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

to run me through at the slightest provocation. 

“You will restrain you activities to reaping the dead,” he said.

Exhaling, I reluctantly nodded.

“Escort her back,” Asahel ordered Sariel and that other death angel.

They each grabbed a side of me. With a jerk, they whipped me into the sky and back to my territory. I did not bother to fly on my own, let alone show them I could keep up with their pace now. In a way, I didn’t want them to know. Not yet at least.

I was left on the roof of the hospital. Sariel shot me another dirty look before flying off, but the other reaper said to me, “You have to be careful, demon. You don’t want to go down this road. Angels who do, suffer greatly.”

“Suffer greatly?” I said, eyes wanly upon him. “What did you do? Swallow a Bible?”

He scowled at me. “Your mockery will not benefit you. Fools shall mock, but they shall mourn.”

I rolled my eyes.

“I am giving you this warning,” that death angel said. “Wo unto those who act hastily and without wisdom—”

“I was helping a friend,” I said.

His eyes narrowed. “You were supposed to leave your old life.”

I leaned near him. “Then why did God put me in New York City? Most of my friends are either in California, New York, or Massachusetts. I can’t believe putting me here was random. I think He wants me to do this because He knows I will help my friends no matter where I go.”

The death angel jerked back from me. I was not sure what effect my words had on him except that he seemed rattled. Unable to respond to me, he launched into the sky and was gone.

Left alone, I briefly thought about finding Matthew, but then I thought the better of it as I was sure I was being watched from above. So I sunk down through the ceiling into the hospital and immediately went on my regular rounds. I reaped ghosts all the way to the ICU where that one cop not yet dead was still under sedation. The mark on his forehead was still there, but was now white. I had a feeling he was going to be ok.

Wandering out of the room, I meandered my way to the lobby where I saw that medium woman again. I wondered for a moment if she was a hypochondriac. She came to the hospital a lot, but I was not so sure if she was actually sick. This time she was sitting with a kid. I sat next to her.

“Bad day?” she said to me with hardly a look my way.

I shook my head then shrugged. “Nah. Mostly a good day—until Sariel and that other gray angel dragged me off to Asahel.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “Did you say Sariel?”

I shrugged again. “That’s what they call him.”

“And who are you?” she asked.

“Eve McAllister,” I said.

She chuckled. “Oh. A modern gal? No fancy name for you then?”

I closed one eye and thought about the name Gollum-wocky had called me, but I could not quite remember it. But Asahel had called me it also.

“I’m just asking because the name Sariel is the name of a fallen angel from the apocryphal book of Enoch,” she said.

My eyes widened on her. “No kidding?”

She nodded. “The name means ‘Prince of God’. His name also shows up in the Dead Sea Scrolls. He presumably taught humans about the course of the moon, basically creating the Lunar Calendar. But other stories claim he was not a fallen angel but was an angel who even this day fights alongside Michael the archangel in war in Heaven. He is also, presumably, the angel who explained to Jacob the meaning of his dream about the ladder. He’s an important angel.”

I blinked hard, taking all that in. Yet I said, “What about Asahel?”

She shrugged. “That name sounds biblical, but I don’t know any angel named that.”

I nodded. I had thought Asahel ought to have been a more prominent person in history. He was imposing, and all the other death angels took orders from him. Then one other name came to me. “What about Armârôs?”

The medium’s eyes widened on me. “Armârôs? The accursed one?”

That description fit him. I nodded.

She drew in a breath. “That’s not your real name, is it?”

I shook my head.

Breathing with relief, the medium replied, “Oh, well in that case, uh… Armârôs was also a fallen angel. The name is claimed to be a corruption from the Aramaic name Armoni—but that is neither here nor there. The name just means ‘the one from Hermon’.”

So… Gollum-wocky was just some ugly dude from Hermon. I wondered about the fallen angel status, though. That guy was a demon. But what was a demon really? Was it biker George who had said demons were actually fallen angels? Or maybe just naughty elves. I forgot.

Then that one name they had called me came to the front of my thoughts. I said, “Abdiel. What about that one?”

She blinked at me, thought a moment and said, “That’s a name from Milton’s Paradise Lost. A fictitious seraphim, I do believe. In Paradise Lost, Abdiel discovered the plan of Lucifer leading angels to revolt, and Abdiel informed on him to God. According to Isaac Asimov, Abdiel was in fact a personification of Milton himself.”

Well… I was not Isaac Asimov, or Milton, or whomever. I was also not a he. I figured Asahel must have confused me with someone else, because that story really didn’t match what he said to me at all about what I had supposedly done to end up as a demon.

“The name means ‘Servant of God’,” she added.

Shivers went through me. But I nodded. Abdiel was just a generic name. Abdiel could be any servant of God. I started to think Asahel just hated me because I was a demon.

I had to quickly vacate the seat when a hospital patron with a bloody compress against his head tried to sit on me. I jumped to the ceiling and remained on the underside of it, upside down. Only one other person in the foyer crowd looked up besides the medium when I did that—a man in a dirty overcoat and hat. The moment he saw I was staring at him, he quickly turned to leave.

I followed him, flying over the crowd to the doors where he went out.

When he got to the curb outside, I landed and called out to him. “Hey!”

He turned and lowered his collar with a wink of an orange eye at me. It was Roddy. He didn’t say anything when I reached him. He only handed over a paper lunch bag and hurried off into the street again.

Looking at what he had put into my hand. The contents were soft. I opened it and dug inside, taking whatever it was out. It was the perfect deli sandwich—no mayo, no garlic—and wrapped in paper. Written inside it was a note.

 

Thanks for all your help. Keep guarding our John Doe and we’ll take care of the rest.

XOXO

Tom

 

I was the best Thank you gift ever. And it tasted great.

*

Nobody had wanted him to do it. Not the McAllisters. Not his parents. Not even Rick Deacon who said bad things might come of it if he left, and he had just better finish school. But Hanz was sick and tired of waiting for news of Eve. The Seven had said they would look for her, but none of them had gotten back to him with any kind of update. But also, Hanz’s training at the hospital was practically over. Since he had sent out applications to start his future residency, all he really had left was waiting time as the hospital turned over with new medical students. So, in the first second he could, he packed a bag and got on a plane, going straight to Massachusetts. He had to make the Seven take Eve’s disappearance more seriously.

Hanz had not told a soul where he was going. He did not want anyone to stop him. Eve had long been put out as a missing person, even with the SRA. Hanz had it told to the Supernatural Regulator’s Association that she was kidnapped as he wanted as many people looking for her as possible, and the SRA would get anxious. Honestly, how could anyone expect him to just let her go and continue on with his life as if they had never been? It wasn’t possible for him. It just wasn’t.

But when he arrived in Boston, he realized he did not know how to get to Middleton Village, and he recalled that none of the Seven were in their hometown anyway. All of them were off at college, most of them heading into Master’s programs or taking jobs.

Searching through all the mailing addresses Eve had in her wedding book, he dug up the best one. Daniel Smith, the one who had not come to California, would be in Boston—that is, if he wasn’t still in England doing research with that soccer player Peter McCabe. And in all truth, Daniel was the one Hanz wanted to talk to the most. Daniel, and Peter for that matter, were the most knowledgeable in supernatural lore out of all the Seven. Eve had said Daniel’s major was something like the history of mysticism and Peter was studying archaeology, especially Egyptian archaeology—which had a huge connection to her curse. Hanz used the map app on his phone to find Daniel’s address. And when he knocked on the door, Daniel was home.

Daniel opened the door, peering up with inquiring blue eyes through glasses at Hanz from a scruffy face covered in a chocolate brown goatee and mustache, his hair a little mussed yet trim. A red crystal hung on a chain around his neck. His eyes widened on tall blonde man on his doormat, yet drew in a breath then nodded. “I should have guessed you’d come here.”

Nodding, ragged with grief, Hanz said, “Can I come in?”

Sighing, Daniel stepped aside, allowing Hanz to enter his apartment. It was a small space, but not a shared space. A studio apartment with hardly a kitchen, his couch probably a hideaway bed in the couch, Daniel lived not meagerly but not all that fancy either. Clearly he was on a budget. Yet his walls were decorated with what looked like Celtic art—or maybe just pagan, which was weird for a guy who was a member of the Holy Seven and a genuine Christian church-goer.

As if reading Hanz’s mind, Daniel said, “It’s functional. Those are witch wards and maps for locating threats. If you look at them closely those images move.”

Hanz leaned near one which had at first glance looked like a complicated Celtic knot, but at second glance was actually a map of Boston with moving pieces and locations on it. Masked with a trick of the light or the peculiar lines, it messed with his eye.

“My sister Silvia provided them,” Daniel said. “She’s a witch.”

Looking to Daniel, Hanz frowned. He had not exactly believed in witchcraft—at least not as presented as a flourishing sort of gifted magic as in fictional novels. But this kind freaked him out.

“Should you be dabbling—?” Hanz started.

“This isn’t dabbling.” Daniel closed the door and walked to his desk which doubled as a kitchen table. “It’s insurance. The Seven are hated and targeted by witches and demons around the world. Magic is permissible, as long as credit is given to God as the source of all.”

“Even the dark stuff?” Hanz asked, wary. All this stuff made his skin crawl.

Daniel halted. He inspected Hanz from the corner of his eye and shook his head. “The dark stuff is a counterfeit perversion of the real stuff. Stolen.”

Hanz nodded. He decided not to argue. He had met Daniel only once before. His impression of the guy was that Daniel had to be much older than he looked, if only in spirit. Daniel was physically younger than him by about three years, but Daniel felt like he was