The sleek man made a pass with one hand, as if he was drawing a line between himself and the little man. The air shimmered and a cold breath of wind swept through the underpass. Up on the platform children started to cry and dogs to howl.
The little man stopped, looking straight ahead with a thoughtful expression. He pursed his lips, blew, and smiled cunningly at the man standing in front of him. There was a sharp, tinkling sound, like glass breaking. The sleek man's face contorted in pain and he took a step backwards.
'Bravo, devona' said the young woman, coming to a halt behind the Central Asian. 'But now you definitely shouldn't be in a hurry.'
'Oh, I need to hurry, oh yes I do,' the little man jabbered rapidly. 'Would you like some melon, beautiful lady?'
The young woman smiled as she studied him. She made a suggestion:
'Why don't you come with us? We'll sit and eat your melon, drink some tea. We've been waiting for you so long, it's not polite to go running off straight away.'
The little man's face expressed intense thought. Then he nodded:
'Let's go, let's go.'
His first step knocked the sleek man off his feet. It was as if there were an invisible shield moving along in front of the little man, a wall of raging wind: the sleek man was swept along the ground with his long hair trailing behind him, his eyes screwed up in terror, a silent scream breaking from his throat.
The young punk waved his hand through the air, sending flashes of scarlet light flying at the little man. They were blindingly bright as they left his hand, but began to fade halfway to their target, and only reached the Central Asian's back as a barely visible glimmer.
'Uh!' the little man said, but he didn't stop. He twitched his shoulder blades, as if some annoying fly had landed on his back.
'Alisa!' the young man called, continuing his fruitless attack, working his fingers to compact the air, drawing the scarlet fire out of it and flinging it at the little man. 'Alisa!'
The girl leaned her head to one side as she watched the Central Asian walking away. She whispered something and ran her hand across her dress. Out of nowhere a slim, transparent prism appeared in her hand.
The little man started to walk faster, swerving left and right and holding his head down strangely. The sleek man went tumbling along in front of him, no longer even attempting to cry out. His face was ragged and bleeding, his arms and legs were limp and useless, as if he hadn't simply slid three metres across a smooth floor, but been dragged three kilometres across the rocky steppe by a wild hurricane, or behind a galloping horse.
The girl looked at the little man through the prism.
First the Central Asian started to walk more slowly. Then he groaned and unclasped his hands – the melon smashed open with a crunch against the marble floor, the briefcase fell with a soft, heavy thud.
The man whom the girl had called devona gasped.
He slumped to the floor, shuddering as he fell. His cheeks collapsed inwards, his cheekbones protruded sharply, his hands were suddenly bony, the skin covered with a network of veins. His black hair didn't turn grey, but it was suddenly thinner and dusted with white. The air around him began to shimmer and currents of heat streamed towards Alisa.
'What I have not given shall henceforth be mine,' the girl hissed. 'All that is yours is mine.'
Her face flushed with colour as rapidly as the little man's body dried out. Her lips smacked as she whispered strange, breathy words. The punk frowned and lowered his hand – the final scarlet ray slammed into the floor, turning the stone dark.
'Very easy,' he said, 'very easy.'
'The boss was most displeased,' said the girl, hiding the prism away in the folds of her dress. She smiled. Her face radiated a sexual energy.
'Easy, but our Kolya was unlucky.'
The punk nodded, glancing at the long-haired man's motionless body. There was no great sympathy in his eyes, but no hostility either.
'That's for sure,' he said, walking confidently towards the little man's desiccated corpse. He ran his hand through the air above the body, which crumbled into dust. With his next pass the young man reduced the melon to a sticky mess.
'The briefcase,' said the girl. 'Check the briefcase.'
Another wave of his hand, and the worn imitation leather cracked apart and the briefcase fell open, like an oyster shell under the knife of an experienced pearl-diver. But to judge from the young man's expression, the pearl he'd been expecting wasn't there. Two clean changes of underwear, a pair of cheap cotton tracksuit bottoms, a white shirt, rubber sandals in a plastic bag, a polystyrene cup with dried Korean noodles, a spectacles case.
He made a few more passes and the polystyrene cup split open, the clothing came apart at the seams and the case opened to reveal the spectacles.
'Shit! He hasn't got anything, Alisa! Nothing at all!'
An expression of surprise slowly spread across the witch's face.
'Stasik, this is the devona, the courier. He couldn't have trusted what he was carrying to anyone else!'
'He must have done,' the young man said, stirring the Central Asian's ashes with his foot. 'I warned you, didn't I, Alisa? You can expect anything from the Light Ones. You took responsibility. I may be a low-level magician, but I have more experience than you – fifty years more.'
Alisa nodded. There was no confusion in her eyes now. Her hand slid over her dress again, seeking the prism.
'Yes,' she said softly. 'You're right, Stasik. But in fifty years' time our experience will be equal.'
The punk laughed, then squatted down beside the long-haired man's body and started going swiftly through his pockets.
'You think so?'
'I'm sure. You shouldn't have insisted on having your own way. I was the one who wanted to check the other passengers as well.'
The young man swung round to protest, but it was too late – the hot currents of his life energy were already streaming out of his body.
CHAPTER 1
THE OLDSMOBILE was ancient, which was why I liked it. But the open windows were no help against the insane heat rising from the road after the sun had been scorching it all day long. What was needed was an air conditioner.
Ilya was probably thinking the same thing. He was driving with one hand on the wheel, glancing round all the time and chatting to everyone. I knew a magician of his level could identify probabilities ten minutes in advance and there wasn't going to be any crash, but I was still feeling rather uneasy.
'I was thinking about putting in an air conditioner,' he told Yulia apologetically. The young girl was suffering worse than anyone from the heat, her face had come out in nasty red blotches and her eyes were glazed. I was just hoping she wasn't going to be sick. 'But it would have ruined the entire car, it wasn't meant to have one. No air conditioner, no mobile phone, no on-board computer.'
'Uhuh?' said Yulia, with a feeble smile. We'd all been working late the day before. No one had got to bed at all, we'd been working in the office until five a.m. and then stayed there for the rest of the night. I suppose it's unfair to make a thirteen-year-old girl slave away like that with the grown-ups. But it was what she'd wanted, no one had forced her.
From her seat in the front, Svetlana shot Yulia an anxious look. Then she looked at Semyon disapprovingly. The imperturbable magician almost choked on his Yava cigarette. He breathed in and all the smoke drifting around inside the car was drawn into his lungs. He flicked the butt out of the window. The Yava was already a concession to popular opinion – until just recently Semyon had preferred to smoke Flight and other equally repulsive tobacco products.
'Close the windows,' said Semyon.
A moment later it suddenly started getting cold. There was a subtle, salty sea smell in the air. I could even tell that it was the sea at night, and quite close – the typical smell of the Crimean shore. Iodine, seaweed, a subtle hint of wormwood. The Black Sea. Koktebel.
'Koktebel?' I asked.
'Yalta,' Semyon replied. 'September tenth, 1972, about three in the morning. After a minor storm.'
Ilya clicked his tongue enviously.
'Pretty good! How come you haven't used up a set of sensations like that in all this time?'
Yulia gave Semyon a guilty look. Climate conservation wasn't something every magician found easy, and the sensations Semyon had just used would have been a hit at any party.
'Thank you, Semyon Pavlovich,' she said. For some reason Yulia was as shy of Semyon as she was of the boss, and she always called him by both his first name and his patronymic.
'Oh, that's nothing,' Semyon replied equably. 'My collection includes rain in the taiga in 1913, and I've got the 1940 typhoon, a spring morning in Jurmaala in '56, and I think there's a winter evening in Gagry.'
Ilya laughed:
'Forget the winter evening in Gagry. But rain in the taiga . . .'
'I won't swap,' Semyon warned him. 'I know your collection, you haven't got anything nearly that good.'
'What about two, no, three for one . . .'
'I could give it to you as a present,' Semyon suggested.
'Forget it,' said Ilya, jerking on the steering wheel. 'What could I give you that would compare with that?'
'Then I'll invite you when I unseal it.'
'I suppose I should be grateful for that.'
He started sulking, naturally. I always thought of them as more or less equal in power, maybe Ilya was somewhat stronger. But Semyon had a talent for spotting the moment that was worth recording magically. And he didn't use his collection without good reason.
Of course, some people might have thought what he'd just done was a waste: brightening up the last half-hour of our journey with such a precious set of sensations.
'Nectar like that should be breathed in the evening, with kebabs on the barbecue,' said Ilya. He could be incredibly thick-skinned sometimes. Yulia tensed.
'I remember one time in the Middle East,' Semyon said unexpectedly. 'Our helicopter . . . anyway, never mind that. . . we set out on foot. Our communications equipment had been destroyed, and using magic would have been like walking through Harlem with a placard saying "Beat the niggers!" We set out on foot, across the Hadramaut. We had hardly any distance left to go to get to our regional agent, maybe a hundred kilometres. But we were all exhausted. And we had no water. And then Alyoshka – he's a nice guy who works in the Maritime Region now – said: "I can't take any more, Semyon Pavlovich, I've got a wife and two children at home, I want to get back alive." He lay down on the sand and unsealed his special stash. He had rain in it. A cloudburst, twenty minutes of it. We drank all we needed, and filled our canteens, and recovered our strength. I felt like punching him in the face for not telling us sooner, but I took pity on him.'
Nobody in the car said anything for a minute, savouring Semyon's story.
Ilya was the first to gather his wits.
'Why didn't you use your rain in the taiga?'
'What a comparison,' Semyon snorted. A collector's item from 1913 and a standard spring cloudburst collected in Moscow. It smelled of gasoline, would you believe!'
'I do.'
'Well, there you are. There's a time and place for everything. The evening I just recalled was pleasant enough, but not really outstanding. Just about right for your old jalopy.'
Svetlana laughed quietly. The faint air of tension was dispelled.
The Night Watch had been working feverishly all week long. Not that there'd been anything unusual happening in Moscow, it was just routine. The city was in the grip of a heatwave unprecedented for June, and reports of incidents had dropped to an all-time low. Neither the Light Ones nor the Dark Ones were enjoying it too much.
