The Fourth Channel (Kari Hunter Series Book 1)

by Jen Kirchner

  He picked up the phone and placed it against his ear. His movement swirled the densest necromantic cloud I had ever seen. His accent was soft, and reminiscent of ancient Spain. I closed my eyes, forcing relieved tears down both sides of my face.

  “Ruairí, this is Diaco Rendon speaking. You knew better than to attack my daughter, and now you have me to contend with. I am going to kill you, Ruairí, if it is the last thing I do.”

  Ruairí had no snappy comeback to offer. The phone immediately disconnected and the dial tone echoed from the panic room.

  Dad set the phone back down on the table and looked at me. Behind him, Mom was clutching his hand as if he were her anchor to the world. She smiled at me brightly, her eyes sparkling in delight as if what just happened was completely normal. She held up a paper bag.

  “Dinner?”

  Dinner comprised a chicken salad sandwich, a cup of curried pumpkin soup, a dill pickle, and a snickerdoodle. My parents knew nothing of flavor profiles. They only knew I liked these things separately, so why not put them together?

  I ate dinner at the lab table, thinking about how Ruairí had attacked me while I was surrounded by the very people who were supposed to protect me. I knew I wasn’t the only one unnerved by the ordeal. My family was congregating in small groups, whispering amongst themselves. I didn’t need to hear them to know what they were saying: Ruairí had become more powerful than anyone had estimated. Even Mikelis might not be safe now.

  Mikelis and Luucas showed up shortly after the attack, both of them angry and upset at the news. Luucas seemed fearful when Lumi described Ruairí’s power. Mikelis was just quiet, listening to all that was said. He didn’t seem afraid, just thoughtful, as if this was going into his databank on survival skills.

  There was also a lot of debate about tonight’s concilium. My dad didn’t want to leave me alone in the house, and I didn’t want him to leave me either, since he was the only person who had proved effective against Ruairí. But we knew he had to go, especially since he and Luucas were the ones who called the forum. We decided the best course was for Dad to wrap my house in an impenetrable wall of defensive spells. The only way Ruairí could get to me now was if I left the house.

  When Dad was done, he left Mom in my care and went upstairs to shower. She smiled at me and spoke of things I didn’t understand, like family events that had never happened in this reality. I just sat next to her, marveling at how the woman who raised me was going completely insane. All because of me. When her reality took a turn and she didn’t know who I was for about five minutes, I couldn’t take any more. I propped my elbow on the table, put my forehead in my free hand, and started to cry.

  Mom wrapped her arms around me and whispered in my ear, “He will like being immortal.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about and it made me cry even harder. At that point, Dad returned to take care of Mom, and she was quiet again.

  The group left early for the concilium to escort Brad home and give his property the same treatment as mine. By that time, I was emotionally and physically worn out. I said goodnight to everyone, scooped Nadia in my arms, and started up the stairs, but Luucas called me back.

  Of course. It’s not a day until Luucas has nagged me about something.

  “Your hybrid is still in Marcus’s garage,” he said, “and I’m driving to the concilium with Lumi, so the Audi is staying here. But do you see this look on my face?” He pointed his index finger at his scowl. “Do you know what this means?”

  “You need to shave?”

  “It means you don’t leave this house for any reason. If there’s an emergency, call.”

  “I get it,” I said, and went up to my bedroom.

  I took the bracelet off so I wouldn’t be distracted by the conversations at the concilium. I was safe inside the house anyway, and I really needed to sleep. I peeled off my clothes and crawled between the cool sheets. My head sank into the pillow. Other than the subtle chirping of crickets and Nadia's snoring, the night was still, pulling me down into sleep.

  Unfortunately, my track record for peaceful nights was pretty crappy. The phone rang. I tried waiting it out, but it wouldn’t stop. Overcome by stupor, I sat straight up in bed, startling the cat. Her ears twitched like radar searching for bogies.

  I grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Eliana.” Ruairí sounded much improved, but not one hundred percent. His voice cracked as he spoke.

  I slouched and groaned. “My dad told you not to call me again, Ruairí.”

  “He did, and so did you, if I recall.” He sounded excited. It worried me.

  “Yeah, we did. Now go away.”

  “I cannot,” he said. “I must have your powers.”

  “First of all, I don’t really have any. Second, you’ll never get anywhere near me. This house is an impenetrable fortress. My dad put up a bunch of spells before he left.”

  “I confess, I cannot hope to get past them. You will have to come to me instead.”

  I snorted. “You couldn’t convince me to step out my front door without backup.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yep.”

  “How sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Not even for your family?”

  I smiled and stretched lazily. “My family is all at the concilium, and Brad’s house was given the same treatment as mine.”

  Ruairí laughed. “By the way, how was your birthday dinner? Your Uncle Richard worked so hard to provide a wonderful evening.”

  And with that, Ruairí hung up.

  I was out of bed in a flash. In the dark, I grabbed whatever clothes I could find—a pair of sweats and a t-shirt. No underwear. No bra. No socks. I grabbed my bracelet off the nightstand, ran downstairs to the front door, jammed my feet into a pair of sneakers, and grabbed the keys to the Audi.

  As I jumped in the car, I hit the garage remote and the speed dial on my cell phone simultaneously. The Audi’s tires screeched as I peeled out of the garage. I tried to put on the bracelet while backing down the driveway, but I fumbled, sending it flying onto the floor of the passenger side. I didn’t have time to stop and retrieve it.

  As soon as I hit the street, Brad answered the phone.

  “Huh?”

  “Meet me at your dad’s house. Now.”

  I heard the rustling of bed covers being tossed off. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

  “Just do it!” I said, and hung up.

  I sped to Uncle Rick’s house, running two red lights and a dozen stop signs. It was the longest five minutes of my life. As I turned onto Uncle Rick’s street, I clipped a mailbox with my side mirror. The entire block was blacked out, making my headlights invasive beacons, exposing every façade.

  I knew Ruairí would keep himself hidden from Death Radar, but I searched for his signal anyway. I didn’t detect Ruairí, but what I did pick up startled me so badly I accidentally stomped on the gas and nearly went through Uncle Rick’s garage door. I threw the car in park, ripped the keys out of the ignition, and dove beneath the passenger seat for my bracelet. I put it on while running to the front door. I heard Luucas talking on the other side of the telepathic link. It sounded formal. Dad’s attention was diverted away from Luucas as soon as our minds connected. I felt his surprise. Then his fear. He asked where I was and what I was doing. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t even stop crying.

  I ran to the front door.

  The metal slab was bent and broken, dangling on a single hinge. Smoke hung in the air. Dark splotches on the entry walls signified a magical blowout. I flipped a switch, but no lights came on. I had to use my phone as a light. My breath was ragged as I ran down the hall, letting Death Radar guide me all the way to the kitchen.

  I rounded the counter, shone the phone light onto the floor, and let out a startled sob. Uncle Rick was lying on the floor in a semiconscious state. Dark, glistening fluid was smeared across one cheek and had been forced into his mouth. When
I approached, the few black droplets on the floor gathered together and slithered toward me. I dismissed the immortal blood with a gesture and shone the dim light of the phone around the burned and broken room. It was clear he had put up a good fight before they took him.

  Uncle Rick was functioning, but not breathing. His new form no longer required it. His fingers moved slightly, yet he had no heartbeat. His body was changing, rolling back the years to an agile, healthy male in his late twenties. I had never seen anyone going through the transformation process before. It looked uncomfortable, like the reverse of a growth spurt during puberty, only much faster.

  I slipped the phone back in my pocket. With its light gone, an ethereal gray strand wavered into view. It protruded from his stomach, arced into the air, and disappeared into a wall. It throbbed regularly, a few times a minute. My head throbbed with it. I had never seen anything like this before. Was this part of The Change? I didn’t think so.

  I tried grabbing the strand. Before my fingers could even get near, it flared with a white-green light. A sharp pain lanced my mind. I saw stars. I clasped both hands to my head.

  Uncle Rick’s eyes opened and his head bobbed lazily to the side.

  “Hey kiddo,” he murmured.

  I sank to my knees next to him. “I’m so sorry, Uncle Rick. They did this because of me.”

  “No,” he mumbled. “Not your fault.”

  He tried to lift one of his hands and brush away the tears, but he couldn’t muster the strength.

  I took his hand in mine and squeezed. “Brad’s on his way.”

  “No,” he mumbled. “Don’t want my son to see me like this.”

  The kitchen phone started to ring. I stood and grabbed it. “Brad?”

  Silence.

  “Hello?”

  Still no response, but I knew there was someone on the other end. I had a feeling I knew exactly who that someone was.

  “Someone was supposed to be here waiting for me, weren’t they, Ruairí? Answer me!”

  Ruairí’s words were controlled, but I could hear the anger in his voice. This operation hadn’t gone as he had planned. “No matter. I will still have you.”

  I looked down at my uncle and the pulsing, gray strand. Visions of unauthorized communities filled my head, every unfortunate victim being blown into smithereens by Ruairí’s voodoo spell. “Did you hook my uncle up to the Styx?”

  “Yes.”

  I shut my eyes and squeezed the phone so hard the plastic cracked beneath my grip. I inhaled a deep breath and let it out slowly, evenly. Murderous rage swelled within me. I had never felt such fury in my life.

  “Ruairí, I’m going to kill you. I mean it. My face will be the last thing you see before you leave this earth.”

  He actually sounded pleased, as if I was playing right into his hands. “Splendid.”

  I hung up. Dad had pulled Grandpa, Moons, and Heraclitus out of the concilium, and was telling them what had happened. He wasn’t paying attention to me. I looked down at Uncle Rick, who was passing in and out of consciousness. He hadn’t fully transformed, so his attacker’s blood had to be in his body. If I was lucky, I could pull a fingerprint from it.

  I gestured at Uncle Rick. Thin wisps of dark smoke began to float up from my feet. Small, metallic flecks glimmered in the moonlight as they twisted around me. A series of spell scripts floated up from the floor, including the spell that granted eternal life. I pulled off two magical fingerprints and threw them against the wall. Uncle Rick’s name was first. The name of Uncle Rick’s attacker was second.

  I bent back down and squeezed his hand. My voice was level when I spoke.

  “Everything’s going to be okay, Uncle Rick. Help is on the way.”

  “Eliana, it is not safe for you there. Please return to the house.”

  I was definitely going home, but not for the reason he thought.

  I jumped in my car and put the pedal to the floor. Once inside my garage, I removed the bracelet. I tossed it on the coffee table on my way down to the basement.

  The knives were silent with anticipation when I stepped into the panic room. They had heard the conversation with Ruairí when he called the land line.

  “Stubby, we’re going for a ride.”

  Wheeee!

  TWENTY-TWO

  The concilium must have been over because Death Radar showed immortal signals packed into Fast Food Row. I had never detected so many signals in one place before. The signals clustered so tightly together that they overlapped and were often hard to distinguish one from another, especially since I was concentrating on keeping my foot flat on the gas and weaving through traffic.

  In fact, I almost missed the immortal signal I was looking for. I slammed on the brakes and fishtailed a bit, causing the tires to screech and billow smoke. I swerved into a parking spot on the side of the street and struck the curb. Human pedestrians shouted curses at me for reckless driving. Immortals emerged from shops and alleys to gawk at the human driving Diaco and Isadora Rendon’s flashy red car.

  Everything on the street came to a halt when I slid out of the car with Stubby in my hand. I also carried a notebook of symbols, but I’m sure no one was paying attention to that. They only saw Stubby and the macabre spiral of black smoke that wound from the tip of the blade to my shoulder and trailed behind us as we walked. I heard screams. People ran, clearing the sidewalks.

  I crossed the street to stand in front of Starry Nites Café, a quaint coffee shop squeezed into the end of a long, brick building. I stuffed the car keys in my pocket and tucked the notebook under my arm.

  You should make a grand entrance!

  Before I could ask Stubby what that meant, my head was filled with a vision of myself gesturing. My arms pumped up and down while my fingers tapped a short sequence: pollex, digitus annularis, digitus secundus manus, pollex. The café door in my vision fell flat onto the pavement, then the vision ended. I realized that Stubby was instructing me in how to use the power I had absorbed on The Floor.

  It seemed useful. I stuck Stubby inside my spiral notebook and pinned it between my knees. I gestured the exact way Stubby had shown me in the vision. Smoke churned at my feet and coiled up around my legs. Black runes flashed in the air. The green, wooden slab flew from its hinges and sailed overhead. I didn’t look to see where it landed, but I heard glass shatter and two car alarms. Café patrons jumped up from their tables. Screaming, they fled the premises through the gaping hole I had just created in the storefront.

  I looked down at the knife handle protruding from the notebook. “That last part didn’t happen during your tutorial.”

  Stubby giggled.

  When the doorway was clear, I stepped inside the café. Chairs and tables had toppled. Half-empty coffee cups sat abandoned on tables or smashed on the floor. Behind the counter, an industrial-sized coffee maker was beeping, alerting no one that the brew was ready. I slipped behind the counter and pushed open the break room door. Aside from stacked boxes, a small table, and a bathroom, the place appeared to be empty.

  Death Radar said otherwise. Uncle Rick’s attacker was hiding here, and he wasn’t alone.

  As I turned around to walk back out, a gray, metal frame caught my eye—a basement door, hiding behind the large stack of boxes. I pulled the boxes down, not caring if I broke anything. Then I grabbed the metal latch. Locked.

  Doors couldn’t stop me. I stretched out my necromancer senses and briefly took control of each immortal. My touch was so subtle and fleeting that nobody noticed; it probably felt like a static shock. I checked each one, moving from body to body, until I found Uncle Rick’s attacker. I threw him. I heard an agonized, gargled shout followed by a loud slam. Using the same gestures I had employed a minute ago, I ripped the metal door off the wall and sent it flying behind me into the employee bathroom. The sound of porcelain shattering and walls cracking was deafening.

  The open doorway revealed a dimly lit concrete staircase leading down. Cloaked in a heavy necromantic cloud, I desc
ended and stepped into a storage basement. A dozen immortals had gathered in two groups on opposite sides of the room. A path had been haphazardly cleared through tables, chairs, and stacks of boxes, all the way back to where Conservator Henri Boisseau was stuck like a trapped fly halfway up the wall. No one said a word. No one even moved.

  I set Stubby on a stack of boxes. I could feel every eye in the room fixing on the black knife.

  “I’m not having the best luck with conservators this week,” I said.

  Henri looked as if he might vomit.

  “Let me guess what happened tonight. Ruairí ordered you to convert a human. You were to capture whoever showed up at the house. After you attacked my uncle, you saw the pictures on the walls and realized he was related to a necromancer. You knew you were in trouble, panicked, and left.”

  “No…” His eyes darted around the room. “I was at the concilium.”

  “Like hell.”

  I used my control over his body. One of his hands reached over and grasped the other sleeve, which had a dark stain on the cuff. He pulled it back, exposing a thin scab where he had cut himself and drawn his own blood. Startled gasps rippled around the room. The sight of it only infuriated me more.

  “You hooked my uncle up to the same spell that’s killing the unauthorized communities!”

  “No!”

  “You’re a murderer!”

  Henri’s eyes widened. Facial muscles and brain activity were all I allowed him to control. “No! It wasn’t murder.”

  “He’s going to die! It’s murder that hasn’t happened yet!”