Wind Warrior (15 page)

His words froze in his throat as he looked
over to the driver. Jessica frown deepened as her eyes grew
dangerously narrow.

“
No,” she said angrily.
“No, no, no. Absolutely not. Get out of my car, Sean.”

“
Any other time, I would.
Trust me. But now, I just need you to drive!”

She let go of the steering wheel and shoved
against his considerable weight, trying to force him out of the
partially opened car door.

“
Get out of my car, Sean!
I’m not joking with you. Get out!”

Sean was forced to grab hold of the handle
above the door as a last ditch effort to keep from being forced out
of the car. For a thin woman, Jessica wielded considerable strength
when she was angry.

“
Get out!”

“
Stop pushing me,” Sean
yelled.

The Fire Warrior burst through the hedgerow
and staggered out in front of the car. He turned his gaze to the
arguing occupants and the sneer returned to his face.

“
There you are!” the
warrior bellowed as he leaned on the hood of Jessica’s car. “No
more running. Tell me what I want to know!”

“
What is wrong with you
people?” she screamed. “Get off of my car, you freak!”

She stopped pushing Sean long enough to slam
her hand down on the car’s horn. The roar of the horn overwhelmed
the loud, three-way conversation.

Startled, the Fire Warrior staggered off the
hood and looked in horror at the vehicle. He stretched his hands
above his head and they began to glow white-hot. Flames licked his
fingertips seconds before he slammed them down on Jessica’s
hood.

The fire spread across the hood and rolled
up over the windshield, blinding Jessica and Sean to what lay
beyond the front of the car.

In a panic, Jessica screamed and stomped
down on the accelerator. The car leapt forward and they both heard
an unpleasant thud as the car sped away.

Blinded, they swerved from side to side
across the road. Sean leaned out of his partially opened door and
saw them coming up quickly to an intersection.

“
Stop, Jessica,” he said as
calmly as his nervous body would allow. He could see them still
accelerating dangerously, so he reached over and placed a hand on
her arm. “Stop the car, Jessica.”

She released the gas pedal and slammed down
instead on the brake. Sean jerked forward and his forehead struck
the edge of the doorframe. He rocked backward as the car came to a
stop and grabbed his head.

“
Gah!” he yelled, actual
words eluding him.

Jessica’s chest heaved as she struggled for
breath. Her hands were clenched tightly around the steering wheel
so tightly that her knuckles practically glowed white. As they sat
in the car—Jessica clutching the wheel silently and Sean clutching
his head and groaning—the flames flickered down and died away on
the hood of the car. Only a layer of soot remained over the
windshield, blurring, but not obscuring, their vision.

“
Did I hit him?” Jessica
squeaked in a nearly inaudible voice. “It sounded like I hit
him.”

Sean groaned and leaned his head back
against the headrest. “If you did, good for you.”

Her cheeks went from a pale white to a
flushed angry in the span of a breath. “This is all your
fault!”

Sean opened one eye and immediately
regretted the movement as another stab of pain rolled through his
head. “I think I have a concussion.”

“
I don’t care! I hit a guy
with my car! Do you even know what this means?”

“
You really are a
man-killer?”

She let go of the steering wheel and shoved
against Sean’s body again. “That’s it! Get out of my car! I’m
serious this time!”

Begrudgingly, Sean stepped gingerly out of
the still-open door. Every movement made his head scream in pain.
He leaned down and looked apologetically at Jessica.

She shot him a glance that fully expressed
her feelings. “Close the door and get away from my car. You’ve done
enough damage already.”

Sean closed the door and looked through the
open window. “I really am sorry about this, if it makes a
difference.”

“
It doesn’t, Sean. Don’t
ever talk to me again!”

She drove quickly away, leaving Sean
standing abandoned in the middle of the road. He stole a glance
behind him but he couldn’t see the Fire Warrior.

Suddenly realizing just how exposed he was
in the middle of the road, he turned toward his apartment building
and jogged slowly away.

“
These,” his grandfather
explained, “are you aunts and uncles.”

Four middle-aged men and women stood on the
tiled mosaic on which Xander and his grandfather had landed. They
looked as different from one another as they did from him and he
doubted they were truly related by anything more than the power
that coursed through them all.

“
Hi,” he offered
weakly.

A long-haired man stepped forward. His black
hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail from which wisps of hair
escaped. Xander extended his hand to shake but the man brushed his
hand aside and embraced him in a massive hug.

“
My name is Giovanni,” the
Wind Warrior said, his thick Italian accent making him hard to
understand. His words came out in a broken cadence that told Xander
that English wasn’t his first language. “We have been waiting for
you for a long time. Welcome.”

Xander smiled at the warm welcome. In turn,
he was introduced to the three others. A tall, muscular woman was
introduced as Aunt Thea. Her posture and graceful movements left
Xander feeling intimidated in her presence.

The other woman was Alicia. She seemed far
more the doting grandmother type than dangerous warrior. She
flashed a disarming smile as she hugged him.

The final man was introduced as Uncle
Patrick. His flaming red hair matched his fiery personality.
Instead of a hug from the enthusiastic Irishman, Xander was punched
playfully in the shoulder.

As they resumed their places around him,
Xander had the chance to look at the gathered group. His smile
faded slowly and sadness crept into his eyes.

“
Is something wrong, dear?”
Alicia asked. Xander wasn’t entirely sure if she would pinch his
cheeks or offer him cookies if he seemed upset.

“
I just expected more of
you,” he said.

His heart felt heavy. Just the small group
of Fire Warriors that ambushed him and his grandfather greatly
outnumbered the small group sitting on the floating island.

“
This isn’t everyone,” his
grandfather said, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. “There
are two more of us.”

Xander frowned. “Just two more?”

“
I warned you that we were
a dying breed. You don’t know how much it means to see a young Wind
Warrior joining our ranks.”

“
So where are the other
two?”

Giovanni jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
Xander followed the gesture to the domed marble building that sat
in the center of the island. “Robert keeps the island afloat.”

Xander turned slowly and admired the wall of
water that was drawn upward by impossibly strong winds. “Just one
man is doing all this?”

“
We may be few,” Thea said
without humor, “but we’re more than a match for a handful of Fire
Warriors.”

“
Your Uncle Bart is
watching your parents,” his grandfather said.

Xander’s heart fluttered with relief at the
news. He hugged his grandfather, who groaned as Xander pushed
against the minor burns on his chest and ribs.

“
Thank you,” Xander
said.

“
They’re my family too. I
didn’t want to leave them, but I sure wouldn’t leave them
undefended. Bart will protect them for us.”

Looking behind him, Xander noticed an
outcropping of marble shaped haphazardly like a bench. He walked
over and collapsed onto the seat.

“
Is something the matter,
lad?” Patrick asked.

Xander rubbed his hands together furiously,
as though trying to remove a stubborn smudge of dirt.

“
I appreciate you guys
bringing me here and this place is amazing. It’s just… there are so
few of you. Even with the other two, there are only eight of us
left? Against the entire Fire Caste?”

The aunts and uncles all exchanged nervous
glances. His grandfather nodded solemnly and took a seat beside
Xander. Xander knew this wasn’t a conversation he was going to want
to hear.

“
I didn’t bring you here to
form an army. I brought you here to learn to control your powers,
so you could reach your fullest potential as a Wind
Warrior.”

“
They’re going to destroy
the planet,” he pleaded. “How can you all just sit here and accept
that?”

“
Because it’s the way it’s
supposed to be,” Giovanni said as he came over and knelt before
Xander. “You are young and, as you may have noticed, we are
not.”

The aunts and uncles laughed amongst
themselves.

“
We’ve had a lot of time to
prepare for this. Before you came, we were ready to grow old and
die, knowing that the reins had been passed to the Fire Caste. With
you, it changes things. You’re another chance for the last of the
Wind Caste to make a difference in the world before we
go.”

“
How can you be so calm
about it?” Xander asked. Gone was the vitriol in his voice. He
spoke instead with a quiet reservation.

“
Because it doesn’t matter
if we like the next stage in the world’s evolution,” Thea replied.
“We’ve done our job over the past few thousand years. Our kind has
been the inspiration and the muses for humanity. We’ve breathed the
life of creativity into their minds. We’ve helped them build
skyscrapers that reach toward the heavens. We’ve helped them build
planes that let them feel the wind in their faces. We’ve inspired
them to fly to the stars. But our time is coming to an end and the
Earth needs to be reborn. That’s the role of the Fire
Caste.”

“
But they’re willing to
kill us to get there,” he said softly. He wasn’t yet ready to
accept the end of the world so easily.

“
Aye,” said Patrick, “and
if it’s a fight they want, then it’s a fight they’ll get. We’ll
accept the Fire Caste when we’ve all grown old and died but I’ll be
damned if we’re going to let those greedy buggers kill us off
before our time.”

Xander smiled—glad to hear the fire still
burned in the bellies of the other Wind Warriors. “Then train
me.”

“
We will,” Alicia said,
again flashing her disarming maternal smile.

“
Come,” his grandfather
said as he stood from the bench. “Let’s get you cleaned up,
changed, and, most importantly, rested. You’re going to have a lot
of work ahead of you.”

That night, sleep refused to come. Despite
the exhaustion he felt, Xander’s mind swirled with hundreds of
individual thoughts. He climbed up the stairs of his small,
two-story marble cottage and opened the shutters, letting in the
cool night’s breeze. Within the flume of water, the roar was barely
noticeable. It sounded like a distant waterfall, soothing and
peaceful. In the heart of the hidden island, it was easy for him to
forget that an entire army of supernatural people were trying to
kill him.

Of all the thoughts flitting through his
mind, the thoughts of Sammy emerged time and time again to the
forefront. He should hate her, he knew, but he couldn’t help but
feel drawn to her.