We generally tried not to say things like that on the phone, especially the cell phone, because they listen to all of them and record everything. It all sounded like a flippant conversation... But what if some ordinary little human being picked up the thread and started following it? Then we would have to waste time and energy on him.

"I love you," I whispered. "Thank you."

"Good luck, my little one," Zabulon said affectionately. "I kiss you."

I switched off the phone and smiled to myself.

Well then, everything was all right. So where had that stupid feeling of alarm come from? And where had I gotten the crazy i.e. that I was in love with Igor? Love was something different. Love was pure delight, a fountain of emotions, sensual delights, and enjoying spending time together. But what I was feeling-this strange, timid alarm-was only the consequence of my illness. It just felt strange to a.s.sociate with a man without having any i.e. of how to control him... I couldn't threaten him with a pistol, like those half-witted bandits...

"Alisa?" Olechka's curious little face had appeared in the doorway. "Are you coming in to see us for a minute?"

The girl was barefoot, in just her panties and top. She'd already gone to bed, but she got impatient.

"I'll be right there," I said. "Shall I tell you all a story?"

Olechka lit up: "Uh-huh!"

"A happy one or a scary one?"

The girl wrinkled up her little forehead. But, of course, curiosity won out. "A scary one."

All children like scary stories.

"Run back to bed now," I said. "I'll be right there."

Ten minutes later I was sitting on Olechka's bed in the dormitory, telling the girls a story in a low voice: "And in the morning the little girl woke up and went over to the mirror and looked-and all her teeth were red! She tried cleaning them with toothpaste, and washing them with soap, but they were still as red as ever. She couldn't say a single word to her parents, in case they noticed. It was a good thing her younger brother had fallen ill and her parents took no notice of her at all. That's the way it always is-the little ones get all the attention and n.o.body even looks at you, not even if all your teeth are red..."

Scary children's stories are so wonderful! Especially if you tell them at night, to a pack of silly little girls, with a mysterious half-light coming in through the window.

"I've guessed it already," Natasha said in a bored voice. Such a serious girl, you couldn't impress her with scary stories. The others started hissing at her indignantly and she shut up. I carried on, feeling Olechka's little heart pounding as she pressed herself against me. There would be a good harvest for me there...

"On the third night the little girl tied her right braid to her bed with a piece of string," I went on in a mysterious whisper. "And at midnight she woke up because the string was stretched tight and it was pulling on her hair and hurting. And the girl saw that she was standing over her little brother's bed and her teeth were chattering!

Chattering!"

Larisa gave a quiet squeal. Not because she was frightened, but because it was the right thing to do. And of course one of the girls began happily chattering her teeth together.

"Then the little girl went into the kitchen and took out the hammer and the pincers that her father kept in the cupboard, and before morning came she secretly pulled out all her own teeth. It hurt very badly, but she managed it, because she was a brave girl and she had strong hands. And the next morning Her little brother got better. And the little girl's teeth grew back better than ever, because the first ones were her milk teeth!"

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 s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 pa.s.sing. 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 sc.r.a.p 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! Pa.s.sions 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, tran-quillity.

And the gaping wound in my soul was immediately half-filled.

I should have let Natasha kill her brother. I only needed to take away her fear, and she would have drowned her little brother like a kitten.

I was covered in perspiration. My hands were shaking. Who could ever have expected nightmares like that from such a rational little Miss Know-it-all?

All right. Slow and steady does it I moved on.

By half past midnight I had absorbed another three dreams. They weren't such sumptuous feasts, but they provided fine surges of Power. This was a good place for a vacation, if the girls acc.u.mulated that much energy.

I had almost completely restored the strength that I'd lost. The lion's share, of course, had come from Natasha. I had the feeling that if I could just suck in one more dream, then I would be completely restored and become a normal Other. But n.o.body had any more dreams that were of use to me. There was one that simply repelled me: Gulnara was dreaming that she was taking care of her old grandfather. Dashing around the kitchen, pouring his tea, constantly asking him solicitous questions. Oh, how I hate that awful Eastern culture... Turkish delight laced with a.r.s.enic.

If it wasn't for Igor...

I would only have had to wait half an hour, or an hour, and one of my eighteen donors would have had a frightening dream.

But...

I didn't hesitate for long.

I would collect all the Power I needed, absolutely everything, the next night. But today I could relax and try out the role of an ordinary woman.

I closed the door firmly and slipped out into the summer night. The camp was sleeping. There were lamps lit here and there on the pathways and an almost full moon hung in the sky. Nights like this are great for the werewolves: They're at the peak of their powers, they can transform easily and at will, they're full of high spirits, the thirst for life, and the urge to hunt, to tear living flesh to pieces, to stalk and pounce on their prey. Of course, the vampires and the shape-shifters are the very lowest caste of the Dark Ones. And most of them are simply stupid and primitive. But... on nights like this I envied them just a little bit. I envied them the primitive power that comes from the deepest animal depths of their nature. The ability to transform into a beast-and get rid of all those stupid human feelings.

I started laughing and set off along the path at a run, flinging my arms out and throwing my head back to look up at the sky. I might not have the powers of an Other yet, but my blood was seething with fresh Power, and I didn't stumble even once or hesitate for a moment in my choice of direction. It was like just before my initiation, when "mother's old friend" Irina Alexandrovna had arrived at our apartment unexpectedly. I could sense that my parents were behaving oddly, awkwardly, and every now and then Irina Alexandrovna would look at me in a strange way, as if she were evaluating me, with a gentle, condescending smile. And then my parents suddenly decided to go out somewhere in a great hurry, leaving me alone for the entire evening with "the old friend." And my future mentor told me everything. She said this was the first time she had ever seen my parents, that she had simply put a spell on them. She told me about the Others, and about the Twilight that gives them miraculous powers and said that the first time I entered the Twilight would determine who I would be, a Light One or a Dark One... She said I was a future Other. That I had been noticed by a certain "very, very powerful magician." Later I wondered if it could have been Zabulon himself, but I couldn't bring myself to ask...

Back then I hesitated for a long time... I was a little fool. I didn't like the words "Dark Ones." In the fairy tales and films the Dark Ones were always bad. They had power over the entire world, ruled countries and commanded armies, but at the same time they ate all sorts of disgusting things, spoke in horrible, repulsive voices, and betrayed everyone whenever they got the chance. And, in the end, they always lost.

Irina Alexandrovna laughed for a long time when I told her all that. She admitted that all the fairy tales were invented by the Light Ones. The Dark Ones didn't usually bother with that kind of nonsense. She said what the Dark Ones really wanted was freedom and independence. They didn't strive for power, they didn't impose their own foolish desires oh others. She demonstrated some of her abilities to me-and I learned that my mom had been unfaithful to my dad for a long time already, and my dad wasn't nearly as courageous as I thought, and that my best friend Vika told people all sorts of horrible things about me...

I knew about my mom already, even at the age of ten. I tried not to think about her and Uncle Vitya. I felt so hurt for my dad. But when I heard about Vika, I got really furious and I realized that I wanted to get even with her. It seems funny to me now, but when I was ten, to learn that my friend had told our cla.s.smate Romka my most terrible secret-that I used to wet the bed until I was in second grade-was really horrible! I'd been wondering why he smirked in that disgusting way when I gave him a card and some colored pens for Army Day on the twenty-third of February...

Irina helped me to enter the Twilight for the first time. She said while I was there I would decide for myself who I would be. The Twilight would see straight through my soul and make the most appropriate choice.

After that my friend Vika started getting bad marks all the time and swearing at all the teachers, even the head teacher. Then they took her out of our school; I heard she spent a long time in a children's psychiatric hospital being treated for a rare condition, Tourette's syndrome. The handsome Romka p.i.s.sed his pants in the middle of Russian dictation and had to live with the nickname "p.i.s.ser" for two years afterward, until he and his parents moved to a different district.

Uncle Vitya drowned while he was swimming in the shallow pond at the dacha, but that wasn't until three years later. That's quite a difficult task for a child, after all. And it still makes me feel sick to remember the way I managed to get hold of a lock of his hair...

I didn't regret my choice the tiniest bit.

There are some who think that we Dark Ones are evil. But that's not true at all. We're simply just. Proud, independent, and just.

And we decide things for ourselves.

The beach at night is filled with a wistful enchantment. Like a park in autumn, or a concert hall after a premiere.

The tired crowd goes away for a while to gather its strength for new insanities; the sea licks its wounds and throws the melon rinds, sodden chocolate wrappers, corn cobs, and other human rubbish up onto the beach; the cool, wet sand covers over the tracks of the seagulls and the crows.

I heard Igor when I was still approaching the beach. First his guitar and then his voice.

As he sang, I suddenly realized with piercing clarity that nothing was going to happen. There was a group of people sitting over there on the sand, enjoying themselves with a bottle or two and some bread rolls stolen from the supper table to go with them. And the most that I could count on, stupid fool that I was, was an invitation to spend the rest of the night in his room...