The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, Sergei Luk'ianenko

absolutely anything to escape from the vampires. He's ready to turn to the Dark or the Light."
    "I can't blame him for that."
    "No, of course. Come on."
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    The owl fluttered into the air and flew along the corridor. I walked after it. We were moving three times faster than human beings now: One of the fundamental features of the Twilight is the way it affects the passage of time.
    "We'll wait here," Olga announced, when we were in the living room. "It's warm, light, and cozy." I sat in a soft armchair beside a low table and squinted at the newspaper lying there. There's nothing more amusing than reading the press through the Twilight.
    "Profits on Loans Are Down," said the headline.
    In the real world the phrase was different: "Tension Mounts in theCaucasus ." I could pick up the newspaper now and read the truth. The real truth. What the journalist was thinking when he wrote about the subject he was covering. Those crumbs of information that he'd received from unofficial sources. The truth about life and the truth about death.
    Only what for?
    I'd stopped giving a damn about the human world a long time ago. It's our basis. Our cradle. But we are Others. We walk through closed doors and we maintain the balance of Good and Evil. There are pitifully few of us, and we can't reproduce—it doesn't follow that a magician's daughter automatically becomes an enchantress, and a werewolf's son won't necessarily be able to change his form on moonlit nights. We're not obliged to like the ordinary, everyday world.
    We only guard it because we're its parasites.
    I hate parasites!
    "What are you thinking about now?" asked Olga. The boy appeared in the living room. He dashed across into the bedroom—very quickly, bearing in mind that he was in the everyday world. He started rummaging in the wardrobe.
    "Nothing much. Just feeling sad."
    "It happens. During the first few years it happens to everyone." Olga's voice sounded completely human now. "Then you get used to it."
    "That's what I'm feeling sad about."
    "You should be glad we're still alive. At the beginning of the twentieth century the population of Others fell to a critical threshold. Did you know there were debates about uniting the Dark Ones and the Light Ones? That programs of eugenics were developed?"
    "Yes, I know."
    "Science came close to killing us off. They didn't believe in us; they wouldn't believe. That is, while they still believed science could change the world for the better."
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    The boy came back into the living room. He sat down on the couch and started adjusting the silver chain around his neck.
    "What is better?" I asked. "We were people once, but we've learned to enter the Twilight; we've learned to change the nature of things and other people. And what's changed, Olga?"
    "At least vampires don't hunt without a license."
    "Tell that to the person whose blood they drink…"
    The cat appeared in the doorway and fixed his gaze on us. He howled, glaring angrily at the owl.
    "It's you he doesn't like, Olga," I said. "Move deeper into the Twilight."
    "Too late," Olga replied. "Sorry, I let my guard down." The boy sprang up off the couch, far faster than is possible in the human world. Clumsily, without even knowing what was happening to him, he entered his shadow and immediately fell on the floor, looking up at me. Through the Twilight.
    "I'm leaving…" the owl whispered as she disappeared. Her claws dug painfully into my shoulder.
    "No!" shouted the boy. "I know! I know! You're here!" I started to get up, spreading my hands.
    "I can see you! Don't touch me!"
    He was in the Twilight. He'd done it, just like that. Without any help from anyone, without any curses or stimulants, without any magician to tutor him, the boy had crossed the boundary between the ordinary and the Twilight worlds.
    The way you first enter the Twilight, what you see and what you feel there, goes a long way to determine who you'll become.
    A Dark One or a Light One. Olga's voice in my