Night Watch 05 - The New Watch Read Online Free Page A

untypical Other. He didn’t have any Other abilities at all to begin with, and he shouldn’t have developed any. But several years earlier he had managed to get in the way of the spell of an ancient magical book, the
Fuaran
. The vampire Kostya, who at one time was my neighbour and even my friend, had used Las to demonstrate that the book gave him the power to turn human beings into Others . . .
    What had seemed strangest to me was not that Las was transformed into an Other, but that he was transformed into a Light Other. He was no evil villain, but he had a very specific sense of humour . . . and his views on life would have been more suitable for a Dark One too. Working in the Night Watch hadn’t changed him all that much – he seemed to regard it as just one more joke.
    But he was a weak Other. Seventh-Level, the very lowest, with only vague prospects of ever reaching the Fifth or Sixth (and Las wasn’t desperately keen on the idea anyway).
    ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Semyon disagreed amiably. ‘Gesar simply isn’t expecting anything interesting in the line of magic. You were there, after all, you didn’t spot anything. And you’re a Higher Magician . . .’
    I winced.
    ‘Yes, you are, you are,’ Semyon said in a friendly tone. ‘You don’t have much experience, but you have all the abilities. So digging in that direction is pointless. But Las – he’ll look at the situation differently. Practically from a human point of view. His head works in a rather paradoxical fashion . . . what if he spots something?’
    ‘Then the two of us should definitely go together,’ I said. ‘And you can boldly proceed with initiating the Prophet.’
    ‘Arise, prophet, and see, and hearken . . .’ said Semyon, quoting Pushkin. He walked into the lift first when it finally arrived. He sighed: ‘Oh, I don’t like Prophets and Clairvoyants! They blurt out something about you, and then you wander around like an idiot, wondering what they meant by it. You can imagine such terrifying things sometimes, but it’s all total nonsense really, phooey, not worth bothering about!’
    ‘Thanks,’ I said to Semyon. ‘Don’t worry . . . I’m taking all this very calmly. A Prophet – so what?’
    ‘I remember we had a clairvoyant in Petrograd,’ Semyon remarked eagerly. ‘So in 1916, on New Year’s Eve, we ask him what the prospects are. And then he laid it all on us . . .’
    I managed to intercept Las in the yard, just as he was getting into his freshly washed Mazda. He was frankly delighted when I showed up.
    ‘Anton, are you really busy?’
    ‘Well . . .’
    ‘Why don’t you scoot over to Sheremetyevo with me? Boris Ignatievich told me to follow in your footsteps and look for anything odd. Maybe you could come along?’
    ‘What are we going to do about you?’ I asked, clambering into the right-side front seat. ‘All right, I’ll go. But you’ll owe me one, you know that.’
    ‘Goes without saying,’ Las said delightedly, turning on the motor. ‘I’m a bit pushed for time – I had to change my plans for today.’
    ‘What plans were they?’ I asked as we drove out of the car park.
    ‘Well, it’s like this . . .’ Las was slightly embarrassed. ‘I was going to get baptised today.’
    ‘What?’ I thought I’d misheard.
    ‘Baptised,’ Las repeated, looking at the road. ‘All right, isn’t it? We can get baptised?’
    ‘Who are “we”?’ I asked, just to be on the safe side.
    ‘Others!’
    ‘Of course we can,’ I answered. ‘That’s, like, that’s . . . a spiritual matter. Magic’s magic, and faith . . .’
    Las suddenly started talking nineteen to the dozen.
    ‘I just thought – the devil only knows what they’ll make of me practising magic . . . I always used to be an agnostic – a broad-profile ecumenist, that is – but then I thought . . . better get baptised, to make completely sure.’
    ‘There was this character in the Simpsons: to make completely sure, he observed the Sabbath