The wail of fire sirens split the silent night’s air. Sean pulled back the apartment’s curtains and looked outside. In the distance, flickering flames illuminated the relatively dark town. The swirling red, white, and blue of fire trucks and police cars converged on the scene in a dense roar of sirens. As he watched, another fire truck rushed past his apartment complex.
A knot formed in the pit of his stomach as he looked out the window. The fire was clearly coming from the area of town in which Xander lived. With everything else happening to his best friend, it didn’t seem at all far-fetched to believe that Xander was somehow involved.
He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed the number again. The phone rang over and over with 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 soaked the grassy field.
“What did you get into, Xander?” Sean muttered.
With a renewed sense of urgency, Sean tried driving down the street. As he approached, a police officer stepped in front of his car and shined a flashlight through the windshield. Sean squinted and raised a hand to block the light. As soon as he had come to a complete stop, the officer approached his open window.
“Did you see all the emergency vehicles?” the officer asked, gesturing to the haphazardly parked cars. “You can’t drive through here.”
Sean looked past the officer. He could practically see Xander’s house from where he was stopped. “I just need to get to my friend’s house. It’s right down the street.”
The officer shook his head. “You can’t drive over these hoses. You can park back here and walk down there, if you need to. Just stay away from the firefighters while they’re working.”
Sean begrudgingly parked his car against the curb. The scene was controlled chaos as he skirted across the far side of the road. He did his best to avoid the thick hoses attached to the fire hydrants he passed but generally kept his head down as he passed the scene, as though the police would be able to tell just by looking at him that he had a relationship to one of the men involved in the fire.
Xander’s car was parked in the driveway as Sean approached but the house itself was dark. No light bled through from the kitchen or dining room. There wasn’t even the typical flickering glow from the television, which Xander’s grandfather watched fairly religiously.
As he climbed the steps, he sidestepped piles of dirt and soot that coated both the edges of the stairs and the porch landing in front of the door. The scene only reignited Sean’s concern for his best friend. Reaching out cautiously, he knocked on the door.
For a long minute, he stood on the porch waiting for someone to come answer. When he didn’t hear any movement inside, he rang the doorbell as well.
Sean turned his back to the front of the house while he waited and looked out over the street. The other houses in the neighborhood were equally quiet, though he could see lights glowing through a few of the windows.
Sighing—his fears not abated, as he would have hoped—Sean started to walk back down the stairs before he heard the door handle behind him turn. He quickly turned back toward Xander’s house as the door opened a crack. Despite the gloom within the house, he could see Xander’s father staring out at him.
“Mr. Sirocco?” Sean said. The man looked horribly aged. His eyes looked sunken and his skin had an oily texture that looked like he was unwashed.
“Sean,” Xander’s father said. His voice was slightly hoarse as though thick with emotion. “Xander’s not here.”
Sean felt taken aback by his bluntness. “Do you know where he is? I’ve been trying to call him but he’s not answering. He left some stuff at my place.”
“He went out of town with his grandfather for a while,” Mr. Sirocco replied quickly. “I’ll have him give you a call when he gets back in town.”
Xander’s father tried to hastily close the door behind him but Sean stuck out his foot and blocked it from closing completely. He grimaced as the door slammed against his foot. Looking exasperated, Xander’s father opened the door a little wider again.
“Sean…”
“Can you at least tell me where he went? Something strange is going on.”
The elder man’s expression softened as he looked at Xander’s longtime friend. “Sean, the best thing you can do is le
ave it all alone for a while. I know you’re worried but there’s nothing you can do for Xander right now. Go home. Go back to school. Go on with your life and I promise that if Xander comes back, I’ll make sure he calls you.”
“If?” Sean said suddenly. “If he comes back?”
“Go home, Sean,” Xander’s father repeated more sternly.
Crestfallen, Sean turned away from the door and took a few hitched paces down the steep steps. He expected to hear the door slam behind him but instead he heard a telltale creak as it opened slightly wider.
“Sean.”
He turned and saw Mr. Sirocco standing half out of the door. The older man looked around nervously before his attention fell back to Sean.
“Sir?”
“I know you don’t know what’s going on right now. And I’m really glad that Xander has such a good friend as you. Just… just be careful out there right now. I know this sounds like elementary school advice but don’t talk to strangers. There are some dangerous people in town right now.”
-“Do they have to do with Xander? Are they why he had to leave?”
“Goodbye, Sean.”
The door shut solidly behind Xander’s father as the man disappeared back into the enveloping darkness of the interior. Sean shook his head and turned back toward his car. This trip was supposed to put his mind at ease. If anything, he was even more nervous now than he had been when he thought Xander had just slept over at Sammy’s house.
The fires in the park seemed mostly under control by the time Sean reached the sidewalk in front of the house. Firefighters were busy rolling up hoses and a number of the vehicles had already pulled away. Their absence gave Sean the chills. He hadn’t realized how much the police at the end of the street had set his mind at ease, especially with Xander’s father’s cryptic warning about dangerous strangers in White Halls. As the last of the trucks were getting ready to depart, the street suddenly seemed eerily quiet, as though all the other residents on the street had closed proverbial shutters and pulled their curtains just a little tighter against the windows.
Sean pulled his jacket tight around his body, trying to ward off a chill that was coming from within. He lowered his head and hurried toward his car, hoping to reach it before the last fire trucks left. To his dismay, the firefighters loaded their hoses and climbed into the cabs while he was still about a block away. They pulled away hurriedly, leaving him in the disturbing night’s gloom.
“Excuse me,” a voice said softly behind him.
Sean clutched his chest and turned, holding his other hand up defensively in front of his face. A man seemed to materialize behind him as he emerged from the deep shadows. The stranger’s blonde hair glistened in the faint moonlight but the rest of his body was swaddled in dark clothes that looked almost like leather. The man held his arms behind his back and smiled—but he looked like a stereotypical vampire, eagerly awaiting his next meal.
“It’s awfully late to be walking the streets,” the man said.
Sean couldn’t place the odd accent but it clearly sounded like English was the man’s second language.
“I could say the same thing to you,” Sean replied.
The man chuckled to himself before looking over his shoulder, toward Xander’s house. “I noticed you just came from the Sirocco residence. What did you talk about?”
“Listen buddy. I don’t know you and we’re not having this conversation.” Sean hoped his false bravado was good enough to fool the stranger.
The man’s smile vanished from his face. “Tell me where I can find Xander Sirocco.”
“Never heard of him,” Sean replied, swallowing hard.
The man clucked his tongue disapprovingly. “I can make this difficult for you, if that’s what you want. Either way, you’re going to tell me what I want to know.”
Sean glanced around nervously, hoping some concerned citizen would suddenly appear and rescue him. The houses around him remained dark, though, and no one seemed likely to save him.
The man withdrew a hand from behind his back. His palm seemed to glow with an inner light. It radiated heat and the smell of sulfur washed over Sean.
“This is your last chance before we make this harder than it needs to be. Tell me what you talked about! Tell me where I can find the Wind Warrior!”
Sean glanced suddenly over the stranger’s shoulder and his eyes widened in surprise. The Fire Warrior followed Sean’s gaze and he turned to look at what approached from behind him. The area was completely empty, though. As the Fire Warrior turned back angrily toward Sean—upset at the obvious ruse—Sean’s punch caught him across the jaw.
The Fire Warrior staggered before dropping painfully onto his back. Sean immediately clenched his hand and shook it.
“Ow!” he yelled into the night air. “Man, that hurts. Who knew doing that hurt so bad?”
The Fire Warrior shook his head and blinked heavily as he cleared his vision. Seeing the man recovering, Sean turned and ran toward his car. He huffed as he hurried across the street and was soon reminded of the myriad of reasons he hated running. He realized, however, that he always said the only way he’d be caught dead running was if someone was chasing him.
He reached the far sidewalk and turned toward his car when a ball of flame went flying by his head, missing him by inches. He felt his hairs curl from the heat, withdrawing from the scorching fireball. The flame struck his windshield and exploded in a shower of sparks. The fire quickly caught on his hood and on his worn fabric interior. Within moments, the car was consumed in flames.
Sean turned nervously toward the stranger. Another ball of flames started growing between the hands of the advancing man. The previous smile on the Fire Warrior’s face had become a snarl of rage.
Turning again, Sean ran into the yard next to him, dodging between the young trees that dotted the landscape. White Halls’ main crossroad ran parallel to Xander’s road, which meant that if he made it through just a couple of interconnected yards, he would reach the main road and, hopefully, flag down a passing car.
The yard he ran through wasn’t fenced and bled seamlessly into the rear of the next yard. Despite the strain in his chest from his heavy breathing, Sean picked up his knees and pushed himself forward.
The world behind him lit up as a ball of flames struck the muddy ground. He could feel the intense waves of heat and saw the sparks settle on the grass around him but he didn’t dare slow or even look behind him.
Sean ran past the next house but frowned as he approached the road. The house had a tall, privacy hedgerow separating it from the road. He couldn’t see the cars passing, nor could they see him. More importantly, he would have to push through the hedge before he could get to the relative safety of the road.
Lowering his head, Sean slammed into the hedge. His weight drove the branches aside. They scratched at his skin and pulled on his clothing as he pushed forward. Despite the burning in his legs, his biggest fear was stopping halfway through the hedge and being exposed to the maniac chasing him.
To his relief, the hedge finally gave way and he saw the cool night’s sky over the street beyond. As he took a step out of the hedge, his foot caught on the smashed branches. His shoe came cleanly off his foot and he staggered out and into the street.
Sean looked up as headlights fell over him. He could hear the screeching of tires as he threw his hands up in front of his face and closed his eyes. For a long moment, he waited for the inevitable impact. Slowly, as he realized he hadn’t been hit, he stole a glance through a narrowly opened eyelid.
The car had stopped just a few inches away from him.
With a sigh of relief, Sean hobbled around to the passenger’s side of the car. He threw open the door and slid inside without caring who was behind the wheel or where they were going.
“Thank you, thank you,” he gushed. “You really saved my…”
His words froze in his throat as he looked over to the driver. Jessica frown deepened as her eyes grew dangerously narro
w.
“No,” she said angrily. “No, no, no. Absolutely not. Get out of my car, Sean.”
“Any other time, I would. Trust me. But now, I just need you to drive!”
She let go of the steering wheel and shoved against his considerable weight, trying to force him out of the partially opened car door.
“Get out of my car, Sean! I’m not joking with you. Get out!”
Sean was forced to grab hold of the handle above the door as a last ditch effort to keep from being forced out of the car. For a thin woman, Jessica wielded considerable strength when she was angry.
“Get out!”
“Stop pushing me,” Sean yelled.
The Fire Warrior burst through the hedgerow and staggered out in front of the car. He turned his gaze to the arguing occupants and the sneer returned to his face.
“There you are!” the warrior bellowed as he leaned on the hood of Jessica’s car. “No more running. Tell me what I want to know!”
“What is wrong with you people?” she screamed. “Get off of my car, you freak!”
She stopped pushing Sean long enough to slam her hand down on the car’s horn. The roar of the horn overwhelmed the loud, three-way conversation.
Startled, the Fire Warrior staggered off the hood and looked in horror at the vehicle. He stretched his hands above his head and they began to glow white-hot. Flames licked his fingertips seconds before he slammed them down on Jessica’s hood.
The fire spread across the hood and rolled up over the windshield, blinding Jessica and Sean to what lay beyond the front of the car.
In a panic, Jessica screamed and stomped down on the accelerator. The car leapt forward and they both heard an unpleasant thud as the car sped away.
Blinded, they swerved from side to side across the road. Sean leaned out of his partially opened door and saw them coming up quickly to an intersection.
“Stop, Jessica,” he said as calmly as his nervous body would allow. He could see them still accelerating dangerously, so he reached over and placed a hand on her arm. “Stop the car, Jessica.”
She released the gas pedal and slammed down instead on the brake. Sean jerked forward and his forehead struck the edge of the doorframe. He rocked backward as the car came to a stop and grabbed his head.
“Gah!” he yelled, actual words eluding him.
Jessica’s chest heaved as she struggled for breath. Her hands were clenched tightly around the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles practically glowed white. As they sat in the car—Jessica clutching the wheel silently and Sean clutching his head and groaning—the flames flickered down and died away on the hood of the car. Only a layer of soot remained over the windshield, blurring, but not obscuring, their vision.
“Did I hit him?” Jessica squeaked in a nearly inaudible voice. “It sounded like I hit him.”
Sean groaned and leaned his head back against the headrest. “If you did, good for you.”
Her cheeks went from a pale white to a flushed angry in the span of a breath. “This is all your fault!”
Sean opened one eye and immediately regretted the movement as another stab of pain rolled through his head. “I think I have a concussion.”
“I don’t care! I hit a guy with my car! Do you even know what this means?”
“You really are a man-killer?”
She let go of the steering wheel and shoved against Sean’s body again. “That’s it! Get out of my car! I’m serious this time!”
Begrudgingly, Sean stepped gingerly out of the still-open door. Every movement made his head scream in pain. He leaned down and looked apologetically at Jessica.
She shot him a glance that fully expressed her feelings. “Close the door and get away from my car. You’ve done enough damage already.”
Sean closed the door and looked through the open window. “I really am sorry about this, if it makes a difference.”
“It doesn’t, Sean. Don’t ever talk to me again!”
She drove quickly away, leaving Sean standing abandoned in the middle of the road. He stole a glance behind him but he couldn’t see the Fire Warrior.
Suddenly realizing just how exposed he was in the middle of the road, he turned toward his apartment building and jogged slowly away.