

The police chief pondered.

"Is there a difference?"

"For us there is no principle. The question is how much we can trust his explanations."

Nathan's memory became clear even before the end of the bottle of honey drink. And Brennon did not conceal from his superiors valuable information about the consultant and his butler. Even if he didn't understand a d.a.m.n thing about exactly what Raiden did, it was as clear as day: it's possible to protect so much only some extremely important secret.

"Do we even know where he comes from? He has an imperial surname."

Broyd groaned, somewhat guilty, as Nathan discerned.

"There are a lot of people with imperial surnames. Longsdale was recommended to me from the capital, letters, recommendations, reviews - I checked everything. They're all veritable."

"It seems to them that way," said Nathan, "How do we know that this butler can inspire a person."

The chef was silent frowning. Brennon turned to the window. Frosty patterns crawled across the gla.s.s, slowly eating it from the edges to the center. Nathan sighed, and his breath turned to vapor.

"How does it start?" asked Broyd.

"Getting cold."

"What, even colder?"

"Yeah."

"Well, it's not May Day anyway," Broyd muttered and threw the patterned Mazandran shawl out of the seat. Two revolvers Morrigan flashed at the commissar with long gunpoints. Brennon had not seen them since Broyd fired them into red imperial uniforms.

"These are the only ones in which I was able to stick silver bullets," the former colonel puffed out his cigar, "Take one."

"Do you think it will help?"

"I think I wasn't the only one with a nurse from the village."

Nathan put a revolver on his lap. In the darkness opposite, a red cigar glow was smoldering. Sometimes the cold light of the lanterns slipped inside and threw gla.s.s glare on Broyd's big arms, his heavy bulldog jaw, gray whiskers and light blue eyes. Once, Rocksville Street was smoking in the fires of conflagration, and from the barricade to the barricade it was dotted with the bodies of townsmen.

"They also say rowan helps," Brennon said, digging into his memory.

"Cut down the nearest one and make some rowan crosses for the guys. At the same time compatible with stake."

The breathing vapor settled cold drops and curled into ice. The colonel and the company Sergeant looked at each other. Frightened, the horse snored outside. Broyd hit the wall with a cane, and the carriage stopped.

"Get in," the chief of police ordered the coachman. The poor fellow, finely banging his teeth, did not even thank and hid inside. Brennon shoved a bearskin rug at him and jumped down on the creaking, sparkling snow. Here, Rocksville Street crossed with Ehann Rhode. The area is exceptionally rich and respectable. And d.a.m.n far from the lake. The carriage stopped near a high stone fence with forged gates.

"It has gone far," the Commissar whispered. h.o.a.rfrost covered the openwork lattice of doors. Its sharp white spikes grew rapidly, filling every gap in the forging, until the lattice sparkled with a lacquered ice stained-gla.s.s window. Brennon's hand was burned by the known cold, and Nathan put the revolver into his pocket. He didn't want to freeze that gun either, so no salary is enough...

The horse neighed loudly and twitched in the harness. Brennon grabbed her under the bridle and laid his hand on the withers - the animal shook finely and wildly squinted her eyes, as if it seemed ready to run in all directions at the same time, just to get away. Ehann Rhode climbed a low, gentle hill, and from his place Nathan was the first to see the narrow tracks appearing on a snow-white canvas.

"Sir," he called quietly.

"Still, it came..." Broyd whispered.

The prints of the little bare feet reached out to them like a chain. The air became still and cold, and Brennon thought he was breathing liquid ice. It burned his lungs and throat; his head rang from this air. Or from something else.

Broyd slowly raised his hand. A barely audible, cold sigh slid over the street, and the chef fired at the sound. Brennon immediately s.n.a.t.c.hed up the Morrigan and shouted in the direction of the tracks. A pair of silver bullets swept over the tracks and knocked out ice crumbs from the high fence opposite. But the creature still stopped. The chain of tracks broke off a dozen yards from humans. Covering his superior's back, Nathan turned around - n.o.body. Only silence and unbearable cold through the glove ... and the feeling that it is nearby.

On the thick layer of ice that covered the walls of the houses, two handprints appeared opposite the commissar. Brennon fired. The bullet hit between of the prints and ricocheted off somewhere off to the side. For a moment, Nathan thought he was hearing a voice - a fragment of whisper brought by the wind.

"At least we managed to get its attention," muttered Broyd. Brennon did not answer - he was not much comforted in the fact that the creature would devour them instead of some innocent victim. Fingerprints appeared on the stained-gla.s.s window into which the lattice turned into - long narrow stripes, as if someone was leading the ice on his hand, getting closer. The commissar's fingers were numb, and he thought that he wouldn't drop the gun, even if he wanted to, but couldn't shoot.

"If I hit it in the teeth," Nathan muttered, "will it count as an attack on a suspect?"

Broyd did not answer. The commissar turned around, expecting to see the icy corpse, but the chef was alive. The former colonel was looking at the hill from which the creature descended, and Nathan just felt with his whole body that the toad had also stopped.

There was the hound. Lowering his wolf-like face, he did not take his eyes off humans and what was nearby. When the beast slowly laid bare its long fangs, the creature staggered back. Golden lights burned in the dog's eyes, and the fur fluttered, as if from the wind, although there was not a single breath across Rocksville Street. In the darkness, the red fur seemed flaming.

The dog let out a quiet, low growl and moved forward. Brennon did not so much hear him as he felt how a faint tremor pa.s.sed from the roar in the snow under his feet. The creature was retreating. It was still invisible, but the dog clearly knew where it was. The creature moved back down Rocksville Street, in the direction opposite the lake, and the dog definitely drove it there intentionally.

"It will run now," Broyd whispered, and threw up his revolver, "There are residential areas..."

A tall figure slipped out of the darkness. She raised her hand, and the trihedron flashed with green fire illuminated Longsdale's transparent, pale blue eyes.

"Stop," the consultant said quietly.

He sees it, Brennon thought. The tracks in the snow mixed in panic. The dog fell to the ground and rushed forward with long gliding jumps. The wind struck the consultant's face, reared his hair, and puffed his sleeves on his s.h.i.+rt. It seems that the creature still decided that the dog was more terrible - the snow soared up in a swirling column and screwed into Longsdale with a corkscrew.

"Hey!!" roared Brennon. He did not know what he could do with this creature, so he simply rushed forward, clutching a silvered commissar badge in his fist. But the dog got there first - he was flattened in a powerful jump and crashed into a snowy stream swirl with his chest. In the midst of the snow, Longsdale's blade flashed with green fire, and then a whirlwind soared into the air and swept away like a sheet torn from a rope by a gust of wind.

The dog came down from the owner, whom it pushed into the ground with all four paws, and sniffed the traces of the creature with an independent look. On the dog's face was reading annoyance in half with irritation. Brennon held out his hand to the consultant and shuddered as his icy fingers clenched his wrist.

"Thank you," Longsdale said somewhat hoa.r.s.ely, got up, shook himself like a cat, and bent over the tracks. He squatted down and put his hand to them - the prints were half the size of his palm.

"Mother of G.o.d," the commissar hissed, "this is a child..."

***

"I don't even know why I should rejoice," Broid said thoughtfully, "to the fact that this is a child, or to the fact that this is a d.a.m.n otherworldly creature."

Brennon was tactfully silent. Fire burned in the fireplace, the consultant sat in a nearby chair, the consultant's dog looked at the flame, and the consultant's butler bandaged the police chief's hand. Nathan's palm also left a burn from the cold, despite the fact that he held the Morrigan with his gloved hand.

"This ointment will prevent tissue damage as a result of frostbite, sir," said Raiden, and began to collect medicine and bandages in a suitcase. Broyd brought a gla.s.s of whiskey to his lips, his gaze fixed on Longsdale. He was matte pale, but nothing more. The thought of the head was clear to the commissar - would a potential killer arrange this circus in order to avert suspicions, and, more importantly, who the h.e.l.l did he have to be to inspire such fear in the creatures from the other side?!

"I hope he doesn't throw himself at anyone else today," muttered Nathan. The consultant shook his head, not tearing it from the back of the chair, and immediately grimaced. The Commissioner, not without joy, noted that Longsdale was battered.

"It returned to the lake," the consultant said quietly. "It's too scared to continue today, but it needs to eat, and tonight it remained hungry."

The policemen were silent for a moment - they understood what this meant. But Brennon also understood that only the old, half-inhabited house of Longsdale protects them from the otherworldly toad. And maybe a dog.

"Interestingly, the silver bullets damaged her in any way?" grumbled the chief of police. The consultant only sighed:

"Well, why silver bullets at once? Who is telling you all this? What is the point of shooting a creature without a physical appearance?"

"But how does it live then?" asked Broyd in surprise.

"You should be afraid," the consultant suddenly said and stared at the Commissar point blank, "Why aren't you afraid?"

"And why are you?"

Longsdale frowned as if trying to remember. St.u.r.dy raised his muzzle and looked at the owner. The butler coughed softly.

"Sir, the guest rooms are ready."

Brennon flinched. He did not even notice how this guy left and came, as if Raiden was seeping through the walls.

"Do you often so hunt all sorts of evil spirits?" asked Broyd.

"This is not evil spirits."

"What is it then?"

"Evil spirits are creatures of a different nature, those who come from other side. They cannot be killed, they can only be expelled or imprisoned in some kind of dungeon."

"It inspires hope," the Commissar said through his teeth, "Not only does it eat, you can't kill it."

"And now we are dealing with the undead," the consultant continued patiently.

"What's the difference?"

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"It can be killed because any undead, "Longsdale said," was once human."

18th November

Brennon read autopsy reports. If the first victim had only frozen lungs and heart, then the creature worked much harder than the fourth. Father Tyne was practically frozen inside - all internal organs, all large vessels were frozen, and blood turned into gla.s.s. Well, at least the blood looked like that - Kennedy carefully attached the sections to the report. It really improved - the second and third victims were frozen much more than brewer Murphy, but not to the same condition as the priest.

"Where is the limit?" Nathan turned the page. "What will this creature stop at? Does it stop at all?"

The only part of Father Tyne's body that was not affected by the actions of the undead was the hand that gripped the cross. The icing abruptly cut off near the wrist. The cross was in a round gap. Now he was resting in the casket on the commissioner's desk. Longsdale almost licked and sniffed him (or maybe licked ...), but found nothing. Broyd, twisting the cross this way and that, ordered to return it to the churchmen. The commissar, too, could not understand what was so special about the cross, and sent the attendant to the cathedral. Nathan did not really want to return evidence to the priests, but Broid insisted on this. The chief left for the mayor to inspire fear and awe.

The commissar fumbled in a bag of donuts and realized with disappointment that they were over. There was still a heap of reports on current cases and an interrogation plan, but Brennon decided to first visit the archive, where a consultant got down in the early morning. Nathan left the office and ordered to marinated in the interrogation room a guy, who drunkenly had stabbed six times by knife the student, and went down to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

The archive captured the entire bas.e.m.e.nt and from time to time ate a corner or two from the upper floors. For several years, Broyd beat out the mayor's office money to buy a building nearby for the archive, but so far without success. Longsdale sat in the outhouse, expelling the archivist from there. The old man was indignantly seething, but he regularly brought the case to the invader. The dog was found right there - he lay down as if a huge caterpillar from wall to wall and leaned back on the consultant's legs, like a heating pad. The commissar almost stepped on a luxuriant tail.

"You would let the dog go," Brennon reproached, "He is both cramped and stuffy here. Let him run. Ah, St.u.r.dy?"

The hound languidly waved its tail and lowered its face to its paws.

"What are you looking for?"

"Strange," said the consultant, frowning, studying a something case. "Although I'm not sure that I will find it."

"Why?"

"It might not have been in the police reports. The crime does not always lead to the appearance of undead. And no one guesses about many crimes."

Brennon took a chair across from the consultant. There was a pile of disappearance cases in front of Longsdale, and under it were two or three unsolved murders.

"So you're sure it's an undead?"

"For this I met it."

Nathan leaned back in his chair, wondered whether to pat St.u.r.dy, met with an oblique dog look, and rejected this idea. The dog clearly did not like tenderness.

'That is, a former person. That is strange. It gads freely throughout the city, but pulls corpses certainly into the lake. What for? Not to mention the fact that there are a couple of villages on the banks of the Weer and a whole block descends to it. Why go so far?"

"The behavior of the undead always has its own logic. It does nothing without a reason, albeit incomprehensible to us. This creature is looking for someone."

"Whom?"

"The one who made him undead," Longsdale calmly shrugged and pushed a new pile toward him, not noticing that the commissar almost went nuts.

"That is, this creature is looking here, in the city, for its killer, it has been mistaken four times already ... or not mistaken?!" the Commissar thought, trying to imagine how a brewer and a priest who didn't even know each other, two unidentified persons and someone still unknown could be involved in one murder.

"It has not yet found or has not found all," Longsdale continued, "A person who turned to the undead always comes first for one or those who contributed to the conversion, and then for his family. However, sometimes they are the same people."

"Fine," Brennon sighed heavily, "Now we need to find a person who has done something unknown with someone unknown, and where it is unknown too. And we need to find him before the creature from the lake do this first. You do not make my life easier."

"I'm working on it," Longsdale clapped the folders, "But nothing yet. In addition, Raiden has not yet completed preparation in the laboratory..." - he suddenly fell silent and stared at Brennon.

"I should have checked you. You advise the police. These are the rules."

"I hope," Longsdale asked with some excitement, "he did nothing to you?"

Brennon snorted. He had no doubt that he would have twisted the butler into a knot if he had thought to pounce and bite, but ... d.a.m.n it!

"Is he a hypnotist?" Nathan asked, finally remembering the right word. St.u.r.dy raised his face and measured the commissar with a long mocking look.

"I will forbid him to practice on you," Longsdale said, blus.h.i.+ng, "Sorry. I should have done before..."

"So it wasn't hallucinating," thought Brennon. The guy really hypnotized him. Thank G.o.d, senile memory lapses have not yet begun. But why should Raiden protect the master like that? Or does the butler fear for his own dark deeds?

"How long have you had it?"

"Who?"

"Raiden. He said five years. Right?"

"Maybe," Longsdale answered absently, took out a small magnifier from the case and began to study some evidence attached to the case.

"Do you trust him?"

"To whom?"

Brennon paused to breathe. He always considered himself a patient person, but Longsdale could bring even a saint to seizures in a matter of minutes. Fortunately, there was a knock on the door, and the attendant poked into the room.

"Sir, are you busy? Mr. Broyd is waiting for you."

"What's the matter?"

"Identified the second victim."

***

"Keith McCarthy," Brennon put a folder on the chef's desk. "A lonely old man of sixty-eight years old. Previously was a doctor. He rented a house on Kornacht Street. His tenants, a family of bailiff Elliot Hughes, missed him. When McCarthy did not show up for the rent, they became worried, began to look for his relatives, and in the end they reported to the police."

"Kornacht Street ... what did this beast do so far from the lake?"

"It ate," Longsdale said softly. The police chief threw a menacing gaze at him.

"Like yesterday?"

"It was very stupid," the consultant admitted, "of you."

Broyd turned red. Brennon coughed, but Longsdale despised the hints:

"I had to guard you instead of chasing the undead, and at the same time make sure that you did not leave the house."

"In your opinion, we are small children?!" Broyd rumbled.

"Do you think it would come back to finish us off?" Nathan asked, trying to defuse the situation.

"No. Unlikely."

"Then what the h.e.l.l!.."

"And why do you think," the consultant asked melancholy, "that this is the only undead in the city?"

Broyd plopped into an armchair like a bag of potatoes.

"So there are a lot of them?!"

"No, this beast is one. But there are many other creatures in need of vitality, blood or flesh."

The police chief loosened his tie and muttered:

"I have no idea what shock me more. Probably, the thought that for someone the whole city is a table set for dinner."

He found a flask of whiskey in a drawer, a gla.s.s and poured it. While the head relished one-malt nectar, Brennon returned to what occupied him:

"Why does it drag bodies to the lake? You said it is nourished by the vitality of human. Well, let's say it ate, why take the corpse with itself?"

Longsdale thought for a moment, scratching the dog's scruff.

"Maybe it collects them like trophies. Although, most likely, in this way it refreshes its memory. All bodies were frozen into the ice face down, so that it could look at them."

Brennon frowned.

"That is, not only does this undead eat people, does it also follow who it ate? Is it following a diet?"

Broyd choked on whiskey. The dog sniffed with interest at the G.o.ds ' drink spilled on the floor.

"My G.o.d," the commissar whispered, shocked by his own insight, "it is looking for the one who turned her into undead! These are not trophies. It is trying to remember this man."