Flame Caller (17 page)

From a distance, the air above White
Halls was stained with smears of greasy, black clouds. The sooty
smoke rose from buildings across the town, seemingly chosen
haphazardly.

Xander’s heart sank. He knew there was
a chance the Fire Warriors would still be in town but he had
foolishly expected to find the town relatively unscathed. If it was
him they were after, it didn’t make much sense to destroy the town,
especially once they realized he was no longer there. Then again,
he had to remind himself, the Fire Caste existed to burn away the
stain of mankind. He didn’t think they had many qualms about
starting with even an insignificant town like White
Halls.

They skimmed over the rooftops of the
houses that formed the border of the town. A short distance to his
right, he could see the large, faded, wooden sign that welcomed
visitors as they entered the town from Highway 41. The streets
below them flashed by in a blur as they sped toward Sean’s
apartment.

Glancing beside him, Xander caught
Sammy’s eye and immediately knew that she saw what he had already
noticed. The streets were empty. No one wandered down the
sidewalks, sat on their porches, or yelled over the fences to their
neighbors. Kids were curiously absent, as were their discarded
bicycles and toys. On the warm afternoons, he would have expected
to see plastic child pools inflated on the lawns with children and
adults alike splashing in the shallow waters. Instead, grasses grew
too tall in front lawns and vegetables went untended in home
gardens.

Nervousness twisted Xander’s gut.
Everything about the town was wrong. He prayed quietly that Sean
was all right.

“
Look,” Sammy said
hurriedly. “There’s someone down there.”

Xander followed her gaze but
immediately frowned. The man that looked up at their passing had
telltale blonde hair and wore leather armor stained so dark it was
nearly black.

“
Fire Warrior,” he
muttered, though he knew Sammy couldn’t hear him over the billowing
wind around them. Then again, he also knew she didn’t need to hear
him. Her bitter expression told him she recognized what the man was
as well.

As soon as they passed overhead, the
man turned and ran down the street in the direction they were
going.

Xander regretted flying into town so
recklessly. He had been caught up in the mixed emotions of leaving
the other irritating Wind Warriors and the excitement of seeing
Sean again. He never stopped to consider that the Fire Warriors
could sense his use of power, even his ability to fly. Soaring into
the center of town like a cowboy vigilante had been foolish and,
more importantly, incredibly dangerous and stupid.

“
We need to land,” Sammy
said, echoing his thoughts.

He glanced over at her and smiled. If
they started finishing each other’s sentences, then he’d know that
they’d become “that couple”. He knew the type; the type of couple
that also referred to themselves as “we” rather than “I” as though
they lost the ability to think as a single unit.

“
We’re almost to his
apartment building already,” he replied. “We might as well land
once we get there.”

“
Be on your guard. If one
felt your elemental power, there’ll be others. The place could be
crawling minutes after we touch ground.”

Xander kept her warning in the back of
his mind as they soared toward the nearest cloud of smoke. The
smoke billowed from the remains of a smoldering house, recently set
ablaze and extinguished not by firefighters but left to burn until
it was nothing but a framework of cinders and ash. The pillar of
black soot obscured his view of the apartment.

The duo tilted to the right and
skirted the edge of the cloud. As they came around the far side,
Xander felt crestfallen. His heart did flips in his chest and he
clenched his jaw tightly to keep from screaming in
frustration.

Sean’s apartment was
destroyed.

Specifically, the corner of the
apartment where his room had been located was gutted by fire, long
since burned out. The roof was collapsed, exposing the hollowed
interior. Water damage stained the brickwork of the building’s
exterior and turned the ash within the scorched room to thick
paste. Clearly, this fire had been put out by what remained of the
firefighting crews.

The pair dipped toward the parking lot
of the apartment and their feet touched down gently on the grass
marking the edge of the asphalt slab. Xander hit the ground running
as he hurried toward the exterior stairwell.

“
Xander,” he heard Sammy
yell from behind him.

He didn’t stop, instead keeping his
pace toward the apartment. There had to be something inside the
apartment that could tell him where he could find Sean. He refused
to believe that Sean wasn’t alive; he had to keep hope that his
best friend survived the Fire Warrior’s attack.

“
Xander, watch out,” Sammy
cried out.

He glanced to his right just in time
to see a jet of flame shooting toward him. Xander dropped to the
ground and slid on the dry asphalt. The inferno soared just over
his head, singeing the tips of his dark hair. The knees of his
loose-fitting pants tore and scraped the skin beneath. He felt the
trickle of blood running down his calf as he slid to a stop and
leapt back to his feet.

The Fire Warrior sneered and shifted
his aim. The stream of fire angled back in his
direction.

Instinctively, Xander threw aside his
hands and a miniaturized tornado immediately appeared beneath his
attacker. The flames disappeared as soon as the Fire Warrior lost
his concentration, the conflagration stopping inches from the side
of his head. He felt the hairs curl under the onslaught of
heat.

The Fire Warrior was caught in the
cyclone and spun wildly, hovering only a few feet off the ground.
The man’s eyes rolled in his head as vertigo overwhelmed
him.

“
Are you okay?” Sammy
asked as she rushed over to Xander’s side.

He nodded slowly, keeping his eye
fixated on the swirling, blonde warrior. “I’m good.”

Sammy followed his gaze. “What are you
going to do with him?”

Xander flicked his wrist and the Fire
Warrior catapulted into the air, quickly becoming little more than
a distal, shapeless blob.

Sammy’s expression slackened with
surprise. She clutched Xander’s arm tightly, her nails digging into
the flesh up his triceps.

“
Don’t kill him,” she said
hastily.

Xander arched an eyebrow and looked at
her worried expression. He couldn’t imagine the inner turmoil she
dealt with every day, knowing that she was taking a stand not just
against a faceless mass of the Fire Caste, but against people she
knew by name and had trained with in her youth. For all he knew,
she was friends with the man he had just flung carelessly into the
air.

Sammy turned toward him, her eyes
swimming with concern. “Please, Xander.”

Xander shook his head. “Don’t worry. I
haven’t killed one of them yet.”

The Fire Warrior crashed into a tree
on the far side of the parking lot. They heard the man grunt loudly
as he tumbled through the thick branches. Eventually he broke
through the dense foliage on the bottom boughs and dropped
unceremoniously onto the hard ground.

“
I never promised he
wouldn’t wish he was dead when I was done,” Xander smirked, “but at
least he’ll live.”

Sammy offered her hand with a thankful
smile. He pulled himself to his feet and they walked together
toward where the Fire Warrior rested, still groaning
softly.

As they skirted the side of a parked
car, Xander came to a sudden stop. His eyes widened in surprise and
he stared in amazement at the paint spread childishly on the
concrete.

Sammy looked at the same crude marks
but couldn’t make sense of the triangles.

“
What is it?” she
asked.

Xander could hardly contain his
laughter. “Sean’s alive and I know where to find him.”

They walked the rest of the way to the
White Halls College. On the ground, they could see people peering
nervously from behind drawn curtains or through the slats of closed
blinds. It set Xander’s mind at rest knowing that there were plenty
of people still alive and well within White Halls, even if they
were too scared to leave their homes.

He and Sammy turned sharply in front
of the familiar lecture hall. For a brief moment, Xander paused and
stared up the steps leading to the long stretch of glass doors.
Even though he had never believed it at the time, life had been so
much simpler when he was just an unenthusiastic college student,
half-heartedly stumbling his way through his classes.

Turning away from the building, he led
Sammy toward a row of Victorian-style homes. The homes all looked
remarkably similar, with large pillars framing wrap-around porches.
Balconies jutted out invariably from the second floors, supported
by the pillars below. The only difference between the homes was the
general cleanliness of both the lawns and building exteriors. Some
were immaculately kept while others, like the one they currently
walked past, had patches of dead grass that had died from reasons
Xander would rather not guess.

A series of Greek letters had been
nailed above the doorways of each of the houses. Sammy gasped in
surprise as she pointed at three triangles hanging above one of the
better-kept homes. The triangles were an exact match for the
crudely drawn symbols on the concrete.

“
That’s it,” she said.
“What does it mean?”

“
Literally?” he asked. “It
means ‘Tri Delta’, which is a sorority on campus. Metaphorically,
it means that Sean is hanging out with the last possible person I
would have expected.”

They walked up the steps of the house
and knocked loudly on the door. For a long moment, they heard
nothing from inside. Xander’s jovial attitude began to fade as
doubt crept into his mind. He was so sure he’d find Sean at the Tri
Delta house that he hadn’t even considered what they’d do if we
wasn’t.

After a long wait, they finally heard
the scuffling of shoed feet. Xander had been in the house plenty
enough. He knew the footsteps were walking across the hardwood
foyer. Xander chewed on his bottom lip as he waited for someone to
answer the door.

The door was flung open suddenly.
Beyond its darkened archway, Xander could see Sean holding a
baseball bat as though he were ready to swing for a Major League
fastball. Behind him, a familiar blonde woman stood with a shocked
expression and a fire extinguisher clutched in her bloodless
fingers.

Both their weapons slowly dropped
toward the floor, as recognition passed through the odd pair of
Sean and Jessica.

“
Holy crap,” Sean
whispered.

“
It’s been far too long,
buddy,” Xander replied as he pulled his portly friend into a huge
hug.

The engine sputtered as it was turned
off, the swirling blades chopping the ocean water before coming to
a rest. The large motorboat coasted through the salty water,
rocking gently with the rolling waves.

On the surface of the boat, a group of
dark-armored men moved sluggishly as they strained to carry a heavy
canvas bag between them. The burlap fabric strained from the weight
and the men tried to time their steps so as not to rattle the
contents more than necessary. They moaned as they reached the small
set of stairs that led up to the observation platform at the bow of
the ship.