Will you?

I don't want you to win. I love only myself. But what am I to do if you have become the greater part of me?

Transfixed my life like a bolt of lightning?

Igor was collecting everything. Every last drop of Light energy around him. He was breaking all the laws and agreements and staking everything on a single throw of the dice-including his own life. And not just because he was burning with desire to protect the little human children from the evil witch.

He didn't want to live either. But, unlike me, he was prepared to live for others. If that was the way it had to be.

The last one he drew Power from was Makar.

I'd been feeling the boy looking at me for a long time. With the miserable, longing gaze of a boy in love with a grown-up woman. Miserable, and filled with the sadness of farewell.

It wasn't the kind of sadness that we Dark Ones can use. It was a bright sadness.

Igor drank it all up.

He had transgressed all the boundaries. And I couldn't even respond in the same way-I was bound by the promise I had given to Zabulon, bound by my old misdemeanor.

And also by the insane hope that he would do the right thing. That my enemy would win his victory, but I wouldn't lose either.

Up in the sky the bright disk of the sun was slowly dying. The children were already tired of staring at it through their pieces of gla.s.s. They were wallowing in the sea under the strange spectral light that reminded the two Others on the beach of the Twilight.

I turned to Igor and caught his eye.

"Leave," his lips whispered silently. "Leave, or I will kill you."

"Kill me," I answered silently.

I am a Dark One.

I will not leave.

What is he going to do, this enemy of mine? Attack me? Despite my legal right to be here? Call in the Yalta division of the Night Watch? He must already have consulted with them... and he knows there are no charges that can be brought against me.

Igor took a step closer.

"By the Light and the Darkness, I challenge you..." his lips whispered.

I shuddered.

I hadn't been expecting this. Not this.

"Beyond Light and Darkness, you and I, one against one, to the end."

He had challenged me to a duel.

It's an old custom that came into being with the Great Treaty between the Light Ones and the Dark Ones. A custom that is hardly ever used. Because the victor has to answer to the Inquisition. Because a duel only takes place when there is no legitimate basis for conflict, when the Watches have no le-gal competence to intervene, when emotions speak louder than reason.

"And may the Light be my witness."

n.o.body else could have seen the tiny petal of white fire that flared up for an instant on Igor's open palm. He himself started when he saw it. The higher powers rarely respond to appeals from simple Watch agents...

"Igor, I love you..."

His face quivered as if I had struck it. He didn't believe me. He couldn't believe me.

"Do you accept my challenge, witch?"

Yes, I can refuse. Go back to Moscow, humiliated but secure, with the stigma of having refused a challenge...

every lousy werewolf would spit as I walked past...

Or I could try to kill Igor. Gather so much Power that I could stand up to him...

"May the Darkness be my witness..." I said, opening my hand. And a tiny sc.r.a.p of Darkness quivered on my palm.

"Choose," said Igor.

I shook my head. I wasn't going to choose the place, the time, or the type of duel.

Why can't you understand me? Why?

"Then the choice is mine. Now. In the sea. The press."

His eyes are dark. An eclipse isn't frightening-it's only something cutting off the light.

The sea was unnaturally warm. Maybe because the air had turned cold, as if it were already evening? All that was left of the sun was a narrow crescent at the top of the disk-now even a human being could look at it without blinking.

I swam through the warm water without looking back at the sh.o.r.e, where no one had noticed the two camp leaders slip into the sea without paying any attention to the jellyfish that hurried out of their way.

I remembered the first time I ever went to the sea. I was still very little. I still didn't know that I didn't belong to the human race, that fate had decided I would be an Other. I was staying at Alushta with my dad, and he was teaching me to swim... I remembered the feeling of delight when the water first submitted to my will...

And I remember how strong the waves were in the sea. Very strong. Or was it just that all waves looked huge to me then? My dad was holding me in his arms, he was jumping up and down in the waves, making me laugh. It was such fun... and I shouted that I could swim across the sea, and my dad said of course I could...

You'll be really hurt, Dad.

And it won't be easy for Mom, either.

The sh.o.r.e, full of delighted children and contented adults, had been left far behind. I didn't even feel the start of the press. It just got harder to swim. The water just stopped supporting me. There was suddenly a weight on my shoulders.

A very simple spell. Nothing fancy. Power against Power.

Dad, I really did believe I could swim across the sea...

I extended a defensive canopy above myself and it took the invisible weight off my shoulders. And once again I whispered, "Zabulon, I appeal to you..."

The strength that I had managed to gather was rapidly melting away. Igor struck again and again, battering my defenses mercilessly.

"Yes, Alisa."

He has responded after all! He has answered me! Just in time, as always!

"Zabulon, I'm in trouble!"

"I knew already. I'm very sorry."

I didn't realize immediately what those words "I knew" meant. And that impersonal tone, and the feeling that there was no Power on its way... He always used to share his Power with me, even when I didn't really need it that badly...

"Zabulon, am I going to die?"

"I'm afraid so."

My defensive canopy was dissolving, and I still couldn't make sense of what was happening. He could intervene!

Even from a distance! A small part of his strength would be enough for me to resist the pressure and fight out a draw.

"Zabulon, you said that love is a great power!"

"Have you not been convinced of that? Goodbye, my little girl."

It was only then that I understood everything.

Just as my strength melted away and I felt the invisible pressure on my shoulders again, forcing me down into the warm, twilit depths.

"Igor!" I shouted, but the splashing of the water drowned out my voice.

He was swimming about fifty meters away, not even looking in my direction. He was crying, but the sea has no place for tears.

And I was being dragged down, down into the dark abyss.

How could it have happened... how?

I tried to gather Power from the beach. But there was almost no Darkness there for me to take. That sweet delight and those cries of joy were of no use to me.

Only a hundred meters behind Igor and myself, the young teenager who had fallen so hopelessly in love with me was vainly trying to lie on the waves and relax the leg that was contorted by cramps. Somehow he must have noticed us going into the water and swum after us, this proud boy called Makar, who had already realized that he couldn't swim back to the sh.o.r.e now.

Love is a great power... how stupid you all are, you boys, when you fall in love ...

There's Makar, floundering about as his panic grows... I can take his fear and prolong my own agony for a minute or two...

And there's Igor, swimming in the sea: not seeing anything, not hearing anything, not sensing anything around him, not thinking about anything except that I have killed his love. The stupid Light magician doesn't know that there are no winners in duels, especially when the duel has been carefully prepared by Zabulon...

"Igor..." I whispered as I sank, feeling the pressure force me down, down to the dark, dark seabed.

Forgive me, Dad... I can't swim across this sea...

Story Two.

A STRANGER AMONG OTHERS.

Prologue.

-?- He could already make out the lights of the station glimmering up ahead, but inside the gloomy, neglected park beside the Zarya factory the darkness remained as dense and chill as ever. The thin crust of ice over the snow crunched under his feet-it would probably thaw out again before noon. Locomotive whistles in the distance, incomprehensible announcements over the radio relay system, and the crunching under his own feet-these were the only sounds anyone who happened to be out strolling could have heard if he wandered into the park at that time of night.

But no one had set foot in here at night for a long time now. Not even people out walking ma.s.sive canines with huge teeth-dogs could not save them from what they might meet in the darkness of night among the oaks that had grown tall here over the last forty years.

The solitary traveler with a bulky bag over his shoulder was clearly late for a train. He decided to take a shortcut and go through the park, along the path, with his feet sometimes crunching the thin i.e. sometimes the gravel.

The stars gazed down in amazement at this bold spirit. The round disk of the moon, as yellow as a pool of Advocaat liqueur, shone its light through the jagged, naked branches. The fantastic forms of the lunar seas were like the shadows of human fears.

The traveler noticed the twin gleam of a pair of eyes when he was still thirty meters from the final trees. He was being watched from the gaunt, skeletal bushes that stretched along both sides of the path. There was the vague, dark form of something over there, in the low thickets; perhaps not even something, but someone, because this dense patch of darkness was alive. Or at least it could move.

A dull growl-nothing like a roar, more like a low, hollow squawk-was the only sound that accompanied the lightning-swift attack. A wide mouthful of sharp teeth glinted in the moonlight.

The moon had readied itself for fresh blood. For a fresh victim.

But the attacker suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, as if he had run into an invisible barrier, stood there for a moment, and then collapsed onto the path with a ludicrous squeal.

The traveler paused for a second.

"What are you doing, you blockhead?" he hissed at his attacker. "Do you want me to shout for the Night Watch?"

The patch of darkness at the traveler's feet growled resentfully.

"It's lucky for you that I'm late..." said the traveler, adjusting the bag across his shoulder. "What d.a.m.n nonsense is this, Others attacking Others..." He strode on rapidly across the last few meters of the park and hurried toward the station without looking back.

His attacker crawled off the path, under the trees, and there he transformed into a young man of about twenty, completely naked. The young man was tall with broad shoulders. The crust of ice crunched under his bare feet, but he didn't seem to feel the cold.

"d.a.m.n!" he whispered fiercely, and then shivered for the first time. "Who the h.e.l.l was that?"

He was still hungry, still feeling savage, but this strange victim who had escaped had robbed him completely of any desire to carry on hunting. He was frightened now, although only a few minutes earlier he had been certain that everyone should be afraid of him-a werewolf out on the hunt. The heady, intoxicating hunt for human flesh.

And the hunt was unlicensed-which made the sensation of risk and his own daring even keener.

Two things in particular had completely blunted the hunter's ardor. First, the words "Night Watch"-after all, he didn't have a license. And second, the fact that he had failed to recognize his intended victim as an Other. An Other like him.

Not long ago the werewolf and any of the Others that he knew would have said that was simply impossible.