tory Three

ALL FOR MY OWN KINO

Prologue

The little man had swarthy skin and narrow eyes. He was the ideal prey for any militiaman in the capital city, with a confused, slightly guilty smile and a glance that was naive and shifty at the same time. Despite the killing heat, he was wearing a dark suit, old-fashioned but hardly even worn, and as a finishing touch, an ancient tie from the Soviet period. In one hand he was carrying a shabby, swollen briefcase, the kind agronomists and chairmen of progressive collective farms used to carry around in old Soviet movies, and in the other a string bag holding a long Central Asian melon.

The little man emerged from his second-class sleeper car with a smile, and he kept on smiling: at the female conductor, at his fellow travelers, at the porter who jostled him, at the young guy selling lemonade and cigarettes from a stall. He raised his eyes and gazed in delight at the roof covering Kazan Station. He wandered along the platform, occasionally stopping and adjusting his grip on the melon. He might have been thirty years old or he might have been fifty. It was hard for a European eye to tell.

A minute later a young man got out of a first-class sleeper car in the same Tashkent-Moscow train, probably one of the dirtiest and most run-down trains in the entire world. He looked like the little man's complete opposite. Another Central Asian type, maybe Uzbek, but his clothes were more in the modern Moscow style: shorts and a T-shirt, with a little leather bag and a cell phone hanging on his belt. No baggage and no provincial manners. He didn't gaze around at everything, trying to spot the sacred letter "M" for metro. After a quick nod to the conductor of his car and a gentle shake of his head in reply to the offers from taxi drivers, two more steps saw him slipping through the bustling crowd of new arrivals, with an expression of mild distaste and alienation on his face. But a moment later he was an integral part of the crowd, indistinguishable from any of the healthy cells in the organism, attracting no interest from the phagocyte militiamen or the other cells beside him.

Meanwhile, the little man with the melon and the briefcase was pushing his way through the crowd, muttering countless apologies in rather poor Russian, looking this way and that with his head drawn down. He walked past one underpass, shook his head, and set off toward a different one, then stopped in front of a billboard where the crush was less fierce. Clutching his things clumsily to his chest, he took out a crumpled piece of paper and studied it closely. From the look on his face he knew perfectly well he was being followed.

The three people standing over by the wall were quite happy with that: a strikingly beautiful redhead in a slinky, clinging silk dress, a young guy in punk-style clothes with a bored expression in eyes that looked surprisingly old, and a rather older, sleek-looking man with effete mannerisms.

"It doesn't look like him," the young guy with the old man's eyes said doubtfully. "Not like him at all. I didn't see him for very long, and it was a long time ago, but..."

"Perhaps you'd like to ask Djoru, just to make sure?" the girl asked dismissively. "I can see it's him."

"You accept responsibility?" There was no surprise or desire to argue in the young man's voice. He was just checking.

"Yes," said the girl, keeping her eyes fixed on the little old man. "Let's go. We'll take him in the underpass."

They set out unhurriedly, walking in step. Then they separated with the girl sauntering straight ahead, while the men went off to each side.

The little man folded up his piece of paper and set off uncertainly for the underpass.

The sudden absence of people would have amazed a Muscovite or a frequent visitor to the capital. After all, this was the shortest and easiest route from the metro to the platform of the mainline station. But the little man took no notice. He paid no attention to the people who were stopped behind his back as if they'd run into an invisible barrier and walked off to the other underpasses. And there was no way he could have seen that the same thing was happening at the other end of the underpass, inside the railroad station.

The sleek man came toward him, smiling. The attractive young woman and the casually dressed young guy with an earring in his ear and torn jeans closed in on him from behind.

The little man continued walking.

"Hang on, old timer," the sleek man said in a friendly voice that matched his appearance¡ªhigh-pitched, affected. "Don't be in such a hurry."

The Central Asian smiled and nodded, but he didn't stop.

The sleek man made a pass with one hand, as if he were 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 crying and dogs started howling.

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 high-pitched jangling sound, like invisible glass breaking. The sleek man's face contorted in pain and he took a step backward.

"Bravo, devona," said the young woman, halting behind the Central Asian. "But now you definitely shouldn't be in any rush."

"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 the Central Asian. She made a suggestion:

"Why don't you come with us, respected guest? 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 immediately."

The little old man's face expressed intense thought. Then he nodded:

"Let's go, let's go."

His first step knocked the man with affected manners off his feet. It was as if there were an invisible shield moving along in front of the little man, an immaterial 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 guy who looked like a punk rocker waved his hand through the air, sending flashes of scarlet light flying at the little man. They were blindingly bright when they left his hand but started fading halfway to their target, and they reached the Asiatic's back as a barely visible glimmer.

"Ow, ow, ow," the little old 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 guy called, continuing his useless attack, working his fingers to compact the air, drawing the scarlet fire out of it and flinging it at the little old man. "Alisa!"

The girl leaned her head to one side as she watched the Central Asian walking away. She said something in a quiet whisper and ran her hand across her dress. Out of nowhere a slim, transparent prism appeared in her hand.

The little old man started walking faster, swerving left and right and holding his head down in a funny way. 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 shattered and useless, as if he hadn't simply slid three meters across a smooth floor but been dragged three kilometers 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 walking more slowly. Then he groaned and unclasped his hands¡ªthe melon smashed open with a crunch against the marble floor, the briefcase fell with a soft, heavy thud.

"Oh," gasped the man that the girl had called a devona. "Oh, oh!"

The little man slumped to the floor, shuddering as he fell. His cheeks collapsed inward, his cheekbones protruded sharply, his hands were suddenly bony, the skin covered with a network of veins. His black hair didn't turn gray, but it was suddenly thinner and dusted with gray. The air around him began to shimmer, and invisible currents of heat streamed toward Alisa.

"What I did not give shall henceforth be mine," the girl hissed. "All that is yours is mine."

Her face flushed with color as rapidly as the little man's body dried out. Her lips smacked together as she whispered strange, breathy words. The punk frowned and lowered his hand¡ªthe final scarlet ray slammed into the floor, turning the stone dark.

"Very easy," he said, "very easy."

"The boss was very displeased," said the girl, hiding the prism away in the folds of her dress. She smiled. Her face radiated the same kind of energy women sometimes show after a vigorous sexual encounter.

"Easy, but our Kolya was unlucky."

The punk nodded, glancing at the long-haired man's motionless body. There was no particular sympathy in his eyes, but no hostility either.

"That's for sure," he said, walking over confidently to the desiccated corpse. He ran his hand through the air above it and the corpse crumbled into dust. With his next pass the young guy reduced the melon to a sticky mess.

"The briefcase," said the girl. "Check the briefcase."

A wave of his hand¡ªand 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 guy's expression, the pearl he'd been expecting wasn't there. Two clean changes of underwear, a pair of cheap cotton tracksuit pants, a white shirt, rubber sandals in a plastic bag, a polystyrene cup with dried Korean noodles, a spectacle case.

The young guy 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. He swore.

"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," the young guy 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 weak magician, but I have more experience than you¡ªfifty years more."

Alisa nodded. There was no confusion in her eyes now. Her hand slid over her dress again, seeking for 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 through the pockets quickly.

"You think so?"

"I'm certain. 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 guy swung around to protest, but it was too late¡ªthe hot currents of life energy were already streaming out of his body.