The demonic voice cackled at her retreat, its voice chasing her into the narrow chasm in the stone edifice. She disappeared into its dark tunnel, enveloped by its consuming darkness.
She slowed to a walk, knowing that the eye couldn’t fit into the narrow tunnel. Reaching out, Sammy ignited flames around her hand, illuminating the narrow shaft. The tunnel ran generally downward, deeper into the earth. She risked a quick glance behind her but the entrance to the tunnel was lost in shadows. Sighing, she continued forward, hoping her mind would awaken from her nightmare sooner rather than later. Everything about this dream frightened her.
As she followed the tunnel deeper, the walls became smoother and carved, as though worked by hand. Moments later, she came across her first support beam. The beam was set against the wall but still required her to turn sideways to bypass its girth. As she slid past, her breath caught in her throat. She remembered doing this before, in a similar passage behind her father’s throne room.
Sammy quickly turned away from the passage, willing to take her chances back on the black stone catwalk. When she turned, however, she found herself facing a solid stone wall. What had once been a descending, sloped passage was now an alcove.
She sobbed silently as she turned back around, already aware of what she would find. The passage ended directly in front of her feet, opening into a massive underground chamber. The stone wall behind her slid forward, screeching against the floor and forcing her into the room.
Despite her light’s inability to illuminate the far end of the room, she knew what awaited her.
As if on cue, the giant burning eye flicked open, illuminating the far end of the chamber. Its presence set her skin aflame. The fire oozed from her pores. Though she could feel the intense heat, she knew she wasn’t going to burn to death.
“I told you we’d meet again,” the reptilian voice hissed, its voice filling the chamber.
Flames flickered from the left of the glowing eye, illuminating blood-red scales surrounding an elongated snout. Sammy tried to scream but the licking flames around her body swallowed her voice.
“Come to me, my child.”
Sammy tried to resist but her body moved of its own volition. She strode into the center of the room while the draconic eye followed her movements. Slowly, the eye turned away until another joined it; both eyes burned on opposite sides of the creature’s enormous, reptilian head. Flames danced from the end of its snout, briefly illuminating the rows of razor-sharp teeth beneath its nose.
“Come to me and be consumed,” it hissed.
The giant maw opened and flames poured out, consuming Sammy where she stood.
Xander cleared the table, scraping the vast majority of the uneaten food into the trash. His romantic date with Sammy had been a bust. He didn’t go into the date with high expectations of how the evening would end, but he didn’t expect his girlfriend to stagger away from his home looking ill.
He smiled as he set the plates in the sink. Sammy was his girlfriend. He hadn’t really dared admit it to himself since they reunited. It wasn’t that he was unused to being in a relationship; he had dated Jessica for years. Sort of dated, he had to remind himself. It was hard to think of Jessica now. She seemed to pale in comparison to Sammy. Maybe it was the elemental connection they shared, or the strange attraction they had for one another, but their relationship was already far stronger than his and Jessica’s had ever been.
With the table cleared, Xander climbed the narrow staircase and walked into his bedroom. He wasn’t feeling very tired despite the late hour and the exhausting day he’d had. He had already mentally prepared himself for a late night with Sammy and now that he was left to his own devices, he was frankly bored.
Lying down on the bed, he stared up at the faded mosaic on his bedroom ceiling. His eyes didn’t fixate on the clearer figures this time as they had before the funeral. Instead, he let his mind drift to the dinner and the ending of their date. He ran through all the conversations in his head, every gesture and glance, and psychoanalyzed them for hidden meaning. He knew it was a sign of his own insecurities and that he was probably reading too much into her expressions, but he couldn’t stop his mind from delving into the details of the night.
The sun finally set over the island, casting his room into darkness. He had some lanterns strategically placed around his room but didn’t bother lighting them. He almost wished the other Wind Warriors had splurged for portable generators so he could at least have some basic electricity. It was amazing how much he longed for the simple amenities. It was a sign of his generation, he knew. If he were back home, he’d be clinging to his cell phone like it was all that was keeping him afloat in a sea of technology. Thinking about it, Xander realized that he didn’t necessarily miss the technology. He had been managing just fine without it, just like he was doing without television or computer games. He no longer felt like he needed technology, but on nights like this when he was so incredibly bored, he really, really wished he had access to some video games to pass the time.
Sighing, he climbed out of bed. Sleep wasn’t going to come any time soon and it seemed like a waste to spend his evening lying around. Not that there was much else to do on the island other than walk the cobblestone streets, but it seemed a far better option than lying in bed until he passed out from sheer boredom.
He considered checking on Sammy. She would have been back at her home for an hour or so by then. She was probably asleep, he realized. She had barely seemed able to keep her eyes open when she was leaving after dinner.
Xander frowned. Checking on her wouldn’t be worth his time. Best-case scenario was that he found her asleep, recovering from whatever illness suddenly struck her. Worst-case scenario was that he accidentally woke her and had to face the wrath of an angry woman and Fire Warrior.
Whatever was wrong with her, he hoped it wasn’t serious. He had never considered her getting sick. He had always just assumed that her internal fire would burn away any germs. Realistically, it would have to, he realized. She had been raised in a cavern underground. It was practically an isolation chamber where the germs of the outside world didn’t dare to go.
Did she even have immunities to most of the basic illnesses that he had and gotten over when he was a kid? Or worse, did her higher body temperature actually just work like an incubation chamber for bacteria?
Xander suddenly wished he had never taken college biology.
The room was growing far too dark to sit in with any practicality. Despite his eyes adjusting to the dark fairly quickly, the room seemed morose and—despite his hesitation to admit it—haunted.
He walked toward the windows. He had closed the shutters on the windows that morning when he went to train to keep out the virtually constant sea spray. He had made the mistake of leaving his windows open after first arriving on the island and quickly realized that leaving them open here was like leaving his car window cracked during an unexpected summer shower. His clothes had been drenched that afternoon and he hadn’t made that mistake again.
He hadn’t bothered to open the windows again after training that day because he was too distracted with dinner preparations.
As he approached the shuttered window, he caught a whiff of something unexpected. The smell wafted through the closed shutters—an odd combination of campfire and sulfur. His blood ran cold as the smell of rotten eggs permeated his room. He had smelled that before when encountering Fire Warriors.
As his hand was closing over the shutter’s handle, a sharp pain stabbed into his gut. The pain buckled his knees and he moaned as he slid down to the floor. His head lowered toward the hard ground as it felt like the knife in his stomach was twisted sharply upward, aiming for his heart.
He had felt the twisting in his guts before whenever a Fire Warrior was using their abilities nearby but this pain far exceeded anything he’d experienced before. Moaning, he reached upward and searched for the windowsill. He fought the urge to curl into the fetal position on the floor and wai
t for the pain to pass. If he was feeling this exquisite of pain, it could only mean that the island was in trouble.
Finding the windowsill with his hand, Xander pulled himself up to his knees. A dim light was visible, flickering through the closed slats. The smell of smoke was stronger now and he could see wisps of gray ash seeping through the closed window. Reaching out, he knocked the shutters open.
Dancing flames were visible through the cloud of putrid smoke that billowed down the street in front of his house. The vibrant oranges, reds, and yellows illuminated the island in ghostly shadows.
He couldn’t see the source of the flames through the black cloud but he didn’t need to. There were only a few houses on the island that were occupied and only one that was that close to his own house.
Sammy’s house was on fire.
Despite the pain, Xander leapt from the window without a second thought, buoyed by a sudden updraft of wind. The smoke stung his eyes and burned his throat. He shifted the direction of the wind around him, blasting the smoke away from him. It obeyed his command and parted as he flew forward, but the smoke curled angrily around behind him, enveloping him in its consuming darkness.
The smoke parted before him as he approached Sammy’s house. The heat was intense, rolling from the upper floor of the building in scorching waves. Flames licked the roof as it poured through the slats of her closed shutters on her bedroom window.
Xander started to approach, pushing the smoke aside with the wind he generated. The angry flames reacted to the extra flow of air by flaring brighter. The clay tiles of the room cracked in the sudden increase of heat. He saw the red shingles fall from the building in shattered clusters and smash into the ground below.
Panicked, he pulled up short and pulled his buffeting wind in closer to his body. He didn’t know what had happened to Sammy but he couldn’t risk harming her in his poorly conceived rescue plan.
“Sammy,” he screamed into the night’s air but the roar of the fire stole his words.
The smoke around him whipped chaotically, signaling the arrival of the other Wind Warriors. Giovanni emerged first, being the fastest flier of the group. Xander turned to the others as they approached, signaling for them to keep their distance.
He turned back to the house and saw the shutters on her window catch fire. They glowed a vibrant amber as the paint peeled away, quickly turning from wood to smoldering embers.
“Sammy,” he yelled again.
He could hear the warning calls of his aunts and uncles as they gathered behind him. They saw something in his body language that was only just now occurring to Xander. He knew Sammy had to be inside. Whether she was inside with another Fire Warrior or by herself, he didn’t know. Frankly, he didn’t care. Sammy was in trouble and he was going to save her.
Xander tilted forward and launched toward the closed bedroom window. The others called cautions behind him but he ignored them as he flew to her rescue.
He crossed his arms defensively over his face moments before he struck the burning shutters. The shutters exploded in a spray of sparks and wooden splinters as he crashed into the room. The wind faltered with his concentration and he tumbled onto the bedroom floor. He tumbled across the floor, slamming into a chair and writing table before sliding to a halt.
The smoke was choking inside the bedroom. He could barely see his hand in front of his face as his eyes watered where they burned from the ash. Xander tried to keep himself low to the ground, remembering that the oxygen in the room would remain on the floor.
“Sammy,” he choked. He tried to yell for her—to find her in the gloom—but the smoke burned his lungs every time he tried to inhale.
He crawled along the floor, his fingers digging into the cracks between the marble tiles. The closer he grew, the more he could see that the bed was completely swallowed by swirling flames. The light from the fire was intense, to the point of being blinding. Whatever had started the fire on the bed had been insanely intense.
Xander’s eyes watered, not just from the smoke. Sammy had gone home to go to bed. With the bed so fully consumed, he feared the worst. He wondered again if it had been some plot by the Fire Warriors, as retribution for her betrayal.
He stared as long as he could at the swirling inferno on the four-poster bed before finally looking away. Blue dots danced in his vision, after effects of staring into the intense light. He blinked furiously to wash away the artifacts floating in front of his eyes. As the blue lights began to clear, he saw her smooth, exposed legs sprawled beside the bed.
A coughing fit overcame Xander as he crawled toward her prone form. His body felt heavier than it had when he first entered the room. Dragging himself while staying low to the floor was growing increasingly more difficult.
As he rounded the clawed foot of the formal bed, he saw Sammy collapsed on the floor. Her breathing came in labored gasps and her eyes fluttered in her unconsciousness.
Her alabaster skin practically glowed from an inner light. She didn’t seem harmed aside from the scorched nightgown that clung feebly to her body.
He reached out for her leg and wrapped his fingers around her soft flesh. Smoke curled from between his fingers and he heard the searing of his palm. He screamed in pain and quickly withdrew his hand, cradling the injured hand to his chest.
Her skin was burning from within, like her skin had been transformed to a living ember. He glanced down at his hand and saw blisters forming from his brief contact.
The ceiling above them creaked loudly as the flames weakened the wooden supports. Plaster poured from the ceiling in shards as the roof began to crack from the heat. Xander cringed at the sound but was just as quickly overcome by another coughing fit.
Another massive crack split through the room. One of the wooden beams collapsed, crashing into the bed. The canopy crumbled on the four-poster bed. The beam striking the smoldering mattress sent a wave of sparks into the air. They stung Xander’s skin as they settled over him.
He knew that there wasn’t any time left to dawdle. Despite knowing the anguish he was about to be in, Xander pushed to his feet and rushed to Sammy’s side. When he was a foot away from her unconscious form, his skin began itching from the heat. His tunic steamed as it threatened to catch fire.
His hands paused just before her body. With a shallow breath, he slipped his hands beneath her and lifted her off the ground.
Pain lanced up the length of his arms as he cradled her close to him. Tears welled in his eyes as he staggered under his burden. He knew immediately that he should have just carried her within a bubble, rather than lift her himself. He hadn’t wanted to risk his wind powers further weakening the support beams.
Xander ran forward as quickly as his burning lungs would allow. Without breaking stride, he leapt through the open window and plummeted toward the ground.
Sammy slipped from his grasp as they fell. His hands were numb and unresponsive as he tried to reach out for her. Reaching through the pain, he concentrated enough to create a pillow of pressurized air beneath them both.
They struck the bubble with incredible force, shattering his concentration. The wind had slowed their decent but hadn’t come close to stopping their fall. They both slammed into the cobblestone street and rolled away from the burning building.
The aunts and uncles converged on the pair. Alicia threw a bucket of water over Sammy. A cloud of steam erupted from her skin as the cool water connected with her body. They all stepped away in surprise.
Xander tried to stand but moving his head left him horribly disoriented. He felt a trickle of blood seeping from his hairline, running down over his left eye. He reached out toward Sammy and saw the angry red blisters spread across his hands and forearms.
“Sammy,” he moaned as darkness crept into the corners of his vision.
Try as he might, he couldn’t keep his head aloft as his world went black.
Xander looked at the gauze wrapped tightly around his hands. His fingers were protruding, their skin only pi
nk as opposed to his fiery red and blistered palms and wrists. He knew he was lucky. The burns turned out to be second-degree burns, which meant the blisters would eventually subside and the skin would return to its pink. There probably wouldn’t even be any major scarring, except for the fact that he would probably never tan quite right again.
There was acute pain that radiated up his arms and seemed to pool around his elbows. He occasionally shook his arms as though the action would drain the pain back down to his hands where it belonged.
He flexed his fingers as he walked down the narrow hall that led to the back bedroom. The whole building had been converted to a makeshift hospital long ago; Xander assumed it was when the island was full. They had offered to move his grandfather to the hospital but he knew it would hardly make a difference. He was comfortable where he was and Xander saw no reason to move him.
Sammy had been set up in the back room once she could be moved. It had taken buckets of water to cool down her body. She had originally glowed like a smoldering ember but had returned virtually to normal by the time they carried her away from the burning house.
As he slid down the hall, the friendly Italian greeted him. Giovanni nodded to Xander as they met in the narrow hall, each turning sideways to allow the other to pass.
“How is she?” Xander asked, pausing before the long-haired man.
“She’s awake but hasn’t said more than two words to anyone. Maybe she will talk to you instead?”
“Is she hurt?”
She hadn’t seemed injured when Xander carried her from the heart of the flames but giving her a thorough examination wasn’t possible as he was dangerously close to succumbing to the smoke.
“Nothing that I could see but I gave her a certain degree of modesty during my exam. She doesn’t seem to be suffering, if it makes you feel better. Alicia offered to come by after she tends to your grandfather. She can check her a bit more… thoroughly.”
Flame Caller Page 7