Love Bites Then it Sucks by Julie Steimle (story books to read txt) 📖

imps made me quickly change my mind. Despite being tons of trouble, not even imps deserved to be used like that. I could not in good conscience send them off to somewhere potentially deadly for them. I realized then that I had to scout it out myself.

The second thing that caught my attention was the sort of location they were in. It was a storefront for some kind of deli. It reminded me a little of the place where that old imp gang back in California had holed themselves in—that bar with a apartments up top and a basement ‘clubhouse’ for the ‘Unseelie Gang’, which were a group of punk half-imps who wanted to join the Unseelie Court and acted as a front for them within human society. Roddy had done his darndest to avoid that place, but that Piranha had lived there along with those two others I whom Rick, Tom, Daniel and James had rescued from the gang. I think Roddy and Piranha might have recognized the nature of this location as something similar.

And as I flipped pages, I recognized the earmarks of double-dealing witchcraft. Not that these individuals were witches, but that they used things either purchased or taken from witches. The only reason it did not look like natural elvish or even demon sort of magic was at how manufactured it was. Natural magic felt alive and it moved. I could also smell it. It was familiar, like smelling a tune you can’t remember the words to, if that makes any sense. But witchcraft was like piecing together a Frankenstein’s monster, or baking a cake with a whole lot of mad science. I wondered why these ‘persons’ were using witchcraft when clearly they had to be half-elvish or part demon. This proved to me once more that I had to go myself and not leave things up to imps.

Taking a breath to get myself psyched up for the journey, I snatched up a nearby imp and told him to get me someone’s backpack. It stared at me, startled that I was talking to it, but it zipped off and did exactly that for me. That took about five minutes. It was grinning with little wicked cackles when he chucked it at me. When I caught it, it was solid in my hands.

I then ordered it to go get me a box of jelly donuts.

As it was gone, I searched around the backpack for a name and address. I found it on the inside written in permanent ink. It was just within my neighborhood. Flying over the buildings there, I landing on the roof and sank down through the solid wood and tarpaper to the stairwell, searching for the apartment number. It belonged to a boy named Cassius Washington, whom I eventually found getting shouted at for losing his backpack full of school books. His apartment was comfortable inside with a mix of things from secondhand shops to heirlooms to the latest tec. They oddly had an X-box, but their TV was one of those old box types. His grandmother was irate, while his caramel face was turning a darker shade from embarrassment. Quietly, where clearly he was just doing his homework before his backpack had been stolen, I pulled out and set down his textbooks and homework, emptying his backpack in a stack on the cluttered coffee table. Taking the last pen out of the bag, I wrote on his paper a brief note.

 

Cassius,

I am borrowing your backpack. I’ll bring it back when I am done with it.

Your Guardian Angel

 

It was silly to sign it like that, but I had to write something. He didn’t know me from anybody. As soon as I could, I launched back through the ceiling back to the roof with the backpack and put all the papers I got from Tom inside it. Zipping it up, I looked skyward. It was still light.

I was mostly looking up for planes. It would not be good to crash into one. Though also I was keeping an eye out for other watching angels. I had a feeling that there were still guardians set to watch me for whatever reason. Squatting down to create momentum, with one hard push, I launched into the sky. My dragon-sized wings went wide, flapping to take in air.

Maintaining altitude over my area, I looked over toward my neighbors to see if they were looking up, or if I could see them. Then, like a shot, I zipped into the clouds above where no one could see me, and I snapped over to where the cops had figured the perpetrators lived. Down from the clouds, with a light footed landing on the nearest roof, I crouched down and listened to the imps—or rather the lack thereof. If there really was an imp-eating demon, then imps would do their best to avoid that area as much as possible. They may have short memories, but they weren’t stupid. I was sure imps could smell out danger.

Sure enough, I spotted a pocket of space in which imps gave a wide berth. I could nearly smell their absence, which was odd. As I approached the area void of those little devils, I got immediate shivers. It was as if the air had gotten thinner. My mind also started to fill, unbidden, with thoughts of things that scared me—like the time the vampires in the mountains near my hometown attacked me and I ended up losing control and killing a slew of them. Then the time when hunters had attacked my family and I had also lost control and had my first taste of human blood whipped into my brain—a traumatic memory I had overcome ages ago. And then the time when those witches had kidnapped me. It shot into my skull, practically stabbing me again with the horror of what I had done then and nearly had done when I was in Middleton Village with the intent to kill the Seven. But that left and in came the memory of when I was in that house with Deidre where that one evil spirit (who was not a ghost) had attacked me and I could do nothing to stop it. And after that came the horrific memory of when that one man-gone-demon went after Matthew and I was forced to rip his heart out—the same time I was sure I had lost Hanz for the second time. And though I survived all those and Hanz had not left me, I was breathless, like I was reliving it all once more….

Until I shook my head and told myself to snap out of it. I had survived. Everyone whom I had cared for was safe. Besides, most of those things happened ages ago. I was a reaper now. I had nothing to fear. And I could feel that it was not fear from inside me, but something striving to make me afraid was in the air. But whatever was messing with me, it could not kill me. And thinking on it, in the same way imps urged mischief, I guessed something inside that building was invoking fear.

I followed that sensation, dropping down the side of the building to ground level. I hid around an alley corner, heading toward the source. It led me up to a brick and mortar building where I halted. Drawing in a breath and ducking immediately into the shadows, I put myself immediately out of sight, my eyes having taken in something I should have expected.

Outside the building stood that Gollum-wocky, like a sentry.

None of the mortals could see him, of course, yet I could see cats avoiding him.  

My heart thumped heavily in my chest. My face flushed. Everything made sense now. I knew he was not the source of the fear, but of course he had wanted that cop dead. Clearly he was in on the whole scheme. Gollum-wocky had to be working for the enemy, though it was not clear what a reaper got out of it. Yet… it put something Asahel had once said to mind. That gray angel was not entirely wrong in his attitude about demons trying to go straight. Most demons were demons for a reason. It wasn’t exactly an accident of birth. I think that was why his reasoning hurt so much. I had wondered many a time what I had done before my birth to deserve being a demon. I had no recollection of my past, after all. And also I knew imps who had sought ways to become full demons. Those did not just commit mischief. They led people toward serious crimes. It made them larger and slower. Nastier. I had also heard of elves going demon. I had never seen it myself, but Matthew had talked about the phenomenon, mentioning those he had seen in the Unseelie Court when he had been abducted by them. I realized that demons were not a specific kind of creature but a broad category—a kind of faerie folk in away. They were beings who chose to serve what Star Wars fans would call “the Dark Side”. That’s what Hanz jokingly called it at least. He was a big fan.

And thinking of him made me feel homesick. I honestly wished those friends of mine could tell Hanz where I was. It wasn’t fair to have everything ripped from me like that, to have to remain hidden and to leave him alone so abruptly.

Looking back to where Gollum-wocky stood, I nodded to myself. With him keeping watch on behalf of those creeps, I knew I had to be more careful sneaking about. I was now in violation of the rules and probably in his territory.

I stepped through the wall.

I ended up in a kitchen. It was thankfully empty, with linoleum floor and a boring plain set of cupboards, nearly barren and not home-like at all. I could hear a dull murmur of conversation coming from the other room and the beats of about four irregular hearts. With one ear open for whomever might come in, I made myself light and floated on the air, straight to the ceiling, lying flat against it.

The scent of terror rose, thickening in the atmosphere, almost in reaction to my entrance.

“Oh… he smells something,” an almost gleeful voice broke the murmuring noise.

“Sic ‘em,” another said.

Little paws galloped to the door, clawing at it to press it open. While it nudged in to gain entry into the kitchen, I melted up through the ceiling, into the room above. I ended up in a dusty space under a bed. I could sense no heartbeats in this room, so I pressed further and went through the mattress.

I heard shouting below. “It went upstairs! It’s going nuts!”

I listened for hearts on this floor, though I did not detect any. But there was one possibly two above me.

I pushed up with a jump and climbed though the next ceiling into the next floor. Here were two girls. Both were tied up, gagged and bruised. I recognized one of them.

“Deidre!” I crawled over to her, pulling off her gag.

Her eyes were wide in horror on me. She recoiled as if I were holding a knife to stab her. “Eve?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“You’re a death angel?” Her face was going almost green.

I nodded again. “Yeah. Long story. Look, who’s your friend?”

Deidre shook her head stiffly, her eyes shifting dangerous on to me and back to the other captive. “Not a friend. I hardly know her.”

But the other girl was staring at Deidre as if she had lost her mind. Her hair was bushy and her eyes were the kind of haunted sort—blue and watery. Her hair was that fair frizzy kind which reminded me of the sort of chick who ends up in horror stories actually standing with a sharp knife stabbing people. But somehow I had the feeling she wasn’t that. But what reason would anyone take Deidre and this other gal captive?

“She can’t see me,” I said.

“Duh.” Deidre then