Flame Caller (15 page)

The blow knocked the air out of him.
Every time he tried to take in a breath, the muscles across his
back and ribs constricted, tightening over his lungs.

“
Xander,” Sammy yelled in
concern. She took a step toward him but he held up his hand,
telling her to stay where she was.

He sat on his knees for nearly a
minute before his muscles finally relaxed and breath flooded into
his screaming lungs. He coughed but the jerking movement sent pain
roaring up his bruised back.

“
What’s wrong, boy?”
Patrick taunted from across the arena. “Is this not as easy when
one of the Wind Warriors isn’t holding your hand? You want to go
crawling back to your Fire Warrior and ask for her
help?”

Xander drove his fist into the stone
floor. The sudden pain in his knuckles helped him focus as he
pushed himself back to his feet. He turned sharply toward Patrick
and flicked his head to the side, brushing his shaggy hair out of
his eyes.

As soon as he was back on his feet,
the Irishman swept his arms to the side. Xander reflexively raised
his arms and the wind responded, surrounding him in a bubble of
pressurized air. Despite his defense, Patrick’s hurricane strength
wind shattered his bubble and lifted him from his feet.

Xander tumbled end over end across the
courtyard. His shoulder slammed awkwardly into the marble as he
careened across the ground. Pains lanced down his arm, feeling like
a hot needle sliding just under his skin. He groaned and tried to
stop his momentum but Patrick’s control of the elements was too
strong.

He looked up to see the base of an
archway speeding toward him. Panic raced through him as he saw the
sharper corners of the pillar’s square base. The white marble
glistened in the sunlight. It didn’t take a creative imagination to
envision the beautiful white stained with his red blood.

Instead of trying to stop his
momentum, Xander redirected the wind. A blast of air struck him in
the chest and face, pushing him out of the way of the oncoming
pillar and its deadly edges. Though it wasn’t his intent, it had a
second unintentional effect of stopping his end over end tumbling.
Patrick’s power still moved him forward across the arena but his
redirection had him skidding diagonally across uneven marble tiles.
The pillar passed less than a foot from his face as it shot past.
Looking up, Xander realized he wasn’t out of the clear yet. Beyond
the archway, the hard wall of a nearby building barreled toward
him. He flipped himself around moments before he reached the house,
taking the strike across his back once again.

Xander coughed painfully and tasted a
metallic twinge in the back of his throat. He reached fingers into
the back of his throat and pulled them out tinted red with
blood.

He looked up, though it was hard to
see through the lights dancing in his vision. He could see either
or aunt or uncle—it wasn’t easy to tell through blurry
vision—stepping into the courtyard. Their voice carried easily to
where Xander sat.

“
That’s enough, Patrick,”
the Wind Warrior said sternly. Their voice was muddled by the
constant ringing in his ears. “You’ve made your point.”

“
Stay out of this,” the
Irishman retorted. “If he wants to start a war with the Fire Caste,
then he needs to grow up faster than any of you will let him. He’s
going to need to fight as if his life depends on it. I’m giving him
a taste of that now.”

“
And when will you stop?”
Alicia said. The sense of having cotton shoved in his ears was
fading and the voices were clearer. “Maybe when you’ve killed
him?”

“
He wants a war,” Patrick
snarled. “People die in war. He should know that better than
anyone, since he just lost both of his parents.”

Xander felt the knot in his gut ignite
with his rage. Of all the people to remember his recent loss,
Patrick had the least right to mention them. The wind that had been
holding him in place suddenly passed through him, as though
absorbed by his skin. He felt it build inside of him, like it was
water pouring into a very deep well. The power swelled within him,
granting him a sense of strength he hadn’t felt in a
while.

The world around him seemed to lighten
as he watched Alicia and Patrick argue. The edges of his vision
were painted with a white halo. The dark color of his pupils faded
first to a light brown before paling to near white. Before long,
even the dark rim around his pupils had faded away until a glowing
white light consumed his eyes.

Sammy rushed to his side, staggering
against the strong wind that Patrick kept aloft with barely a
subconscious thought. Her blonde braid billowed away from her body
as he braced herself against the wall.

“
Oh my God, Xander,” she
said. “Are you okay?”

Xander looked up at her and she
stepped back in surprise. He smiled softly to his girlfriend as he
pushed himself off the floor. The strong wind didn’t seem to bother
him. In fact, his dark hair didn’t even waver in the wind as though
he were completely buffered from its power.

Reaching out, he squeezed her shoulder
affectionately before turning back toward the arena.

“
Just leave him alone,”
Alicia told Patrick. The two stood inches away from each other,
their noses nearly touching as they argued loudly.

Patrick opened his mouth to reply but
he was paused when Xander spoke.

“
It’s okay, Alicia,” he
said as he stood in the archway. Xander’s arms were crossed over
his chest. “Let him say what he’s got to say.”

Patrick furrowed his brow in
confusion. He gently pushed Alicia back, more for her safety than
anything else. Wisely, she backed up and rejoined the other aunts
and uncles.

The Irishman tensed his shoulders and
the wind responded, blowing past him as it roared toward where
Xander stood. Xander shifted his right foot behind him, bracing for
the blasting vortex. The wind struck him with incredible force but
he not only kept his feet, he barely even had to rock
backward.

“
I’ve been listening to
you run your mouth about me. I’ve listened to you run your mouth
about Sammy. That’s her name, by the way, no matter how much you
may not want to get to know her. But now that you’ve decided to
bring my family into this, now I’ve had enough.” Xander took a step
forward, despite the torrential wind, much to Patrick’s surprise.
“If you don’t want to give me any respect, then I’ll just have to
make you respect me.”

The wind tore through the openings
between the arches behind him. Instead of flowing past him like it
had with Patrick, the wind poured into Xander. The bottomless well
within him filled quickly with the raw elemental power. The white
halo in his vision consumed more of the arena, leaving his gaze as
a pinpoint focused solely on the Irishman.

The wind started as an angry hiss as
it flooded across the island, slithering through the streets from
all directions as it consolidated around the arena. The shutters of
the nearby buildings fluttered as the wooden planks were ripped
from their moorings and spun on their hinges, before slamming back
into the marble walls. Ceramic shingles rattled and clinked against
one another as the individual flows of wind merged. The power of
the cyclone around them built in magnitude. A slab of marble that
formed the top of a bench screeched loudly as the tornado drove it
off its stone base. In the distance, Xander could hear a crack of
stone, though he couldn’t tell what broke or where.

Sammy huddled beside the aunts and
uncles underneath a broad archway. The elder Wind Warriors focused
on keeping the driving winds at bay but Sammy was still forced to
cower against the pillar and cover her face.

“
Is that the best you
got?” Patrick yelled with a nervous laugh.

The howl of the wind grew louder as
Xander’s response. The arena became the eye of a violent storm. The
buildings nearby groaned, as the wind grew even stronger. The aunts
and uncles, trapped on the periphery of the storm, stooped lower as
they fought to control the destructive winds streaming past
them.

The sky overhead darkened as clouds
blotted out the bright tropical sunlight. Thunder rumbled across
the sky and brilliant flickers of lightning split the dark gloom
that spread over the island.

Patrick glanced around nervously. A
loud rattle warned him moments before a shingle tore free of a
rooftop and launched into the middle of the arena. He threw up a
hand and a quick gust of wind pushed the red clay tile aside. It
shattered on the marble floor, sending shards of clay spraying
across the courtyard.

A blinding flash of light split the
air as a lightning bolt struck one of the abandoned buildings. The
blast blew through the roof, leaving a smoldering crater in the
ceiling. The loosened shingles around the blasted hole were lifted
by the vortex and spun aggressively around the perimeter of the
arena.

A second bolt struck a cobblestone
road that ran parallel to the courtyard, cracking the heavy
stones.

Patrick stepped toward Xander and
yelled to be heard over the deafening storm.

“
That’s enough. You’re
going to tear the island apart if you keep this up.”

Xander glowered at the man. “This is
what you wanted, isn’t it? You wanted to see if I could hold my own
against the Fire Warriors. You wanted to know if I had what it
takes to start a war. Are you satisfied yet? Maybe you need a more
personal demonstration.”

Though the tornado continued to roar
around the arena, a shard of the wind split from the cyclone and
flashed across the courtyard. Patrick summoned his own wind and the
two forces of nature slammed into one another in between the two
men. The crash of the winds sounded like an explosion splitting the
air.

Xander sneered and pushed his wind
forward. Sweat beaded on Patrick’s brow as he struggled against the
crushing pressure.

The vortex around the arena increased
in pressure, mimicking the growing power of the wind within the
courtyard. The wind shredded the rooftops just outside the ring of
archways, filling the air with flying debris. Spinning shingles
grew closer to where Sammy, Thea, Alicia, and Giovanni hid. Lost in
their protective focus, the aunts and uncles didn’t notice the
dangerous shards growing ever closer. Sammy threw up her hands and
the air in front of her wavered from the heat. The shingles
shimmered for a moment as they flew toward the hiding group. One
after another, they exploded in the heat, leaving behind melting
shards that dripped harmlessly to the ground.

“
Xander,” she yelled as
she destroyed another volley of red clay shingles. “Xander, you
need to stop!”

Xander couldn’t hear her. His focus
was solely on the battle between him and Patrick. She could see the
Irishman buckling under the onslaught of gale-force winds. It
wouldn’t be too much longer until he was broken under the pressure.
If she didn’t stop him soon, he was likely going to kill his fellow
Wind Warrior.

The vortex around the arena grew
wider, consuming more of the empty buildings. A loud crack split
the air as a wall collapsed under the driving winds.

Around the island, the waterspout
wavered as it struggled to maintain its integrity. Sections of the
waterspout caved as the vortex within its interior grew in
ferocity. Sheets of seawater poured over the buildings like rain.
Beyond the island, lightning struck the ocean in rapid succession,
lighting up the dark cloudy sky.

“
He’s going to tear the
island apart,” Giovanni warned as he knocked aside a shard of
marble that had gotten caught up in the storm. “When did he get
this powerful?”

“
Who cares?” Thea replied.
“I’m going to stop him.”

She turned toward the interior of the
arena, watching the two men locked in combat. With her back turned,
she couldn’t see the stray shingle soaring toward the back of her
head.

Sammy leapt from beside the pillar and
tackled Thea. They fell to the floor together, a jumble of limbs as
they struck the hard ground. The shingle flew dangerous close to
their heads and smashed into the pillar beside them. The anger was
drained from Thea as she realized Sammy had just saved her
life.