Chapter 11: Old Enemies

Holly had no idea how long she stood there, crying into Mark's shoulder, but finally, she managed to swallow her emotions and turned around, wiping the last of the tears away.

"Hol?" Cas asked, sounding concerned. "Are you okay?" Cas had been in tears as well, but he had been very quiet and without much fuss. It seemed that the shock of the news had yet to really sink in.

Holly nodded, her face set. "I'm fine," she assured him, "it's those Ifrit who won't be okay when we finish with them!"

"Careful, Holly." Nimrod cautioned, "Using djinn power in anger almost never helps the situation. Try to-"

"Blah, blah, blah. Do you ever shut up, Nimrod?" An irritated male voice with an arrogant British accent to it interrupted Nimrod. Everyone whipped around to face the owner of the voice. A dusky-skinned boy, only a couple of years older than Holly, Cas, and the twins, with straight, straw-coloured hair, a square jaw, and cruel green eyes, reclined lazily on top of one of the rock formations a few yards away.

"Azazel!" shouted Nimrod, looking quite angry. "Go away. These young djinn have chosen Good! You-"

"I think that you didn't quite understand me before. Here, I'll help you. MACKINTOSH!" Azazel interrupted Nimrod again.

Nimrod was suddenly encased in a huge block of perfectly clear ice. His brown eyes darted wildly around, asking silently for help. Azazel snickered nastily and leapt down from his perch.

"Nimrod!" cried John and Philippa, and they immediately ran over to see if there was anything that they could do.

"That's ice that will never melt, you washed-up hooligans. Unbreakable, too. The only way it'll begin to melt is if I relinquish it- voluntarily. I call it my Ice Age binding. My own idea. You've no hope for his survival unless you listen to me, very carefully." Azazel wore a smug smirk that made Holly and Cas hate him all the more.

"Name your demands." Holly said bravely. Azazel laughed again, this time even harder.

"Very well. I actually believe that I forgot how funny Americans are when they're trying to sound courageous. My demands, Holly Imelda Coomes, is that you and your friend Castiel over there come with me, without any fuss. At all. I have no intention of killing you, but I do have every intention of allowing Nimrod to die if you two do not comply. Understood?"

"No!" Philippa yelled at the Ifrit. Holly held up her left hand, the way Nimrod did when he wanted to stop all protests.

"Phil, don't worry about us, worry about your uncle. Cas?" Holly turned to her best friend, and Cas nodded, confirming to her that he was willing, if their actions would, indeed, save Nimrod's life.

"Hold still, you two." Azazel took out two separate silver hip flasks, identical to each other in every aspect but one: one of the hip flasks had a carved, jade cap. "MACKINTOSH!" said the evil djinn, and smoke spiralled into the hip flasks; one with white smoke, the other with black. The two young djinn safely in the containers, Azazel screwed the caps on tightly and walked slowly over to where Nimrod stood, frozen. Azazel leaned forward and whispered something sardonically to Nimrod, and then, with one outstretched forefinger, Azazel touched the face of the gigantic ice cube, repeated his focus word, and the ice immediately began to melt in the hot desert sun.

The second he had done this, Azazel Teer laughed again at Nimrod, the powerless djinn twins, and the soppy-eyed mundanes that were with them. Soppy-eyed in Azazel's opinion, at least. He had no tolerance for mundanes, especially those that served his enemies. After he had completed his victory over them, Azazel called his whirlwind to ride off to his hotel. Now that Iblis was gone, Azazel thought it was his right to be the tribal leader of the Ifrit- but no. Simply because Iblis' idiot son had trapped Azazel in a bottle, Azazel had been overlooked. Slighted out of his very reason for being. No, the stupid American Jirjis Ibn Rajmus had to get in the way, like the idiot always did. The only djinn Azazel could ever rely on was his mother, and that was partially because she was afraid of Azazel and his father.

Azazel had been competing with Iblis since Azazel had first mastered his djinn power. After all, what kind of imbecile allowed himself to be tricked into a bottle by a Marid? Let alone John and Philippa Gaunt, who had, at that time, been only twelve.

Now Azazel was seventeen, and quite determined to lead the Ifrit, whether they liked it or not. This he was going to accomplish by using the two young djinn that he had so cleverly bottled up. Even though it played perfectly into his plan, it bothered Azazel that the two unaware djinn hadn't hated each other at first sight. It was a bit unnerving that the child of two very important Marids and Azazel's own lost sibling could turn out to be best friends. Although, Azazel reflected, if he could twist Nimrod's own child against him, no other Ifrit, not even Jirjis Ibn Rajmus, could refute Azazel's wickedness. Yes, that sounded like a perfect plan! That is, if the other one didn't take the bait. Azazel smiled grimly at his own cunning, which he had certainly not inherited from his mother's side of the family. No, it was his father, the powerful demon Beelzebub, who Azazel took after mostly. Azazel only wondered if his lost sibling would be the same. Whatever the case, these two djinn would make Azazel powerful.

Inside her hip flask, Holly was feeling horribly cramped and claustrophobic. She didn't have her special claustrophobia medicine with her, and after a little while, Holly began talking to herself in an effort to calm down.

"I don't much like it in here. I really wish I had my medicine." The word wish seemed to jog her memory.

"MADECASSEE," she said, and a silvery charcoal pill appeared on her palm. She swallowed it. The effect was instantaneous, and left Holly feeling much calmer and have a much greater capacity to think carefully. She walked around the bottom edge of the flask. This took her several minutes, and she decided that the smooth, metallic walls were simply not going to do for an extended period of incarceration.

"Best jazz the place up a little, eh?" she muttered to herself, and with another few recitations of her focus word, and several failed attempts at creating furniture that looked more like modern art than anything else, Holly created what she believed to be the ideal living space. A very retro sort of design, with a well-equipped kitchen, lots of her favourite colour, which was red, and a radio that played only Egyptian music, which Holly understood only a small amount of the time, and didn't really enjoy very much. She much preferred to listen to the music on her iPod instead.

Even though she was quite happy with the space around her, Holly was very, very lonely.

Cas, meanwhile, barely had time to get himself a charcoal pill out of his pocket when he heard the loud grinding sound that indicated that someone was opening his hip flask. Cas swirled (as smoke) out of the hip flask and out into a hotel room.

It appeared to be a very nice hotel room, with thick, Persian carpets on the floor, a widescreen TV, and an elegant chandelier hanging above. In a black leather chair, the young Ifrit who had kidnapped Cas and his best friend was reclining lazily, with an expression of utter amusement on his face. Amusement at Cas's expense. Cas felt his face flush red with anger, and he began to say his focus word, but found that he couldn't remember how to pronounce it.

"APO... AP... APO..." he tried to say APOGEOTROPICAL, but his mouth simply wouldn't cooperate.

"Hello, Castiel Gabriel Malone. I've placed a sesquipedalian binding on you, so you won't remember how to pronounce your focus word until I feel like liberating you. That won't be for some time, though, so don't feel anxious."

"What happened to Nimrod?" Cas asked, finding that he could say this perfectly well.

"Oh, Nimrod will be fine when he defrosts." Azazel replied, sounding bored.

"What do you want with me?" Cas was still very angry, but figured that if he couldn't act immediately, then the best he could do was gather information.

"That's right, you don't know exactly who I am. I'm Azazel Teer, your brother."

What?! Cas absolutely refused to believe this.

"Liar!" he shouted, feeling like a child throwing a temper tantrum, but still convinced that he spoke the truth. "I'm an only child!"

"Oh, please, Castiel, don't embarrass yourself. Surely by now you've realized that those mundanes that mother burned weren't your real family?" Azazel laughed condescendingly, and stood up to look out of the window at the dark Egyptian night outside.

"They're more family than the people who killed them!" Cas glared. "Let Holly out!" Azazel laughed again and turned to look Cas in the eye.

"All in good time, Castiel. But for now, your little Marid girlfriend will stay safely in her bottle." Even as Azazel spoke, Cas felt himself going red all over again with a new mixture of embarrassment and fresh anger. However, instead of shouting again, Cas forced his voice into controlled calmness.

"She's not my girlfriend," Cas said quietly, dangerously. "Holly's my best friend. Let her out, now."

"Again, I think not. It's rather cute, though, how much you get yourself worked up over a trifle like her." Azazel snickered unpleasantly. "We're old enemies, her family and our family. But I'll cut you a deal. If you ever want to see Nimrod's daughter again, you must do exactly as I tell you, or I throw this flask to the bottom of the sea. Have I made myself quite clear?"

"Transparent." Cas said through gritted teeth, his eyes on Holly's hip flask, which Azazel was now holding dangerously close to the open window. Azazel smiled, walked over to the miniature refrigerator, and put Holly's hip flask in.

"Lovely. Now, I suppose that I shall unteach everything that Nimrod has already poisoned you with. Let's begin, shall we?"