"You're a fool, Andriukha," I said derisively. "So delighted because you've caught a Dark poacher! Why don't you try taking a look at the victim? Who do you think finished her off?"

Andriukha broke off and squinted sideways at the dead girl. He seemed to be getting the picture.

"Ava... vampire..." he muttered.

"And who am I?"

"You're a ma... magician..." Andriukha was so confused, he'd begun to stammer.

I turned to the girl, because I'd decided she was the one I ought to talk to. "When I got here it was all over. I saw the vampire, but he was already outside the alley. He took off into the yard. The girl was already dead, she's been completely drained, but only a mouthful of her blood has been taken. I'm new in town, just off the train two hours ago. I'm staying at the Cosmos Hotel."

And I couldn't resist adding, "Not the first time vampires have used this alley for poaching, is it?"

Now I could see the traces of the past there, on the ground and on the walls. I'd jumped several steps at once.

"Only last time you were luckier, Light Ones... But I must say you did a lousy job cleaning up-the signs are still visible now."

"Don't get any i.e. we're grateful to you," the girl answered darkly through her clenched teeth. "And let me take a look at your registration anyway."

"By all means." I meekly showed them the seal. "I hope I'm not required any longer? I wouldn't like to hinder your superlative detectives in their search for the poacher."

"We'll find you tomorrow," the girl told me dryly. "If we need you."

"Please do!" I said with a grin. Then I moved one of the watchmen aside and walked out onto the avenue.

I cast off the guise of an ordinary Dark One about a hundred steps farther on.

Chapter two.

-?- For the next two days and nights absolutely nothing interesting happened. I wandered around Moscow, making unexpected purchases and practicing my new abilities, trying not to make it too obvious. I switched on my cell phone, without having the slightest i.e. why-I had nowhere to ring and there was no one to ring me. I bought a mini-disk player and spent a couple of hours putting together a disk for it from the catalog, looking for old and new songs that triggered some response in my recalcitrant memory. I gradually got used to the changes in Moscow, which behind the tinsel glitter of its bright, festive neon had remained just as dirty and scruffy as ever. The hotel staff all said h.e.l.lo to me, and they seemed to have organized a line for the right to serve me-I was still living like a man who didn't acknowledge any bills worth less than a hundred rubles. But strangely enough, I was still careful to collect my correct change in the shops, even the little nickel-plated coins that are no good for anything except maybe souvenirs for foreigners.

During those two days I only met Others three times: Once in the metro, entirely by chance; once at night, when I ran into a drunk witch trying unsuccessfully to fly up to a third-floor balcony because she'd lost her keys and didn't have enough Power left to go through the Twilight. I gave the witch a hand. And once during the day I was taken for an uninitiated Other by a rather powerful Light magician-I even remembered his name: Gorodetsky. He'd just happened to go into the shop for the same thing as me-to put together a new mini-disk for his player. The magician was surprised when he saw my official seals and backed off immediately. He was even going to leave, out of disgust, I think, but they'd just finished cutting my disk, so I was the one who left.

I was left wondering for a while why he hated the Dark Ones so much.

But then, everybody hates us. Well, almost everybody. And they just don't want to believe that what we feel about them is mostly indifference-just as long as the Light Ones don't get in our way. And they do, all the time. But I suppose we get in their way too.

No one from the Night Watch bothered me. I don't think they even made any attempt to find me and question me.

They must have realized that a Dark magician has no need to drink human blood. Of course, I could have done it, and given myself a chronic digestive disorder-if I hadn't been sick in disgust... I was totally absorbed in waiting for the next step up along the stairway, for when something inside me would force me to make use of magic, but apparently for that to happen required an extreme, unambiguous situation. Not just minor actions, like getting rid of the fat-faced ticket inspectors in the bus with their shaved heads, or a mantle of calm for the agitated people standing in line for metro cards when I couldn't be bothered to wait-no, all that was quite literally yesterday's level as far as I was concerned. In order to learn something new and reveal another layer of my sealed memory, in order to take possession of the knowledge that was still slumbering, I needed more serious shocks.

I had to wait for them, but not very long.

Like many other Dark Ones, I turned out to be an inveterate night owl. Since I was living among ordinary people, I couldn't completely ignore the day, but I didn't feel like resisting the alluring call of the night either. I rose late, about midday or even later, and I only returned to the hotel at dawn.

My fourth night in Moscow was already streaked with the first hints of dawn, the blackness had already admitted the first shades of dark gray into itself, when I ran smack into the next step upward. I was strolling along deserted Izmailovsky Boulevard when I suddenly sensed the flash of a powerful magical discharge somewhere in among the buildings in the distance.

When I say "discharge," I don't mean that uncontrolled energy had simply escaped. No. The energy was discharged and then immediately absorbed, otherwise the final result would have been a ba.n.a.l explosion. Others transform themselves, and the world, and energy. But in the final a.n.a.lysis the balance of energy emitted and absorbed always amounts to zero, otherwise...

Otherwise the world simply couldn't exist. And we couldn't exist in it.

I felt something urging me to go there. Go!

So I had to go I walked for about twenty minutes, confidently turning corners at intersections and sometimes taking shortcuts through courtyards. When I was almost there I sensed Others-they were approaching rapidly from two different directions, and at the same time I heard the sound of several automobiles. Almost immediately I picked out the house and the apartment I needed from the faceless palisade of high-rises. That was where the event had occurred that had caught the attention of the other me, still concealed somewhere in the depths of my ordinary being.

A standard five-story Khruschev-period building on Thirteenth Park Street. Rubbish containers standing along the end wall, and not a sign of the trading kiosks I was so used to seeing in the South.

Three vehicles at the entrance: a Zhiguli, a humble and very unkempt-looking station wagon, and a pampered BMW. There were actually plenty of other cars standing all around, but they were obviously parked for the night, while these had just arrived in a hurry and been dumped.

The fifth floor. At the entrance to the stairwell (the metal door, by the way, was standing wide open) I sensed powerful magical blocks, and they made me pull my shadow up from the ground and enter the Twilight.

I think the Twilight draws Power out of Others-if they don't know how to resist it, of course. n.o.body told me what to do. I just started doing it instinctively, as if I'd always known how. Maybe I always had, and I just remembered when I needed to.

The blue moss that inhabits the first level of the Twilight had spread in luxurious abundance over the walls and the stairs, even the banisters. The people living in this entrance must be highly emotional if it was flourishing so well.

Here was the apartment I wanted. More powerful blocks, and the door locked even in the Twilight.

And at that point I was flung up another two steps. Overcoming a momentary weakness, I raised my own shadow from the floor again and went deeper.

I could immediately tell this was a place where not many came. There was no building. There was almost nothing at all except a dense, dark gray mist and the moons that I could vaguely make out through it. All three of them.

There ought to have been a raging wind-the wind doesn't recognize any difference between the ordinary world and the Twilight-but at this level, time flowed so slowly that I could hardly feel it at all.

I began slowly falling, sinking into this mist, but I held myself up. Apparently I knew how to do that. A certain effort-as always, hard to describe and more instinctive than conscious-and I moved forward. Another effort, and I glanced out into the preceding level of the Twilight.

Everything was happening in syrupy slow motion, as if the world had sunk into a layer of transparent gray tar, and at first, sounds seemed like deep, distant peals of thunder, but I managed to adjust to their slowness. I must have set my rate of perception to the same pace, attuned myself to this new reality, and from that moment on, everything that was happening began to remind me again of the ordinary world-the world of human beings.

A narrow hallway, as they all are in those buildings. Two doors on the left-to the bathroom and the kitchen. One room farther along on the left and one on the right. The room on the right was empty. In the room on the left there were five Others and a body lying on a disheveled bed. The body of a guy about thirty: He had several ragged wounds in the area of his crotch and stomach, which immediately put to rest any i.e. that he could be saved.

The wounds were covered with a crumpled, b.l.o.o.d.y bed sheet.

There were three Light Ones and two Dark Ones. The Light Ones were a lean young guy with a rather asymmetrical face and two acquaintances of mine-the music lover Gorodetsky and the girl shape-shifter. The Dark Ones were a plump magician with a keen, intense expression, and a gloomy individual who looked to me like an unsuccessful parody of a lizard-he was wearing clothes, but his hands and face were green and scaly.

The Others were arguing.

The Light One I didn't know was talking.

"It's the second incident this week, s.h.a.gron. And another murder. I'm sorry, but it's beginning to look like you've thrown the treaty out the window."

The Dark One glanced involuntarily at the corpse.

"We can't keep track of everybody, you know that perfectly well," he blurted out, but I didn't hear any trace of guilt or regret in his voice.

"But you undertook to warn all the Dark Ones about Clean Week! Your chief promised officially."

"We did warn them."

"Well, thank you!" The Light One clapped his hands in theatrical applause. "The result is impressive. I repeat: We, the agents of the Night Watch, officially request your cooperation. Call your chief out!"

"The chief isn't in Moscow right now," the magician replied morosely. "And, by the way, your chief knows that perfectly well, so he needn't have bothered to authorize you to request cooperation."

"Does that mean," Gorodetsky asked with the hint of a threat in his voice, "that you are refusing to provide cooperation?"

The Dark magician shook his head rather more quickly than he need have. "What do you mean, refusing? No.

We're not refusing. I just don't understand what we can do to help."

The Light Ones seemed to be filled with righteous wrath at that. The magician I didn't know spoke again. "What can you do? Some shape-shifting hooker rips the b.a.l.l.s off a client-an uninitiated Other, by the way-and gets clean away! Who knows all your countless low-life best-you or us?"

"Sometimes I think you do," the Dark magician retorted and glanced at the girl. "If you remember the conversation in the Seventh Heaven when they caught the Inquisitor and him..."- he nodded at Gorodetsky and paused, as if he were thinking about something.

"Most likely the shape-shifter's not registered. And most likely the client got a bit too boisterous and er... er...

Well, let's put it this way: He wanted something that was unacceptable even to a hooker. And this is the result."

"s.h.a.gron, you can't unload this on the human cops, because she killed him when she was in her Twilight form.

Like it or not, the Watches are involved. So tell me straight: Are you going to carry out an investigation or will you force us to deal with it? And don't even hope that you can just drag things out. We want Sat.u.r.day's vampire and this cat up in front of a tribunal, and before next weekend. Do you understand our demands?" The skinny young guy was leaning on s.h.a.gron, insisting on his rights, and he obviously enjoyed doing it, as an Other who didn't often get involved in showdowns. And he seemed to have justification for putting on the pressure...

"These lousy, lecherous cats," the scaly one suddenly muttered. "Brainless b.i.t.c.hes..."

"Shut up," the Light girl told him coldly. "You overgrown gecko."

Ah, yes, she was a cat too, even though she was Light...

"Cool it, Tiger Cub," Gorodetsky said to her. Then he turned to the Dark magician again. "Do you understand our demands?"

At this point I returned to the first level of the Twilight. To describe the seconds that followed as a dumb show would be a gross understatement.

"You!" the girl gasped. "You again!"

"Buenos noches, lady and gentlemen. Pardon me, I saw the light, so I just dropped in."

"Anton, Tolik," Tiger Cub said in a ringing voice that trembled slightly, pointing one finger at me in a childish manner. "Andriukha found him standing over the vampire's victim on Sat.u.r.day! This Dark One from Ukraine!"

All five of them carried on staring straight at me.

"I hope," I said ironically, "that I don't resemble a shape-shifting hooker any more than I do a crazy vampire?"

"Who are you?" the Dark magician, the one they called s.h.a.gron, asked in a hostile voice.

"A magician, dear colleague. A Dark magician. From out of town."

When he tried to probe me, I could tell that if I hadn't yet climbed up the next step, then I was right there in front of it. He didn't get anywhere. And meanwhile I noticed that s.h.a.gron's defenses were not entirely his own-I could sense a framework that had been put together by a top-cla.s.s magician. Probably the famous chief who wasn't in Moscow at the moment.

"A second murder, and here you are again," Tolik drawled suspiciously, also making an attempt to probe me-quite unsuccessfully, as I noted with some satisfaction. "I don't like it. Perhaps you would care to explain?"

Tolik certainly looked annoyed, but now he was behaving correctly, and that suited me just fine. He was obviously the leader of the three Light Ones and now he was busily thinking over the possible courses of action. There seemed to be plenty of choice.

"Yes, I would," I agreed readily. "I was out strolling not far from here. I sensed something bad going on. And I came to see if I could do anything to help."

"Do you work in the Watch back home in Ukraine?" the scaly one asked unexpectedly.

"No."

"Then how can you help?"

"Who knows?" I said with a shrug.

Of course, the scaly one's tongue was long and forked. Our people's imagination is certainly pretty limited. You'd think the Twilight image of a Dark One offered plenty of scope for fantasy-unlike what the Light Ones have, which is just a standard outfit: a luminescent glow and white clothes. The more sentimental ones, mostly the women, have a white garland as well. But even so... almost all the Dark Ones go for the old worn-out cliche of a scaly demon with horns and a forked tongue.

"Of course, you have nothing at all to do with these murders?" the girl said with poorly concealed sarcasm.

"Naturally."

"I don't trust him," said the girl and turned away. "Anton, you have to probe him."

"We will," Anton replied without thinking. "When we get back I'll personally request all the data on him..."

I laughed ironically.

"All right. If you don't want any help, I don't mind. I'm not going to impose myself on you. I'll be going then..."

I started toward the door.

"Hey, Dark One," Tolik said to my back. "I'd advise you not to leave Moscow. That's an official ban from the Night Watch."

"I'll bear it in mind," I promised. "In any case, I wasn't planning to leave..."

"I'll go with you," Tolik said to Anton and Tiger Cub. "I have something to say to you."

Anton thought gloomily that he must have done a bad job cleaning up again-for some reason this strange Dark One's words had really stung him. Tiger Cub had imitated the stranger's way of speaking very precisely, right down to the intonation pattern, and when Anton saw the Dark One, he was convinced yet again that Tiger Cub had the makings of a skillful actress. Who could tell what she might have been if she hadn't been an Other...

s.h.a.gron and his partner had driven off in their fancy BMW a long time ago. Tolik reached out his hand demandingly and Anton obediently gave him the keys to the office Zhiguli. Tiger Cub got into the back without speaking. Anton sat beside Tolik, who drove rapidly out onto Sirenevy Boulevard and headed east.

"Who is he, this Dark One?" Anton asked to break the silence. He was in a foul mood. Another body-and this time an uninitiated Other!

"He's a very powerful magician," Tolik said abruptly. "More powerful than me. I tried to probe him and I failed-he closed up instantly."

"Closed up?" Tiger Cub said in an excited voice from the back. "You mean he came without a shield?"