Sixth Watch Read Free Page A

Passed on any message via the victims?”
    An impish smile appeared on Gesar’s face.
    â€œYou could say that. Take the case and go. If you decide to work in classic style, you can get the blood from the stockroom. Oh yes . . . and give me a call when you figure it out.”
    â€œAnd you’ll tell me something smart,” I said morosely, getting up and taking the folder.
    â€œNo, I simply had a bet with Olga on how long it would take you to solve it, Anton Gorodetsky. She said an hour, I said a quarter of an hour. See how much faith I have in you?”
    I walked out of Gesar’s office without saying goodbye.
    Half an hour later, after I had glanced through the documents,laid them out on my desk, and gazed at the lines of print for a while, I gave him a call.
    â€œWell?” Gesar asked.
    â€œAlexander. Nikolai. Tatyana. Oxana. Nina. Gennady. Olya. The next victim would be called Roman, for instance, or Rimma.”
    â€œI was closer to the truth, after all,” Gesar said smugly. “Half an hour.”
    â€œThey’re certainly ingenious,” I remarked.
    â€œThey?”
    â€œYes, I think so. There are two of them, a guy and a girl.”
    â€œYou’re probably right,” Gesar agreed. “But ingenious or not . . . it would be better if we didn’t let things get as far as the ‘T.’”
    I didn’t say anything. But Gesar didn’t hang up.
    And neither did I.
    â€œSomething you want to ask?” Gesar said.
    â€œThat vampire girl . . . fifteen years ago . . . the one who attacked the boy Egor. Was she definitely executed?”
    â€œShe was laid to rest,” Gesar said frostily. “Yes. Quite definitely. For certain. I checked myself.”
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œThis morning. It was the first thing that occurred to me too. Check out everything we have on whether the pseudorevitalization of vampires is possible.”
    And then Gesar hung up. Which meant that he’d told me everything.
    Everything I needed to know, of course. But not everything that might come in useful, or everything that he knew himself.
    Great Ones never tell you everything.
    And I’ve learned to do that myself. I hadn’t told Gesar everything either.
    Our hospital ward was located in the semibasement, on the same level as the guest rooms. Below that were the repositories, the jail cells, and other high-risk areas that needed to be guarded.
    No one ever formally stands guard over the hospital. In the first place, it’s usually empty. If a member of the Watch is injured, a healer will heal him in two or three hours. If the healer can’t heal him, then most likely the patient is already dead.
    And then, in the second place, any healer is also a highly qualified killer. Basically, all it takes is to apply a healing spell “backward,” and the result will be fatal. Our doctors don’t need to be protected, they can protect anyone you like themselves. What was it that belligerent, drunk doctor said in the old Soviet comedy movie? “I’m a doctor. I can fix it, and I can break it.”
    Now, however, when there was a patient in the hospital, and that patient was a human being who had been attacked by a Dark One, they’d put a guard on the door. Arkady, who had only recently started working in the Watch, used to be a schoolteacher. And, exactly as his new colleagues expected, he claimed that hunting vampires was far easier than teaching physics in tenth grade. I knew him, of course, just as I knew everyone who had trained in the Night Watch in recent years. And he certainly knew me.
    But I halted at the entrance to the hospital suite, as regulations required. Following some ideas Arkady had about the correct dress code for a security guard, he was wearing a formal blue suit (which is logical enough, in principle). He got up from behind his table (fortunately for the guards here, our paranoia hasn’t yet gone so far as to require