Chapter 15: A Dream Or A Nightmare?
Being trapped in the small blue bottle, Cas didn't have much to do. He didn't much like watching television, especially since the television stations were all in Arabic, and Cas was never a great one for movie-watching. No matter how hard he concentrated, Cas also couldn't seem to muster up a good book to read: at least, a book that wasn't one of his school textbooks. Finally, giving up, and deciding that he envied Holly's vivid imagination, he had given his bottle very Spartan furnishings, and began, very quickly, to grow lonely.
Sighing heavily, Cas sat down on his rather uncomfortable folding bed. He wondered what Azazel was up to, where they were going. Obviously, Azazel was going to cause mass destruction, that much Cas knew for sure. Cas and Azazel were so different, it was hard to believe that they really could be brothers. Azazel acted every inch the wicked djinn he was, but Cas? Cas hated the very idea of causing real pain to others. True, there was the odd April Fools' joke, but those were always in good spirits and always just for fun.
Azazel didn't seem to feel anything but hatred and anger. It was strange, to Cas, that Azazel could feel genuine disappointment in Cas. He had ordered his mother to kill Cas's adoptive parents without pause. This was not to mention Mark's dad, stepmother, and uncle. Holly seemed so far removed from everything, yet completely involved in every way imaginable. Cas wondered what she was doing, how she was taking it all. The sudden loss of the only parents she had ever known, the sudden revelation of her true heritage and origins, in many ways, Holly had more strange, sudden truths to deal with than Cas. She must be frantic, Cas thought with a mirthless smile. He knew that Holly had the makings of a truly great djinn, not to mention she was the best friend Cas had ever had. Cas couldn't quite explain what made Holly such a great friend to him, but he knew that, among other things, Holly would be quite determined to rescue Cas no matter what it took.
Cas, meanwhile, also realized that he himself had his own problems to deal with. He, too, had lost the people he believed to be his parents, and he, too had discovered his hidden origins. Or had he? There still seemed quite a few unexplained things to Azazel's claim. If Azazel was indeed Cas's biological brother, and they shared the same pair of biological parents, then who were those parents?
It was the thought of his parents that sparked a thought that slowly developed in Cas's head. There was definitely an explanation to why Holly had been raised by mundanes, but what about Cas? Azazel certainly seemed not to know anything about it, and if he didn't, Cas found it reasonable to assume that Dimme Teer wouldn't know much about why Cas had been spirited away from them. Cas wished he knew why.
A wave of sudden sleepiness overtook Cas, and he fell over onto his side and promptly fell fast asleep.
In his dream, Cas was in a huge underground cave. Cas couldn't tell quite how large it was, because only a small spot of light was present. The light came from a bronze lamp, rather like the brass one that Nimrod had materialized from during Cas and Holly's Tammuz. The handle, however, was not bronze, but made of carved, yellowing ivory, crafted in the shape of what seemed to Cas to be an angel in full flight.
"So, Cas," came a deep, resounding, sombre voice from just outside the circle of light. "We meet at last."
"Who... Who are you?" Cas asked, somewhat fearfully, raising the lamp higher. His voice echoed around the cavern for a good few seconds before the male voice answered.
"I am your namesake, the angel Castiel. I have come on behalf of Gabriel. He's sorry that he couldn't make it tonight." Castiel stepped into the dim light from the lamp, and Cas was faced with a dark-haired, solemn man clad all in perfect white. Cas blinked, and in the moment between his eyes shut and opened again, Cas saw the faint outline of two enormous, snowy white wings.
"Gabriel? As in, the archangel?" Cas felt even more worried than he already did.
"Yes. He's busy delivering a message to your friend, Holly Godwin." Castiel nodded.
"So it's true, what Azazel said. Nimrod is Holly's father by blood." Cas said.
Castiel sighed. "Yes, that much is true. It is true, also, that you and Azazel Teer share the same parents."
"Is that what you came to tell me?" Cas lowered the curiously carved lamp again in order to look Castiel in the eyes.
"No. You asked for a message, remember? I've come to deliver that message to you." Castiel stood up straighter, but Cas just looked at him, befuddled.
"What message did I ask for?" he said, squinting up at Castiel.
"You asked for why you were taken away from perdition. I have come to show you why and how." Castiel raised his right hand towards the roof of the cavern, which was so high up that Cas couldn't see it. "If you wish to leave, simply let go of the lamp." Cas heard Castiel say as the air around him lightened and faded into white mist.
A few seconds later, the mist cleared to reveal a tiny room, the walls covered in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. A weeping blond woman sat on a stone stool in the corner of the room, cradling a small, fair-haired very young child in her arms. At the other end of the room, a tall, fair-haired, clean shaven man paced back and forth, his arms crossed, seemingly deep in thought.
"Sister," he said, his voice a very distinct, very educated English accent. "You know meeting you down here always makes me uncomfortable, so get on with it. What is it you wanted to tell me?" The tall man sounded very impatient with his sister.
"Iblis, do you remember last year when..." The woman trailed off, looking down at the child. By now, Cas had guessed that the child must be Azazel, the woman, his mother, Dimme, and the tall man had to be Iblis Teer.
"Of course. It's not every day that my little sister gets herself involved in the affairs of demons. Particularly," Iblis sniffed loudly and disdainfully, "one of the Princes of the Pit."
Dimme Teer nodded. She looked, to Cas, completely dishevelled, and quite far from the way he would have thought an evil djinn should look. "He came to see me again. The Lord of the Flies." Dimme looked back at her brother. As Iblis realized what she was saying, his features changed from impatience to something near fury. Not quite, though.
"You're very lucky that our father is no longer head of the Ifrit, otherwise your head would be decorating a pike somewhere! Didn't I tell you before not to meddle in the affairs of demons?! Well, didn't I?!" Iblis snarled at her, and Dimme nodded sadly.
"Yes. Several times over. But Iblis, you do not simply refuse a demon, especially one as powerful as him." she replied quietly.
"By rights, that thing," Iblis pointed to the young Azazel, "should have been killed the moment it was born! And so should the other one be. Do you not realize, sister, that you have single-handedly destroyed all of djinnkind? Mark my words, you will come to regret not killing your hellspawn children when you could."
"But..." Dimme began, but Iblis wasn't finished.
"Are you going to try and tell me again that they'll both turn out to be perfectly normal djinn? Because you and I already know that that is most certainly not true. Your two children will turn out to have more power than you or I could ever have, with only our Neshamah. Those two will have all the eternal fires of Hell at their disposal. They'll live long past thousands of years. One of the brats is bad enough, but I don't know what you're going to do with two. Are you going to be so frightened of both of them that you can't walk straight if they tell you to do otherwise?"
Dimme didn't respond, but wiped the tears away from her face and took a deep breath.
"Well?" Iblis prompted. "What are you going to do?"
Dimme stood, a drowsy Azazel still held in her arms, and faced her brother head-on. "I... I'm going to..." she began, but did not finish. Instead, she ran out of the underground chamber, sobbing, her long blond hair fanning out behind her as she ran.
"Luck, for those two, means bad luck for every other djinn, good or evil!" Iblis called after her, and the scene faded back into white mist.
"My father is a demon?" Cas turned to Castiel, horrified. "Why are you helping me, then?"
Castiel looked at Cas somberly. "There is more to your story than this one scene, Cas." he said. "Would you see it?" Cas nodded, and the mist cleared again, this time to reveal an elegant room, with two sumptuous cradles and a plain rocking chair. Dimme Teer, looking older and more tired than she had before, sat in the rocking chair, sound asleep. Evidently, she had not spared any djinn power when it came to her sons. Cas drifted over to the cradles, feeling like a ghost, and looked at the child that slept in it. He received a bit of a shock when Cas realized that the tiny baby with a shock of messy brown hair was him.
"She's worn herself thin already making you and your brother content." Castiel explained. "She knows very well that at this rate she'll lose all of her powers in less than a year. She's too afraid of your father to stop."
"Wait, djinn can lose their powers?" Cas asked. Castiel nodded, but shushed Cas.
"Listen," he said quietly, and a moment later, the nursery flooded with brilliant white light. Cas had to shield his eyes, such was the intensity. A second or two later, however, the light faded and Cas blinked in surprise. Two angels had appeared in the nursery. One was Castiel, and the other was an equally sombre-looking, red-haired fellow. Cas could just barely see the ghosts of feathery white wings.
"Which one is the younger, Janax?" the Castiel from the past asked the red-haired angel. Janax examined the infant Cas and the toddler Azazel, and eventually pointed at Cas.
"That one. The dark haired one." Castiel walked over to have a better look at the child.
"I suppose he is smaller. Now, then, did anyone tell you why we have to move this young djinn?" Castiel asked Janax. Janax nodded.
"He is to be delivered by order of the Almighty. This djinn child will be allowed to choose his own fate; to have great power or to have goodness in his heart." Janax explained.
"But why?" Castiel persisted, even as he reached out and lifted the infant Cas out of his cradle. Janax merely shrugged.
"I have not been made privy to the exact reasoning, Castiel. I merely know that I must deliver him from this evil."
Another bright flash of white light later, and the two angels were gone, along with the baby. Cas turned back to Castiel, even as the air around them began to turn back into mist.
"Is that it?" Cas asked, and Castiel shook his head.
"One more scene." he said, and the fog began to clear for a third time. This time, however, there was something different about the way it cleared, something sinister. The white fog vanished, only to be replaced with total and utter darkness.
"Castiel?" Cas called out to the angel, but there was no reply. Cas could almost feel the darkness pressing in around him on all sides, and he began feeling very claustrophobic. He struggled for each breath. It may have been Cas's imagination, but he could almost swear that he saw a pair of enormous, evil-looking blood red eyes peer towards him through the darkness, and heard a hissing, almost reptilian voice call to him.
"My son," it seemed to say. "My second son. Join me in the fight for evil. I am the Lord of the Flies, I am Beelzebub. Join me. You cannot resist for long." Cas's hands were shaking so badly that he dropped the still-lit lamp into the palpable darkness below. The effect was instantaneous. In the span of a second, two things happened. First, the voice and eyes, Beelzebub, screamed and vanished. Second, Castiel came back and dragged Cas forcefully backwards, through more swirling white mist.
"Wake up, Cas!" Castiel shouted. "I can hold him off for another second or two. Go!"
Cas's eyes flew open. He was damp with sweat, and aching all over from pain that seemed to have appeared from out of nowhere. He was disoriented, and nearly forgot that he was in a bottle, headed towards who-knew-where. All Cas could think about was the worry that he hadn't woken up in time for Castiel to escape Beelzebub's wrath.
"Well," Cas muttered as he wrapped his arms around himself, shivering fearfully with the memory of those evil blood red eyes, "My dad certainly isn't getting anything for Father's Day."