Godforsaken: Book 1 (Shade of Light) (21 page)

Lily, immobilized, looked at the magic going
on before her eyes. A huge castle stretched up about half a mile
and mingled with the ceiling above. It was lit up by blue lights,
as though thousands of projectors were placed around the castle.
The ceiling was too high to reach, and the ground was gray like
ash, but too solid to be ash in truth.

Peering around in shock, Lily didn’t notice
her feet taking her toward Samael of their own accord.

“Here we are.” His voice made her jerk back
to reality. “Do you remember what I told you?” Receiving no answer,
he reminded her. “Stay close to Raphael.”

She nodded absently. The castle didn’t look
ugly, on the contrary, outwardly it had a specific beauty, but Lily
remembered Raphael’s words about trying to look deeply. The first
look might be an illusion.

“Let’s go,” Raphael started forward toward
the gates on the far end of the pathway.

Samael looked at Lily severely. With
uneasiness in her heart, Lily flinched, and hurried to catch up
with the monk. The pathway leading toward the entrance of the huge
castle was lit by dim, flame-yellow lights. If Lily wasn’t sure
about their heavenly origin, she’d think there were two neon wires
pinned to both sides of the pathway.

Samael walked behind, keeping some distance
between him and Lily. Every now and again she peered back at him in
hope that he would say something, but Samael seemed to be blind to
her.

They were at the gates when Samael caught up
with them. There was a big picture carved on the gates. Looking
carefully, Lily recognized the warrior holding a long spear at the
throat of a fallen man. Wearing a military uniform, he bore the
same look as Raphael did now. Here was the prison Dudael, and the
fallen man must be Azazel. She glanced at a notice hung above the
picture, but the language was unfamiliar to her.

“What’s written there?” she whispered to
Samael.

“The one who dares to tread here will be
blind and deprived of God’s light forevermore, until the day of the
great judgment when he shall be cast into the fire,” Samael
translated tonelessly.

Lily’s heart sunk. “What does it mean? Will
we be able to leave this place, Samael?”

“You have nothing to worry about.” Finally,
Samael glanced at her. His eyes were playful, he looked like a
child who was on the brink of a new discovery. “This is a warning
for Lilith’s offspring, besides, the keeper of the prison himself,”
he pointed to Raphael, “is with you. He’ll definitely bring you out
of it again, won’t you, Raphael?”

The monk replied with nothing, keeping his
worried gaze on the gates. Most assuredly Raphael recalled the
memories, the old times when he had built this prison and tossed
the previous keeper of the Garden of Eden into it. Now he was here
with the new keeper. Lily wondered how long it had been since he
had last been here, but she dared not to break concentration on the
gates.

“What about you, Samael?” Lily murmured
after a little while.

“What about me?”

“Will you escape from here, too?” Her voice
trembled. “What if God realizes you broke the rules?”

“I have to leave with you,” Samael’s voice
became anxious, or at least it seemed that way to Lily. “But even
God will agree with me that the rules exist only to be one day
broken. If he didn't believe that, he wouldn’t love the life he
created on Earth.”

“You think God loves people because they
sin?” Lily guessed.

“He loves man because man is unpredictable,”
Samael said. “If man followed all rules, life on Earth wouldn’t
exist. Man would never have been banished from the Garden of Eden.
I told you about the feelings and the danger – sometimes, they show
the right way, but you still need to break or bend some rules.”

“Instinct,” Lily added rapidly.

The conversation was interrupted by the
rough voice of the opening rusty gates. Lily felt adrenaline
rushing through her veins. Her heart began hammering as in her
mind’s eye she saw the castle's insides. To her disappointment,
there was darkness behind the gates, like nobody was at home.

The gates hung open and quiet fell. No
voices, no wind, nothing. Lily thought she became deaf and rubbed
at her ears, but Samael grasped her hand, looking at her
severely.

As her eyes turned toward the gates, she saw
a person walking to meet them, holding a torch above the head. The
flame lit a narrow passage opposite the gate. Lily looked closely,
trying to figure out if the person holding the torch was a human.
It wore a black cassock like Raphael in the church, and its face
was obscured under the hood, but Lily spotted two flaming eyes.

It came and stood two steps away from
Raphael before it bowed and greeted him.

“My angel.” It was a dulcet woman’s
voice.

“Succubus,” Raphael greeted back.

Lily tried to see something else under the
hood, but the creature’s face remained in darkness. Only her eyes
were flaming. Lily gave up and glanced at the torch. She had never
seen such fire before. It was glowing lazily, as if in different,
lengthened time, and the flame was mingling with air like a yellow
liquid. The creature, holding it, raised its free hand and pushed
back its hood. Lily forgot to breathe. A unique beauty stood before
Lily’s eyes; curly golden hair spilling out over the cassock's
shoulders, lips plump and cherry red. She saw distinctly
flaming-yellow eyes, and a face more beautiful than any she had
ever seen before. It was a woman, far too beautiful for such a
prison. She looked from Raphael to Samael, whose eyes were piercing
into her. They stared at each other for an intimate space of time.
Lily gawked from her to Samael, then back at her, and saw
Succubus’s face curl into a thin, happy smile.

“Welcome, Samael,” she said. “It’s been a
long time.”

“A long time for the ones who’re stuck in
this prison,” Samael cut her off waspishly. “The time goes by much
faster outside,” he teased, his smile sneering.

“You haven’t changed.” Succubus narrowed her
eyes. “My rude mustang.”

It was clear they had known each other for a
long time. Lily felt an incomprehensible envy as she noticed the
way Succubus looked at Samael. She was seducing Samael with those
eager eyes, she was seducing him with her irresistible look.

“
Accipere eum in
,” Raphael ordered,
breaking their eye contact. Succubus nodded obediently and gave the
monk a bow. Without saying anything, she spun around and started
forward into the castle. She hadn’t even noticed Lily. It was as
though Lily didn’t exist.

Lily looked at Samael in puzzlement. In her
narrowed eyes an unexplainable anger rose, demanding an
explanation, but the unearthly creature ignored her look. He
indicated the pathway ahead.

Lily wheeled around curtly and hurried to
catch up with Raphael, who was already about to enter the gates.
Samael sighed and made his way after her.

“Stay close,” Raphael hummed under his
breath as she came up beside him. “Try to control yourself and
don’t look around too much.”

Lily nodded involuntarily. She tried to peer
back at Samael, but Raphael poked her. “Stay close,” he hissed
threateningly.

With a loud snap, the gates closed behind
them, and Lily thought that the ceiling would crash down. She
received only a sandy rain. As the gates were closed, the darkness
in a hazy corridor laid before them disappeared and was replaced by
fire light, but Lily couldn’t find the source.

The outside silence was replaced by echoes
wandering in the corridor – cries, shrieks, moans, groans, hollers.
It sounded like people were being tortured in the depths of the
castle. The farther they strode into the prison, the louder the
voices became. Lily looked around to find where they were coming
from. On both sides, endless sandy walls stretched on, along with
the unreal flame.

Raphael and Samael looked unfazed.

“Can you hear the voices?” she hissed to
Raphael. The archangel nodded. “What are they?”

Raphael only looked down at her with his
serious eyes. He didn’t reply, but the expression in his eyes told
her to be patient, that soon she would figure it out on herself.
Lily gulped and looked away.

Succubus was two steps ahead, holding the
torch high above her. She kept looking ahead. Not once had she
turned to check if the angels were still following her or not. She
obviously wasn’t interested in the guests.

The wandering sounds grew louder and louder.
The passage parted in three in the end, and their guide took them
to the right. Lily tried to see something in the other dark
corridors, but found nothing, only blackness.

The journey went on along another corridor –
the same sandy walls and solid floor. Lily spotted a doorway
somewhere in the distance. She straightened, felt a flutter in her
stomach, but her eyes stared strongly at the hole in the wall. With
every step it grew closer, and finally she could peek into the room
through the doorway.

A tremor ran over her body and her mouth
fell open in horror. She saw a naked woman lying on a bed, her head
propped up by the headboard. She looked at Lily with stony eyes.
They were empty, carrying no emotion within them. Her long black
hair was scattered about her, her hands were lying at her sides.
Her breasts were quaking because of the motions of a naked man atop
her. As he turned and faced Lily, she saw something like a human,
or something that might’ve been human once. Half the skin of his
face was ripped, as if a lion had clawed it off, and fresh blood
was still dripping down on the woman’s neck. He smiled at Lily
wickedly, widening his eyes, and with his long tongue he licked the
woman’s skin. Still the black-haired woman’s eyes remained
emotionless. She seemed dead. Lily covered her eyes with her hand
and opened her mouth to shriek, but her voice refused to come out
of her throat.

Raphael patted on her shoulder. She tried to
regain her breath until they reached the next doorway. Now Lily
knew what the voices were about: sex. Within every doorway she saw
it – three women kissing and licking a huge man sitting on his
throne. Then she saw a tall and muscular man standing at a wall as
a red-haired woman knelt down before his erection. She took it into
her mouth while another man came up to join her.

The next room held two naked men engaging in
intercourse. One had brown frizzy hair and green eyes like
Samael's, tight skin and a handsome face. The other was older, with
graying hair, and he stood a little shorter than his lover. The
younger glanced at Lily and winked at her, or perhaps at Samael. He
looked like a human – his face, his skin, his body – but the
expression in his eyes was devilish. Lily didn’t recognize any
human emotion in them. His hand passed through the other man’s gray
hair, and they kissed eagerly. Lily averted her eyes, but couldn’t
help looking into the following rooms.

The corridor split again. This time Succubus
led them into the middle corridor. After ten yards, Lily saw
doorways again. Sounds wandering here became more mystical, like
some of them were too old and eluded the walls’ memories.

Every room had different people with
different predilections, though Lily wouldn’t call them people –
half human, half demons. She saw group sex, saw masochists
scratching on each other’s skin, creating words or pictures using
sharp knives, or teeth, or long nasty nails. In one room Lily saw a
crooning brown-haired woman in the doggy-style position, her face
buried in the bed, as a man thrust into her while another man
scourged him. His back was all bloody, his skin whipped raw, but he
kept thrusting into her and screaming hysterically. The man
relished every stroke on his back, he enjoyed the pain and the sex
at the same time.

They went through several corridors, but the
world around them the same – opened doors, some of them covered by
transparent curtains, but all of them lead to the same destination
of sex, moans, and cries of pain. There were different faces, but
each shared the same inhuman expressions.

“Where do the other corridors lead to?” she
asked Raphael when they chose the leftmost path at the next
fork.

“This is a maze.” the archangel said. “It
was created for humans. If they come in through the same gates we
did, they will never find the right way back out again.”

“But how can humans find the way in?” Lily
asked, interested. “And who would want to risk being trapped here
forever?”

“There are a lot of people longing for
immortality, and they’ll do anything and everything to attain it,”
Raphael explained. “Some organizations in different countries find
such buyers and bring them here.”

Lily peeked back at Samael, bewildered. The
keeper of Eden was walking unfazed, his hands thrust into his
pockets, looking for all the world like he had come to a park for a
stroll. Nothing captured his interest, save that he kept looking
ahead at Succubus. Lily felt a rush of her blood in her ears. Why
didn’t he pay attention to her? She was scared, she needed him now,
she wanted his protective arms, but instead, Samael ignored both
Lily and Raphael.

A moment later, Lily jerked under Raphael’s
grasp. He had stopped her and pulled her aside.
What is
wrong?
She looked around. Succubus had stopped in front of
them, gazing at Samael through Lily, like Lily was merely a ghost
wandering in these endless corridors. Lily glanced back at Samael
uneasily.

Succubus paced toward him, and Raphael
pushed Lily out of her way. Lily peered at him indignantly.

“She can’t see us,” the monk said. “Don’t
you remember about my powers here? You’re invisible like me.”

Lily looked at Samael then back at Raphael
quickly. “Can’t Samael see us either?”