But there wasn't a single trace of the target, apart from the dryness in my throat, the itching in my gums, the insane pounding of my heart. The faint taste of blood on my lips. A mounting sense of excitement.

The signs were all circumstantial, but at the same time they were too obvious to be ignored.

Who was it? Who?

The train started moving behind me. The feeling that the target was near didn't get any weaker, so we had to be still close to each other. The train going in the opposite direction appeared. I felt the target tremble and start moving toward it.

Forward!

I crossed the platform, weaving between the new arrivals staring up at the indicator boards, then set off toward the back of the train—and my sense of the target began to get weaker. I ran toward the front of the train—there it was again… closer…

It was like that children's game: First I was «cold,» then I was «hot.»

The people were boarding the cars. I ran along the train, feeling the sticky saliva filling up my mouth, my teeth starting to ache, my fingers starting to cramp up… The music was roaring in my earphones.

In the shadow of the moon

She danced in the starlight,

Whispering a haunting tune

To the night…

How appropriate. The song was absolutely perfect.

But it was a bad omen.

I jumped in through the closing doors and froze, concentrating on what I could feel. Had I guessed right or wrong? I still couldn't get a visual fix on the target…

I'd guessed right.

The train hurtled on around the circle line. My instincts were raging, shouting at me: «Right here! Beside you!»

Maybe I'd even got the right car?

I gave my fellow passengers a surreptitious looking-over and dropped the idea. There was no one there worth taking any interest in.

I'd just have to wait, then…

Feel no sorrow, feel no pain,

Feel no hurt, there's nothing gained…

Only love will then remain,

She would say.

At Marx Prospect I sensed my target moving away from me. I jumped from the car and set off toward the other line. Right here, somewhere right beside me…

At the radial line station the feeling of the target became almost unbearably strong. I'd already picked out a few likely prospects: two girls, a young guy, a boy. They were all potential targets, but which one of them was it?

My four candidates got into the same car. That was a stroke of luck at last. I followed them in and waited.

One girl got out at Rizhskaya station.

The feeling of the target didn't get any weaker.

The young guy got out at Alekseevskaya.

Great. Was it the girl or the boy? Which one of them?

I risked a stealthy glance at both. The girl was plump and pink-cheeked; she was absorbed in reading her MK newspaper, showing no signs of any kind of agitation. The boy, in contrast, was skinny and frail, standing by the door and tracing his finger across the glass.

In my opinion the girl was a lot more… tempting. Two to one it was her.

But then, in judgments like that the question of sex decides pretty much everything.

I'd already begun hearing the Call. Still not verbalized yet, just a slow, gentle melody. I immediately stopped hearing the sound from the earphones. The Call easily drowned out the music.

Neither the girl nor the boy showed any signs of alarm. The target either had a very high threshold of resistance or had simply succumbed right away.

The train stopped at Exhibition. The boy took his hand away from the glass, stepped out onto the platform, and strode off rapidly toward the old exit. The girl stayed.

Damn!

They were both still too close to me. I couldn't tell which one I was sensing!

And then the melody of the Call soared triumphantly and words began insinuating themselves into it.

A female voice!

I jumped out through the closing doors and hurried after the boy.

Great. The hunt was nearing its end at last.

But how was I going to handle things with no charge in my amulet? I didn't have a clue.

Only a few people had got off the train, and there were four of us riding the escalator up. The boy at the front, a woman with a small child behind him, then me, followed by an aging, seedy-looking army colonel. The colonel's aura was beautiful, a glittering mass of steel-gray and light-blue tones. I thought with weary humor that I could call on him to help. Even these days people like that still believe in the idea of «officer's honor.»

Except that any help I could get from the colonel would be about as much use as a fly swatter in an elephant hunt.

I dropped the stupid idea and took another look at the boy, with my eyes closed, scanning his aura.

The result was disheartening.

He was surrounded by a shimmering, semi-transparent glow. Sometimes it was tinged with red, sometimes it was flooded with a dense green, and sometimes it flared up in dark blue tones.

It was a rare case. A destiny still undefined. Undifferentiated potential. This boy could grow up to be a great villain, he could become a good and just person, or he could turn out to be a nobody, an empty space, which is actually what most people in the world are anyway. It was all still ahead of him, as they say. Auras like that are normal for children up to the age of two or three, but they disappear almost completely as people get older.

Now I could see why he was the one the Call was addressed to. There was no denying it—he was a real delicacy.

I felt my mouth starting to fill up with saliva.

This had all been going on for too long, far too long… I looked at the boy, at the thin neck under his scarf, and I cursed my boss and the traditions, and the rituals—everything that went to make up my job. My gums itched; my throat was parched.

Blood has a bitter, salty taste, but this thirst can't be quenched by anything else.

Damn!

The boy hopped off the escalator, ran across the lobby, and out through the glass doors. Just for a moment I felt relieved. I slowed down as I followed him out, and just caught his movement out of the corner of my eye as he ducked down into an underpass. He was already running, physically pulled by the lure of the Call.

Faster!

I ran over to a kiosk and said, trying not to show my teeth:

«The stuff for six rubles, with the ring.»

The young guy with a pimply face handed me the quarter-liter bottle with a slow, sluggish movement—like he'd been taking a drop to keep warm on the job. He warned me honestly.

«It's not great vodka. Not gut-rot, of course, it's Dorokhov, but, you know…«

«Got to look after my health, anyway,» I rapped. The vodka was obviously fake, but right now that was okay by me. With one hand I tore off the cap with the wire ring attached to it, and with the other I took out my cell phone and switched it to repeat dial. The young salesman's eyes popped out of his head; not many people who can afford a cellular would buy a cheap surrogate vodka. I took a swallow as I walked along—the vodka stank like kerosene and tasted even worse; it was obviously boot-leg liquor, bottled in the back of someone's garage—and ran to the underpass.

«Hello.»

Larissa wasn't there anymore. Pavel's usually on duty at night.

«This is Anton. It's somewhere near the Cosmos hotel, in the back alleys. I'm in pursuit.»

«You want the team?» The voice was beginning to sound interested.

«Yes. I've already discharged the amulet.»

«What happened?»

A street bum bedded down halfway along the underpass reached out a hand as if he were hoping I'd gave him the bottle I'd just started. I ran on past.

«Something else came up… Make it quick, Pavel.»

«The guys are already on their way.»

I suddenly felt as if a red-hot wire had been stuck through my jaws. Ah, hell and damnation…

«Pasha, I can't answer for myself,» I said quickly and broke off contact. I pulled up short, facing a police patrol.

Isn't that always the way? Why do the human guardians of law and order always turn up at the most inappropriate moment?

«Sergeant Kampinsky,» a young policeman announced briskly. «Your papers…«

I wondered what they were planning to pin on me. Being drunk in a public place? That was probably it.

I put my hand into my pocket and touched the amulet. Just barely warm. But this wouldn't take a lot.

«I'm not here,» I said.

The four eyes that had been probing me in anticipation of easy pickings went blank as the last spark of reason in them died.

«You're not here,» both of them echoed in chorus.

There was no time to program them. I blurted out the first thing that came into my head:

«Buy some vodka and take a break. Immediately. Quick march!»

The order clearly fell on fertile ground. The policemen linked arms like kids out looking for fun and dashed off along the underpass toward the vending kiosks. I felt vaguely uncomfortable, picturing the consequences of my instructions, but there was no time to put things right.

I bounded up out of the underpass, certain I was already too late. But oddly enough, the boy still hadn't got very far. He was just standing there, swaying slightly, about a hundred meters away. That was serious resistance. The Call was so loud now, it seemed strange to me that the occasional passersby walking down the street didn't launch into a dance, that the trolleys didn't swing off the main avenue, forcing their way down along the alley toward their sweet fate…

The boy glanced around. I thought he looked at me. Then he set off, walking quickly.

That was it, he'd broken.

I followed him, frantically trying to decide what I was going to do. I ought to wait for the team—it would take them only ten minutes to get here, at most.

But that might not turn out so good—for the boy.

Pity's a dangerous thing. I gave way to it twice that day. The first time in the metro, when I spent the charge of the amulet in a fruitless attempt to displace the black vortex. And now the second time, when I set out after the boy.

Many years ago someone told me something that I flatly refused to accept. And I still don't accept it now, despite all the times I've seen it proved right.

«The common good and the individual good rarely coincide…«

Sure, I know. It's true.

But some truths are probably worse than lies.

I started running toward the Call. What I heard was probably not what the boy did. For him the Call was an alluring, enchanting melody, sapping his will and his strength. For me it was just the opposite, an alarm call stirring my blood.

Stirring up my blood…

The body I'd been treating so badly all week was rebelling. I was thirsty, but not for water—I could quite safely slake my thirst with the dirty city snow without doing myself any harm. And not for strong drink either—I had that bottle of lousy vodka with me and even that wouldn't do me any damage. What I wanted was blood.