Sixth Watch (31 page)

“Yes,” the woman replied. “Some kind of mystical nonsense . . . No, I don't want to know anything, I don't want to hear it. I've got children! Just let us out!”

“As soon as possible,” said Svetlana.

“Fine, as soon as possible,” the woman agreed meekly.

As I listened to this surreal dialogue I gazed around. The Two-in-One was nowhere to be seen. He wasn't chasing after the car, he wasn't running along the pavement beside it.

“Dad, check the roofs,” my daughter suddenly said.

It wasn't the most beautiful or touristy area of St. Petersburg, but the buildings weren't new either. They were old, dating back at least to the early twentieth century. They were all of different heights, with a variety of weird and whimsical roofs—some were almost flat, some were steep, mansard roofs with dormer windows, and some had little towers and ornamental gables.

“No,” I said. “They're not chasing us.”

“That's not possible!” Svetlana exclaimed, making another sharp turn into a narrow side street. “They're here, they must be here!”

I agreed with that completely. The Two-in-One was somewhere close by. But he wasn't chasing us.

Was he moving ahead of us, luring us on somewhere?

Was he influencing Svetlana, making her follow the right direction?

That was possible too.

Anything was possible, but if you discarded the improbable, the answer was obvious.

I dived back into the car and rubbed my finger over the leather surface under one of the child seats with my finger. I smiled at the boy, who was following my actions closely.

And then I flung out my arms—the doors flew open and my little neighbors went flying out of the car, together with their seats.

The side street we were driving along really was very, very narrow and both seats slammed into the walls of the buildings.

“Dad!” Nadya yelled in horror.

Svetlana braked sharply and stared blankly at me.

I looked at the woman. She was frowning and rubbing her forehead with two fingers. It didn't look at all like the behavior of a mother whose two children have just been thrown out of a moving car.

“The car's not new, and neither are the child seats,” I said. “But there aren't any marks from the seats on the leather; they've only just been put in. Step on it!”

Svetlana shook her head, looking in horror from me to the scene behind us and back. I looked back too—the seats were lying in the snow and a red patch was spreading out beside one of them.

“Anton . . . Anton, I think you made a mistake,” Svetlana said in a quiet voice.

“No I didn't,” I said stubbornly. “Are those your children?” I asked the woman.

The woman's chin dropped and she slumped onto the dashboard.

“She's passed out!” Svetlana exclaimed.

“It's the shock of the control being broken off!” I replied. “She's a puppet! They were controlling her!”

“Who?” Svetlana shouted.

“Those . . . children!” I said with a nod toward the car seats in the road. “It's them, the Two-in-One!”

Svetlana killed the engine.

“I can't leave it like this! I've got to check!”

“The fiery rain has stopped,” Nadya said pensively.

“The gas could just have run out,” said Svetlana, getting out of the car. “I'll check . . .”

“Stop!” I shouted, jumping out after her and grabbing her hand.

We stood beside the car that blocked off the entire side street. On either side of the road lay two child seats, with a motionless little arm protruding from one of them.

“You killed those children,” Svetlana said in a low voice. “You . . .”

I raised my hand and a wave of Power surged down the street. Crude, untargeted energy. The very simplest spell, the Press.

And the most important thing was that it could only be stopped by the same simple method. By a discharge of pure Power.

Svetlana looked at me, biting on her lip. I could tell that she didn't believe me. That she desperately wanted to stop the Press and go dashing to those child seats, to see how the children were, to try to help them . . .

She didn't believe me.

But she waited.

The Press crept along the side street in a hazy, murky tidal wave—it's quite a sluggish spell, not too spectacular. The snow it had passed over was left shiny and glittering, polished to mirror smoothness. Flattened beer cans lay here and there, looking like line drawings. After a slight crunch, the two-dimensional projection of a trash can appeared on the surface of the pavement, pressed down into the asphalt.

I thought in an abstract kind of way that if I really had made a mistake, in a moment the street would look like a horror movie. And this was my last chance to stop the Press.

But I realized that I wasn't going to stop it.

And at the very second when the Press was about to grind down the seats and the children's bodies, a vague form suddenly shot up in front of the wave of Power, changing its shape and dimensions as it rose. There was a sudden, opposing impulse of Power—and my spell disappeared.

And so did the seats with the children in them. Standing in their place were the Light Magician Denis and the Dark Magician Alexei.

Or would it be more correct to say their shells?

“How did you guess?” Denis asked. His voice was the same as it always used to be. He used to say “Hello Anton” to me in exactly the same tone at the office. He was a polite young man, but he preferred to address everyone by their first name.

“From a whole set of things!” I shouted.

I could see my breath in the cold, puffs of vapor Nothing came out of Denis's mouth.

“Denis, if you can hear me,” I said. “If you're still alive somewhere inside there . . . try to resist! It's the Twilight. It's another of its manifestations. You can fight it . . .”

Denis laughed.

“Gorodetsky, you're acting as if an evil magician had deprived me of my will. That's not the way it is at all, Gorodetsky. I let him in myself.”

He turned to Alexei, who stepped off the pavement into the road. The two magicians took each other by the hand.

“Now we are united in a single whole!” Alexei added.

It was clear enough. The usual verbal diarrhea of someone possessed: “I let
this
in myself!” “Now I'm stronger and wiser, and I don't sweat!” “When I allowed the Dark One to think for me, the world became simple and clear!”

“I'm so glad, Anton,” said Svetlana, taking me by the hand. “I'm so glad that you were right!”

Now there was a ludicrous kind of parallel between the Two-in-One and the two of us, with both pairs holding hands.

Except that our daughter was standing behind us, and she promptly repeated Denis's question.

“But, Dad, how did you really guess?”

“It's all very simple, little daughter. They didn't look at their Mum even once. A genuine magician may be fascinating for a child, but Mum's even more important than that.”

Nadya laughed.

We stood there looking at each other, waiting to see who would make the first move. Making the first move isn't always a winning strategy.

“Do we have any grounds for compromise?” Svetlana suddenly asked. “Any possibility of negotiations? After all, there was a time, Two-in-One, when you used to deal with Others without dashing straight into combat.”

Denis and Alexei shook their heads simultaneously.

“Compromises are made with the strong,” Denis replied.

“And that's not you,” Alexei added.

“But you're dragging things out,” I said. “Maybe we're not so very weak after all. Maybe we'll lose, but what if we manage to kill one of you in the process? How would you like being the One-in-One?”

Alexei opened his mouth as if he was about to say something . . . But he didn't. He and Denis swung around in a strange way—their entwined arms swiveled unnaturally at the shoulder—and the former Light One and Dark One walked away along the narrow street.

“Looks like I gave them something to think about,” I said. “Or him. Which is right? Christ, I had no idea I was so eloquent.”

I turned around.

The Tiger was standing beside Nadya, holding a paper cup of coffee and sipping it through a straw.

“Hello, Anton,” he said. “Hello, Svetlana. Yes, I probably put them off. Sorry if I interfered, today really is a splendid day to die.”

THE COFFEE BAR WAS SMALL AND HOT, THE TINY LITTLE
tables were packed close together, and the lamps on them had plush red shades. As well as coffee the place served cognac and whisky, canapés, and tiny little cakes. It was a pretty niche venue, a place where you could sit for a while with a good coffee and eat something strictly symbolic.

And the coffee here really was good; there were varieties from at least a dozen different places—Nicaragua, Brazil, Kenya, Cuba, Costa Rica . . .

“Do you like this place?” I asked the Tiger.

He nodded and took a drag on his cigarette.

“Yes.”

“I feel guilty,” I said. “Didn't you pick up that terrible habit from me?”

“Yes, I did,” the Tiger agreed. “And the coffee too.”

I wrinkled up my brow, remembering.

“I wasn't drinking coffee then.”

“Not right then. But you were thinking how much you would like a cup of coffee . . .”

“Dealing with you gods is hard work,” I said with a forced laugh. I looked at my daughter, who seemed to be the calmest of all of us. She looked completely at home in this coffee shop, where the crowd
mostly consisted of young people between fifteen and thirty. I noticed that almost no one here was drinking alcohol, only coffee. It was strange, the way one generation differed from another. The old ways disappeared, and the old myths went with them . . . Not many people outside our country knew that modern-day Russia no longer guzzled vodka at the slightest possible excuse. There was no one smoking in the coffee bar either—except the Tiger of course.

“Like one?” the Tiger asked.

“It's against the law here to smoke in public buildings,” I replied gloomily. “We're civilized people and this is the twenty-first century.”

“Here,” said the Tiger, handing me the pack. “No one will notice that you're smoking. And the smoke won't harm anyone. Not even you. And they'll be the most delicious cigarettes you've ever smoked.”

“You should work in the tobacco business,” I murmured, taking the pack. I'd never seen one like it before—the cigarettes were called Twilight. The nicotine content was shown as zero and the tar content was -0.6.

“They clean out your lungs as you smoke them,” said the Tiger. “A good marketing idea?”

“I think you've become dangerously humanized,” I remarked as I opened the pack. “And I don't mean the coffee and the cigarettes, I mean your sense of humor.”

“That's your fault too,” the Tiger told me.

“How come? I'm not funny at all, except maybe when I fall facedown in the salad.”

“Yes, you're as serious as a tombstone,” the Tiger admitted. “You reduced that situation to a stalemate. I couldn't kill the boy-Prophet. But there was still a risk that the prophecy would be proclaimed. So I was obliged to remain here, among people, indefinitely, until Innokentii Tolkov dies, and preferably until you, your wife, and your daughter die too.”

“Well thanks for being so candid,” Svetlana sighed.

“I abandoned the idea of accelerating the process,” the Tiger said resentfully. “I had to wait for the natural course of events. But that meant I had to stay here. Indefinitely.”

“And you started living a human life,” I said, taking out a cigarette and sniffing it. It smelled of tobacco. A pleasant smell, to the nostrils of a smoker. No, I wasn't going to break the law by smoking in a coffee shop! I regretfully jammed the cigarette back into the pack. “Let me guess . . . you have an apartment?”

“Not just one, I have homes in several different cities,” the Tiger replied. “You should see my bungalow in the Dominican Republic!”

“And you probably have a girlfriend too?” I said. “And maybe not just one?”

The Tiger smiled modestly.

“The mind boggles,” I said. “And then the children will be born with superpowers.”

“No, no,” the Tiger replied hastily. “That's a very serious step, I'm not ready for that yet.”

“So were you incarnated in a human being then?” I asked, lowering my voice for some reason.

“I don't understand,” the Tiger said with a frown.

“He means the Twilight,” said Nadya. “Right, Dad?”

I nodded.

“I am not the Twilight,” the Tiger said with a sigh of annoyance. “The Twilight doesn't have . . .” He pondered for a moment. “A personality? A mind in the human sense? An incarnation? Essentially, I'm a certain part of it. A functional organism. Or mechanism. I exist in my own right.”

“That's what you've become,” I remarked. “You've been corrupted by human life. With all its little joys.”

The Tiger nodded.

“Well, good. I've got nothing at all against that. You don't go around killing poor Prophets left and right—and that's just great! So tell me, who is the Two-in-One?”

“I don't have any more information than you do,” said the Tiger, slightly offended. “Another part of the Twilight.”

“That is, part of you?” Sveta asked.

“Of the Twilight!” the Tiger replied insistently. “Does your left hand know what your right hand is doing?”

“My head does,” Svetlana told him.

“Unfortunately, I'm not the head,” said the Tiger, taking a sip of coffee. “I had a mission. I came to this world to carry it out . . .”

“And in between visits?” Nadya asked.

“I didn't have any ‘in between.'” The Tiger laughed. “And I stayed here. I've been thinking things over. And I realized I don't like the Two-in-One.”

“Why not?”

“First, because if he kills you, I'll have to go back,” the Tiger said irritably. “And I happen to be waiting for the next
Star Wars
to be released.”

“If only Lucas could hear that,” Nadya exclaimed in delight.

“Second, I don't like the very little that I do know about the Two-in-One,” the Tiger went on. “If he thinks that the Covenant of the Twilight has been violated, then he has no other option but to exterminate all the Others. And the disappearance of the Others will result in the death of all life on the planet.”

“Why?” I asked.

The Tiger shrugged.

“I only know the result. And I don't like it. Perhaps the Two-in-One doesn't care if he's left on a lifeless planet. Perhaps the Twilight doesn't care . . . or it isn't aware of what's happening. But I'm against it.”

“What a stroke of luck for us that you've been humanized.” I chuckled. “Tell me, can you stop him?”

“The ancient god of Light and Darkness? The vampire god? Who has appeared in the world to stage the apocalypse?” The Tiger shook his head. “No chance.”

“But he walked away today!”

“Perhaps because I appeared so unexpectedly,” the Tiger suggested. “Or perhaps because the prophecy says ‘three victims the fourth time.' How many times has he tried to kill you so far?”

“Once,” I replied gloomily.

“Now it's twice. I'm pretty sure that when he attacks the third time, he'll back off again. Perhaps he'll justify his retreat to himself by some weighty considerations of logic, but the real reason is different. Whether he's knows it or not, the Two-in-One is following the prophecy. The first and second times he withdrew when a new opponent appeared. He'll find a reason to withdraw one more time . . .”

“And the fourth time he'll kill us.”

“If you don't kill him,” the Tiger said with a nod. “Nadezhda Antonovna is an Absolute Enchantress. Her Power is unlimited. But as you know perfectly well, skill is required to use Power properly. So if there's a duel, my money would be on the Two-in-One.”

“But what about the Sixth Watch?”

The Tiger thought about that.

“Would it be stronger than the Two-in-One?” I asked.

“The Sixth Watch would be the right opponent,” the Tiger said eventually. “Thousands of years ago, six Others concluded some kind of agreement with the Twilight in the person of the Two-in-One. Now the agreement has been violated, and the Two-in-One has been incarnated to punish all the Others as renegades. But if the Sixth Watch is resurrected, a dialogue will probably be possible. The Treaty could be renewed, mistakes could be put right, and so on.”

“But you don't know what the Treaty was, what the mistakes were, what the Sixth Watch was?”

“I told you, no!” the Tiger replied peevishly. “I'm on your side. I'm for the Others and the people, because I like being an Other-person. And I'm ready to help, but don't expect answers to any of your questions. I don't have them.”

“But can you guess at any?” Svetlana asked. “After all, you're closest of all to the Twilight.”

The Tiger laughed.

“Yes, I can guess . . . the Sixth Watch wasn't forgotten immediately, right? You found out about the occasion when it discussed collaboration with the human Inquisition. Why?”

“Why did it reject the idea?” I said.

“No, not that! Why did it discuss the question at all? Why did it even exist, if the Two-in-One hadn't appeared for hundreds or thousands of years?” the Tiger replied.

“The Sixth Watch was the most ancient of all our Night and Day Watches,” I said morosely. “At the dawn of time the Two-in-One appeared to the Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthals. And they decided something. Let's assume they discussed things without any formal structure, at the shaman level . . . Some kind of group got together and they decided something. And then the Two-in-One showed up again a lot later, when he had some grievances to settle. Civilization already existed, with its ancient cities . . .”

“Ur, Shang, Egypt, Atlantis,” the Tiger said without a trace of irony.

“Our Watches didn't exist yet,” I said, thinking out loud. “But some kind of Sixth Watch was chosen for the meeting with him. Were they the same Others who gathered at the dawn of time? Or their successors? And why Sixth?”

“More likely it was called The Watch of Six,” the Tiger suggested. “Or The Six Watchmen. Something like that.”

“What you could call ‘the six supervisors' in Russian thieves' jargon,” Svetlana said wryly.

“You could put it like that,” I said, watching as the Tiger pensively blew smoke out of his mouth. I gave in and took a cigarette from the pack. As I lit it I caressed it with my finger.

“You poser,” Svetlana said derisively.

“You could put it like that,” I repeated, taking a drag.

The cigarette really did taste superb—if you can say that about poison.

“The question is, why did the Sixth Watch disappear?” Nadya
said. “At the beginning, the Two-in-One came to the vampires and shape-shifters. There weren't any specialized differentiations yet. But by the time he made his second visit, there were—and they appeared as six forces united in the Sixth Watch. But why did it exist for centuries before and after the Two-in-One's second coming, and then disappear?”

“It didn't just disappear, the very memory of it was lost,” Svetlana added.

I shrugged, and the Tiger repeated my gesture. “I don't know,” he said, “but that's what I would advise you to think about: What was the Sixth Watch needed for, and why did it disappear? Perhaps then you can work out how to defeat the Two-in-One. And who the members of the Watch are.”

He got up, and I realized our conversation was over.

“Are you tracking us?” I asked.

The Tiger shook his head.

“But you appeared at just the right moment . . .”

“I appeared when I sensed someone was using Power—you were using it, and so was the Two-in-One. I realized you were dueling, and so I came.”

“It's a good thing you used the Press when you did, Dad,” said Nadya. “Bye-bye, Tiger!”

“Bye-bye, Absolute Little Girl,” the Tiger said absolutely seriously. “I hope everything will be all right. Although there isn't much chance of that.”

I was expecting the Tiger simply to disappear. But first he took some money out of his pocket and put two thousand-ruble notes on the table. Then he walked out through the door of the bathroom.

“He's become completely humanized,” I said in amazement. “It's unbelievable.”

“Nadya, open a portal to the Watch office,” Svetlana said. “I realize that's the place where you couldn't defend yourself against the Tiger. But it's still safer.”

“Maybe Gesar has some kind of refuge in mind?” I sighed, taking a drag on my cigarette.

A young waitress walked up to our table. I thought she had come to take the money, but she stopped beside us and glared at me indignantly.

“Is something wrong?” I asked

“Well, what do you think?” the girl asked. “You're smoking! Shall I call the police and get them to charge you?”

“Yes . . . er . . .” I said in embarrassment, stubbing out the cigarette in the coffee that was left in my cup and flapping my hand in the air. “I'm sorry. It was stupid of me.”

“Don't be angry with my dad,” said Nadya. “He was lost in thought. He's just got some bad news.”

“Has something happened?” the waitress asked suspiciously, but her expression softened as she watched me taking money out of my pocket.

“Yes,” said Nadya. “We're all going to die.”

“Well, that is news. What a comedian.” The waitress snorted, raking up the money.

One day, in a casual conversation, Olga had told me that she almost became a witch. Not in the metaphorical sense, like “that woman is a witch,” and not even in the pseudoscientific sense that any female Other is inclined to use the magical techniques of witchcraft. But in the absolutely literal sense. There was a time when if things had gone differently, Olga would have started boiling up potions in a cauldron, charging amulets with magic, hexing people, and making “medicinal ointments” to drive virgins wild.