The Night Watch Read Online Free Page B

splashed the liquid out of the open bottle into the hideously transformed face. Why do vampires tolerate alcohol so poorly?
    The menacing scream changed to a shrill squeal. The girl-vampire began whirling around on the spot, beating her hands against her face as it shed layers of skin and grayish flesh. The male vampire swung round, all set to dart away.
    This was going too easily altogether. A registered vampire isn't some casual visitor I have to fight on equal terms. I threw the bottle at the girl-vampire, reached out my hand and grabbed hold of the cord of his registration tag, which had unraveled on command. The vampire gave a hoarse croak and clutched at his throat.
    "Leave the Twilight!" I shouted.
    I think he realized things were looking really bad now. He flung himself toward me, trying to reduce the pressure from the cord, extending his fangs and transforming as he came.
    If the amulet had been fully charged, I could have simply stunned him.
    As it was, I had to kill him.
    Page 17
    The tag—a seal on the vampire's chest that gave off a faint blue glow—made a crunching sound when I gave the silent order. The energy implanted in it by someone with far more skill than me flooded into the dead body. The vampire was still running. He was well-fed and strong; other people's lives were still nourishing his dead flesh. But he couldn't possibly resist such a powerful blow: His skin shriveled until it was stretched as taut as parchment over his bones; slime gushed out of his eye sockets. Then his spine shattered and the twitching remains collapsed at my feet.
    I swung around—the girl-vampire could have regenerated already. But there was no danger. She was running away across the yard between the buildings, taking huge bounds. She still hadn't left the Twilight, so I was the only one who could see this astounding sight. Apart from the dogs, of course. Somewhere off to one side a small canine broke into hysterical barking, trans-fixed simultaneously by hatred and fear and all the other feelings that dogs have felt for the living dead since time immemorial. I didn't have enough strength left to chase the vampire. I straightened up and captured a 3-D image of her aura—gray, desiccated, rotten. We'd find her. There was nowhere she could hide now. But where was the boy?
    After he emerged from the Twilight created by the vampires, he could have fainted or fallen into a trance. But he wasn't in the alley. He couldn't have run past me… I bounded out of the alley into the yard and saw him. He was bolting, moving almost as fast as the vampire. Well, good for him! That was wonderful. No help required. It was bad that he would remember everything that had happened, but then who would believe a young boy? And before morning all his memories would fade and assume the less menacing features of a fantastic nightmare.
    Or should I really go after the little guy?
    "Anton!"
    It was Igor and Garik, our inseparable duo of operatives, running down the alley from the avenue.
    "The girl got away!" I shouted.
    Garik kicked out at the vampire's shriveled corpse as he ran, sending a cloud of rotten dust flying up into the frosty air. He shouted:
    "The image!"
    I sent him the image of the girl-vampire running away. Garik frowned and started moving faster. Both operatives dashed off in pursuit. Igor shouted as he ran:
    "Clear up the trash!"
    I nodded, as if they needed an answer, and emerged from my own Twilight. The world blossomed. The operatives' silhouettes melted away, and their invisible feet even stopped leaving tracks in the snow lying in the human dimension of reality.
    I sighed and walked over to their gray Volvo parked at the curb. There were a few primitive implements lying on the backseat: a heavy-duty plastic bag, a shovel, and a small sweeping brush. It took me about five minutes to scrape up the vampire's feather-light remains and put the bag in the trunk. I took some dirty snow from a decaying heap left by a careless yard-keeper,