The Fourth Channel (Kari Hunter Series Book 1)

by Jen Kirchner

  More voodoo spells. My legs went numb. Needles ran from my toes to the top of my spine. I couldn’t move from the pain. My head was fuzzy and my vision blurred. I continued to push away the onslaught of voodoo.

  “Dad, I can’t breathe!”

  Even my view through the telepathic link was developing tunnel vision. Dad’s hands were barely visible, though I could see he was flashing a set of commands. I closed my eyes, rolled onto my back, and inhaled deep breaths of air.

  “Thanks, Dad.” I opened my eyes. Grandpa, Moons, and Luucas were standing over me, looking worried. Luucas's attackers were dead. Their corpses lay against the back wall. I tried not to think about them.

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  “Is the spell gone?” Moons asked.

  Dad answered in my head. “No. What must have started as a small voodoo charm has become a leviathan. Every spell I use against it is absorbed, making it stronger.”

  I shook my head. “He needs to see the spell. It’s here.”

  “And more,” Luucas said, pointing to something on the floor behind him. “There’s an underground bunker.”

  “Ruairí’s house?” Color me intrigued.

  Grandpa helped me stand. Once upright, I saw Luucas had been referring to a trap door in the floor. The door had been pulled open and I could see a metal staircase inside. Feathers, pebbles, and fragments of bone littered the stairs, and there were pockmarks in the walls. I assumed these were the remains of voodoo wards that Dad had blown up. The dim overhead light only fell on the top half of the stairs, cloaking whatever was at the bottom.

  I didn’t think I could walk down the dark stairs without falling, so Grandpa scooped me up. I felt us rise upward and bob gently in the air. We glided to the bottom of the stairwell and Grandpa set me down. Thanks to Death Radar, I could at least get a sense of where everyone was. Luucas was to my left and Grandpa was covering the rear. Moons stood in front of us, casting a spell at the door. I felt a small energy surge from Moons’s spell, then heard a small click. The door opened into blackness.

  “We are in,” Moons whispered.

  We were so excited to get inside that we all moved forward and collided.

  “I should go first,” Luucas said, “just in case someone’s inside.” The air tensed with Grandpa and Moons’s unspoken offense. My tummy grumbled. “I mean no disrespect, Sirs. You’re too valuable to our people. If something were to happen—”

  “I am not a delicate flower,” Moons snapped.

  “Okay, then stay here and protect Kari while I secure the first room.”

  Another awkward pause.

  “Dad got rid of Ruairí’s spells, except for the one draining The Floor. So it’s safe. Right, Dad?”

  “I confess I am also curious to see what is inside. If you stay near the door, I will keep you safe.”

  “See?” I said, as if everyone could hear that. “The coast is clear.”

  “That is not what I said.”

  “Close enough.”

  Grandpa guided me inside. I smelled cooked meat, sweat socks, and strong mint—the saccharine kind from an air freshener. Grandpa shut the door, cutting us off from the dim light at the top of the stairs. He took my shoulders and turned me. I assumed I was facing the door. He slipped his fingers under my bracelet, allowing Dad to see through his eyes. Grandpa’s sight was much better than mine, especially in the dark.

  “Diaco,” he said, “a protective ward, please?”

  A massive spell bloomed. I could feel the energy spread out, wrapping around the perimeter of the bunker. Just when I thought the two ends of the spell would meet, they continued on below, revealing a space that was much more expansive than I expected. There were two more floors beneath us. I was pretty sure they went under the street. Grandpa slipped his fingers out from my bracelet.

  “This place is huge,” I said.

  Luucas’s voice called back from somewhere across the bunker. “And bizarre.” His voice dropped so low I almost missed his next words. “I don’t think she should see this.”

  “What? What do you see?” I demanded. “Turn on the lights!”

  “Yes, turn on a light!”

  Grandpa had left me at the door, so I was on my own. I groped around enough to deduce that I was standing in a small entry. A folding screen with fabric panels formed two walls, and the metal door was part of the third, set in cold cinderblock.

  I felt my way down the cinderblock to a corner of the room, turned, and kept going. A few feet in, I reached drapery, knocked over a floor lamp, and bumped my shin on a bulky piece of wood. I yelped and switched the lamp on.

  The bunker had once been a fallout shelter. Olive-green drapery hung from the outer walls, masking most of the drab cinderblock. Matching fabric panels, like the one that cordoned off the entry, were scattered everywhere to create smaller rooms. I stood in the living room, near a green couch and a matching loveseat, a simple coffee table, and an old television. An upright piano sat against the far wall.

  I stepped around a set of fabric panels and spotted a small kitchenette. More panels blocked my view to the back room, but it looked like a bedroom. Despite how clean the bunker appeared, it was thoroughly lived-in. Ruairí had been here for a long time.

  Grandpa, Moons, and Luucas faced massive wooden shelving mounted to the wall; it was the same wood that I had banged into. It was thick, crude wood, coated in a shiny resin, and ran the entire length of the bunker. The shelves were clearly the prized feature of the room, loaded with hundreds of items that hardly seemed a noteworthy collection: a bent gold ring with a tiny, blue stone; a single filthy sock, neatly folded; a clay jar; a hairpin; a ragged, cloth shirt; a lock of blond hair in a bottle; a black journal; and a pair of worn women’s shoes from the seventeenth century. The items were spaced evenly except for two empty spots: one in the center of the second shelf and a small space at the end.

  In my head, I heard Dad curse quietly in Iberian. Obviously, the collection had a special meaning that I didn’t quite understand. Something everyone else knew. I stepped back and scanned the items again. My eyes were repeatedly drawn to the two empty spots.

  The meaning clicked and a wave of nausea rushed over me. I was beholding Ruairí’s trophy wall, where he featured a personal item from every necromancer he had ever killed. The items must have been arranged as a timeline. The space in the middle was waiting for Mikelis’s contribution. The empty spot at the end was for mine.

  “Well, I’m effectively disturbed.” I turned my back on the wall and tried not to think about it.

  I slipped around the fabric panels until I was in the bedroom. Red drapery covered the cinderblock. The bed was raised on a platform and flanked by two narrow, wooden nightstands. Near the end of the bed, a television sat atop a dresser, and on the other side there was a closed door. Other than this place being the underground bunker of a nutcase, it looked pretty normal.

  I left the guys where they were whispering and gawking at the trophy wall and opened the door. My stomach turned.

  The light in the room was already on—a single naked bulb dangling over a filthy operating table. Dried, red blobs covered the table and dotted the cement around it. A freezer sat on the left side of the room next to a closed door. On the right side, a ragged cloth doll hung from a long peg on the wall. The doll had short bits of straw and broken feathers for hair. Most of the objects that had composed its face were gone, leaving nothing but small stains where eyes and a mouth had once been. Its only clothing was a single black shoe with a strange, white emblem drawn on the sole. I couldn’t make it out. Gray, foreign script hung over the doll. Its power was massive and sick and pulsing as if alive.

  Hundreds of gray strands protruded from the script, similar to the one I had seen attached to Uncle Rick.

  I turned around and called out, “I found the spell!”

  Grandpa, Moons, and Luucas joined me. They didn’t seem as interested in the room as I was; they were focused on the door next to the freezer
. After a cursory inspection of the doll and operating table, they went straight for that door and disappeared behind it.

  While they explored the bunker, I stared at the voodoo doll so Dad could poke and prod at the spell, searching for a solution so we could destroy it, save Uncle Rick, and go home. Black smoke and energy swirled around me, a byproduct of Dad’s spells. His hands and arms worked everything from complicated, sweeping gestures to short, stabbing movements. I had expected his spells to react with the voodoo energy in a clash of opposing powers, but nothing happened. Every spell that hit the cloth doll just disappeared. The gray spell script darkened a little with each spell Dad cast. My nose was itching again. I had to take a step back.

  “What’s happening, Dad?”

  “It is as I feared. Ruairí’s spell absorbs necromantic energy. I am unable to destroy it.”

  “There has to be a way.”

  “If there is, I do not know of it. Tell me how you disconnected the telepathic spell from your watch. Perhaps we could use the process here.”

  That was a great idea. I could build a spell from the magic killer.

  “You’ll have to get my symbols notebook from the panic room,” I said. “It’s in the drawer with the knives. Says ‘Symbols’ right on the front.”

  Through the telepathic link, I watched Dad go downstairs. The signal cut out when he stepped through the barrier of the black posts in my lab. When the connection returned, he was back in the hall with the notebook in his hands.

  “It’s on one of the last pages, Dad.”

  He flipped to the end. The very last entry was for the magic killer.

  “Okay,” I said, “that’s great. Just stare at that page for a moment.”

  I gestured the coordinates for the magic killer and watched them materialize in the air before me. Once the coordinates had formed, I gestured again, sending them off to connect to their power on The Floor. The black string of runes appeared. I separated the panels and pulled off the symbol for the cloth doll, making it the spell’s target. I collapsed the layers together. They snapped back with a clang.

  “Now what must you do?” Dad asked.

  “There are two kinds of powers on The Floor: blood powers and death powers.” I opened up the spell again and pulled the power’s runes to the front. I pointed at the end of the runes. “See that little swirl at the end? It looks like a spiral.”

  “Yes.”

  “That means it’s a death power.”

  “You will need Luucas.”

  “Exactly.”

  I went to the door next to the freezer and pulled it open. A rickety set of stairs descended into the lower levels of the bunker. The air was stale and bitter. My skin crawled. I groped around for a light switch but couldn’t find one.

  “Luucas! I need to kill you.”

  His voice sounded distant and muffled. “Coming!”

  I turned away and started to shut the door, but I changed my mind. I stuck my head back into the creepy darkness. “What’s down there?”

  There was no immediate answer, which insinuated something I didn’t want to know.

  “Don’t come down here,” Luucas finally said. “It’s where the necromancers are kept.”

  “Like a dungeon?”

  Moons’s voice cut into our conversation, promptly ending my curiosity. “It is a massive torture chamber for your necromancer predecessors!”

  A cold shiver ran over my skin. “I’ll just stay up here then.”

  I shut the door, keeping the eerie vibe of the lower floors at bay. A minute later, Luucas emerged with Grandpa and Moons in tow.

  I explained the solution. It was simple. Efficient. Clean. More importantly, no one would get hurt. They liked the plan, so Luucas gave his permission to sacrifice him. I sent his soul to The Floor and carefully drew a bit of his life force. My spell went off...

  A loud screech filled the air. The gray voodoo script darkened to charcoal and expanded like storm clouds. The doll glowed faintly as its foul energy swelled. I gagged and retreated to the freezer, out of the spell’s aura of influence.

  I crouched down and put my head between my knees. Grandpa and Moons couldn’t see the voodoo script or feel what had happened, and they just kept asking what was going on. I gestured at Luucas’s shrouded form, bringing his soul up. He saw me crouched against the wall and his concern only added to the calamity.

  “It’s absorbing our spells,” I croaked. “Necromancy makes it stronger.”

  “When the spell has gathered enough energy, it will send that energy through the network of unauthorized communities,” Dad said.

  We had to stop feeding it power.

  “What about other channels?” Luucas asked. “Moons and I could try to kill it with third-channel magic. We could cast a spell simultaneously.”

  It was worth a shot. Grandpa and I moved back out to the bedroom and watched from the sidelines. Dad put a new bubble around both of us.

  Moons held up one hand and counted down from three. Their mouths moved at the same time, chanting together. Twin red runes filled the air above them. When the spells were complete, cones of flame shot from their hands and engulfed the voodoo doll in a single sphere of orange fire. The ball hung in the air for a half minute. I wasn’t sure if it was actually doing anything; I could see on their faces that something was wrong. The air crackled. The sphere swelled and contracted, struggling to squelch the voodoo within. The flames turned violet and black in the feverish struggle, then the sphere collapsed in on itself. A whirlpool of flame drained into the doll and disappeared.

  A moment of stillness settled over the bunker. The floor trembled. Grandpa reached out and pulled me behind him. I peeked out so I could see.

  The voodoo spell returned the fire. Two red flames shot back out toward Moons and Luucas. I screamed. Luucas shouted and dove for Moons, pushing him out of the way. They fell through the door at Grandpa’s feet as the freezer and far wall were engulfed in flames. From their prone positions, they screamed and waved their arms, casting new spells to extinguish the flames. Dad cursed in Iberian again.

  Grandpa was the only one who seemed unfazed. “The spell defends itself,” he mused, “and it absorbs all necromancer magic aimed at it.”

  “There must be a way,” Dad said. “I thought the magic killer destroyed one of your knives? Surely it could have annihilated Ruairí’s spell.”

  “It wasn’t in spell form. It was a raw power, but I cast it inside my lab, so the posts were around it.”

  “We should try that, then.” Dad dissolved the bubble around us. The fire was now out and Moons was pulling Luucas up off the floor.

  “We’re going to try something else,” I said, “but we need to make a set of posts first. Feel free to return to your exploration. I’ll call you back when we’re ready.”

  Posts are created from spheres, so I could do the first part myself. Spheres are easy, and the commands for making them are intuitive for every necromancer. As soon as we complete our first sacrifice, we can feel the strands of supernatural energy that compose the world and, naturally, we’re drawn to them. When I was a kid, I was constantly making small, spastic movements with my hands, so people thought I was nervous and fidgety. But that wasn’t the case at all; I was just fiddling with the fabric of magic.

  I didn’t make my first sphere until I was ten years old. My mom found it hidden under my bed, wrapped in a blanket. She and Dad sat me down and assured me that making spheres was healthy and normal, as long as I didn’t do it in front of other people.

  I cupped my hands together and fanned the air gently. Black smoke rolled up from my feet and spiraled around my legs, moving upward until I was surrounded by a dark tornado. Strands of energy slipped between my fingers and gripped my wrists. White sparks danced between my palms, forming a nucleus of cold fire. Wisps of smoke peeled off of the cocoon surrounding me and pierced the light. The smoke and fire writhed and swirled into a ball, like oil and water attempting to combine. I gestured again and mov
ed my left hand over the top of the ball. It hardened into glass and dropped into my right. The torrent of smoke around me dissipated. I set it on the floor and made three more.

  When I had finished, I held one of the spheres before me so Dad could cast on it. Black runes burned the air above and a heavy shroud of smoke enveloped me. The white parts of the sphere flared brightly while the black parts softened into putty. We did the same thing for the remaining spheres, then I placed them on the floor around the room. The voodoo doll hung a couple of inches from the wall, so the spheres could easily get behind it.

  I pulled a chair from the adjoining bedroom and sat down to watch, thinking to myself how easy killing Ruairí’s voodoo spell was going to be. The posts took nearly an hour to stretch completely to the ceiling. The embossed runes formed last, slithering up from the base and intertwining until they reached the top. The first post clanged and a set of inky runes swirled around it. The second post was just a minute behind. When all four posts had finished, sheets of shadow stretched between them, enclosing the room and the voodoo spell and severing the voodoo tendrils.

  I stood. “Okay, Dad, the posts are finished. I’m going to call—”

  I didn’t get a chance to finish. The voodoo script darkened and convulsed. The long, gray tendrils that connected the unauthorized communities shimmered and trembled on both sides of the barrier walls. They shifted positions, as if looking for an opening. When they couldn’t find a way past the barrier, balls of green-white light ran through the tendrils and slammed into the walls. The impact made a sound like a firecracker. One of the balls splashed against the barrier directly in front of me, catching me off guard. I backed way up. The posts hummed. I felt their energy dancing on my skin as they worked to keep the voodoo spell at bay.

  The cacophony drew Luucas, Moons, and Grandpa, who had been exploring the lower floors of Ruairí’s bunker. Their signals appeared on the other side of the protected area, at the door by the freezer.