The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko Page A

friends?'
    'Yes. I don't want them to shudder every time they step inside the door.'
    'What, then?'
    I took a pistol out of a hollow gouged in the bricks and glanced sideways at the owl – Olga was studying the gun.
    'Silver? Very painful for a vampire, but not fatal.'
    'It has explosive bullets.' I slid the clip out of the Desert Eagle. 'Explosive silver bullets. Four four calibre. Three hits and a vampire's totally helpless.'
    'And then?'
    'Traditional methods.'
    'I don't believe in technology,' Olga said doubtfully. 'I've seen a werewolf regenerate after being torn to pieces by a shell.'
    'How long did it take to regenerate?'
    'Three days.'
    'Well, there you are then.'
    'All right, Anton. If you have no faith in your own powers . . .'
    She was disappointed, I realised that. But then I was no field operative. I was a staff worker assigned to work in the field.
    'Everything will be fine,' I reassured her. 'Trust me. Let's just focus on finding the bait.'
    'Okay, let's go.'
     
    'This is where it all happened,' I told Olga. We were standing in the alley. In the Twilight, of course.
    The occasional passers-by looked odd skirting round me, yet unable to see me.
    'This is where you killed the vampire.' Olga's tone couldn't have been more brisk. 'Right ... I understand. You did a poor job cleaning up the mess, but that's not important.'
    As far as I could see, there wasn't a trace left of the dead vampire. But I didn't argue.
    'The girl vampire was here . . . you hit her with something here . . . no, you splashed vodka on her . . .' Olga laughed quietly. 'She got away . . . Our operatives have completely lost their touch. The trail's still clear even now!'
    'She changed,' I said morosely.
    'Into a bat?'
    'Yes. Garik said she did it at the very last moment.'
    'That's bad. This vampire's more powerful than I was hoping.'
    'She's completely wild. She's drunk living blood and killed. She has no experience, but plenty of power.'
    'We will destroy her,' Olga said sternly.
    I didn't say anything.
    'And here's the boy's trail.' There was a note of approval in Olga's voice. 'Yes indeed . . . real potential. Let's go and see where he lives.'
    We walked out of the alley and set off along the pavement. The houses surrounded a large inner yard on all sides. I could sense the boy's aura too, but it was very weak and confused: he clearly walked round here all the time.
    'Straight ahead,' Olga commanded. 'Turn left. Further. Turn right. Stop.'
    I stopped facing a street with a trolleybus crawling slowly along it. I didn't emerge from the Twilight yet.
    'In that building,' Olga told me. 'Straight ahead. That's where he is.'
    The building was a monster, an immensely high, flat slab set on tall legs or stilts. At first glance it looked like some gigantic monument to the matchbox. Look again and you could see it as an expression of a morbid gigantomania.
    'That's a good house for killing in,' I said. 'You could go insane in there.'
    'Let's try both,' Olga agreed. 'I've got plenty of experience.'
     
    Egor didn't want to go out. When his parents left to go to work and the door slammed behind them, he felt the fear immediately. And he knew that outside the empty apartment the fear would turn into terror.
    There was nothing that could save him. Nothing anywhere. But at least his home gave him the illusion of safety.
    Last night the world had crumbled, completely collapsed. Egor had always admitted quite openly – at least to himself, if not to others – that he wasn't really brave. But he wasn't exactly a coward either. There 'were some things it was only right to be afraid of: young thugs, maniacs, terrorists, disasters, fires, wars, deadly diseases. He thought of them all lumped together – and all equally distant. All these things really did exist, but at the same time they remained beyond his everyday experience. Follow simple rules, don't wander the streets at night, don't go into unfamiliar districts, wash your hands before eating, don't jump