The Last Watch Read Online Free

asked what had happened in the last few days. Well … she told me about that young guy in Scotland.’
    I nodded in relief. Svetlana knew all about it, that was great. No need for lies or half-truths.
    â€˜It’s a strange business,’ she said.
    I shrugged and drank the forty grams of vodka that I had been allocated. I crunched happily on a pickled cucumber and then asked, with my mouth full:
    â€˜What’s so strange about it? Either a wild vampire, or one who went loco because he hadn’t fed for too long … that’s pretty normal stuff for them. This one seems to have a distinctive sense of humour, though. Fancy killing someone in a tourist attraction called the Castle of the Vampires!’
    â€˜Quiet.’ Svetlana frowned and indicated Nadya with her eyes.
    I started chewing energetically. I love fried potatoes – with a crispy crust, and they have to be fried in goose fat – with crackling, and a handful of white mushrooms, fresh ones if they’re in season , or dried ones if they’re not. Everything’s all right, mummy and daddy are talking about all sorts of nonsense, about movies and books, vampires don’t really exist …
    Unfortunately, there’s no way our daughter can be fooled. She can see them all quite clearly. It had been a struggle to teach her not to mention it in a loud voice in the metro or on the trolleybus. ‘Mummy, Daddy, look, that man there’s a vampire!’ Never mind the other passengers, they would just put it all down to childish foolishness, but I felt awkward for the vampires somehow. Some of them have never attacked people: they drink their donor blood honestly and lead perfectly decent lives. And then in the middle of a crowd a five-year-old kid jabs her finger at you and laughs: ‘That man’s not alive, but he’s walking around!’ There was nothing we could do – she could hear what we were talking about and she drew her own conclusions.
    But this time Nadya took no interest in our conversation. She was putting a red tile roof on a little house of yellow plastic bricks.
    â€˜I don’t think it’s a question of anybody’s sense of humour,’ Svetlana said. ‘Gesar wouldn’t send you right across Europe for that. The Watch in Scotland isn’t full of fools, they’ll find the bloodsucker sooner or later.’
    â€˜Then what is it? I’ve found out everything about the victim. A decent guy, but no saint. Obviously not an Other. The Dark Ones have no need to kill him deliberately. The boy’s father once refused to become an Other, but he cooperated unofficially with the Night Watch. A rare case, but not unique. The Dark Ones have no reason for revenge.’
    Svetlana sighed. She glanced at the fridge – and the carafe came flying back to us.
    I suddenly realised that she was worried about something.
    â€˜Sveta, have you looked into the future?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    It’s not possible to see the future in the way that charlatans and fortune-tellers talk about it. Not even if you’re a Great Other. But it
is
possible to calculate the probability of one event or another: will you get stuck in a traffic jam on this road or not, will your plane explode in mid-air, will you survive or be killed in the next battle? … To put it simply, the more precise the question is, the more precise the answer will be. You can’t just ask: ‘What’s in store for me tomorrow?’
    â€˜Well?’
    â€˜There’s no threat to your life in this investigation.’
    â€˜That’s great,’ I said sincerely. I took the carafe and poured another glass for each of us. ‘Thanks. You’ve reassured me.’
    We drank – and then looked at each other grimly.
    Then we looked at Nadya – our daughter was sitting on the floor fiddling with her building set. Sensing our gazes on her, she started trilling: ‘La la-la la