Love Bites Then it Sucks by Julie Steimle (best self help books to read .TXT) 📕

Then Asahel arrived with two other gray angels. All three stood tall as the other angels bowed upon seeing them. I didn’t bow though. It was ridiculous to. Asahel had ripped me from my life, and honestly this kind of obeisance rubbed me the wrong way.

The angel next to me bumped me with her wing. She mouthed at me, “Bow.”

“I only bow to God,” I said, pushing her wing back.

Asahel turned his eyes, resting them darkly upon me. “Oh, do you now?”

I lifted my chin, glaring at him.

He merely huffed and addressed the group. “The council is now in session. Fellow servants of God—”

The bag lady angel fluttered up in the middle of his speech on damp newspaper wings and crash landed with a bang of her cart against the concrete. “Sorry I’m late! I—” She saw Asahel and paled. “Oh, my apologies. I had no idea I was that late.”

She rolled her cart and herself all the way over to my side, shooting me a rolled-eye look once she saw me and my bloody wounds.

Clearing his throat, Asahel said again, “Fellow servants—”

Down boomed another angel—this one a meaty looking man covered in tattoos. He was surrounded by smoke and dust. He took one look at Asahel and backed off to the side in horror, no apologies at all.

“—we are gathered here to discuss—”

With yet another a crash, I saw a guy who looked like he was hiking the Alps (he had a backpack and everything) drop down with wings made from tent fabric.

“Is that ALL of you?” Asahel impatiently demanded.

“He doesn’t know?” I muttered under my breath.

The bag lady peeked to me then shook her head with a whisper. “Nope. I dare say he don’t care to either.”

I could not tell if Asahel heard that or not. There was some bickering on the other side of the roof where the ‘hiker’ had tromped over and set up a small stool. I wondered how he had kept all his stuff with him, until I saw the bag lady pull out yarn and knitting needles. Where she got those, I didn’t know. Was there some way we could get stuff after all? I was dying for something to eat. Not that I had no energy or anything, but that my stomach still remembered food, and my mouth frequently salivated at the smell of it.

“As I was saying…” Asahel shot us all a dirty look. “…we are gathered to discuss a few death trends occurring in the world right now.”

“Death trend?” I quietly questioned, not so much to be heard, but as a knee-jerk reaction.

The angel to my right hissed, “Occurrences which cause death in numbers—things like diseases or violence rising.”

“Oh.” I nodded in thanks to her.

She just averted her eyes from me.

“Due to the rise in untested vaccines, there will be more child deaths and more teen deaths,” Asahel said.

I drew in a breath. Untested vaccines? Really? Was that legal? I had all my shots… though I did not think that mattered now. Surely the FDA would make sure vaccines were safe, right? That was what the Food and Drug Administration was for. 

“That new HPV vaccine is a killer,” he said plainly as if it were a simple order of business.

I felt sick. I had heard of girls dying from the HPV vaccine, but I had not believed it. Had I been wrong?

“Also, with the flu shots, there will be another wave of elderly departing this world,” he said.

I shuddered. I hoped this wasn’t true.

“And there is a new opiate on the market, which is predicted to take out…” I could not listen anymore. I set my head in my hands and closed my eyes. I heard his voice more in echoes, saying things like “possible school shooting” and “knifings in the subway” and “up and coming dirty bomb”.

Hearing that last one, I popped my head up. “What?”

Asahel gazed dryly at me. “You have something to contribute?”

I clenched my teeth, resisting the urge to growl at him. “Why are you giving us this horrific list as if it were an events calendar at a high school? Are we just to sit back and let things like this happen?”

He smirked at me. His nose lifted as he gazed superiorly down on me. “You are a reaper. Your job is not to stop death, but to guide souls to the other side. I would think a vimp would find it natural wading through death.”

I wanted to slap him, rip that smug look off his face.

“We are simply telling you what to prepare for,” he said.

I shook my head. “I am to prepare for an ‘up and coming dirty bomb’?”

He chuckled as if he found me amusing. “It is a possibility. Our job is not to interfere. It is to guide souls to the other side.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Which you clearly need to learn better,” he said, eying my oozing wounds.

With a glower, I replied, “I told you, collateral damage is unacceptable.”

The grim reapers lifted their heads, and both nodded. Every other angel cringed, including the demons and elves.

Asahel smirked more at me. “No such thing. Death is death.”

I hated him. It was clear to me now that he was a heartless being, and there was no point in arguing with such a creature.

“Will someone tell this novice the consequence for stepping out of jurisdiction?” Asahel addressed the crowd with a raised voice.

Several of the angels shot me looks, but said nothing.

But the witch piped up, “If an angel who is not tasked as a guardian steps of her jurisdiction and prevents death, she will bear the pain and suffering that would have been inflicted upon the intended recipient.”

I rolled my eyes. I figured that one out already.

“And she will suffer it for all eternity,” the witch added vindictively.

I shot her a dirty look.

She sneered back.

“Very well,” Asahel said, then went back into his recitation of calamities we had to expect in New York City for the coming months.

As I heard them, my mind asked me one question…. Of all the cities I could have been sent to, why New York? If they wanted to torture me, I could have been sent to Chicago or Detroit. I heard it said they were hell-holes, fraught with crime and death. It puzzled me. Especially since I realized something as Asahel droned on… I personally knew people who lived in New York City. My friend Jessica used to work here as a police officer. That ex-witch, Jessica’s friend Silvia Lewis lived in New York City, last time I checked. I met her at Jessica’s wedding. The fact that there were death angels who knew people whom I knew was a reminder. Rick Deacon, for starters. Did Asahel know that?

That’s when I wondered how much Asahel did know. I had first met him in Hanz’s hometown back in Northern California. Back then I had assumed he was some kind of guardian angel there. I now knew that was wrong. He traveled. He was a supervisor, though I did not know over how much territory. But he also gave certain people particular attention. I wondered how much attention he had paid to me—and in addition, to the people whom I was connected with.

“Are you paying attention there, demon?” Asahel said.

I hardly heard him. The angel next to me nudged me again with her wing.

“What?” I looked up from my thoughts. His condescending gaze at me said it all. I responded likewise. “Yeah, I get it. More death. Be aware.”

His eyes darkened. But the angels around me coughed, smothering laughs. I really had summed it up. It was a long meeting and all of us felt tired. I don’t care what George had said. Even if angels in general did not require sleep, I could tell they all got weary and wished for rest.

“You don’t appear to be taking you duty seriously, demon.” His voice sounded thin, brittle as he spoke.

“I’m not taking this seriously?” I touched the oozing bullet wound on forehead near my temple, pointing it out. “Am I the only one here who remembers what it was like to be alive? That people want to be alive?”

“You haven’t reaped a suicide yet, apparently,” one angel muttered.

I shot him a dirty look. “Even suicidal people want a reason to live. You just have to help them find it.”

Several of the angels stared at me with surprise, the bag lady especially who looked genuinely like she was reassessing her initial opinion of me in a less negative light. The witch scowled, but I think for the same reason.

“Your job is not to save souls, demon,” said Asahel. “But to—”

“Guide souls to the other side, I know.” I was getting tired of this shtick. “Are we done here? I think there are souls that actually want to go waiting for me at the hospital.”

Leaving his silent companions, Asahel walked right up to me, glaring down with so much spite, for a second I thought he might draw his scythe and ‘accidentally’ reap me. Yet he said, “Your impudence will cause you suffering, demon. And you will fail—Abdiel.”

I frowned. “My name is Eve.”

He smirked at me. “I remember you, though you have forgotten me.” He then looked to the others, ignoring me as if I was not worth speaking to more. “All the reapers are dismissed. I will have private business now with the guardians.”

Glad to go, I stepped to the edge of the building to drop off the side. The other reapers shot into the air, though some watched as I peered down at the tiny movement on the street below while thinking of my route back to my territory and if I really wanted to go there just yet. I was out of it and this meant I had a brief opportunity to see a bit of the city.

One departing angel said to me, “You can’t suicide yourself. You are already dead.”

I halted with one foot off the building. “Wherever did you get that idea? Both of them.”

He then peeked down at the devastating drop, blinking at me next.

With a roll of my eyes, I fluffed out the skin of my dark wings so they were larger. “I’ve been flying since I was fourteen.” And I dropped off the side, my wings catching the wind. I swooped around did a midair flip, then landed back where I was standing. I gave that angel a toothy grin.

He pulled back, nodding. Then in a blink, on his feathered wings, he tore into the air and was gone.

“I said go.” Asahel glared directly at me.

I shot him a dirty look. But I took one step into the air and dropped once again off the edge of the building.

Chapter Eight

But I did not fly away.

I halted on a window ledge just below the rooftop, listening at a crouch. I was too angry to go just yet, getting ordered off like that. And I heard him say, “Finally. Now… I need all of you to keep a watch on her. She is going to get desperately hungry—”

“Are you so sure?” A voice I had not heard at the meeting piped up. I didn’t dare peek over the roof edge to see who said it, but he sounded cool