lya was waiting for me beside the road, standing there with his hands stuck in his pockets, staring up in disgust at the sky through the flurry of fine snowflakes.

"You took your time," was all he said after I'd shaken the deputy's hand and got out of the car. "The boss is getting impatient."

"What's going on here?"

Ilya grinned, but it wasn't his usual cheerful smile.

"You'll see... let's go."

We set off along a trampled path, overtaking women with shopping bags rambling home from the supermarket. How strange it is that we have supermarkets now, just like the genuine article. But people still walk the same old tired way, as if they'd spent an hour standing in line for little blue corpses called chickens...

"Is it far?" I asked.

"If it was, we'd have taken a car."

"How did our playboy make out? Couldn't he handle it?"

"Ignat tried his best," was all Ilya said. I felt a brief pang of vengeful satisfaction, as if it were in my interest for handsome Ignat to screw up. If a mission required it, he was usually in someone else's bed within two hours after his assignment was set.

"The boss has declared a state of readiness for evacuation," Ilya suddenly said.

"What?"

"At a moment's notice. If the vortex isn't stabilized, the Others quit Moscow."

He was walking ahead of me; I couldn't look into his eyes. But what reason would Ilya have to lie...

"And is the vortex still..." I began. Then I stopped. I could see it.

Above the dismal nine-story block facing us, a black tornado was revolving slowly against the background of the dark, snowy sky.

You couldn't call it a twister or a vortex any longer. It was a tornado. It rose up out of the next building, hidden by the one we could see. And judging from the side angle of the dark cone, it started almost down on the ground.

"Damnation..." I whispered.

"Watch what you say," Ilya snapped. "It could easily come true."

"It's thirty meters high..."

"Thirty-two. And still growing..."

I cast a hasty glance at my shoulder and saw Olga sitting there. She'd emerged from the Twilight.

Have you ever seen a bird frightened? Frightened like a human being?

The owl looked ruffled. Can feathers really stand on end? There was an orange-yellow flame blazing in her amber eyes.

The shoulder of my poor jacket was torn into tiny shreds, and the claws continued scraping, as if they wanted to scrape right through to my body.

"Olga!"

Ilya turned back and nodded:

"Now you see... The boss says the vortex at Hiroshima wasn't that high."

The owl flapped its wings and soared smoothly into the air, without a sound. A woman shrieked behind me¡ªI swung around and saw a stupefied face, glazed eyes following the bird's flight in amazement.

"It's a crow," Ilya said quietly, half-turning his head to glance at the woman. His reactions were far quicker than mine. A moment later the accidental witness was overtaking us, muttering about the narrow path and people who liked to block the way.

"Is it growing fast?" I asked, with a nod at the tornado.

"In bursts. But it's stabilizing now. The boss called Ignat off just in time. Come on..."

The owl made a wide circle around the tornado, then flew lower and over our heads. Olga still looked very self-possessed, but her careless emergence from the twilight showed how agitated she really was.

"Why, what did he do wrong?"

"Nothing really... except for being overconfident. He got to know her. Then he started forcing things along and that made the twister start to grow... and how!"

"I don't understand," I said, confused. "It can only grow that way if it's being fed with energy by the magician who summoned up the Inferno..."

"That's the whole point. Someone must have tracked Ignat and started shoveling coal in the firebox. This way..."

We went into the entrance of the building that stood between us and the vortex. The owl flew in after us at the last moment. I gave Ilya a puzzled look, but I didn't ask any questions. Anyway, it was clear soon enough what we were there for.

An operations center had been set up in an apartment on the first floor. The heavy steel door, firmly closed in the human world, was standing wide open in the Twilight. Without stopping, Ilya dived into the Twilight and walked through. I fumbled for a few seconds, raising my shadow, and followed him.

It was a large apartment, with four rooms, all very comfortable. But it was also noisy, smoky, and hot.

There were more than twenty Others there, including field operatives and us backroom boys. No one took any notice when I arrived; they just glanced at Olga. I realized that the old Watch members knew her, but no one made any attempt to say hello or smile at the white owl.

What could she have done?

"Go through into the bedroom; the boss is in there," Ilya said briskly, turning off into the kitchen, where I could hear glasses clinking. Maybe they were drinking tea, or maybe it was something a bit stronger. I glanced in quickly as I passed and saw I was right. They were reanimating Ignat with cognac. Our ladies' man looked completely wiped out, crushed. It was a long time since he'd suffered this kind of failure.

I walked on by, pushed open the first door I came to, and looked inside.

It was the children's room. A child of about five was sleeping on a little bed, and his parents and teenage sister were on the carpet beside it. Clear enough. The owners of the apartment had been put into a sound, healthy sleep so they wouldn't get under our feet. We could have set up the entire operations office in the Twilight, but why waste all that energy?

Someone slapped me on the shoulder and I looked around¡ªit was Semyon.

"The boss is that way," he told me. "Come on..."

It seemed that everyone knew I was expected.

When I entered the next room, I was taken aback for just a moment.

There couldn't be any more absurd sight than a Night Watch operations center set up in a private apartment.

There was a medium-size magic ball hanging in the air above a dressing table stacked with cosmetics and piled high with costume jewelry. The ball was transmitting a view of the vortex from above. Lena, our best operator, was sitting on an ottoman beside it, silent and intense. Her eyes were closed, but when I came in she raised one hand slightly in greeting.

Okay, so that was normal. Ball operators see space in its totality; there's no way to hide anything from them.

The boss was reclining on the bed, propped up with pillows.

He was wearing a brightly colored robe, soft oriental slippers, and an embroidered skullcap. The room was filled with the sweet fumes of a portable hookah. The white owl was sitting in front of him. It looked like they were communicating nonverbally.

That was all normal, too. In moments of exceptional stress, the boss always reverted to the habits he'd picked up in Central Asia. He worked there at the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth, first disguised as a mufti, then as a Muslim guerrilla leader, and then as a red commissar, and finally he spent ten years as the secretary of a district party committee.

Danila and Farid were standing by the window. Even with my powers I could make out the purple glimmer of the magic wands hidden in their sleeves.

A perfectly standard arrangement. At moments like this the headquarters would never be left unprotected. Danila and Farid weren't the strongest fighters we had, but they were experienced, and that was often more important than crude strength.

But what was I supposed to make of the final Other who was in the room?

He was squatting modestly and unobtrusively in the corner. As thin as a rake with sunken cheeks, black hair cut short, military style, and big, sad eyes. It was impossible to tell how old he was, maybe thirty, maybe three hundred. He was dressed in a loose-fitting gray suit. A human being would probably have taken the stranger for a member of some small sect. And he would have been half right.

He was a Dark Magician. And a top-flight one too. When he glanced briefly at me, I felt my protective shell¡ªwhich wasn't installed by me!¡ªcrack and start to buckle.

I took an involuntary step backward. But the magician had already lowered his eyes to the floor as if to show me that the momentary probing had been accidental...

"Boris Ignatievich." I could hear my voice wheezing slightly.

The boss nodded curtly, then he turned to the Dark Magician, who immediately fixed his eyes on the boss.

"Give him an amulet," the boss ordered brusquely.

The Dark Magician's voice was sad and quiet, the voice of someone burdened with all the woes of the world.

"I'm not doing anything forbidden by the Treaty..."

"Neither am I. My colleagues must be immune against observers."

So that was it! We had an observer from the Dark Side in our headquarters. That meant Day Watch had a headquarters somewhere close by, and one of us was there.

The Dark Magician put his hand in the pocket of his jacket. He took out a carved ivory medallion on a copper chain and held it out to me.

"Throw it," I said.

The magician smiled gently with the same air of melancholic sympathy and flicked his hand. I caught the medallion. The boss nodded approvingly.

"Your name?" I asked.

"Zabulon."

I hadn't heard the name before. Either he wasn't that well known, or he was somewhere right up at the top of Day Watch.

"Zabulon..." I repeated, glancing at the amulet. "You no longer have any power over me."

The medallion grew warm in my hand. I put it on over my shirt, nodded to the Dark Magician, and walked over to the boss.

"You can see how things are, Anton," the boss said, mumbling slightly, because he didn't take the mouthpiece of the hookah out of his mouth. "There you are, look."

I looked out the window and nodded.

The black vortex sprouted out of a nine-story block just like the one we were in. Its slim, flexible stalk ended somewhere around the first-floor level. By reaching out through the Twilight, I could locate the precise apartment.

"How could this have happened, Boris Ignatievich?" I asked. "This is a lot more serious than a brick falling on someone's head, or even a gas explosion in a hallway..."

"We're doing everything we can." The boss seemed to think he had to justify himself to me. "All the missile silos are under our control; the same measures have been taken in America and France, and they're just being put in place in China. Things are a bit trickier with the tactical nuclear weapons. We're having big problems locating all the operational laser satellites. The city's full of all sorts of bacteriological garbage... an hour ago there was almost a leak from the Virological Research Institute."

"You can't cheat destiny," I said guardedly.

"Exactly. We're plugging the holes in the bottom of the ship, and the ship's already breaking in half."

I suddenly noticed that everyone¡ªthe Dark Magician, Olga, Lena, and the warriors¡ªwas looking at me. I began feeling uncomfortable.

"Boris Ignatievich?"

"You're linked to her."

"What?"

The boss sighed and took the tube out of his mouth. The cold opium smoke streamed out onto the floor.

"You, Anton Gorodetsky, a programmer, unmarried, of average abilities, are linked to the girl with that vile black filth hanging over her head."

The Dark Magician in the corner sighed softly. I couldn't think of anything better to say than, "Why?"

"I don't know. We sent Ignat to her, and he did a good job. You know he can seduce absolutely anyone."

"But it didn't work with her?"

"It did. Only the vortex started to grow. They spent half an hour together and the vortex grew from a meter and a half to twenty-five meters. We had to call him off... quickly."

I glanced sideways at the Dark Magician. Zabulon appeared to be looking at the floor, but he immediately raised his head. This time my defensive shield didn't react: The amulet gave me secure protection.

"We don't need this," he said in a low voice. "Only a savage would kill an elephant to get a small steak for his breakfast."

The comparison shocked me. But he seemed to be telling the truth.

"We don't require destruction on this scale very often," the Dark Magician continued. "At the moment we don't have any ongoing projects that require such a large-scale discharge of energy."

"I really hope you don't..." said the boss, in a strange, grating voice. "Zabulon, what you have to understand is that if this disaster does happen... we'll squeeze everything we can out of it too."

The shadow of a smile appeared on the Dark Magician's face.

"The number of people who will be horrified by what happens, who will spill tears of sympathy with others' grief, will be very great. But there will be more, infinitely more, who will sit with their eyes glued greedily to their TV screens, who will take pleasure in other people's suffering, feel glad that it passed their city by, and make jokes about the retribution meted out to the Third Rome... retribution from on high. You know that, my enemy."

He wasn't gloating; the highest-ranking Dark Ones don't react in such primitive ways. He was stating a fact.

"Nonetheless, we're ready," said Boris Ignatievich. "You know that."

"I know, but we are in a more advantageous position. Unless you have a pair of aces up your sleeve, Boris."

"You know I always have all four."

The boss turned toward me as if he'd completely lost all interest in the Dark Magician:

"Anton, the vortex isn't being nourished by the Day Watch. Whoever created it is working on his own, an unknown Dark Magician of hideous strength. He sensed Ignat's presence and accelerated the pace of events. Now you're our only hope."

"Why?"

"I told you, Anton, you're linked. There are three divergences in the probability field."

The boss waved his hand and a white screen unfurled in the air. Zabulon frowned; he must have been caught by the edge of the energy discharge.

"The first path along which events can develop," said the boss. A black stripe ran across the white sheet that hung in the middle of the room without any visible means of support. Then it blurred, spreading out in an ugly blot than extended beyond the edge of the screen.

"This is the most probable path. The vortex attains its maximum power and the Inferno erupts. Millions killed. A global cataclysm¡ªnuclear, biological, asteroid impact, a twenty-point earthquake. You name it."

"And a direct infernal discharge?" I asked cautiously, glancing sideways at the Dark Magician. His face remained impassive.

"No. I don't think so. The threshold's still a long way off." The boss shook his head. "Otherwise, I think the Day Watch and the Night Watch would have wiped each other out already. The second path..."

A thin line, leading away from the black stripe. Broken off abruptly.

"Elimination of the target. If the target dies, the vortex will disperse... of its own accord."

Zabulon stirred and said politely:

"I'm prepared to help with this little initiative. Night Watch cannot carry it out on its own, I believe? We are at your service."

Silence. Then the boss laughed.

"As you wish," said Zabulon with a shrug. "I repeat: For the time being we offer you our assistance. We don't want a global catastrophe that will wipe out millions of people in an instant. Not yet."

"The third path," said the boss, looking at me. "Watch carefully."

Another line, branching off from the main root, gradually growing thinner and fading away to nothing.

"That's what happens if you get involved, Anton."

"What do I have to do?" I asked.

"I don't know. Probability forecasting has never been an exact science. I only know one thing: You can remove the vortex."

I suddenly had the stupid idea that maybe I was still being tested. A field-work test... I'd killed the vampire, and now... But it couldn't be. Not with such high stakes!

"I've never removed any black vortices." My voice sounded different, not exactly frightened, more surprised. The Dark Magician Zabulon giggled repulsively, with a woman's voice.

The boss nodded:

"I know that, Anton."

He stood up, pulled his gown around him, and walked up to me. He looked absurd; his oriental garb seemed like an awkward parody in the setting of an ordinary Moscow apartment.

"Nobody has ever removed any vortices like this one. You'll be the first to try."

I said nothing.

"And don't forget, Anton, if you mess this up... even just a tiny bit, anything at all... you'll be the first to burn. You won't even have enough time to withdraw into the Twilight. You know what happens to Light Ones when they're caught in an Inferno eruption?"

My throat went dry. I nodded.

"Pardon me, my dear enemy," Zabulon said mockingly, "but don't you allow your colleagues the right to choose? In such situations, even in wartime, it has always been usual to call for volunteers."

"We've already made our call for volunteers," the boss snapped without turning around. "We've all been volunteers for a long time already. And we don't have any choice."

"But we do. Always." The Dark Magician laughed again.

"When we acknowledge that human beings have the right to choose, we deprive ourselves of it, Zabulon," said Boris Ignatievich, with a glance at the Dark Magician. "You're playing to the wrong audience here. Don't interfere."

"I say no more." Zabulon lowered his head and shrank down again.

"Give it your best shot," said the boss. "Anton, I can't give you any advice. Try. I beg you, please, try. And... forget everything you've been taught. Don't believe anything I've said; don't believe what you wrote in your course notes; don't believe your own eyes; don't believe what anyone else says."

"Then what do I believe, Boris Ignatievich?"

"If I knew that, Anton, I'd walk straight out of this headquarters and across to that entrance myself."

We both looked out the window at the same moment. The black vortex was still swirling around and around, swaying from side to side. Someone walking along the sidewalk suddenly turned to face into the snow and started making a wide circle around the stalk of the vortex. I noticed a path had already been trodden along the edge of the road: The people couldn't see the Evil straining to strike their world, but they could sense its approach.

"I'll watch Anton," Olga said, "back him up, and maintain communications contact."

"From outside," the boss agreed. "Only from outside... Anton... go. We'll do the best we can to screen you from any kind of observation."

The white owl flew up off the bed and landed on my shoulder.

I glanced at my friends, then at the Dark Magician¡ªhe looked like he'd gone into hibernation¡ªand walked out of the room. The noise in the rest of the apartment faded immediately.

They showed me out in total silence, without any unnecessary words, without any shoulder-slapping or helpful advice. After all, what I was doing wasn't such a big deal. I was only on my way to die.

It was quiet.

Too quiet somehow, even for a bedroom community of Moscow at that late hour. As if everyone had shut themselves in at home, turned out the lights, and huddled down with their head under the blanket, keeping quiet, saying nothing. Quiet, but not sleeping. The only movement was the trembling of the blue and red spots in the windows¡ªthe TVs were switched on everywhere. It had become a habit already, when you were afraid, when you were suffering¡ªswitch on the TV and watch absolutely anything, from the shopping network to the news.

People can't see the Twilight world. But they are capable of sensing how close it is.

"Olga, what can you tell me about this vortex?"

"Nothing definite."

So that was it?

I stood in front of the entrance, watching the stalk of the vortex flexing like an elephant's trunk. I didn't feel like going in just yet.

"When... what size of vortex can you extinguish?"

"Five meters high, and I have a shot at it. Three meters and it's a sure thing."

"And will the girl survive if you do that?"

"She might."

There was something bothering me. In this unnatural silence, with even the cars in the street trying to avoid this doomed district of the city, there were still some sounds left...

Then it hit me. The dogs were howling. In all the apartments in all the buildings on all sides, the miserable dogs were complaining to their owners¡ªin quiet, pitiful, helpless voices. They could see the Inferno moving closer.

"Olga, information about the girl. All of it."

"Svetlana Nazarova. Twenty-five years old. Physician, employed in polyclinic number seventeen. Has never previously come to the attention of the Night Watch. Has never previously come to the attention of the Day Watch. No magical powers detected. Her parents and younger brother live in Brateevo; she maintains occasional contact with them, mostly by phone. Four girlfriends, currently being checked, so far nothing exceptional. Relations with other people equable; no serious hostility observed."

"A doctor," I said thoughtfully. "That's a lead, Olga. Some old man or old woman dissatisfied... with their treatment. There's usually an upsurge of latent magical powers in the later years of life..."

"That's being checked out," Olga replied. "So far nothing's turned up."

There was no point; it was stupid making wild guesses; people cleverer than I am had already been working on the girl for half a day.

"What else?"

"Blood group O. No serious illnesses, occasional mild cardiac arrhythmia. First sexual contact at the age of seventeen, with one of her peers, out of curiosity. She was married four months; has been divorced for two years; relations with her ex-husband have remained equable. No children."

"The husband's powers?"

"He hasn't any. Neither does his new wife. That's the first thing that was checked."

"Enemies?"

"Two female ill-wishers at work. Two rejected admirers at work. A school friend who tried to get a fake sick-note six months ago."

"And?"

"She refused."

"Well, well. And how much magic have they got?"

"Next to none. Their malevolence quotient is ordinary. They all have only weak magical powers. They couldn't create a vortex like this one."

"Any patients died? Recently?"

"None."

"Then where did the curse come from?" I asked myself. Yes, now I could see why the Watch had gotten nowhere with this. Svetlana had turned out to be a goody two-shoes. Five enemies in twenty-five years¡ªthat was really something to be proud of.

Olga didn't answer my rhetorical question.

"I've got to go," I said. I turned toward the windows where I could see the two guards' silhouettes. One of them waved to me. "Olga, how did Ignat try to work this?"

"The standard approach. A meeting in the street, the 'diffident intellectual' line. Coffee in a bar. Conversation. A rapid rise in the mark's attraction. He bought champagne and liqueur; they came here."

"And after that?"

"The vortex started to grow."

"And the reason?"

"There was none. She liked Ignat; in fact, she was starting to feel powerfully attracted. But at precisely that moment the vortex started to grow catastrophically fast. Ignat ran through three styles of behavior and managed to get an unambiguous invitation to stay the night. That was when the vortex shifted gear into explosive growth. He was recalled. The vortex stabilized."

"How was he recalled?"

I was frozen through already, and my boots felt disgustingly damp on my feet. And I still wasn't ready for action.

"The 'sick mother' line. A call to his cell phone, he apologized, promised to call her tomorrow. There were no hitches; the mark didn't get suspicious."

"And the vortex stabilized?"

Olga didn't answer; she was obviously communicating with the analysts.

"It even shrank a little bit. Three centimeters. But that might just be natural recoil when the energy input's cut off."

There was something in all this, but I couldn't formulate my vague suspicions clearly.

"Where's her medical practice, Olga?"

"Right here, we're in it. It includes this house. Patients often come to her apartment."

"Excellent. Then I'll go as a patient."

"Do you need any help implanting false memories?"

"I'll manage."

"The boss says okay," Olga replied after a pause. "Go ahead. Your persona is: Anton Gorodetsky, programmer, unmarried, under observation for three years, diagnosis¡ªstomach ulcer, resident in this building, apartment number sixty-four. It's empty right now; if necessary, we can provide backup on that."

"Three years is too much for me," I confessed. "A year. One year, max."

"Okay."

I looked at Olga, and she looked at me with those unblinking bird's eyes, and somewhere in there I could still see part of that dirty, aristocratic woman who'd drunk cognac with me in my kitchen.

"Good luck," she said. "Try to reduce the height of the vortex. Ten meters at least... then I'll risk it."

The bird flew up into the air and instantly withdrew into the Twilight, down into the very deepest layers.

I sighed and set off toward the entrance of the building. The trunk of the vortex swayed as it tried to touch me. I stretched my hands out, folding them into the Xamadi, the sign of negation.

The vortex shuddered and recoiled. Not really afraid, just playing by the rules. At that size the advancing Inferno should already have developed powers of reason, stopped being a mindless, target-seeking missile, and become a ferocious, experienced kamikaze. I know that sounds odd¡ªan experienced kamikaze¡ªbut when it comes to the Darkness, the term's justified. Once it breaks through into the human world, an inferno vortex is doomed, but it's only a single wasp in a huge swarm that dies.

"Your hour hasn't come yet," I said. The Inferno wasn't about to answer me, but I felt like saying it anyway.

I walked past the stalk. The vortex looked like it was made of blue-black glass that had acquired the flexibility of rubber. Its outer surface was almost motionless, but deep inside, where the dark blue became impenetrable darkness, I could vaguely see a furious spinning motion.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe its hour had come...

The entrance didn't even have a coded lock. Or rather, it had one, but it had been smashed and gutted. That was normal. A little greeting from the Darkness. I'd already stopped paying any attention to its little tricks, even stopped noticing the words and the dirty paw tracks on walls, the broken lamps and the fouled elevators. But now I was wound up tight.

I needn't have asked the address. I could sense the girl¡ªI kept on thinking about her as a girl, even though she'd been married. I knew which way to go; I could even see her apartment, or rather, not see it but perceive it as a whole.

The only thing I didn't understand was how I was going to get rid of that damned twister...

I stopped in front of the door. It was an ordinary one, not metal, very unusual on the first floor, especially in a building where the lock at the entrance is broken. I gave a deep sigh and rang the bell. Eleven o'clock. A bit late, of course.

I heard steps. There was no sound insulation...