'Night Watch,' I said. I held my hand out, holding the amulet. It was discharged, but that's not so easy to sense at a distance. 'Leave the Twilight!'

The male vampire would probably have obeyed me, hoping that I didn't know about the trail of blood he'd left behind him, that the whole business could just be written off as 'an attempt at unauthorised interaction with a human'. But the girl lacked his self-control, she didn't have the wit to get it.

'A-a-a-agh!' She threw herself at me with a long, drawn-out howl. It was a good thing she still hadn't sunk her teeth into the boy; she was out of her mind now, like a desperate junkie who's just stuck a needle in his vein only to have it jerked back out again, like a nymphomaniac after her man's pulled out just a moment before coming.

That dash would have been too fast for any human, no one could have parried it.

But I was in the same dimension of reality as the girl vampire. I threw up my arm and splashed vodka from the open bottle into her hideously transformed face.

Why do vampires tolerate alcohol so poorly?

The menacing scream became a shrill squeal. The girl began whirling around on the spot, beating her hands against her face as it shed layers of skin and greyish flesh. The male vampire swung round, all set to run.

This was going too easily altogether. A registered vampire isn't some casual visitor I have to fight on equal terms. I threw the bottle at the girl, reached out my hand and grabbed hold of the cord of the man's registration tag, which had unravelled on command. The vampire gave a hoarse croak and clutched at his throat.

'Leave the Twilight!' I yelled.

I think he realised things were looking really bad now. He flung himself towards me, trying to reduce the pressure from the cord, extending his fangs and transforming as he came.

If the amulet had been fully charged, I could have simply stunned him.

As it was, I had to kill him.

The tag – a seal on the vampire's chest that gave off a faint blue glow – made a crunching sound as I gave the silent order. The energy implanted in it by someone with far greater skill than me flooded into the dead body. The vampire was still running. He was well fed and strong, other people's lives were still nourishing his dead flesh. But he couldn't possibly resist such a powerful blow: his skin shrivelled until it was stretched as taut as parchment over his bones, slime gushed from his eye sockets. Then his spine shattered and the twitching remains collapsed at my feet.

I swung round – the girl vampire could have regenerated already. But there was no danger. She was running across the yard between the buildings, taking huge strides. She still hadn't left the Twilight, so I was the only one who could see this extraordinary sight. Apart from the dogs, of course. Somewhere off to one side a small dog broke into hysterical barking, transfixed simultaneously by hatred and fear, and all the other feelings that dogs have felt for the living dead for time immemorial.

I didn't have enough strength left to chase her. I straightened up and captured a 3D image of her aura – grey, desiccated, rotten. We'd find her. There was nowhere she could hide now.

But where was the boy?

After he emerged from the Twilight created by the vampires, he could have fainted or fallen into a trance. But he wasn't in the alley. He couldn't have run past me ... I ran from the alley into the yard and saw him. He was bolting, moving almost as fast as the vampire. Well, good for him! That was wonderful. No help required. It was unfortunate that he would remember everything that had happened, but then who would believe a young boy? And before morning all his memories would fade and assume the less menacing features of a fantastic nightmare.

Or should I really go after him?

'Anton!'

Igor and Garik, our inseparable duo, came running down the alley from the avenue.

'The girl got away!' I shouted.

Garik kicked out at the vampire's shrivelled corpse as he ran, sending a cloud of rotten dust flying up into the frosty air. He shouted:

'The image!'

I sent him the image of the girl vampire running away. Garik frowned and ran faster. Both operatives headed off in pursuit. Igor shouted as he ran:

'Clear up the trash!'

I nodded, as if they needed an answer, and emerged from my own Twilight. The world blossomed. The operatives' silhouettes melted away and their invisible feet even stopped leaving tracks in the snow lying in the human dimension of reality.

I sighed and walked over to the grey Volvo parked at the kerb. There were a few primitive implements lying on the back seat: a heavy-duty plastic sack, a shovel and a small brush. It took me about five minutes to scrape up the vampire's feather-light remains and put the sack in the trunk. I took some dirty snow from a melting pile left by a careless yard-keeper, scattered it in the alley and trampled it a bit, working the final dusty, rotten remains into the slush. No human burial for you . . .

That was that.

I went back to the car, got into the driving seat and unbuttoned my jacket. I felt good. Very good, in fact. The senior vampire was dead, the guys would pick up his girlfriend and the boy was alive.

I could just imagine how delighted the boss would be.

CHAPTER 2

'SLOPPY WORK!'

I tried to say something, but the next remark stung like a slap on the cheek and shut me up.

'You screwed up!'

'But. . .'

'Do you at least understand your own mistakes?'

The boss had cooled off a bit and I took the risk of raising my eyes from the floor and saying cautiously:

'It seems to me . . .'

I like being in that office. It stirs the child's heart in me to see all those amusing little trinkets on the shelves in the bullet-proof glass cupboards, hanging on the walls. Everything there – from the old Japanese fan to the jagged piece of metal with a deer welded on to it – the symbol of some car plant – each had its own history. If you were lucky and the boss was in the right mood, you could hear some very interesting stories.

Only I don't seem to find him in that kind of mood too often.

'Okay.' The boss stopped striding round the office, sat down in a leather armchair and lit up. 'Let's hear it.'

His voice had turned businesslike, matching his appearance. To the human eye he looked about forty years old, and he belonged to that narrow circle of businessmen that the government likes to rely on so much.

'What do you want to hear?' I asked, at the risk of provoking another tirade.

'The mistakes. Your mistakes.'

Right then . . . Okay.

'My first mistake, Boris Ignatievich,' I said with a perfectly innocent air, 'was that I failed to understand the nature of the mission correctly.'

'Oh, really?'

'Well, I assumed my goal was to track down a vampire who had begun actively hunting in Moscow. To track him down and . . . er . . . neutralise him.'

'Go on, go on . . .' the boss encouraged me.

'In actual fact, the essential purpose of the mission was to ascertain my suitability for operational activity, for field work. Starting from my incorrect understanding of the mission, that is, following the principle of "separate and protect" . . .'

The boss sighed and nodded. Anyone who didn't know him too well might even have thought he was ashamed.

'And did you contravene this principle in any way?'

'No, and that's why I botched the mission.'

'How did you botch it?'

'Right at the beginning . . .' I squinted sideways at a stuffed snowy owl standing on shelf behind the glass. Had it really moved its head? 'Right at the beginning I drained the amulet in a futile attempt to neutralise a black vortex . . .'

Boris Ignatievich frowned. He brushed his hair back with his hand.

'Okay, let's start with that. I've studied the image, and if you haven't touched it up . . .'

I shook my head indignantly.

'I believe you. Well, a vortex like that can't be removed with an amulet. Do you remember the classification?'

Damn! Why hadn't I looked at my old notes?

'I'm sure you don't. But it doesn't matter. There is no class for this vortex. There's no way you could possibly have dealt with it . . .' The boss leaned across the desk and continued in a mysterious whisper: '. . . and you know what . . .'

I was all ears.

'There's no way I could have either, Anton.'

This confession was unexpected, and I couldn't think of anything to say. Maybe no one had ever actually said out loud that the boss could do anything, but that was what everyone at the office believed.

'Anton, a vortex as strong as that can only be removed by the person who created it.'

'We have to find him . . .' I said uncertainly. 'I feel sorry for the girl . . .'

'This isn't about her. Not just about her.'

'Why?' I blurted out and then hastily corrected myself. 'We have to stop the Dark Magician, don't we?'

The boss sighed.

'He might have a licence. He might be entitled to cast the curse . . . This isn't even about the magician. A black vortex as powerful as that . . . You remember the plane that crashed last winter?'

I shuddered. It wasn't that we'd done anything wrong, it had more to do with a loophole in the law: a pilot who was under a curse had lost control and his airliner had crashed into a residential area of the city. Hundreds of innocent lives . . .

'Vortices like that can't act selectively. The girl's doomed, but it won't just be a brick that accidentally falls off some roof on to her head. More likely a building will explode, there'll be an epidemic, or someone will drop an atom bomb on Moscow by mistake. That's the real problem, Anton.'

The boss suddenly swung round and cast a withering glance at the owl. It folded its wings away quickly and the gleam in its glass eyes faded.

'Boris Ignatievich,' I said, horrified. 'I'm at fault. . .'

'Of course you are. There's only one redeeming aspect, Anton.' The boss cleared his throat. 'When you gave way to pity, you acted quite correctly. The amulet couldn't completely detach the vortex, but it has postponed the Inferno for a while. And now we have a day to work with, maybe even two. I've always believed that ill-considered but well-intentioned actions do more good than actions that are well considered but cruel. If you hadn't used the amulet, half of Moscow would already be in ruins.'

'What are we going to do?'

'Look for the girl. Protect her ... as well as we can. We'll be able to destabilise the vortex again once or twice. And in the meantime we'll have to find the magician who cast the curse and make him remove the vortex.'

I nodded.

'Everybody will be involved in the search,' the boss said casually. 'I've recalled everyone from holiday, Ilya will be back from Sri Lanka by morning and the others will be here by lunchtime. The weather's bad in Europe. I've asked our colleagues in the European office to help, but by the time they can disperse the clouds . . .'

'By morning?' I asked, glancing at my watch. 'Another whole day.'