Sixth Watch (4 page)

For centuries.

I vaguely recalled that before Killoran the archive was supervised by a jolly, affable man who had one shortcoming—he couldn't find anything. Except by accident. And so the most a visitor could count on was an open door and a powerful flashlight, because the wiring was always on the blink and you could be left in total darkness in the center of a huge hall at any moment.

Helen had spent one year putting the archive in order—or rather, in what we were willing to acknowledge as order. Then she had catalogued and classified everything, including the unsorted materials—which turned out to be about ninety percent. After that she informed Gesar that there was enough work here for forty or fifty years, so she would take Russian citizenship and sign a contract with the Night Watch. Gesar gaped at her and said that as a bonus the Night Watch would buy her an apartment near the office. Helen was embarrassed and said there was no need to buy anything, just paying the rent would be enough. Gesar reasonably explained that over fifty years the cost of renting would be enough for several apartments, after which he attached me to Helen—to help her clear all the bureaucratic hurdles.

In my opinion, Helen shouldn't have bothered with any of the formalities, neither the citizenship nor the apartment. She practically lived in our archive anyway, only getting out once or twice a
week—the archive had been thoughtfully equipped with a small studio apartment. But I dutifully helped her deal with the Moscow bureaucracy, after which we became friends (as far as it was possible to be a friend of Helen's, if you weren't an ancient manuscript).

I opened the door of the archive and walked into a huge, dark hall lined with shelving all the way from the floor right up to the immensely high ceiling. There were several dozen halls like this in the basement, but Helen always worked in the first hall; even she felt lonely down here. Clearing my throat to announce my presence, I moved through the semidarkness toward a blinding cone of light at the center of the hall. Helen was sitting at a desk that had an immense cardboard box from an old Horizon-112 TV set towering above it, and she was sorting through the school exercise books packed into the box. A single powerful lamp in a metal shade was burning above the archivist's head. Helen was wearing worn jeans and a warm knitted jacket—the heating system couldn't cope with the immense basement.

Helen was genuinely delighted to see me. I was offered tea (and politely refused it—which, however, made no difference) and any help I required. By way of reciprocal politeness, I chatted with Helen about the work of Constable and Turner (my entire contribution to the minilecture was attentive listening and encouraging noises) and I drank half a mug of tea.

I made a mental note that we should arrange archive and infirmary duty for our colleagues. They could call in occasionally with their questions and their work concerns to visit their colleagues who were dug in so deep in their lairs. There were probably others, apart from the doctor and the archivist. The scientists in the science section. The armorers . . . although no, colleagues called in to see them frequently and quite willingly. But I hadn't visited Killoran for heaven only knew how long, it could have been a year, or even longer . . .

We really ought to send the young people to visit our hermits.
It would brighten things up for them and be good for the novice Others.

“Why do you want such rare information, Anton?” Helen asked, glancing through my request, then immediately checked herself. “If it's not a secret, of course.”

My level and position in the Watch allowed me, in principle, to request any information at all without any kind of explanation. But I couldn't see anything wrong with consulting Helen on things.

“There's been a series of attacks on people,” I said. “The victims are all alive.”

“And how many are there?”

“Seven,” I said. And I repeated: “All alive.”

Helen raised one eyebrow, looking at me.

“Alexander Borisov,” I said, starting to list them. “Nikolai Evgeniev. Tatyana Rumiantseva. Oxana Elizeeva. Nina Andronnikova. Gennady Davydov. Olya Yalova.”

“You've given me the first names and surnames,” Helen said thoughtfully. “You haven't given me their age, what they do, the circumstances of the attack. That's the first strange thing. The victims include men and women, although the bloodsuckers usually specialize . . . There's a strong sexual side to vampirism. That's the second strange thing. All the victims are alive, which means the vampire has good self-control. But in that case, how did the Watch find out about the attacks? It's easy enough to conceal the crime, if the victim is still alive. Simply wipe someone's memory clean, and they'll think up some explanation for the weakness . . . flu . . . And that's the third strange thing.”

I nodded. I was genuinely enjoying the conversation.

Of course, Helen wasn't a field operative and never had been.

But didn't I already tell you that she likes systematizing things?

“And the fourth strange thing is why you've told me all this,” Helen concluded. “You are apparently seeking either confirmation of your own conjectures, or my advice . . . which is also strange, of course . . . Oh no! There's a fifth strange thing too. Why on earth
have you, a Higher Magician who trains novice Others, taken on this case anyway?”

“Bravo!” I said.

“Theory number one,” Helen continued. “You have decided . . . or Gesar has decided . . . that I've been stuck in the archives for too long. You yourself were once dragged out of the computer center and dispatched to patrol the streets. I don't like this theory; I'm very fond of this archive of yours.”

“Helen,” I said, pressing my hand to my chest. “I swear that I have no intention of dragging you out of your cozy archive into the noisy streets of Moscow.”

“Then the second theory. You are expecting advice.” Helen took a scuffed notebook and a stump of pencil out of a pocket of her jeans. She jotted something down quickly on a clean page.

Then she nodded.

“Aha. There was a reason why you gave me the names. Alexander, Nikolai, Tatyana, Oxana, Nina, Gennady, Olya. Let's take the first letters: A-N-T-O-N-G-O . . . Anton Gorodetsky. The vampire was hinting that it's you he wants. The vampire only attacked, he didn't kill, because he wanted the Watch to find out about the attacks. The vampire couldn't give a damn about who he bit—a little girl or a retiree—as long as the letters matched. Obviously, Gesar understood all this too—and that's why he assigned the investigation to you. This vampire is a vampire out of your past—right?”

“Yes, that's the way it is,” I said. “Only the vampire is female.”

“Did someone remember her?” Helen asked in surprise.

“The latest victim, Olya. The vampiress gave her a severe sucking and didn't wipe her memory clean. But even that's not the point.”

Helen didn't speak for a few seconds. Then she looked into her notepad again.

“Why yes,” she said. “Of course. Borisov, Evgeniev, Rumiantseva, Elizeeva, Andronnikova, Davydov, Yalova: B-E-R-E-A-D-Y. Be ready.”

“Intriguing,” I said.

“Intriguing, you say . . .” Helen said with a nod, studying the notepad. “Be ready . . . Maybe she was trying to frighten you? Interesting. What was she going to write at the end, with these bites? Did Gesar spot it?”

“Who knows? The boss is probably no more stupid than I am.”

“But what do you want from me, that's the riddle,” Helen muttered. She started chewing on her nails, without the slightest sign of self-consciousness. “I'll find you all the materials in any case. Advice. Well, I'm flattered, if that's it . . .”

“Advice,” I confirmed. “You have a cast of mind that's . . . original. If you've set this shambles in order, you can do the same with this data.”

“It's some vampiress out of your past,” said Helen. “Judging from the information you requested, you laid her to rest . . . but you fancy that she has come back.”

“I didn't lay her to rest. The Inquisition did. But she really was laid to rest. Gesar checked that. She's the only female vampire who could have a bone to pick with me . . . although vampires don't pick bones, do they? It's logical to assume that somehow she has risen from the dead.”

“I'll find all the documents,” Helen murmured. “But how else can I help . . . you're no fool, you spotted everything yourself.”

“Just think about it a bit, Helen,” I asked her. “I don't want to make this business a matter of public discussion.”

“But what is there to think about here?” Helen closed her notepad. “You've already got everything you can out of these surnames, first names, and patronymics, haven't you?”

We stared at each other.

Then Helen chuckled.

“You! A Russian! You Russians have that unique middle name—the patronymic. And you never even thought that if the first name and surname have a meaning, you ought to check . . .”

I was no longer listening to her. I closed my eyes and remem
bered. In my young days, when I used to study for exams, I was certain I had a poor memory, but the abilities of an Other can work wonders . . .

“Alexander Igorevich, Nikolai Timofeevich, Tatyana Sergeevna, Oxana Yurievich, Nina Orestovna, Gennady Ustinovich, Olya Robertovna.”

“I-T-S-Y-O-U-R,” said Helen, telling me what I'd already realized for myself. I wasn't sure what I'd been expecting to hear.

“Be ready . . .” I said, stating the message of the first letters of the patronymics.

“It's your . . . Your what?” Helen continued.

“Anton Gorodetsky, be ready, it's your . . .” I concluded. “So that foul slime bag has something in store for me, does she? Maybe she's decided to take revenge?”

“Calm down,” Helen said gently. “She hasn't mentioned your daughter or your wife, has she?”

My rapid heartbeat slowed down again.

“Yes. You're right, it could have been worse,” I said. “Thanks, Helen, you really did see something that I missed.”

“That's because I'm not Russian and I'm looking in from the outside,” the Irishwoman said didactically. “Anton, you're a Higher Other. And so is your wife. And your daughter's an Absolute Other. What can one vampiress do against you? Even if she has come back to life? Even if she's become a Higher Vampire?”

I didn't answer. All this was right . . . only the blatant audacity of the attacks, this challenge thrown down so openly—it all seemed to cry out: “It's not that simple!”

“It's not all that straightforward,” I said.

“Stay here, Anton.” Helen sighed. She picked up my printout and took a huge flashlight out of the desk drawer. “I'm going to get your documents.”

“Why do you walk around the archive with a flashlight?” I asked.

“Some of the documents don't like the light,” Helen replied. “They can take fright and disappear for a few days . . . or years.”

She stepped out of the cone of light and disappeared. A moment later her voice reached me from a distance—she was walking across the hall without switching on the flashlight.

“And, it's less frightening here in the dark, Anton. It means you don't see lots of things . . .”

EARLY IN THE MORNING, AT A QUARTER PAST SEVEN, I WAS
standing in the kitchen whisking up an omelette in a little old enamel saucepan with a fork. The skill I had acquired a long, long time ago, in a little one-room apartment, allowed me to do this practically without a sound; I only clattered the fork against the bottom of the little saucepan once.

As I whisked the omelette I tried to recall where this saucepan came from, with the enamel cracked off in places and the cheerful little yellow duckling on the side. After all, it wasn't part of Svetlana's dowry. I used to cook with this saucepan back in my student days. And it wasn't new then either; my mum gave it to me when I rented my first apartment . . .

Yes, it's at least fifty years old . . . If not more. This little saucepan remembers the USSR and Comrade Brezhnev. Now that's something I don't remember, but it definitely does. And maybe even Khrushchev? And the Cuban Missile Crisis? And the Great Fatherland War . . .

No, that's going a bit too far. That's not possible.

I couldn't resist it any longer though. I looked at the little saucepan through the Twilight.

The contents glinted with a reproachful yellowish shimmer, reminding me that eggs and milk are foodstuffs of animal origin.
Well, I'm sorry, all you unhatched chicks and calves deprived of milk, but we humans are predators.

I moved on from the aura of the food and tried to read the saucepan's aura. That's a difficult trick, probably impossible in principle for a Second- or Third-Level Other.

But I managed it—by compensating for my lack of experience with force and zapping as much energy into the memory of the metal as I sometimes expended in a week.

People had eaten out of this saucepan. Good food and plenty of it, as they say. For some reason (maybe because of the jolly duckling on the side?) a lot of food for children had been cooked in it. Including for me.

It wasn't made during the war years of course, but right at the beginning of the fifties. And the remelted metal included the iron of smashed tanks; even now there was still something black and orange blazing, something smoky roaring and shuddering, melting and groaning . . .

It's a good thing the aura of objects is invisible not only to humans but to most Others . . .

“Dad?”

I looked up. Nadya was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, watching me curiously. To judge from the school uniform (she goes to a lycée, and they're strict about that there), she was all set to go to her lessons.

“What, my love?” I asked, and tried to keep mixing the omelette, but for some reason the fork was stuck.

“What are you doing? There was such a bright flash, I thought you were opening a portal.”

“I'm cooking an omelette,” I said.

Nadya demonstratively sniffed at the air.

“I think you've already cooked it. And it got burned.”

I looked into the little saucepan.

“Yes, looks like it.”

My daughter smiled for a few moments, looking at me. Then she turned serious.

“Dad, has something happened?”

“No. I wanted to read the saucepan's history. I overdid the Power a bit.”

“But apart from that, everything's all right?”

I sighed. Trying to hide something from Nadya was pointless. Ever since she was about seven, I suppose.

“Well, not absolutely. I'm concerned about this vampiress . . . Stop, where are you going?”

“To school. Is that okay?”

“Mum's still in the shower. Wait!”

Nadya started getting nervous.

“Oh, Dad! I only have to go through three courtyards! I'm fifteen years old!”

“Not three, but four. Not fifteen, but fourteen. And a little bit.”

“I'm rounding up!”

“That's the wrong direction.”

Nadya stamped her foot.

“Dad, stop that, I'm an Absolute . . .”

“An absolute who?” I asked.

“Enchantress,” Nadya growled. Naturally, she realized there was no way she could win this argument.

“That's good then, an enchantress, and not a fool. You might be boundlessly powerful, but an ordinary rock, if they hit you from behind . . .”

“Dad!”

“Or an ordinary vampire call, when you're not prepared for it . . .”

Nadya walked over without saying a word and took the saucepan from me. She sat down at the table and started eating with the fork that had been used for beating the eggs.

“Nadya, I'm not a tyrant,” I said. “Wait for Mum. Or let's go now, I'll take you.”

“Dad, when I walk along the street, three Others keep an eye on me.”

“Two,” I corrected her. “From the Night Watch and the Day Watch.”

“And a third one from the Inquisition. He has a powerful artifact, you don't notice him.”

So that's how it is . . .

“Well, are they going to let a demented vampiress attack their beloved Absolute Enchantress?”

“I know about all that,” I agreed.

“Dad, I wear seven amulets. Three of them are specially targeted against vampires.”

“I know.”

Nadya sighed and started poking at the omelette and muttering.

“There's not enough salt.”

“Salt's bad for your health.”

“And it's burned.”

“Activated charcoal is very good for your health.”

Nadya spluttered in laughter and put the saucepan down.

“All right, I surrender. Mum can take me, only she mustn't let anyone see her. If my class sees that my parents bring me to school . . .”

“You're worried about what they think?” I asked, taking out a frying pan. I didn't feel like messing about with an omelette any more. “I'll make fried eggs . . .”

“Yes!”

“That's good,” I said. “Lots of Others who realize who they are as children very quickly stop paying any attention to ordinary people. It's good that you're not like that.”

“Dad, that girl, the last one who was bitten . . .”

“Well?”

“Did she ask to have her memory wiped clean herself?”

I nodded and broke an egg over the frying pan.

“Yes, she did. Smart girl. Even if she had persuaded us to leave her the memories, it would have been hard for her to live with them.”

“I suppose so,” Nadya agreed. “But I couldn't have done that. It's like killing yourself.”

“What a clever daughter I have.”

“She takes after your wife,” Svetlana said, walking in. “Not quarreling in here, are you?”

“No,” Nadya and I chorused.

“Some kind of . . . residual energies.” Svetlana gestured vaguely with her hand.

“Dad was cooking an omelette,” Nadya said, and giggled.

Naturally, I'd told my girls everything the day before. About the attacks. And about the riddles. And about the contents of the cardboard box from a Note 202 reel-to-reel stereophonic tape recorder, which Helen had kindly packed to the hilt with the documents that I needed.

Unfortunately, my story hadn't provoked even the slightest unease. And if it had only been Nadya—I understand that youth is heedless and foolish . . .

But Sveta also took a skeptical view of my story.

She accepted that a message to me was encoded in the names of the victims. But at the same time, she flatly refused to take the threat seriously. “Those who truly wish to do evil do not inform others of their plans.”

And Sveta rejected my hypothesis that the people had been attacked by a vampiress who had once been laid to rest following our encounter. First, although I don't work the streets all the time, I had managed to offend quite a few vampires and vampiresses. Second, the ones I had offended could have friends, “sisters in blood”—that's quite a serious business with vampires, though not as serious as in the Hollywood fantasies. And third, in most cases bloodsuckers don't bear grudges for years and years, they don't take revenge in the style of the Count of Monte Cristo. They're rather earthbound creatures. Practical.

Otherwise, with their mode of life—or more precisely, afterlife—they couldn't exist for long.

All in all, my unease of the previous day had been put down to “the caveman mentality of the household patriarch.” I took offense at such blatant feminism, went to the kitchen, and sat down to go through the documents. Then Sveta and Nadya, having watched some soap opera or other of theirs, came to the kitchen to drink tea, and I moved to the “study.” Unfortunately, spacious as our apartment is, it's not spacious enough for me to have a separate room for working at home, so I'd set up a study for myself in the glassed-in loggia. And everything would have been fine—it was warm in there and there was plenty of space—but it turned out that I can't really work properly with a view of the courtyard, and the people, and the cars. I can't concentrate—I keep turning my head toward the glass wall, like a lethargic schoolboy in a boring lesson.

Nonetheless, I dutifully sat through the remainder of the evening with the documents and sorted them out into several groups. Then I used a laborious and complicated spell to force myself to understand Hungarian and Danish—although I wouldn't exactly say the result was that I “learned” them. I sorted out the documents again and read Amanda Kaspersen's article “On the Resilience of Vampires and Its Limits.” I realized that either when it was written the Day Watch in Denmark was very weak, or in the early twentieth century moral attitudes were far simpler. Miss Kaspersen crudely tortured the vampires who were taken prisoner by the Night Watch, subjecting them to vivisection (if that term can be applied to the living dead, of course) and keeping scrupulous minutes of the whole procedure. Even I, with my total lack of affection for bloodsuckers, started feeling queasy.

Burning, freezing, cutting into pieces, removal of organs, poisoning . . . even radiation, which was still so exotic in those times—Amanda stuffed radium into the captive vampires in massive doses!

I looked into the biographical note on Miss Kaspersen and discovered that she worked in the Night Watch from the age of fifteen,
that is, from the end of the nineteenth century. That was all it said, but possibly she had personal reasons to hate vampires?

Anyway, after everything I had read, I didn't feel like working anymore and I went to bed.

But today, after sending my daughter off to school, accompanied by my wife, I calmly went back to my documents. Everything that clearly had nothing to do with the case or had already been read I put back into the box that once held an ancient tape recorder (how on earth had those boxes survived in our archive? Did someone put a spell on them, or what?).

Unfortunately, Amanda Kaspersen's documents, for all their exhaustive savagery, had not given me any help at all. The assiduous young Danish woman had ascertained that vampires are very, very, very durable, that killing them is hard, and they repair any injuries quickly. Amanda considered the most reliable means (not counting magical laying to rest) to be severing the head and burying it at least two and half yards away from the body (I didn't even try to figure out how the distance was chosen), or total and complete incineration (“to ashes”), with the ashes being scattered to the wind and “immersion in a barrel of vodka, gin, homebrew liquor, or other alcoholic beverage of sufficient strength to support combustion.”

Well, even children know that vampires can't tolerate alcohol.

I gathered all of Amanda's documents and put them into the box (by the way, there weren't just copies, but even some originals—how did they find their way in there?) and crossed her name off the printout. Amanda had convincingly demonstrated that if you take a vampire and torture it good and hard, it will die conclusively and not bother anyone again. I had discovered lots of new things about the female character and Danish national customs, and I now realized why the Danes cut that poor little giraffe, Marius, to pieces in front of children. And I suspected that I would never be able to look at Legos in the same way again.

But there wasn't anything I needed in the documents.

Well, there was still Csaba Orosz.

Hungary has never been renowned as a place where vampirism is especially rampant. The legendary Count Dracula, who, as it happens, was not a vampire but simply a cruel human being, lived next door, in Rumania. The Hungarians themselves, on the whole a good-natured people who are fond of wine, meat, and scrumptious sweet stuff, have always been rather intolerant of vampires eating them. And in addition, unlike the English and the Americans, they have always been uncivilized enough to believe in vampires.

So in Hungarian territory vampires have always dragged out a miserable and secretive existence.

Even without the intervention of the Night Watch.

After the young maiden's entertaining notes on vivisecting vampires, I didn't immediately understand the tone of Csaba Orosz's text.

But a fact is a fact—Csaba Orosz was an enthusiastic admirer of vampires!

I looked up the biographical note on Orosz. He was a Light One, Seventh Level. He was initiated rather late, at the age of sixty. Orosz, who was working as a provincial apothecary at the time, was delighted at the prospects that had opened up to him—he traveled around the world, even getting as far as Australia and Central America. Then he settled in Budapest and started working in the Night Watch, in some minor office position.

A Light One, no doubt about that. But a vampire lover!

After reading all of Orosz's articles and several later publications about him (the funny thing is that it was mostly Dark Ones who wrote about Orosz), I thought I understood his motives.

He became an Other too late. You can't wind back age—he could give himself the appearance of a young man, he could boost his health, he could look forward to many decades, or even centuries, of fulfilling life. But youth—genuine youth—had already gone forever.