“I’m not going to lie that I hate being around some of your relatives,” she whispered in response. “But that doesn’t mean I want you rushing off to defend my honor every time one of them says something bad about me. If you did, you wouldn’t have any time for anything else. Anyway, I’m capable of taking care of myself.”
Xander smiled and took her hand. “I know you are. But in this case, it’s not a fight you can win. If you stand up to Patrick, it’s only going to give him the ammunition he needs to have you thrown off the island. No, this is something I’m going to have to do for the both of us.”
He turned toward the door but Sammy didn’t let his hand go. He turned back to see her smiling softly.
“Was he right?”
“About what?” he asked.
“Are you standing up for me because you love me?”
Xander knew Patrick had said it just to get a rise out of them both but he knew it wasn’t as far from the truth as Patrick believed.
He reached up and ran a hand across her cheek. “It sounds a lot better than saying we have some strange infatuation with each other, doesn’t it? Yes, Sammy. I love you.”
She leaned in and kissed him passionately. As they parted, he could hear her exhaling softly.
“I love you, too,” she said, smiling.
Xander took a deep breath to calm his pounding heart. “You really do make me happy, Sammy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go beat that fact into an arrogant Irishman.”
Xander had to duck underneath the low-hanging archway that led into the courtyard. He had trained not too long before with Thea in the same area. With the marble archways lining the perimeter of the courtyard, it still looked quite a bit like a modern Coliseum.
Red clay shingled roofs crowded the tops of the arches. They were angled downward like auditorium seating. Glancing at the surrounding rooftops, Xander could imagine ghostly figures lining the sloped roofs, watching the ensuing battle. The Wind Warriors of times past were the spectral observers, watching as Xander and Patrick faced one another.
“Let them watch,” Xander muttered angrily as he turned his attention toward the redheaded Irishman.
Patrick removed his shirt and set it on a sheered half-pillar that sat along the edge of the arena. Despite his age, Patrick was still in incredible shape. He flexed and his chest muscles swelled against his bare chest.
“I didn’t figure you would show,” he yelled, though he barely needed to raise his voice to be heard.
Xander scowled at the older man as he untied the cloth belt that held his tunic closed.
“Got nothing to say, lad? Cat got your tongue? Or maybe you need to ask your lady if it’s okay to talk back.”
Xander tossed his shirt aside unceremoniously, letting it fall in a crumpled heap underneath an archway. “I don’t have to run my mouth for people to know what I’m thinking.”
Patrick laughed derisively. “Everything you do and say just reminds me of how much of a kid you still are. You’re barely out of diapers and already thinking you’re tough enough to play with the big boys.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Sammy cross her arms defensively across her chest. Her mouth was etched in a permanent frown as she watched the exchange between the two men. From behind her, the other aunts and uncles emerged from between the pillars surrounding the courtyard, their curiosity piqued by the gauntlet thrown down between the two men. Xander knew what they came to see; both he and Patrick had their axes to grind. He wasn’t sure how far this would go but he was feeling angry enough to match whatever Patrick wanted to throw his way.
Looking over his shoulder, Xander looked into the faces of his aunts and uncles. They all watched with general interest. He didn’t see sympathy or concern for either of the combatants. They only saw two men eager to work through their respective testosterone-driven frustrations. How quickly they forgot that Xander just lost both his parents. It was infuriating to see their generally dismissive attitudes.
Xander felt a swelling of anger in his gut. The wind swirled around his legs. As it skimmed over the large, flat marble stones around his feet, the wind seemed to whisper to him. He couldn’t understand the words but he understood its message well enough. The wind brought whispered, half-heard promises of power.
“This isn’t a training session like you’ve been doing,” Patrick continued. “We’re not here to teach you how to use your powers. You’re a smart young man who clearly knows everything, so there’s nothing left to teach.”
The wind crept around his body like a serpent, climbing first up his legs before slithering around his torso. The air drew itself up higher until Xander could practically see it dancing in front of his vision.
Patrick smiled wickedly. “Don’t hold back. I definitely won’t be.”
“You just planning on talking me to death?” Xander asked dismissively.
Patrick sneered and shoved his hands toward Xander. A blast of dense air struck Xander in the chest and threw him across the courtyard. He slammed painfully into a carved marble pillar before collapsing to the ground.
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 Warri
or 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.
“I’ll take care of it,” Alicia said, stepping over the pair.
She lowered her head against the staggering wind.
“Xander. Patrick. You need to stop this.”
Neither man heard her yelling. The wind stole her words from her lips as soon as they left her mouth. She frowned and closed her eyes. She channeled the elemental power to her fingertips. The air around her grew deadly still, a stark contrast to the gale whirling around her. She could feel the pressure building in her ears as she cultivated her power.
The normally sweet, maternal woman’s brow creased with frustration as she watched the two egotistical men. She pushed her strength to its limits, knowing that nothing short of her best would separate the two warriors. When she knew she had done all she could, she took one strained step forward and raised her hands above her head.
“I said stop!”
She slammed her hands down to the marble floor and an explosion ripped through the air.
Both men were lifted from their feet by the blast and thrown to the ground. As quickly as it had arrived, the tornado around the courtyard disappeared. The dark skies cleared and brilliant sunlight streamed back through the walls of the waterspout. Even the rolling thunder faded away into the far distance.
Flame Caller Page 9
