Сергей Лукьяненко - Day Watch

I lowered my voice to a whisper and said solemnly, "Only they were still pink anyway!"

One of the girls who had been waiting for a happy ending gasped in fright. I concluded solemnly: "And the parents still loved her little brother more than her. Because he was very ill that time and they were really worried about him."

And that was all. I wondered how many of the girls had younger brothers. The birth rate in Russia is low, but if the first child is a girl, people usually try for a second.

My mother had wanted to do that when she was already too old, past thirty-what a fool… But by then I was an Other, even at the young age of twelve, and I dealt with the unexpected problem. Though probably I shouldn't have bothered. If I did have a brother, what would have been so bad about that? Even if he was only a half brother… and only I would have known that for sure (even my mom had her doubts)… He could have turned out to be an Other-not just a brother but an ally… But what's done can't be undone.

"And now-to sleep!" I ordered the girls in a cheerful voice.

Of course, they started asking me to tell them another story. But I refused. It was half-past eleven already, and I still had to get to the beach… the girls' voices were already ragged and sleepy. When I left, Gulnara tried to tell a scary story of her own, but all the pauses and hesitations suggested that she would fall asleep halfway through it.

I went back to my room, stretched out on the bed, and started waiting.

I wondered what Igor was doing right then.

Was he entertaining his kids too?

Or was he drinking vodka with some other camp leaders?

Or was he screwing one of them?

Or had he forgotten he was intending to go swimming that night and sleeping peacefully in his bed?

I shook my head. No. Anything but the last option.

He was reliable. Almost… almost like Zabulon. What an absurd comparison: There weren't many, even among the Dark Others, who could call Zabulon reliable. But I could. I had a perfect right to do it. Love is a great power, and such a strange power…

What if Igor turned out to be a potential Other?

I squeezed my eyes shut tightly in simultaneous sweet anticipation and panic. What would I do then? Then it wouldn't be the tryst with an ordinary man that Zabulon had approved, but a genuine love triangle…

What was wrong with me!

There couldn't be any triangle. Not even if Igor did turn out to be an uninitiated Other. He'd go running off with his tail between his legs and forget he ever had a romance with Zabulon's girl.

And I would forget it too.

The time dragged by unbearably slowly. The hands on my watch crept along hesitantly, as if they weren't even sure that time was passing. I had planned to wait for half an hour, but I gave in after twenty minutes. I didn't have the strength to hold out any longer…

I got up and walked quietly through the girl's dormitory…

There was silence in there. The calm, pleasant silence of a large children's dormitory with just a few sounds-breathing, snuffling, lips smacking sleepily.

"Girls," I called quietly.

No answer.

I set off along the row of beds, gently touching shoulders, arms, hair… Nothing… nothing… nothing…

Here was something.

It was Olechka. I knelt down beside her bed and lowered my hand onto her sweaty forehead. I heard her dream and felt the flow of Power. The dream was confused and incoherent; it had nothing to do with my bedtime story. Olechka was dreaming that she was climbing to the top of a tower-an old tower that was leaning slightly, with half-ruined stone banisters that had huge gaping holes in them. Down below at the foot of the tower there was either a medieval town or an ancient monastery. And the strange thing was that although the tower was in semi-darkness, down below the sun was shining. And there were people wandering about between the decrepit buildings-happy and cheerful, dressed in light summer clothes, holding cameras and colorful magazines. They were enjoying themselves so much, it couldn't possibly occur to them to look up at the sky and see the little girl walking toward a gap in the banisters as if she were under a spell…

I needed to hang on just a little bit longer. Wait until Olechka started falling-that was where the dream was leading her. I don't know what happened, but I suddenly gathered my strength and sucked in her dream. Every last scrap of it.

The dark tower above the cheerful crowd, and the gaping holes in the banisters, and the cold indifference, and the fearsome, alluring height. Everything that could give me Power.

Olechka held her breath for a moment. I even felt afraid that she might fall into a coma-it's rare, but it sometimes happens to people when you draw Power from them too suddenly.

But she started breathing again.

I got up off my knees. I'd even broken into a sweat myself. I could feel that a bundle of energy had fallen into the empty gap left by my usual Power. No, it still hadn't filled it, not by a long way… and I'd acted hastily for some reason…

But I was recovering.

Again-the gentle touches, the soft hair, the lips parted in sleep, the relaxed fingers…

Nothing here… nothing here… but there was something here.

It was Natasha.

And her dream had been prompted by me.

Natasha was standing in a bathroom, naked and covered in soapy lather. She was holding a boy, about five or six years old, and hammering his head against the tiled wall, saying over and over again: 'Are you going to peep again? Are you going to peep?"

The boy was dangling in her hands like a rag doll. His eyes were wide open in terror, but he didn't say anything. He seemed to be far more afraid of being punished by his parents than hurt by his sister.

But Natasha wasn't feeling too good either. Her soul was filled with a mixture of furious anger at her insufferable brother, and fear that she would hit his head against the wall too hard, and shame, even though only very recently she and her brother had been given their baths together, and guilt… because she'd deliberately left the door unlocked in the expectation that her brother would try to peep in, driven by the natural urge of children to violate all prohibitions.

This was really something! Passions like that in someone who wasn't even twelve yet!

Natasha gave a deep sigh, and in her dream she hit her brother's head so hard against the wall that it started to bleed. I couldn't see where the blood came from, but it suddenly covered the entire head.

I sucked in her dream.

Completely. The fury, the fear, the shame, the guilt, and the budding sensuality, still vague and ill-defined. But the dream didn't end!

Natasha had just released her grip when she grabbed her brother again by the shoulders and, with the cold calculating movement of an executioner, forced his head into the bath water, which instantly turned pink. Even the clumps of foam on the surface of the water turned pink. The boy began twitching helplessly, struggling to pull his head out of the water.

I froze in surprise. A murder committed in a dream gives almost the same discharge of Power as a real one. Now I'd be able to fill the gap in my soul in a single moment!

All I had to do was draw Natasha's newly awakened fear out of her, and…

But I didn't do anything. I stood there, leaning down over the bed, watching another person's dream as if it were a horror movie that was showing on TV instead of the children's cartoons.

Natasha suddenly jerked her brother's head out of the water and he gulped in air greedily. There was no blood on him any longer-he just had a small bruise under one eye. Dreams have their own laws.

"You'll tell them you fell in the bath yourself and banged your head, all right?" Natasha hissed. The boy nodded in fright. Natasha quickly pushed him out of the bathroom and closed the door, then slowly got into the foamy water. The nice, bright-pink water… I waited for another second or two and then drank in the remains of the dream. Triumph, excitement, tranquillity.