But it was a Higher Vampire!

Trying to set aside my excessive hopes that there was a connection to my case, I got into the driver’s seat and set off for the office.

The city duty officer was Pavel. I flashed him the impression of the aura, and he was delighted to get it. It’s always a pleasure to hand the patrolmen something serious instead of highly uninformative information such as, “At Chistye Prudy a wild vampire took out two on our side…His appearance? Male, kind of middle-aged…”

I sat down in front of the computer in my office, looked at the screen, and said, “This is plain crazy.”

But I launched the Comparison program anyway. The big problem with comparing auras is that you can’t let the system compare them automatically, the way you can with fingerprints. The impression of the aura can be passed from head to head, but not from head to computer: No computers like that exist. To get an aura into the database, we have an elderly artist who works with us-Leopold Surikov. Despite being the namesake of a famous Russian artist, our Leopold had not been a great success as a painter. And he had turned out to be a pretty weak Other, too. But he could receive an impression of an aura and then reproduce the intricate pattern in a drawing, working patiently and painstakingly in the manner of a Chinese or Japanese miniaturist. And then that drawing could be entered into the computer for safekeeping and comparison. All the other Watches who can afford to keep an artist Other on the books do it exactly the same way.

Of course, it’s slow, laborious work. Two days for even the least intricate aura.

But if the aura was already in the database, you could sidestep the long process, which was what I intended to do. Just to make sure I’d done everything possible. But the question remained: How would an unregistered vampire’s aura get into the database?

A table appeared on the screen and I started clicking away with the mouse, constantly checking with the traces in my memory as I entered plus and minus signs into the questionnaire.

“Is there an upper arc?”

Of course not. How could an undead vampire have an upper arc in his aura?

The figure showing the number of registered auras was immediately cut by a factor of five. There were far fewer undead in the archive than live Others. Several rows also disappeared and the table immediately became shorter as it was focused on vampires.

“How prominent is the first lateral barb?”

I entered two plus signs. I could have entered three-the barb was right on the borderline.

The questions continued. I answered about twenty of them before I let myself glance at the upper right corner of the table.

I saw the figure 3 winking at me.

I’d gotten a result after all. A small figure like that had to refer to a vampire and members of his clan, the ones he had initiated. There are certain differences between their auras, but they are absolutely minimal; it would take hundreds of questions to get a specific identification.

But three candidates suited me just fine.

I clicked on the figure 3…

And I almost fell off my chair. There was Kostya Saushkin’s smiling face looking back at me, with the words LAID TO REST written across it in thick red letters.

I stared dully at the screen for a few seconds, remembering the contents of the aluminum container that Gesar had shown me a week earlier, after I got back from Samarkand.

And then I groaned out loud when it finally hit me.

I clicked again and shuddered when I saw Polina, Kostya’s mother. But it wasn’t the photograph that shocked me, it was the words written across it in red: LAID TO REST.

I started running through her file from the top: “Born a human being, with no abilities as an Other. Initiated by her husband under paragraph 7 of the agreement, ‘The right to self-determination of an Other’s family…’” A little farther down I picked out the line: “Refused to participate in the lottery, rewarded with a monthly supply of nonpreserved donor blood, group 3, rhesus positive. She was conservative in her feeding habits, did not hunt human beings, always took exactly the same type of fresh blood, unlike some vampires who, once they gave up hunting, started insisting on virgins’ blood, only group 1 or 2. Groups 3 and 4 give me indigestion, they said.”

The final lines of the extract made everything clear.

“Voluntarily terminated her existence and laid herself to rest on 09.12.2003, shortly after the death of her son, Higher Vampire Konstantin Gennadievich Saushkin (Case No. 9752150). Buried on 10.14.2003, at her own request, with the Christian rites of burial, performed by the Light Other Father Aristarkh.”

I knew Father Aristarkh. He was one of those very rare cases when an Orthodox priest managed to combine his life as an Other with his faith and also tried to carry out some kind of missionary work among the Dark Ones. I had been speaking to him only a month earlier. Why hadn’t I known about Polina Saushkina’s suicide-for that was what it was, if you stripped away the shell of words.

I hadn’t wanted to know, so I hadn’t asked. All very simple.

A third click of the mouse-and the third file.

Naturally: “Gennady Ivanovich Saushkin…”

I groaned and clutched my head in my hands. Fool! Fool! Fool!

It didn’t matter that, according to the file, Saushkin senior was a fourth-level vampire, that he didn’t hunt, was not a member of the Day Watch, and had never been known to break the law.

Edgar had never been listed as a Higher Other either. But just look at the way he had managed to withstand the influence of four amulets and only tell me part of the truth.

And I had understood the partial truth exactly the way that suited me. The way that suited my own complexes, fears, and feelings.

The boy Andrei, who had been fished out of the pond after his close encounter with Gennady Saushkin, was wrong to blame himself. He was not to blame for his teacher and fellow trainee being killed.

I was to blame. I had got stuck on the name Saushkin, as if it was some kind of impassable barrier. And I hadn’t bothered to take even a single step sideways.

I was just about to print out the page when I realized that I couldn’t even wait thirty seconds for the printer to purge its printing heads and make itself ready.

I leaped out of my office and dashed up the stairs.

But then I ran into a dead end-Gesar wasn’t in. Of course, I realized that he needed to rest sometimes too, but why did it have to be right now? This was really bad luck…

“Hi, Anton,” said Olga, coming out of the main office. “Why are you looking so…hyped-up?”

“Where’s Gesar?” I howled.

Olga looked at me thoughtfully for a second. Then she walked up to me, pressed her hand carefully against my lips, and said, “Boris is sleeping. He hasn’t gone home even once since the day you got back from Uzbekistan. An hour ago I used all the female wiles in the book to get him to go to bed.”

Olga was looking great. Her hair had obviously been worked on by a good stylist, her skin was covered with a wonderful gold tan, and she was wearing a hint of makeup-just enough to emphasize the beautiful outline of her eyes and the sexy plumpness of her lips. And she smelled of something very expensive-spicy and floral, hot and seductive.

She really had used all her female wiles.

But then, I’d seen her when she looked quite different. And not only seen her-I’d actually inhabited that magnificent body myself. We had traded bodies in order to elude the Day Watch. The sensation had been instructive, but I couldn’t say that I really missed it all that much.

“And if you, Anton, start yelling and phoning Boris and insisting that he has to come to work immediately, I’ll turn you into a bunny rabbit,” Olga said. “I just haven’t decided yet if it should be a real one or a stuffed toy.”