Chapter Ten: Demon Fire
Holly was falling. She had been falling for what felt like an eternity, dank cool air rushing past her, chilling her bones and sending spasms of sheer terror through her. On all sides, the oppressive gloom loomed eerily, mocking her, jeering silently.
She couldn't believe it. She'd chosen wrong. She'd been so sure of herself, so sure that her choice was the only right option. Now, alone, tumbling head over heels in the dark and surely about to die, Holly began to cry, to blubber. All she'd wanted was to get her way- just once.
"I'm sorry, Father," she whimpered. "I didn't want this at all! I... I..."
WHAM! With a deafening crash, the dark melted away, revealing tongues of what appeared to be black fire. Holly choked at the sudden unpleasant scent and overwhelming taste of fire and brimstone and... something else. Something very, very old, and very, very evil.
Holly's fall slowed until she was almost floating, drifting down into the abyss of black fire. She watched in horrified fascination as the black flames rose up, licking her ankles as she descended, almost like an overexcited puppy upon its master's return home. Curiously, the strange fire didn't hurt her at all, but it didn't warm her any, either. It was an empty fire, though the tortured shrieks of others trapped in the fire somewhere beyond her vision, told Holly that she was lucky.
She continued to drift downwards, slowly becoming engulfed in the roaring yet empty black fire.
Her bare feet touched the rocky pitted surface below, the source of the black fire, and at long last, she screamed, her voice rising in a tormented crescendo as her body slowly turned to ice.
"Welcome to Hell, Prophet."
"She's been like this for quite awhile." Dr. Brown explained to the newcomers, glancing momentarily at the feverish young djinn in question. "Honestly, I believe that Holly's current condition is... well, the phrase would be 'way out of our depth.' I'd recommend taking her to the djinn clinic."
"Yes, of course. I can't think why Alexandra didn't take her there in the first place." Nimrod frowned and followed Dr. Brown's gaze through the open doorway at his comatose daughter and distraught wife.
"Then I'll make arrangements immediately." Dr. Brown assured Nimrod, but then paused. "And Mr. Godwin, sir, I'll need to speak with you as soon as possible. It's about the war-"
"Yes, yes. Whatever you think is necessary." Nimrod waved the young doctor away dismissively, and followed Mark, Cas, Dr. Godwin, and Groanin into the dreadfully beige room to wait.
It was dark, almost black, but with the faintest hint of dim, silvery starlight filtering down through the near-freezing waters of the Thames. Her mouth and nose filled with polluted water, and she tried to swim up, towards the almost nonexistent light, towards air, but without success. Half-frozen mud swirled around her, pulling the drowning girl deeper into the river, and her clothes soaked in more dirty water and weighed her down even more. Her lungs burned, begging for her to take a breath, just one breath of painfully cold but life-giving air, but Holly couldn't. After one last, valiant effort to free herself from the concrete block she was chained to, Holly gave up. Her vision faded, her heart slowed, and her now lifeless body continued to sink deeper and deeper into the depths of the cold, unforgiving River Thames.
"Nimrod, I can't just leave her." Alexandra protested tearfully, shoving one of the more unfortunate of the ugly vases that decorated the hospital hallway, sending it crashing to the linoleum floor.
Nimrod glanced at the shattered vase apprehensively. "No one is asking you to leave her, Alexandra." He said, in what he hoped was a calming manner, "But you can't very well intend to go all the way to Scotland with her."
Alexandra stamped her foot on one of the pieces of broken vase. "Yes I can!" She exclaimed adamantly. "And what do you mean, Scotland?!"
Nimrod sighed. It was taking all of his own willpower not to break down, exactly as Alexandra was doing. "What I mean is," He explained, his patience waning, "that the only djinn clinic nearby enough and with any space left to take Holly is in Braemar. In Scotland. So it is there she will go."
"Then I'm going to Braemar, too. I don't care if the food is terrible and you can't understand a word that any of the locals say, I'm going!" Alexandra stamped her foot again and brushed a tear from her eye.
Nimrod sighed again. Clearly, Alexandra was determined to stay with Holly for at least as long as the effects of the mysterious fever were present, but he had to get her to leave, if only for an hour or so. "Very well, Alexandra. You're going to Braemar when Holly goes. I suppose that means that I ought to come as well."
Alexandra nodded with as much dignity as she could muster. "Good." she said sharply.
"I'm not finished yet. If we're going to Braemar, then we ought to go home and pack, oughtn't we?"
This earned Nimrod a reproachful glare from his wife. "Sometimes I really think that you don't love me, Nimrod." She said frostily.
Nimrod ignored her tone, and, seeing that he had at least won the post-argument argument, set about the task of locating Groanin.
Holly awoke to find that she was nose-to-nose with a very grumpy- looking black and gold striped hooded Egyptian cobra. She shrieked loudly and scrambled as far away as she could, considering that her movement was very much restricted by the length of rope binding her wrists behind her back. The snake hissed as snakes do, seeming more startled than hostile, and slithered away into a patch of tall grass. Holly watched it go, and then examined the rest of her surroundings more carefully. She was in an overgrown stone-walled courtyard that was illuminated by an otherworldly red glow.
"Hang on," she muttered to herself, "I know this." Holly rose to her feet with quite a bit of difficulty, and finally managed to make her way over to a large niche in the blackened stone wall. There, she was able to see, far far below her, (indeed, the height alone was enough to make Holly feel somewhat sick to her stomach,) was a gathering of about four other people. Oddly enough, she didn't have to squint to see the faces of the people standing far below her.
There was Nimrod, looking surprisingly similar to Gabriel in an impeccably white suit and a rather ridiculously bulky silver crown, and standing next to him was Alexandra, wearing an equally spotless white silk sari, an overwhelming amount of glittering silvery jewelry, and a silver, diamond-studded tiara that matched Nimrod's crown. A few feet away from them, Mark stood, looking (if it was possible,) even sillier than the latter two, for he was clad, once again, in the same manner as an Egyptian champion, wearing a white kilt, a white headdress, and a silver armband. His blue-tinted sword was drawn, and all three were looking up to where Holly was, pale concern in their eyes.
"It's chess," she said aloud, suddenly realizing why this all seemed so familiar to her. "I've had this dream before, and it's chess!"
"That's right," said a familiar voice behind her.
"Took you awhile, didn't it Hol?" added a second voice. Holly turned around, and her grin froze in place when she saw the owners of the two voices.
"Cas." She began, her eyes darting from one person to the other, and grappling for words. "Th... Wha...?"
"I know." Agreed Cas. "There are two of me."
The other Cas nodded. "Strange, isn't it?"
Holly remained speechless, her eyes as wide as saucers as she continued looking at one Cas and then the other.
The Cas to her right was dressed in a few layers of loose-fitting white robes with silver embroidery, his dark hair had been neatly and uncharacteristically combed out of his face, and on his head he wore a similarly coloured pointed hat.
The other Cas, the Cas to Holly's left, was clad similarly in a loose white robe, though his hat was more like Mark's headdress than the other Cas's mitre, and his dark hair looked just as messy as it usually was. Both Cases held silver staffs, though the Cas on the right had a shepherd's crook, while the Cas on the left leaned nonchalantly on a staff that was topped with an ankh, the Egyptian symbol for life.
Finally, Holly found her voice. "You look like the pope." she said, pointing to the Cas on the right.
He glanced down at himself, and then at his shepherd's crook. "I suppose," he conceded. "But all of this... these... costumes are meant to represent the fact that we're the bishops in this chess game."
The Cas on the left nodded, beaming. "Yup. And you're a knight." He said matter-of-factly. Holly raised an eyebrow.
"I'm not dressed like a weirdo, though. Am I?" she glanced down at herself, and saw that she was dressed as she normally was, apart from the fact that all of her clothes seemed to follow the same colour scheme as the rest of her family, and that at her hip rested the silver hilt of a sword, not unlike that of Mark.
"Sorry to disappoint," smiled the Cas on the right.
"You should wake up soon, though." added the Cas on the left, his grin vanishing. "Everyone's worried sick."
"Yes." The Cas on the right agreed. "But you'll need help. I- we will send him along shortly. 'Til then-"
"Just try not to give up." Interrupted the Cas on the left. "And remember this: What never died..."
"...Is still alive." Finished the Cas on the right, sparing the other Cas a fairly irritated glance. "You may have to remind me of that later."
"Time's up." Holly felt the familiar sense of dread nestle once again in the pit of her stomach as Azazel stepped out of the shadows. "Now leave, you two."
"There's nothing I can do." Magnus said quietly. "I don't know how to banish demon fire from her soul. If you'll recall, I didn't survive." He sighed. "We don't even know why Beelzebub or some other demon chose to infect her with demon fire."
"Then I fail to see the point of you even coming here, if all you were going to contribute was 'there's nothing I can do.' Not very helpful." Mark, whose nerves had been on edge since Alexandra's phone call, was ready to lash out at just about anyone. It irritated Mark even more, if such a thing was possible, that Magnus seemed somehow familiar, but he couldn't quite place why or how.
"Maybe I wanted to see my only niece before she dies a horrible painful death!" Magnus snapped back.
"Would you both please shut up?" Cas's voice was barely more than a whisper. Until then, he had been even quieter than was normal for him, staring silently at his best friend and clutching at the arms of his chair so tightly that his knuckles had gone white. "None of this is helping at all. So until someone has something valuable to contribute, can you not be at each other's throats?"
Reluctantly, Mark and Magnus quieted, though from time to time, Mark shot the ghost a resentful glance.
"I know what to do." Jonathan, who had been as equally silent as Cas, piped up. "But I have to do it, and it won't cure anything, just delay it a bit."
"What?" Mark asked tensely. "What is it?"
Jonathan paused. "Well," he began carefully. "It's a bit hard to explain."
"Calm down. It's not as though I'm going to kill you or anything." Azazel unsheathed one of his razor-sharp black bladed knives and stroked the edge with his index finger in a businesslike manner. "Only torture you a little. And it was more than generous of me to allow you to see your friends before we began. Now it'll be fresh in your memory just exactly who you'll be betraying."
Holly pulled fruitlessly at one of the copper shackles that bound her to the chair, hoping that the help Cas had mentioned before was soon in coming.
"It's useless. You know that." Azazel's tone was condescending as he approached her, the knife glinting sinisterly in his left hand.
"Now, if you hold still, this might hurt a bit less."
"Liar." Holly spat. Azazel shrugged.
"Oh, you're right. Shame on me, and all that. But have you forgotten? I am evil. Evil people lie sometimes." He paused. "So do good people, I suppose. But evil has more fun with the lies."
"I'm not going to betray my friends and family." Holly changed the subject, wishing with every fibre of her being that her rescuer would show up now.
"Oh, but you will." Azazel grinned. Momentarily, Holly was distracted from her wishing by the uncanny resemblance the evil djinn held to Cas, a resemblance that sent a shiver down her spine, but this thought was soon banished from her mind by the sudden appearance of the dark, slight figure of a boy a couple years younger than Holly.
"Hey, moron!" the boy taunted Azazel. Azazel turned slowly around to face the newcomer. "Leave her alone." Quick as a flash, the mysterious boy sucker- punched Azazel with more force than seemed possible, sending him sprawling across the room. A second later, both the spread-eagled Azazel and the copper chains binding Holly burst into scraps of shadow.
"What the hell?!" shouted the boy, turning to Holly and helping her stand. "What the freaking hell is wrong with you?" He sighed and shook his head. "Nevermind, we don't have time for a soliloquy. Come on, we have to go find your Neshamah."
Holly stared at the boy, unsure whether to be offended by his verbal abuse, or pleased that he'd rescued her. Then, as he pulled open a trapdoor that had previously been hidden by tall grass, Holly realized that she'd seen him somewhere before.
"Hey!" she said, "I know you!"
The boy froze.
Wow... this is a long one, isn't it? And YEAH! Some ACTION! Heh... well, anyway, tell me what you think, por favor! D'you like it? D'you hate it? :D