Everybody was still asleep in the sitting room too. I glanced into the kitchen, but there was no one there except for a dog, cowering in the corner.

'Moving again?' I asked.

The terrier bared his fangs and gave a pitiful whine.

'Well, who asked you to play soldier yesterday?' I squatted down in front of the dog and took a piece of sausage off the table. The well-trained animal hadn't dared steal it. 'Here, take it.'

The jaws clicked shut above my open palm.

'You be kind and people will be kind to you!' I explained. 'And stop cowering in corners.'

I took a piece of sausage for myself and chewed it as I walked through the sitting room into the study.

They were asleep in there too.

Even when it was opened out the sofabed in the corner was narrow, so they were lying very close. Ignat was in the middle with his muscular arms flung out wide and a sweet smile on his face. Lena was pressed up against his left side, with one hand clutching his thick shock of blond hair, and her other arm thrown across his chest with her hand on our Don Juan's other partner. Svetlana had her face buried in Ignat's armpit, with her arms reaching in under the blanket that had slipped halfway off their bodies.

I closed the door very quietly and carefully.

It was a cosy little restaurant. As its name suggested, the Sea Dog was famous for its fish dishes and its shipboard interior. And, what's more, it was right next to the metro station. And for a fragile middle class that was sometimes prepared to splash out on a restaurant, but liked to save money on taxis, that was a significant factor.

This customer had arrived by car, in an old but perfectly serviceable model-six Zhiguli. To the well-trained eyes of the waiters the man looked a lot more prosperous than his car suggested. The calm with which he drank his expensive Danish vodka without asking the price only served to reinforce this judgement.

When the waiter brought the sturgeon he'd ordered, the customer glanced at him briefly. Before that he'd been sitting there, tracing lines on the tablecloth with a toothpick, occasionally stopping and gazing at the flame of the glass-bodied oil lamp, but now he suddenly looked up.

The waiter didn't tell anyone what he thought he saw in that instant. It was as if he was gazing into two blinding well-shafts. Blinding in the way the Light blinds when it sears and becomes indistinguishable from the Dark.

'Thank you,' said the customer.

The waiter walked away, fighting the urge to walk faster. Repeating to himself: it was just the reflection of the lamplight in the gloom of the restaurant. Just the way the lamplight happened to catch his eyes.

Boris Ignatievich carried on sitting there, breaking toothpicks. The sturgeon went cold, the vodka in the crystal carafe got warm. On the other side of the partition of thick cables, fake ships' wheels and sailcloth, a large gathering was celebrating someone's birthday, there were speeches of congratulation and complaints about the heat, taxes and gangsters who weren't doing things 'the right way'.

Gesar, the chief of the Moscow office of the Night Watch, waited.

The dogs who'd stayed outside shied away at the sight of me. The freeze had been really tough on them. Their bodies had refused to obey them, they hadn't been able to draw breath or bark, the saliva had congealed in their mouths, the air had pressed down on them with a hot, heavy, delirious hand.

But their spirits were still alive.

The gates were half open; I went through them and stood for a moment, not quite sure where I was going and what I was going to do.

What difference did it make, anyway?

I didn't feel resentful. I wasn't even in pain. The two of us had never even slept together. In fact, I was the one who'd been careful to erect barriers. I didn't just live for the present moment; I wanted everything right now, but I wanted it for ever.

I found the walkman at my belt and switched it on at random. That always worked for me. Maybe because I'd been controlling the simple electronic circuits for a long time, like Tiger Cub, without knowing it.

Who's to blame if you're so tired?
And haven't found what you were longing for?
Lost everything you sought so hard,
Flown up to the sky and fallen back again?
Whose fault is it that day after day
Life walks on other people's paths
But your home has become lonely,
With darkness at its windows,
And the light dims and sounds die
And your hands seek new torment?
And if your pain should ease –
It means new disaster's on the way.

It was what I myself had wanted. I'd tried to make it happen. And now I had only myself to blame. Instead of spending all evening with Semyon, discussing the complex issues of the global conflict between Good and Evil, I ought to have stayed downstairs. Instead of getting angry with Gesar and Olga for their cunning version of truth, I ought to have insisted on my own. And never, ever have thought that it was impossible to win.

Once you start thinking like that, you've already lost.

Who's to blame, tell me, brother?
One is married, another's rich,
One is funny, another's in love.
One's a fool, another's your enemy,
And whose fault is it that there and here
They wait for each other, it's how they live,
But the day is dreary, the night is empty,
The warm places are crowded out,
And the light dims and sounds die,
And your hands seek new torment?
And if your pain should ease,
It means new disaster's on the way.

Who's to blame and what's the secret,
Why is there no grief or happiness,
No victories without defeats,
And the score of luck and disaster is even?
And whose fault is it you're alone,
And your one life so very long,
And so dreary and you're still waiting,
Hoping some day you will die?

'No,' I whispered, pulling off the earphones. 'That's not for me.'

We'd all been taught for so long to give everything and not take anything in exchange. To sacrifice ourselves for the sake of others, to face up to the machine-gun fire. Every look noble and wise, not a single empty thought, not one sinful intention. After all, we were Others. We'd risen above the crowd, unfurled our immaculately clean banners, polished up our high boots, pulled on our white gloves. Oh, yes, in our own little world we could never go too far. A justification could be found for any action, a noble and exalted justification. Here we are all in white, and everyone else is covered in shit.

I was sick of it.

A passionate heart, clean hands, a cool head . . . Surely it was no accident that during the Revolution and the Civil War, almost all the Light Ones had attached themselves to the Cheka? And most of those who didn't had died. At the hands of the Dark Ones, or even more often at the hands of those they were defending. At the hands of humans, because of human stupidity, baseness, cowardice, hypocrisy, envy. A passionate heart and clean hands. But keeping a cool head was more important. That was essential. I didn't really agree with all the rest. Why not a pure heart and hot hands? I like the sound of that better.

'I don't want to protect you,' I said into the quietness of the forest morning. 'I don't want to! Women and children, old men and morons – none of you. Live however you want, get what you deserve! Run from vampires, worship Dark Magicians, kiss the goat under its tail! If you deserved it – take it! If my love means less than your happy lives, then why should you be happy?'

They can become better, they must, they're our roots, they're our future, they're our responsibility. Little people and big people, road-sweepers and presidents, criminals and cops. They carry within them the Light that can erupt in life-giving warmth or death-dealing flame . . .

I don't believe it!

I've seen all of you. Road-sweepers and presidents, criminals and cops. Seen mothers killing their children, fathers raping their daughters. Seen sons throwing their mothers out of the house and daughters putting arsenic in their fathers' food. Seen a husband smiling as he sees his guests out, then closes the door, and punches his pregnant wife in the face. Seen a smiling wife send her drunken husband out for another bottle and turn to his best friend for a passionate embrace. It's very simple to see all this. All you have to do is look. That's why they teach us not to look before they teach us to look through the Twilight.

But we still look anyway.

They're weak, they don't live long, they're afraid of everything. We mustn't despise them and hate them, that would be wrong. They must only be loved, pitied and protected. That is our job, our duty. We are the Watch.

I don't believe it!

Nobody can be forced to commit a vicious act. You can't push anybody into the mud, people always step into it themselves. No matter what the circumstances are, there are no justifications and there never will be any. But people look for justifications and they find them. All people have been taught to do that, and they've all proved diligent pupils.

Yes, of course, there have been, there still are, and there always will be those who have not become Others, but managed somehow to remain human. But there are so few of them, so very few. Or perhaps we're simply afraid to look at them more closely. Afraid to see what we might discover.

'Am I supposed to live for your sake?' I asked. The forest didn't answer, it was already prepared to accept anything I said.

Why must we sacrifice everything? Ourselves and those we love?

For the sake of those who will neither know nor appreciate it.

And even if they did find out, all we'd get for our efforts would be an incredulous shake of the head and insults.

Perhaps it would be worth just once showing humankind who exactly the Others are. What one single Other is capable of when he's not shackled by the Treaty, when he breaks free of the Watches.

I actually smiled to myself as I imagined the scene. The overall picture, not just my place in it: I'd be stopped soon enough. So would any Great Magician or Great Sorceress who decided to violate the Treaty and reveal the Others to the world.

What chaos it would be!

Aliens landing at the Kremlin and the White House wouldn't even come close.

Impossible, of course.

Not my path.

In the first place, because I didn't want to take over the world or throw it into total anarchy.

The only thing I wanted was for them not to force the woman I loved to sacrifice herself. Because the path of the Great Ones is genuine sacrifice. The appalling powers they develop change them utterly.

None of us is quite human. But at least we remember that we used to be human. And we can still be happy and sad, can love and hate. The Great Magicians and Sorceresses move beyond the bounds of human emotions. They probably feel emotions of their own, but we can't understand them. Even Gesar, a magician beyond classification, isn't a Great One. And Olga somehow failed to become a Great One.