Сергей Лукьяненков - Last Watch

“All correct,” the man said with a nod. “But I’m a little concerned about the scale of the event…and the devices that you employ. It seems to me that the deal was clearly made on unequal terms.”

“I told you this would happen,” Edgar said to Arina. He turned back to the man and asked, “What do you want? More money?”

The man shook his head.

“Take the money and your daughter, and go. That’s my advice to you,” said Arina.

The man licked his lips and then unbuttoned his shirt.

He turned out not to be fat at all. His torso was encased in something that looked like a back brace. Except that it had wires protruding from it.

“A kilogram of plastic explosive. The switch works on the ‘dead hand’ principle,” said the man, raising his left hand. “I’m going to take that sphere, all the strange trinkets that I found on these guys”-he prodded one of the sleeping Others with his foot-“and everything you have in your pockets. Is that clear?”

“As clear as day,” said Edgar. “I said right at the beginning that this would happen. I made the right choice with you.”

I suddenly noticed that Gennady was no longer there with us.

“And this resolves a certain number of moral difficulties,” Edgar continued, turning away.

The explosives belt suddenly flew into little pieces. It wasn’t an explosion; it looked like the work of a clawed hand moving with unnatural speed…out of the Twilight, for example. Totally confused, the man opened his left hand, and a small switch with an absurd little tail of wire fell out of it. He’d been telling the truth.

The next moment, the man screamed, and I chose to turn away.

“An exceptionally loathsome character,” said Edgar. “His threat was serious, even though the little girl is his own daughter. But now we have the blood we need, with none of the killing of innocent people that upsets Arina so much.”

“You’re no better than him,” I replied.

“I don’t pretend to be,” Edgar said with a shrug. “Let’s go. It’s not the first time we’ve entered the Twilight together, is it?”

Edgar even took hold of my hand. I didn’t protest. I found my own shadow on the floor and stepped into it. Through the gust of icy cold wind, into the frozen, hungry space of the Twilight…

The first level.

We moved on without delay. The second level. The space around us was seething, agitated either by the fresh blood or the hole that Merlin had made here in the fabric of creation.

Edgar and Arina were still beside me. Intensely focused. A moment later Gennady also appeared, with blood on his lips. On the second level I could barely recognize Saushkin senior, his face was so badly distorted by hideous malice and insane hatred.

The third level. The final eddies of the vortex of Power that had been blocking our way so recently were still raging here.

Edgar started looking around and said, “Someone’s following us…one of the signs has been activated.”

“Successfully?” A cloud of steam escaped from between Arina’s lips as she asked.

“I don’t know. Let’s go lower!”

The fourth level greeted us with its pink sky and colored sand. I pulled my hand out of Edgar’s grasp and said, “We agreed! I won’t join the fight against the golem!”

“And nobody’s forcing you to,” Edgar said with a toothy grimace. “Don’t worry, you can keep out of it. Forward!”

This was the point at which I had planned to start an argument. To drag things out and then run for it, or even stay on the fourth level and send the Last Watch on to a pointless battle against the monster.

But something seemed to urge me on. Something like the insane obsession that had possessed Arina, Edgar, and Gennady seemed to take possession of me, too. I had to go down to the fifth level…I had to!

If only to distract them from their vigilance…

“All right, but I don’t intend to lay down my life for your sake!” I shouted, and stepped down to the fifth level under Edgar’s watchful eye.

They appeared beside me almost instantly. Yes, they had certainly pumped themselves full of Power. Gennady was the only one who was slightly delayed. He had obviously got through at the second attempt.

And this level of the Twilight was so much nicer than the ones above it! Cool, even chilly, but already without that icy wind that sucked the life out of you. And the colors here looked almost natural…

I looked around, trying to spot the golem, and I saw it about two hundred meters away: There were two snake’s heads sticking up out of the grass, turning this way and that like submarine periscopes. Then the golem spotted us. The heads shuddered and reached up higher. There was a loud hissing sound-very much like a real snake’s hiss, except that it was coming from such a long distance away…

A moment later the snake was already slipping toward us, managing to keep both of its heads above the grass at the same time.

“‘Head and tail,’” Arina said pensively. “I don’t know, I don’t know…Edgar, release Kong.”

I understood what she meant when I saw Edgar take a small jade figurine out of his pocket. It was a long-armed monkey with short, pointed horns protruding from its head. The Inquisitor breathed on the figurine and then unscrewed its head-the figurine turned out to be hollow-and carefully set it down in the grass. We barely had time to jump back before the vessel started giving out green smoke that coiled into the form of a monster.

The deva that had hunted Alisher in Samarkand was nothing like King Kong. He didn’t have the height for that, since he only stood about three meters at the withers. But the toothy, gaping jaw, muscular limbs with sharp claws, coarse dark-green fur, and brutish, flaming-orange eyes impressed me far more than the sentimental giant from the old movies.

And the movie King Kong probably never had such a repulsive, acrid smell, either. How can a golem stink when it consists of concentrated Power, not flesh, or even clay, and it has been stored in a magical vessel? I didn’t know. Maybe it was an accidental side effect. Or maybe it was a joke played by the monster’s creator?

“Go and kill it!” Edgar shouted, pointing to the snake. Kong roared and went dashing toward the snake in huge bounds. The snake slithered toward him, not at all frightened by his sudden appearance, even seeming to liven up at the prospect of a worthy opponent. The earth shuddered under their feet and coils, the monkey’s thunderous roar and the snake’s deafening hiss fusing together into a single mighty rumble.

Now was the time! While they were entranced by the prospect of the forthcoming battle.

I turned around-and froze. Standing behind me was a short old man with a beard, dressed in white. At some moments he looked absolutely real, I could count every last hair in the gray beard and gaze into the weary face furrowed with wrinkles; at others he became a hazy white shadow through which I could see the grass and the sky.

The old man slowly pointed to the ground at his feet. Then he repeated the gesture.

Did he want me to go down to the sixth level?

I mimicked the gesture and jabbed my hand downward. The old man nodded, and an expression of relief appeared on his face.

He began melting away into the air.

There was no time to hesitate. At any moment one of the Last Watch might turn around and realize that I was preparing to make my escape.

The Power is within me! I can go down to the sixth level.

The Power is within me! I can see it always.

I must do this! Therefore I will do it.

I felt a blast of icy wind.

As I stepped through the barrier I heard Arina’s voice. “Somebody really is-”

The voice fell silent, cut off at the border of the sixth level. At the border that protected the world of Others who had withdrawn.