blood.
Stirring up my blood…
The body I'd been treating so badly all week was rebelling. I was thirsty, but not for water—I could quite safely slake my thirst with the dirty city snow without doing myself any harm. And not for strong drink either—I had that bottle of lousy vodka with me and even that wouldn't do me any damage. What I wanted was blood.
Not pig's blood, or cow's blood, but real human blood. Curse this hunt…
"You have to go through this," the boss had said. "Five years in the analytical department's a bit too long, don't you think?" I don't know, maybe it is a bit too long, but I like it. And after all, the boss himself hasn't worked out in the field for more than a hundred years now. I ran past the bright shop windows with their displays of fake Gzhel ceramics and stage-set heaps of food. There were cars rushing past me along the avenue, a few pedestrians. That was all fake too, an illusion, just one facet of the world, the only one accessible to human beings. I was glad I wasn't one of them.
Without breaking my rapid stride, I summoned the Twilight.
The world sighed as it opened up. It was as if airport searchlights had suddenly come on behind me, casting a long, thin, sharp shadow. The shadow swirled up, acquiring volume; the shadow was drawing me into itself—into a dimension where there are no shadows. The shadow detached itself from the dirty asphalt surface, swirling and swaying like a column of heavy smoke. The shadow was running ahead of me…
Quickening my stride, I broke through the gray silhouette into the Twilight. The colors of the world dimmed and the cars on the avenue slowed, as if they were suddenly bogged down. I was getting close to my goal.
As I dodged into the alleyway, I thought I would just catch the final scene. The boy's motionless, ravaged body, drained dry, the vampires disappearing.
But I wasn't too late after all.
The boy was standing in front of a girl-vampire who had already extended her fangs, slowly taking off his scarf. He was probably not afraid now—the Call completely numbs the conscious mind. More likely he was longing to feel the touch of those sharp, gleaming fangs.
There was a young male vampire standing beside them. I sensed immediately that he was the leader of the pair: He was the one who was initiating her, he was introducing her to the scent of blood. And the most sickening thing about it was that he had aMoscow registration tag. What a bastard!
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But then, that only improved my chances…
The vampires turned toward me in confusion, not understanding what was going on. The boy was in their Twilight, I shouldn't have been able to see him… or them either.
Then the male vampire's face began to relax, he even smiled—a calm, friendly smile.
"Hi there…"
He'd taken me for one of his own. And he could hardly be blamed for his mistake: I really was one of them now. Almost. The week of preparation had not been wasted: I had begun to sense them… but I'd almost gone over to the Dark Side myself.
"Night Watch," I said. I held my hand out, holding the amulet. It was discharged, but that's not so easy to sense at a distance. "Leave the Twilight!"
The young guy would probably have obeyed me, hoping that I didn't know about the trail of blood he'd left behind him, that the whole business could just be classified as "an attempt at unauthorized interaction with a human being." But the girl lacked his self-control; she didn't understand.
"A-a-a-agh!" She threw herself at me with a long, drawn-out howl. It was a good thing she still hadn't sunk her teeth into the boy; she was out of her mind now, like a desperate junkie who's just stuck a needle in his vein only to have it jerked back out again, like a nymphomaniac after her man pulled out just a moment before orgasm.
Her lunge would have been too fast for any human being; no one could have parried it. But I was in the same dimension of reality as the girl-vampire.
I threw up my arm and