The Necromancer's Knives

by Jen Kirchner

  Stubby’s glittery smoke tickled my nostrils.

  The voodoo. See how the hall is lined with those symbols? Over time, Ruairí sacrificed too many necromancers and had too much necromancer magic swirling around inside him. Voodoo is aggressive toward necromancers, even if they’re cheating, fake necromancers.

  Mikelis nodded. “Eventually, it wasn’t safe for Ruairí past this point because his own voodoo magic would attack him. He tried to destroy the voodoo with fire, but it was too ingrained in his walls.”

  He stared at the walls thoughtfully, his gaze raking over the etched symbols.

  “I don’t like the look on your face,” I said.

  Mikelis sighed and pointed at the voodoo script. “Voodoo spells have to be attached to a physical item, and they’re usually imbued on small items. However, someone attached voodoo spells to this entire wall, and it was probably painted in someone’s blood…” His voice trailed off, and he lapsed into a moment of heavy thought. “That had to be difficult.”

  “I guess that’s why most practitioners use little bones and rocks.”

  Mikelis nodded in agreement. “Ruairí was famous for using little trinkets. They’re difficult to detect, so they can infiltrate almost anywhere. Still, I’d always believed that he just wasn’t capable of imbuing bigger items. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Ruairí was capable of this before he clogged himself with too much necromancer magic.”

  “Or maybe Luucas is right and there was someone behind Ruairí. Maybe that’s who did this.”

  We stared at each other for a second.

  “It’s a long shot,” I added.

  “Yeah.” He took a few steps inside the blackened hallway and peered around the bend. He grimaced. “You don’t want to see this. How about we split up? I’ll check this hall, you check that one.” He pointed to the clean cinder block tunnel. “I’ll meet you back at this intersection in fifteen minutes, okay?”

  Even Kari should be okay for fifteen minutes.

  “Thanks for your vote of confidence.”

  I watched Mikelis disappear around the bend. I felt conflicted about him going that way. I knew he didn’t want to see it either.

  Stubby must have felt my indecision, because as soon as Mikelis disappeared, the knife’s words filled my mind.

  He’s more equipped to handle that than you are.

  I wanted to argue with that, but I couldn’t.

  The hall twisted and turned so often that I lost all sense of direction. When it finally sloped upward for about twenty feet, the air became cooler and cleaner, which was a huge relief. There were no rooms on our path, just this weird tunnel, and I was beginning to think it led nowhere. Maybe this area was never finished?

  “Okay,” I said, turning around, “we’re going ba—”

  Before I could finish, a weak pulse of energy tapped my shoulder, surprising me into silence.

  “Did you feel that?” I asked.

  No. What is it?

  “A spell.” I paused. The pulse had been weak… and a little weird, although I couldn’t say why. “I think.”

  Might be. Your senses have been getting stronger.

  I was too focused on the faint trace of magic to follow that comment. I stood absolutely still, hoping to catch it again. Frozen, like I was trying not to scare off a squirrel. I squinted in the direction the spell had come from, even though I was staring at a dirt-covered wall.

  “This is weird, right?” I murmured. “There shouldn’t be anything down here. I destroyed most magic in the world—and this bunker was the epicenter.”

  I lapsed into silence, concentrating. Just before I gave up and turned around, a faint pulse of energy feathered across my skin.

  “There.” I whispered the word, as if raising my voice might destroy the spell.

  I feel it. If we follow it, it will take us further from the bunker. Mikelis only gave us fifteen minutes.

  “It can’t be that far. Otherwise, we wouldn’t feel it through so much dirt and rock.”

  You and your stupid curiosity.

  If I picked up the pace, I could probably find the source of the energy and get back only slightly late. Mikelis wouldn’t mind. He’d be interested in this, too.

  The hallway dipped. The floor was different here, lined with rotting wood over the dirt. I went around a bend and the path ended in an enormous room. The air tasted stale, like death. I shined the light around. A shiver ran up my spine.

  Don’t go in there.

  “It’s just a room,” I whispered.

  I had to admit, the room really creeped me out. It was constructed like an ancient amphitheater. It was large and round—not just round-ish, but perfectly round and smooth—and the ceiling looked perfectly flat. Intricate runic carvings, from both voodoo and proper channel magic, covered the walls and ceiling, with small holes dotting most of the negative space. Three enormous arched doorways were carved into the walls, although they looked like decor and not functional doors.

  There were four rows of seats encircling a small stage. From the entry, a wide path led down to the stage, where an ornate stone block stood alone. A set of four necromancer posts surrounded the stone block, creating a protective field so weak that the gray static walls flickered in and out of my view, pulsing the same energy that led me here.

  The necromancer posts didn’t surprise me; I knew Ruairí O’Bryne was capable of making them. I was just surprised to find them down here. What was so important about that big slab of stone?

  I took a step inside the room. The energy throbbed and washed against my skin, crawled over me as if learning every inch, then flashed out.

  Gone. Like a distress beacon that shut off now that I’d arrived. Or maybe I’d tripped a spell Luucas had set up? Darkness played in the far reaches of the room and licked up the walls, causing my skin to crawl.

  Have you ever seen anything like this?

  “No. You?”

  I don’t get out of the basement much.

  I started down the ramp. As I approached the black posts, I noticed they were odd. They had only a third of the embossed runes that my dad’s posts have, and the bottom of each post was covered in voodoo runes. The curved strokes of necromancy and the jagged lines of voodoo looked as if they were trying to erase each other from existence. No wonder the protective field was struggling.

  When I passed through the barrier of the protective posts, my vision went black and pain lanced across my mind. I saw stars and pitched forward, almost colliding with the stone block. Sucking in a deep breath, I put my head between my knees.

  Are you okay? That was from the little bit of voodoo on the posts.

  My voice was hoarse. “Yeah.”

  Crouching this close to the stone block, it looked more like a treasure chest. The top of the block was carved into a giant lid, though there was no seam. The rock was a single slab. A depressed square in the middle of the lid was empty, save for a little sand and dirt that gathered around the edges.

  Carvings covered the rest of the chest, some similar to the ones on the walls, mixed in with scenes of stick people, animals, and fish. There didn’t seem to be a story to the images; they were drawn only for ornamentation. The pictures seemed to honor ancient humans, though the chest didn’t look ancient. Not new, but not ancient either. Not that I could really tell, since my specialty was dead things and not rocks.

  Whatever this thing was, half of the images were obscured by dried gunk. I dropped my bag on the floor, stuck Stubby into a crevice, and picked off a chunk of the gunk.

  Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you doing?

  “Trying to clean this off so I can get a better look.”

  No. Use something else.

  I wasn’t in the mood to argue. We were already running late to get back to Mikelis. I ran Stubby’s tip along one of the grooves in the stone.

  WHAT ARE YOU DOING? STOP!

  Startled, I yanked the knife back and whirled around, looking for oncoming danger. Was there a rogue voodoo spell coming
at us? A voodoo practitioner who survived and wants to exact revenge for killing their deranged, ferret-faced leader?

  No, we were alone.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  We talked about this already. I am not a common utensil. I was born to do glorious things like sacrificing powerful people and protecting you, not picking voodoo boogers off of a weird rock.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  It’s dirty and it smells. The knife paused. And I saw a bug.

  “Aw, is my macho, panty-wearing, non-killer knife afraid of bugs?”

  Non-killer? You take that back!

  I jabbed the knife into a dark, dusty crevice. Dried, flaky crust broke off and stuck to the blade.

  Stubby gagged. I snickered.

  I can’t help it. This room is disgusting. You keep your lab so clean. The fingers I stab are all nicely manicured.

  “Yeah, Brad gets his nails done. Don’t tell anyone, though. He’s sensitive about it.”

  I jammed Stubby into the deep crevice of a carving that looked different from the others. If there was a key anywhere, this seemed like a good spot to hide it.

  “Just let me clean this off so I can get a better look. Does this look like something to you? What do you see?”

  Bug poop. Lots and lots of bug poop.

  “I’m talking about the carvings, you big baby. Look at this long, weblike thing we’re tracing.”

  You’re going to damage it, and then you’ll be in trouble. You heard your dad. He wants to turn this into an amusement park. Now that he owns it, and your parents are apparently paupers, they’re going to need everything looking just as weird as we found it.

  “Don’t remind me.”

  As soon as the words left my lips, Stubby’s tip got wedged into a narrow seam. A barrage of complaining and whining bombarded my brain, distracting me from trying to unjam the blade.

  Stubby was too wide and sturdy to give. The stone would have to, historic or not. I twisted the handle and Stubby popped out from the crack, breaking off a small chunk of stone. The fragment flew toward me, nailed me between the eyes, then plopped onto the ground.

  Stubby tried saying something but was laughing so hard that I couldn’t understand it.

  I picked up the small chunk and stood. It looked to be nothing special; just a small fragment of the big rock that I had broken. Flat. Rough. I spun it around. One corner had a small, round peg at the end, like it fit into the holes on the wall. One side had a design carved into it, but Stubby’s razor-sharp blade had scraped half of it off when I’d pried it out. The design that remained was kind of like voodoo runes: foreign and unreadable. Honestly, I wasn’t sure this stone fragment was an accident.

  “Does that look like my mom’s key to you?”

  No. What’s with the fake necromancer posts?

  I turned. It took me a few seconds of staring to see what Stubby was referring to.

  There were four posts surrounding the massive rock. The posts created a protective field, like the ones in my lab and panic room. However, the gray static field ignored the two farthest posts and disappeared through the wall opposite the entry, encompassing the carving of the middle door.

  Two of the posts were decoys. The remaining posts had to be on the other side of the wall.

  There’s no way Luucas would have known the posts were fake; only a necromancer could see the magic field extending through the wall.

  There had to be a way through to the other side. I walked over, clamped Stubby between my knees, took the flashlight in one hand, and started tapping the holes with the stone peg. Nothing was happening, and the peg only fit half of the holes.

  When I couldn’t find anything obvious within reach, I went up on my tiptoes.

  I can’t see.

  “I can’t hold you and do this at the same time.”

  Lift me up—I can help!

  “No, you can’t.”

  I felt an indignant gasp.

  Are you saying I’m not helpful?

  “I wasn’t. But now that you bring it up…” My voice trailed off as I reached for an enormous carving of a wild boar that looked to be a little deeper than the others. I slid the peg into its eye socket.

  You take that back! I’m the most helpful knife you have!

  “When?”

  The wall lurched. On my toes with Stubby between my legs, I lost my balance and pitched forward. My body refused to part with my sacrificial knife, even if it killed me. Instead, I dropped the flashlight and dug my fingers into the wall, trying to stop my fall.

  It didn’t work.

  The wall swung outward, flinging me into the darkness beyond. I stumbled over my flashlight and kicked it into the darkness, and tumbled.

  During the half second that I was falling, my mind offered suggestions on how to react: scream, throw myself backward, grab the door frame and hang on for dear life, blame Luucas, blame Mom, blame Dad, blame Stubby.

  Instead, my reaction was to finally release Stubby before the blade sliced one of my legs open.

  I hit the ground and rolled into the darkness, letting Stubby slide away. Everything hurt. I rolled onto my back and patted myself down, making sure Stubby hadn’t cut off a body part. Luckily, everything seemed present, including all ten toes.

  See how helpful I was in finding this room? You never would have found it without me.

  I rolled my eyes and stood. The flashlight had landed against a stone wall, providing just enough light to get my bearings.

  We were in a small room. At the opposite end was another tunnel, and it led away from the bunker.

  The air was moving here, but I wasn’t sure how. We were nowhere near the surface. I couldn’t see the black posts from here, but the field ended just ahead. The real third and fourth posts must be embedded in the rock. Their field completely protected this weird little room.

  Um, Kari?

  “Huh?”

  I grabbed the flashlight and shined it across the ground and up, revealing a narrow space with a high ceiling and curving walls in contrasting stripes of glossy stone and earth. The look of it was captivating. Was this a natural formation?

  To my left, a stone disc had been set into the wall, about the size of a manhole cover. Although the stone was covered in loose dirt and a heavy layer of dust, I could see it had luminescent swirls of green, white, and gold. I didn’t know what kind of stone it was; I had never been that interested in earth science. Biology and music were where I excelled. I’d have to tell Heraclitus about it later.

  Kari?

  Luucas probably had no idea this section of the bunker even existed. The stone fragment probably wasn’t the key my mom had talked about, but this was definitely an area that Ruairí O’Bryne had kept secret.

  Kari.

  Had Ruairí made this door and the protective posts? His name wasn’t listed as the posts’ creator, but that didn’t surprise me; I didn’t know anything about necromancer-voodoo hybrid spells. Instead, I guessed that the spell showed the name of the necromancer who gave their life so Ruairí could create these posts. I stood there, staring at the gray field, letting that thought sink in. It made me a little sick.

  KARI!

  “What?”

  I turned around just as the stone door sealed shut, encasing us in the bowels of the earth. Whispers of wind slid across the walls and swirled around me, prickling the back of my neck. It was disorienting. It sounded like ghosts.

  I ran to the door and slammed my hand on the wall and felt my insistent blows silently absorbed. The door had sealed so completely that I couldn’t even see the seams.

  Well, it looks like I’ve lost the betting pool to Rambo and Longy. I said you’d get killed by the other necromancer, not starve to death in a dark tunnel like an idiot.

  I stared at the door. I have a necromancer power that had proven effective at ripping doors off, but if the concrete slab didn’t hit me and kill me, the cave-in that resulted from the spell would. I felt around the door for another b
utton or hole that might trigger it from this side, but the stone was solid and flat, and weirdly smooth.

  My bag was back in the last room, along with my phone—though I doubted I could get reception down here anyway. I was still wearing my bracelet with the telepathic link; I’d just have to leave the field of the protective posts to check it.

  I glanced at Stubby. “I’m sorry. I know you were trying to tell me about the door.”

  Actually, a millipede was about to crawl on me, but it changed direction at the last second. And yeah, the door, too.

  “Thanks a lot.”

  I stepped through the barrier of the protective posts and into a narrow tunnel. My ears popped and my necromancer senses came alive again. Mikelis was moving on Death Radar, fast, probably looking for me. I couldn’t detect my parents from this range, but three other signals appeared, not far from where I stood.

  I sucked in a sharp gasp.

  What is it?

  I whispered, “It’s Norayr Hakobyan, the head of Immortal Intelligence.”

  The guy who wants you to terrorize the world so that Immortal settlements can live in peace?

  I couldn’t even roll my eyes at Stubby’s grasp of irony. “Henri Boisseau’s with him.”

  Ronel van Niekerk was running around, too, not far from Norayr and Henri. She was a little farther out and following a weird, winding path. She must have been coming to join her boss.

  What about your bracelet?

  Dead air. Dad still wasn’t wearing his watch. I was on my own.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I gave the sealed doorway one last glance, then I grabbed Stubby. I pointed the flashlight to the ground and started tiptoeing in the direction of the signals, being careful not to scuff my shoes, trip, kick stones, or do anything else that would announce my presence.

  Uh, what are you doing?

  My whisper was so low I could barely hear myself. “I’m going to check it out. Do you have any better ideas?”

  No. However, if you’d used me for that power that allows you to walk through walls, it would be a different story.

  “Remember what I said about you not being helpful?”

  After about twenty yards, the passage started filling with a dim, gray light. Ghostly. It complemented the creepy wind effect. I’d probably have nightmares later.