Free Wind Warrior by Jon Messenger Page A

Everything made a lot more sense now. Sammy had shown up to
his class the day after he saved that man from being hit by the
bus. She had to have sensed his power and was sent immediately
afterward. How could he have been so blind?
    He sighed and turned back to his
grandfather. “So what do we do now?”
    “ We run. We get as far away
as we can and we keep you safe.”
    “ And then what? Never use
our powers again? We know they can track us—so we just all live to
a ripe old age until we die of natural causes and the Fire Caste
takes over?”
    “ I didn’t say it was a good
plan.”
    “ And what happens when they
do take over? What happens to the Earth?”
    His grandfather shrugged. “As each of the
Wind Warriors die, I would assume volcanoes would erupt. There
would be city-shattering earthquakes. When the last of us pass on,
the Fire Warriors will be able to fully escape their prison and
roam the Earth.”
    Xander shook his head. “Then I’m not
running. I can’t hide and save myself while knowingly damning the
rest of the world.”
    “ You’re a stubborn mule of
a boy, you know that?”
    “ I’m sure that’s hereditary
too,” he replied with a smile. “So where do we find these Fire
Warriors?”
    His grandfather’s smile washed from his
face. Xander felt it too, a sudden surge of energy like the static
charge just before a lightning strike.
    From out of the trees in the park behind
them, dark-robed men emerged. In their hands, burning orbs danced
in the darkness.
    “ I don’t think finding them
will be a problem,” the old man whispered.

 
     

     
    His grandfather launched into the air,
carried upward on a sudden gust of wind, just as the bench ignited
in flames and sparks. The wind died when the old man was nearly
twenty feet in the air, leaving him hovering as he redirected the
wind flow. A sudden downdraft of pressurized air slammed into one
of the Fire Warriors, driving the man into the ground with violent
force.
    “ Run, Xander!” his
grandfather yelled. “I’ll hold them off.”
    “ No way,” Xander replied.
“I can help.”
    He was stepping toward the dark-robed men
when the ground in front of him erupted in a wall of flames. The
flames burned nearly white with an intense heat that washed over
him. Xander staggered backward as his clothes began to smolder and
the air burned in his lungs.
    He could barely see his grandfather land on
the far side of the flames. He heard, rather than saw, a roar of a
tornado as it touched down, uprooting one of the trees in the park.
Xander saw the silhouette of a man being launched high into the
night sky and didn’t envy the painful landing he had in his
future.
    Beyond the wall of flame, sparks roared into
the night air. Balls of flame exploded against the ground as they
sought the agile old man. One of the Fire Warriors stretched out
his hands and a jet of flame poured across the field. His
grandfather rolled to the side but the flames ignited the side of
his shirt. A quick arctic breeze froze the shirt and extinguished
the flames but Xander could hear his grandfather’s labored
breathing over the din of battle.
    He waved his hand and a futilely small gust
of wind crashed against the wall of fire. Instead of breaking
through, the wind only fed the flames that grew more intense in
response.
    Frustrated, Xander stepped further away.
Maybe his grandfather was right? He barely knew how to control his
powers. Maybe he was a bigger liability by sticking around. Maybe
he should run, like his grandfather had asked.
    A scream split the air, a throaty yell that
sounded close to a mix of pain and coarse coughing. Xander knew
that sound and the cough that accompanied it. His grandfather was
hurt.
    He closed his eyes and bit back the tears of
frustration. “Please, I know you can hear me. You used me as a
vessel when you helped save that man from the bus. Help me save
another of your children. Use me however you have to, just save my
grandfather!”
    The wind