Chapter 35: Cas and Buck's Excellent Adventure

Cassius woke in a room filled with steam. He coughed, feeling his breath rattle in his chest, and sat up, swaying dizzily, his heart beating so quickly he felt it would pound its way right out of his chest cavity.

"Good, you're finally up. Is your head okay? You have kind of a lump." Cassius looked through the cloud of steam at his cousin, sitting before a steaming pile of rocks and stripped down to his underwear.

Wincing as he felt the egg-shaped bump on the back of his head, Cassius squinted around the sauna in the dim light afforded by the flickering wall sconces. "Where are we?" He asked, his heart rate finally slowing with the knowledge that he was awake, Beelzebub was gone, and he wasn't, in fact, covered with the blood of his parents.

"No idea," Buck said cheerfully, though it was clear that his lighthearted smile was forced. "I woke up in here just a little while ago. The steam was dying down, so I put some more water on the rocks here."

Still dizzy, Cassius shuffled his way over to his cousin and the source of the steam. Looking down at himself upon feeling a sudden chill at his back, Cassius discovered that he, too, was wearing only his boxer shorts. "Why are we in our underwear?" He asked, coughing slightly.

Buck shrugged. "Heck if I know. Probably so that our clothes won't get gross and damp while we're in here recovering from frostbite or whatever. Hey, your cold isn't coming back, is it? You're coughing again."

A knock came from the other side of the dimly illuminated wooden door. "Are those voices I hear? Are you both awake?" Called a muffled but distinctly American voice.

"No, we're talking to each other in our sleep." Buck rolled his eyes and snorted. "Yeah, we're awake. Who the heck are you?"

"The name's Joey." The American replied. "Your clothes are out here. When you're done, I'll be in the big room with the Buddha statue. It's through the door and down the hall at the very end. You can't miss it."

Cassius listened as Joey's footsteps faded away, then turned to Buck. "Shall we go, then?"

Buck stood slowly and stretched out his joints. Cassius grimaced at the sharp crackling of his cousin's bones. "Yeah, I guess." Buck frowned, as though he was trying to remember something. "It's just... Never mind." He shook his head, ridding himself of whatever troubling thought had taken hold of him.

Gingerly, Cassius stood as well, still a bit dizzy, still wheezing alarmingly from his cold. And what a shame, too, he'd thought perhaps he'd been getting better, at least before... before...

Cassius couldn't bring himself to finish the thought. The Rectory and Father Desai. Blood spurting, him, covered with the stuff, his hands sullied, his soul as well, desperation, water gaping below, welcome to the void Cassius, Lilith smirking, you've taken a life you can't fix this as long as you live- And that dream, seeing his mother burn to death before his very eyes, seeing his father stabbed to death just as Father Desai had been-

"Cas! Are you okay?" Buck halfway shouted at him. Cassius blinked, his head spinning, fingers trembling, breath rattling.

"What? Fine. I'm fine." Cassius wheezed, setting a hand on the smooth stone wall for balance. "Let's go."

Buck spared him a worried look before unlatching the wooden sauna door. Chilly air rushed in as steam rushed out, making Cassius feel even shorter of breath and causing Buck to shiver uncomfortably. "Here we are," He said, spotting two piles of haphazardly folded clothing. Without pausing, he squatted down next to them and began sorting through the garments. "Here's your t-shirt, Golden Boy," he said, tossing it to him. It landed on Cassius' head, and he tugged on cheerlessly. Why did he have to have chosen to wear red yesterday morning? He joined Buck in sorting through the rest of the clothes, and after a brief mix-up in jeans, the two of them were once again fully clothed.

"Okay," Buck nodded, gathering up his coat and feeling revitalized from the steam. "Through the door and down the hall, right?"

Cassius nodded, feeling preoccupied. "That's what Joey said," He confirmed vaguely.

"C'mon then." Buck announced, and grabbed Cassius by the collar of his jacket to get him moving.

At the end of the hall was a large, mostly empty room that housed a rather massive statue of Buddha in a state of unfortunate disrepair. Cassius felt a cold lump of dread form in the pit of his stomach as he met the impassive tarnished green gaze of the statue as an abrupt realization came over him: This place was a monastery. No, no, no, no, no... He thought, his mind a mess of blank panic. He didn't want to hurt any more holy men, he couldn't hurt anyone else, he had to leave immediately-

"Where are you going?" Buck asked, somewhat irritated, and yanked on Cassius' jacket collar to get him to keep walking forwards. "He's right there, come on."

Cassius shook his head vehemently. "I can't... monastery..." He mumbled, knees knocking as he was dragged towards the man in the orange robe, reclining lazily before the Buddha statue. At the sound of their voices and footsteps, the man- a monk? Cassius wondered,- looked over at them and grinned an electric smile. The next moment, however, the elbow supporting his head slipped on the slick board floor and his skull cracked against it with an unpleasantly solid thunk.

"Whoops," The orange-robed young man sat up and rubbed the fresh lump on the back of his head. "That smarts. Don't worry about me, though, I got a skull like iron." Jokingly, the young man rapped his knuckles against his temple and stood, dusting himself off and smiling again at Buck and Cassius.

"Anyway, it's good to see that you're both all right. You fell right out of the sky, you know, with all that mountaineering gear. But hey, I'm sorry, I didn't introduce myself properly. The name's Joey, Joey Ryder." Joey held out an open palm for them to shake.

A muscle in Buck's jaw twitched with recognition and he squinted at Joey cautiously. Cassius looked at Joey's extended hand with a horror akin to reading a death warrant.

"Buck," Buck grunted finally, omitting his last name and shaking Joey's hand. "This is my cousin Cas. Sorry if he acts a little weird; he's been through a lot lately."

Joey nodded understandingly, and his electric smile faded into a troubled frown. "Say, your voice sounds familiar. Have we met before?"

Buck's shoulders tensed. "I don't think so." He lied.

Joey pondered for a moment. "Hm. Maybe I'm thinking of someone else. Now that I think about it, I think that kid was Indian, so it couldn't have been you, huh?"

Buck avoided eye contact. "Nope. Couldn't possibly be me."

"I guess. Hey, either of you guys mind if I have a toke?" Joey pulled a rolled-up paper joint out of the sleeve of his robe. It smelled strongly, a scent that reminded Cassius in part of a very specific hallway of his high school, where the stoners always hung out.

"Is that... marijuana?" Cassius asked, his horror of illicit drugs momentarily superseding his horror of accidentally hurting this stranger.

Joey grinned. "Sure is. You mind?"

Buck shook his head. "Nah, man. Go ahead."

Joey Ryder stuck the blunt between his teeth, pulled out a silver lighter from his other orange sleeve, and lit it. Grey smoke billowed from the end of the blunt, and the strong odor grew tenfold in its intensity.

"What kind of a monk are you?" Cassius asked, still distracted by the presence of the joint.

Joey's eyebrows popped up with surprise. "Monk? Me? I-" He glanced down at his orange robe. "Oh, you mean this thing. Nah, I just found it in one of the rooms. My other clothes were getting kinda grungy, and these were okay. Just had a lot of dust on them, was all. But no, I'm no monk. Not in a million years." He laughed goodnaturedly and sat cross-legged on the floor, inviting the djinn to do the same with a wave of his hand.

"So... Where exactly are we?" Buck asked, sinking to the floor cautiously while Cassius followed suit, staring intently at the smoking tip of Joey's blunt. Joey shrugged.

"I'm not really sure, to be honest. Somewhere between Uttar Pradesh and Tibet, I think. The Himalayas if you want to be a bit more specific. So how'd you guys end up falling out of the sky?"

"Updraft," Cassius answered without thinking, becoming more at ease with the knowledge that Joey was not a member of any sort of clergy. Buck glared at him.

"Updraft, huh? Yeah, I heard that whirlwinds can be tough to control for kid djinn like you two. Especially way up in the mountains like this."

Everything in Buck's mind came to a screeching halt and he stared, bug-eyed, at Joey. "You... know?" He choked out. Joey shrugged, letting his eyelids droop over his red-rimmed eyes.

"Sure. You didn't think I'd stick two regular kids in a sauna while they were unconscious, did you? I've met some djinn in my days, I know what's up. You guys need to be warm to function, don't you? I used to be a nurse, too, back in the States."

Buck felt a cold sweat forming on the nape of his neck. What was Joey playing at?

"So why'd you help us at all?" Cassius asked, as clearheadedly as he could manage.

Joey shrugged. "Why not? You needed it. Plus there's got to be a reason that you two are flying around the Himalayas. Call me crazy, but not a whole lot goes on around this empty monastery. I was bored."

"Why are you here?" Buck burst out impetuously. "I mean... uh..." He backpedaled furiously "Is no one else up here?"

Joey looked around vaguely and shrugged. "If there are others, I haven't met them. I've been stuck up here for three weeks. Snowed in, as it happens."

A rumble came quite suddenly from underneath the three, and the old board floor began to shake beneath them. Buck glanced uneasily around, gaging how quickly he could make it to the nearest doorway, whereas Joey looked unconcerned as he continued to smoke his blunt.

Cassius, on the other hand, became suddenly aware of the cold lump of dread in the pit of his stomach again as his eyes were drawn, as if magnetically, towards the rattling Buddha statue, watching as the blue-green visage shook and seemed to open its eyes to gaze back at him with sour distaste...

"Don't worry about this, it happens all the time." Joey explained nonchalantly. "This place was built real good. Only one part collapsed so far, and it looked like one of the newer parts."

"How... Comforting." Buck replied dryly as Cassius continued to stare, enraptured, at the Buddha statue.

"Is he okay?" Joey asked, though to Cassius, his voice blended into the rumbling of the earth.

"I told you he isn't." Buck reminded Joey crossly, a bit annoyed that he had to repeat himself.

"All right, dude, no need to get huffy." Joey shrugged and exhaled a great puff of strong-smelling smoke. "It's just that earthquakes are highly cosmic moments that not everyone is ready to experience."

Buck, who had grown up in the midst of Los Angeles' frequent earthquakes, rolled his eyes and breathed a silent sigh of relief when the quaking beneath his feet finally stilled. He stood and stretched again. "Yo, where's the bathroom at?"

"Through that door, third door on the left. Careful, it's kind of old and the door sticks a lot." Joey nodded amicably, and took a long drag on his joint.

As Buck's padding footsteps faded down the hallway, Cassius blinked blankly at the huge copper Buddha.

"Hey, dude, can I offer some advice?"

Cassius blinked again and rubbed his eyes, trying to rid himself of the strange cobwebby feeling that was invading his thoughts. "Wait, are you talking to me?"

"Yeah man." Joey said patiently. "You seem like the world's weighing you down. Like- what's that old saying? Oh yeah, like you got a millstone around your neck while you're trying to swim. I've met a lot of folks like you, back when I was working at this Ashram that kinda turned out to be run by a snake cult- long story- but some of them were just kids like you."

Cassius ran his hand over the goosebumps that had formed on the nape of his neck. "I'm sixteen," he pointed out, his voice weak to his own ears. "I don't know if that can really count as being a kid anymore." Joey ignored him.

"But I mean the worst thing you can do is try and ignore whatever millstone you have around your neck, because it's only going to end up drowning you. You dig?" Joey took another drag from his blunt and followed Cassius' gaze to the Buddha statue. "What even is a millstone, anyway?" He pondered aloud.

"It's a circular stone used for grinding grain into flour," Cassius explained automatically. "They're really, really heavy."

"Huh. Guess you learn something new every day." Joey shrugged. "But you wanna know the real secret to true happiness?"

Cassius' voice halted in his throat. Happiness? What was that? He'd long since forgotten what it was like, to be so innocently happy-

"You gotta accept the past and get a move on. Like The Lion King; Hakuna Matata and everything."

The goosebumps spread from Cassius' neck down to his arms. How could he put the past behind him? How could he move on from taking another's life? It was an insurmountable evil, what he had done, and there seemed no logical way that he could ever forgive himself.

The very small part of his mind that wasn't entirely focused on wallowing in his own guilt raised its metaphorical hand politely, calling attention to a small aspect of what Joey had said.

The real secret to true happiness. In a second, Cassius' gaze snapped from inwards to outwards, and he turned to give Joey his full attention.

"So are you truly happy then?" He asked. "You don't wish that anything was different about your life?"

Joey looked a little taken aback by the question. After a moment's reflection, he shrugged. "Nah, I like it here. I mean, it hasn't been perfect, but I doubt anybody's life has been perfect. To be honest I know I probably have had it way better than a lot of people. So... I guess I am pretty happy, yeah. Why do you ask?"

Buck forced the bathroom door made of swollen and warped wood shut and leaned against it.

"Okay," He muttered to the air, "I don't know what's going on, but I swear I'm hearing voices. Why am I hearing voices? I thought it was Cas going crazy, not me." He paused. "I'm talking to myself in the bathroom of some random monastery in the Himalayas. Am I dreaming? I better be dreaming." He tugged his arm from the sleeve of his jacket and pinched it, wincing.

"Okay, not dreaming." He frowned, and looked around, hoping against hope that Joey had been correct in his assertion that they were alone up here.

To be sure, you're not dreaming, laddie. You know that as well as I do. The voice came, clear as a bell. Buck jammed his arm back into his sleeve and yanked at the bathroom door, which remained stubbornly in place.

"I don't have time for ghosts!" He yelled at the empty bath and wooden stalls. "Or hallucinations or whatever! Rakshasas is dead and I sent away his residual wish-thingy and he said he'd never be back-"

Really, how rude. The voice that sounded very like Mr. Rakshasas tutted. If you'd listen for one moment, young Dybbuk, I have some very important directions for you.

The door, at last, gave way, and Buck tumbled out into the hallway, landing flat on his face. He scrambled to his feet only to trip over his shoelaces and land on his elbows.

My dear, allow me: the young djinn still believes you to be dead. A soft female voice entreated, and Buck's blood went cold when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Looking back, he saw no one there. On his feet again, Buck backed slowly away from the voices, taking care not to trip over his shoelaces again.

Please relax, young djinn. This will take but a moment. The female voice whispered in his ear, and Buck felt a pair of delicate hands rest their fingertips on his temples.

His vision was wrenched away from the monastery hallway, to a craggy mountaintop. You must fly into the face of the mountain here, the woman told him, and you must not waver. His vision zoomed outwards into a map- was that China? It moved and shifted, drifting south, and finally began to focus inwards onto another mountain- wait, this was the monastery.

Whirlwinds are far too dangerous, you must use another tool to reach your destination. The woman explained. His vision moved down the halls and rested on an unassuming door that he'd passed by earlier. A carpet uses its master's blood to bond with it. It will not let its master fall. We await your arrival with eagerness, young djinn.

The vision, or whatever it was, faded gently away, leaving Buck on his knees with his head filled with a strong floral scent that made him dizzy.

Feeling dreamlike, Buck stood, swaying a little, and walked with careful steps back down the hallway and stopped at the unassuming door he'd seen in the vision. The wood here was as warped and swollen and jammed shut as the bathroom door had been, but several yanks and painful splinters later, Buck had managed to open it. The room that lay before him appeared to be some sort of storage closet. Everything in it was covered with a thick layer of grime and dust that made Buck cough as he stirred it up. He walked into the dark closet, past vaguely glinting statuettes, dusty, half-burned candles, reliquaries with faded paint, and brooms that looked as though they hadn't been used in over a century, focused in on one large cylindrical shape standing on its end before him.

He reached out and tugged on the top end of the cylinder and it crashed on top of him in a great heavy mess, unrolling to reveal what it truly was: a large blue carpet- probably about ten feet by six feet, Buck estimated,- that glittered softly in the light from the hallway. Grunting under its weight and struggling to extract himself, Buck pulled himself to his feet and, covered with grime and dust, he grinned.

"All right," he said aloud, "now we're getting somewhere."

Author's Notes: Okay, the fact that Cassius is so *shocked* and *scandalized* at discovering some random stoner in the Himalayas when he went to public high school in New York City and most certainly had classmates who were stoners is a source of some mystification for me but it's totally legit. And seeing as how Joey used to be a nurse in the states, I'm sure he's familiar with the benefits of medical marijuana and could talk for awhile about them. Also I don't think I'll be able to update at all in September since I'm going away to Uni and that's going to be really hectic, so next week's chapter will be the last one for awhile.

~Lucinda