Wind Warrior by Jon Messenger Page A

no
answer. Finally, the voice mail picked up with an automated
tone.
    “ You’ve reached Xander,” it
said. “I can’t come to the phone right now. Leave a message and
I’ll call you back.”
    Sean swallowed hard as his eyes fell on the
firefighters battling the visible blaze. Sighing, Sean waited
patiently for the beep.
    “ Hey Xander. This is
message number forty-six or so. Where are you? Give me a call when
you get this.”
    He hung up the cell phone and slid it into
his pocket. Sean let the curtain fall back into place and he
turned, sitting heavily onto the worn couch. His gaze drifted to
the mound of clothes and college textbooks piled on the edge of the
couch. Xander’s backpack was still discarded on the floor, in the
last place it had been left before he disappeared.
    At first, Sean had enviously assumed that
Xander had gone home with Sammy after the spring formal. The fire,
however, changed that. Seeing its budding beginning had been enough
to send Sean’s mind down a dark path, one that assumed his best
friend was in grave danger. The fact that Xander wouldn’t answer
his phone only added to his growing fear.
    Sean felt a nervousness building in his
ample gut. It wasn’t like Xander to disappear. If there was one
thing about his best friend, the man was unerringly predictable.
That was before his powers appeared, Sean had to remind
himself.
    He pulled out his cell phone once again and
looked at the time. It was already past midnight and most of White
Halls was sound asleep. Sean looked down the narrow hallway leading
from the living room and saw his own bedroom door, still sitting
partially open. His bed was inviting, and his body was certainly
tired enough to sleep, but his mind was still blazing with concern.
He knew that trying to sleep would be a wasted effort.
    Instead, Sean picked up his keys from the
coffee table and walked toward the front door. It might be late but
he couldn’t go to sleep until he knew what was happening. If Xander
wasn’t at the apartment, there was only one other place Sean
imagined he would have gone. If Xander’s parents didn’t know where
he was, then Sean would truly worry.
    He hurried down the narrow steps of the
apartment and let the small bell above the door jingle as he walked
outside. The parking lot was full and dark; only a single lamppost
illuminated the area and it resided on the far side from where he
had parked. Had it not been for the insanely low crime rate in
White Halls, Sean might have been concerned. As it was, he walked
to his car with barely a glance upward.
    He slipped behind the wheel of his car and
started the engine with a loud sputter. A noxious cloud of black
smoke that shot out of the tailpipe accompanied the rattling
engine. The smell within the car quickly became atrocious and Sean
rolled down his window as he backed out of his parking spot.
    He put on his turn signal and prepared to
ease onto the traffic-less road. He was so engrossed with checking
on Xander that he never noticed the blonde-haired man watching his
apartment from the deep shadows across the street. As Sean pulled
away from the apartment building, the man stretched his fingers
wide and a small flame erupted in his hand.

    White Halls was hardly big enough to
necessitate a long drive. He could have just as easily walked the
mile and a half to Xander’s house but it wasn’t Sean’s style to
walk when there was a perfectly capable car handy.
    As he turned onto Xander’s street, his
vision filled with the twirling lights from atop a sea of police
cars and fire trucks. Firemen in gasmasks dragged hoses across the
narrow street and sprayed pressurized jets of water into smoldering
trees and bushes.
    The once vibrant green grass of the park was
scorched and charred, leaving the ruined ground exposed beneath.
Rivers of water rushed down either side of the street and poured
like an angry waterfall into the narrow metal drains. The ground
was muddy and large pools of water still