Godforsaken: Book 1 (Shade of Light) Read Online Free Page A

allowed Mike to pour her another drink.
    “If you don’t want to you shouldn’t–” Alen
sounded politely.
    “I will,” Lily cut him off sharply and
cringed. But the first glass had already begun to take effect, she
felt the alcohol running in her veins as an unfamiliar feeling rose
up inside her chest. Even if she didn’t like Alen, she had never
been so mean to him before. But right now, she wanted to spring
upon him and shout and slap him across the face. Her normally kind
blue eyes narrowed and filled with hatred.
    “This is for my lovely Nancy,” Mike’s voice
brought Lily back to her senses, and she turned her gaze away from
Alen. “We've been together… How long has it been? Eighteen months.
During those months I never doubted my love for you, Nancy. You’re
beautiful, clever, sexy. What else could a man want? I love you,
baby.”
    “I know,” Nancy said back and leaned forward
to kiss his lips.
    Lily stared at them kissing and the anger
that had risen in her disappeared. She imagined the man and white,
and she imagined herself in Nancy’s place kissing that man, and her
heart trembled like a leaf in a high wind.
    “You’re very brave,” Alen's voice pulled her
back from the memories. She eyed him, the glass still in her hand.
“I’m just talking about the drink. You really shouldn’t drink if
you–”
    But Lily didn’t let him finish. She lifted
the glass to her thin lips and drained it, making a face. Alen
laughed soundlessly, shaking his head. He took his glass and drank
it too.
     
    * * *
     
    The dance floor was full of young people.
The loud music engulfed the club and worked its way up to a private
room upstairs. Behind the door four men with utterly serious faces
sat at a round table. They had business faces. The music was low in
here.
    “You know there is no other way to enter
that place,” said a man with curly hair and big black eyes. His
round face and wide forehead was covered in a thin layer sweat. His
bloodshot eyes looked over the others around him before coming to a
halt on the man sitting opposite the table. “The line was broken a
long time ago, now it all depends on you.”
    “And my answer hasn’t changed,” the other
said, raising his eyes up at the interlocutor. His eyes were an
unusual shade of green, and they seemed almost bottomless. Those
eyes carried his high wit, his cleverness, and a strange sort of
mystery that didn't reside in anyone else's eyes.
    The man arched his eyebrows. Unearthly anger
flooded over his face, as though the anger was as tangible as puffs
of smoke.
    “Samael, he helped you out when you were
exiled,” spoke another man. This one had narrow eyes and a sharp
face, and he sat on the left side of Samael. Samael locked his gaze
on the man’s in front of him in an unblinking stare. “It’s because
of you that the line is broken,” he claimed. “There is still time
to repay your debt–”
    “I owe nothing to anyone,” Samael
interrupted stiffly. “I hadn’t made any deal with anybody, let
alone made one with your lord. There was no deal to not touch the
children from that line. Where did you find this prat, Beelzebub?”
Samael said to the big, black-eyed man in front of him, the one who
had been speaking before. “Shut him up, or else I’ll shut him up
myself.”
    Beelzebub raised his hand. “Calm down Kali,”
he whispered to the man with sharp face, then his eyes caught
Samael. “You don’t want to cooperate with us,” he sighed, dropping
his eyes to the untouched glass of whiskey before him. “I wonder
why?”
    “You know very well that there is no way
into my place for either of you. In spite of his wicked look,
Samael’s voice sounded calm. He knew how to restrain his nerves.
“But you–”
    “I’m here, yes,” Beelzebub finished for him.
For some seconds silence flooded the room, until Beelzebub smiled
and went on. “You have seen what he is capable of, you have seen
what we can change, being tied up together?