first process is involuntary and intensifies as you go deeper into the Twilight. The second is also, to a greater or lesser degree, typical of everybody – both human beings and Others. A sick child asks his mother: sit with me, rub my tummy! His mother strokes his tummy, and the pain goes away. The mother wants to help her child, and she is able to direct part of her Power to produce the desired effect. So-called psychics – human beings with truncated, castrated Other abilities – are not only able to influence people who are near and dear to them in a spontaneous outpouring of heightened emotion, but can heal other people or even put a curse on them. The Power that flows from them is more structured. No longer steam, but not yet ice – it's water. Third . . .We are Others. In us the balance of emission and absorption is displaced towards absorption.'

'What?' I exclaimed.

'Did you think it was all simple, like with vampires?' Gesar asked with an ironic smile. 'Do you think Others only take, without giving anything in exchange? No, we all give back the Power that we produce. But while an ordinary person's process of absorption and emission is in dynamic equilibrium, and the balance is occasionally disrupted as a result of emotional agitation, with us it's different. We are unbalanced from the very beginning. We absorb more from the surrounding world than we give back.'

'And we can juggle the remainder,' I said. 'Right?'

'We operate with the difference in potentials,' said Gesar, wagging his finger at me again. 'It doesn't matter what your "magical temperature" is – that was the term the witches used to use. You can actually generate a great deal of Power, and the rate at which it is emitted will increase in geometrical progression. There are Others like that . . . they give more back to the common pot than people do, but they also absorb very actively. They work on that difference in potentials.'

After a moment's pause, Gesar added a self-critical comment:

'But those are only rare cases, I admit. Far more often Others are less capable of producing magical Power than ordinary people, but equally or even more capable of absorbing it. We're not just crude vampires. We're donors too.'

'But why don't they teach us that?' I asked. 'Why?'

'Because in the most basic understanding of the process, we do, after all, consume Power that comes from someone else!' Gesar barked. 'Why did you come barging in here at such an early hour? To rant and rave and lecture me! How can this be true, that we simply consume the Power produced by people! And you have actually taken it directly, pumped it out, like a genuine vampire! When it was necessary, you didn't think twice. Off you went, in shining white armour, with sadness writ large on your noble visage! And behind you little children were crying!'*

* See The Night Watch, Story Three

He was right, of course. Partly.

But I had already worked in the Watch for long enough to know that a partial truth is also a lie.

'Teacher . . .' I said in a low voice, and Gesar started.

I had refused to be his pupil any more on that day when I gathered power from people.

'I'm listening, pupil,' he said, looking into my eyes.

'Surely it's not a question of how much Power we consume, but how much we give back,' I said. 'Teacher, isn't the goal of the Night Watch to divide and protect?'

Gesar nodded.

'To divide and protect until such time as people's morals improve and new Others will only turn to the Light?'

Gesar nodded again.

'And all people will become Others?'

'Rubbish.' Gesar shook his head. 'Whoever told you such nonsense? Can you find that phrase anywhere in even one of the Watches' documents? In the Great Treaty?'

I closed my eyes and looked at the words that sprang into view.

'We are Others . . .'

'No, it doesn't say that anywhere,' I admitted. 'But all our training, everything we do . . . it's all set up to create precisely that impression.'

'That impression is false.'

'Yes, but the self-deception is encouraged.'

Gesar heaved a deep sigh. He looked into my eyes. And said:

'Anton, everyone needs their life to have a meaning. A higher meaning. Both people and Others. Even if that meaning is false.'

'But it's a blind alley . . .' I whispered. 'Teacher, it's a blind alley. If we defeat the Dark Ones . . .'

'Then we'll defeat Evil.