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

Her eyes raked over my face. She angled her head and said, “You look like a vampire.”

I shrugged. “My father was one.”

“Father?”

I nodded.

“So vampires really exist?”

I nodded again. “But they only target foolish people who stray off forest paths or frequent night clubs for one night stands.”

“How come your eyes are orange?” she asked.

I blinked my eyes, thinking on them for a moment. “I am also half imp.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Little devil,” I said. I then snatched the one flying around her head who had been suggesting the woman try to stick me with her IV needle. It would have been a bad deal for her if she did, of course. I showed her the imp. “They tell you to do naughty things.”

The woman emitted a yelp, quickly slapping her hand over her mouth to stifle it. She looked around to see if anyone was looking. Then she ducked low, hissing, “How did you end up becoming a grim reaper?”

I was about to answer, but I felt the rush of cold of fleeing ghosts. Those blasted death angels had found me. I sank through the floor, letting go of the imp.

I ended up landing in the middle of an operating room, luckily not on a patient. I had to dodge a nurse and a cart, but I stumbled out of the room. Then I dropped again through the floors down to the basement. I landed in a steamy shower area. The floor was wet and there was a naked man washing there.

Slapping my hands over my eyes, I skidded out of the room into the adjoining locker area then dashed to some stairs. Up the stairs, I made it back to the main floor where I skidded around one orderly, dodged a nurse and ended up in an operating room where the patient just flat-lined. I stared at him, hesitating, as it was the cop those two death angels had been after.

His face was young and blood-splattered. His eye were swollen shut. And all the people around him worked to bring him back. His spirit slipped out, but I hesitated to reap him. He did not even see me. He just stared at his body, murmuring, “Not yet. My wife…”

The nurses pulled out the crash cart and started it up.

“Clear!” shouted one for them.

They pressed the pads to his chest and jolted him back to life. His spirit sucked back into his chest. His heart blipped again on the screen.

And they continued to work on him.

I sat quietly in the corner, waiting for the operation to end, listening for the angry death angels who would be coming for me.

Through the door I heard that cop’s voice shout, “Don’t you go in there! I know you aren’t the official reaper of this area.”

The answering voice chilled me to the bone. I did not know which reaper it belonged to. It was not Asahel or Sariel, but it sounded like the voice of a cold enforcer. He said, “Stay out of our business, mortal.”

Yet Officer Johnson replied with a brave tremor in his voice, “No. I’ve handled the ghosts you have not been able to reap—the ones that are too fast for you. You will hear me out, reaper. That man in there must live. He is a witness to a murder who needs to testify or our case is lost.”

I looked to the dying cop on the table. He was a murder witness? Then he really needed to live.

“I care not for petty mortal concerns,” the reaper said.

“Murder is not petty!” Officer Johnson snapped.

“You tell ‘em JJ,” Matthew chimed in. “But where are they standing? I can’t see them.”

“It’s good that you don’t,” Officer Johnson snapped.

But the reapers pushed into the room. I would have dodged out again, but I knew I shouldn’t now. I rushed to the doorway to block their entry. When they came through it, all three jerked to a halt as I was in their path. Their mouths thinned into lines of ‘Ah-ha! We found you!’, rejoicing.

The death angel right in front of me was that smooth-talking Gollum-demon. He did not seem so hunched now. Standing tall and near naked with his soviet scythe out for cutting, his thin neck craned to look over me next, giving me the impression of that drawing of the Jabberwocky in the Alice in Wonderland books. With him were the first two nasty ones, standing like the Jabberwocky’s lackeys.

“We’ll deal with you after we reap him,” he said.

I whipped out my reaper staff to block him.

Seeing it, he got this wicked look in his overlarge eyes, his silky smooth voice saying to me, “Oh, you think you can take me on, huh? I’ve killed vimps, you know. Towns of them.”

Towns? Huffing, I snarled back, “Liar. There is only one vimp born every three hundred years. There have never been towns of them.”

A guffawing snort burst from him as he laughed in such an ugly way. His body seemed to go into convulsions. But then, zipping by me faster than I could react, his blade went ‘snicker-snack’ over the operating table and he—the walking Jabberwocky-of-a-reaper, hooked up that poor policeman, dead. And that reaper almost literally went ‘galumphing’ back to the door.

I clocked him with the end of my reaper staff. He dropped hard to the ground.

“The dude wasn’t dead yet!” I screamed. But the machines all around me had flat lined again. Everyone in the room scrambled to bring him back.

Matthew and Officer Johnson burst into the room.

The doctors rushed to push them out as I dodged to not be in their path. Matthew’s and my eyes met. He and his friend JJ were devastated, hearing the machines let out a long drawn-out pitch.

The Gollum-wocky pushed off the floor and pounced on me. He sank his scythe blade into my shoulder. The pain went searing hot. I could feel my spirit slipping out the crack of my skin toward the open air. He would have pushed it in further had I not bitten into his neck, my fingernails extending into claws to tear him to shreds. He tore back from me, bleeding.

He pointed one bony finger at me, snarling. “I’m reporting you to Asahel! You’ll be damned forever if I have any say in it!”

I spat at him, also spitting out his blood which tasted bitter. “Back at you, demon. You can’t reap a person who is not dead yet!”

“He was marked!” he shouted back.

“In MY territory!” I whipped my scythe out longer.

Matthew and Officer Johnson flattened against the wall, their eyes now trailing desperately to their dead fellow police officer who continued to flat line.

“He got shot in ours!” Gollum-wocky spat back.

“You don’t follow them to their deaths!” I reaped up some medical tools and threw them at him. A scalpel stuck into his arm. So did a syringe needle with I don’t know what in it.

“Gaaah!” He ripped both out and chucked them back at me.

I knocked them away. That same moment, he pounced on me again. I realized then that he would trash the room and not care whom he hurt in the process. So, digging my claws into his skin, I rolled us through the next wall and the next until I pulled us both into the ambulance garage. We dropped down a foot, thudding heavily down to the cold concrete.

His hands were around my neck. I clawed his face. Both of us tumbled under a moving ambulance, rolling over the oily-splotched ground to the far wall. There we dropped into the foliage, disturbing the underbrush which seemed to wither upon contact. The other two angels chased out after us.

But then I felt hands tear us apart. I would have shoved them away to get back at Gollum-wocky but I recognized the faces of both the bag lady and the hiker—both guardians pulling us out from our brawl.

“What’s going on?” the bag lady snapped at us.

“They’re in my territory, and they just reaped a guy who wasn’t dead yet!” I kicked at Gollum-wocky.

“Is that true?” the backpack guy asked, his face contorting with disgust at Gollum-wocky and his thugs.

“He got shot in our territory. He was marked for death!” Gollum-wocky snapped back.

“No excuse!” I shrieked. “He did not die until you put your scythe in!”

Immediately the hiker let go of Gollum-wocky and dashed to and through the wall, vanishing from our sight.

“No! You meddler!” Gollum-wocky snarled, darting toward the wall to make chase, but bag lady got in his way with her cart like a shot.

The other two angel thugs split up to go in his stead, but I spread my wings to block them again, knocking them to the ground. My reaper staff extended in my hands, and I used it to make sure they stayed out of the way.

“YOU KNOW THE RULES! NO REAPER IS TO REAP OUTSIDE THEIR TERRITORY!” the bag lady bellowed.

“HE WAS MY PREY!” Gollum-wocky bickered back.

“Prey?” I shrank my staff down to a proper length and clocked him with it again. It made a white mark along his cheek as if for a moment I had split his face open. “The people we reap are not prey, demon! Have you forgotten you’re supposed to be an angel!?”

He spat at me.

We then saw the hiker walk back, his expression grim. The hiker’s eyes met the bag lady’s and he shook his head.

Gollum-wocky cackled, swaggering back from us. “See ya later, losers.” Then with his cronies, they ‘galumphed’ (for those who don’t know, it means ‘galloped in triumph’) back to his territory. I think he took it slow to gloat.

I felt sick. I failed to protect a good man from a hasty reaper.

“Hey,” the bag lady said, resting a hand on my shoulder, “We’ll report this to Asahel.”

“Will he care?” I muttered.

“About this, yes,” the hiker said. He then winked at me.

Both guardians left.

I dragged myself back into the hospital, searching for Matthew and that police officer, JJ. It took a bit, but I found them outside a recovery room, quietly whispering. When they saw me, their faces were tense.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

Matthew put a finger over his mouth and pointed me to the window of that room. I peered in, wondering what he wanted me to see. But when I looked inside, I saw that man—not dead, though the death mark was still there. His heart was beating and he was hooked up to machines keeping him alive. Matthew then gestured for me to walk with them casually, whispering, “He’s not dead. I don’t know what you fought off but—”

“It was a nasty reaper,” Officer Johnson hissed.

“Why are we whispering?” I asked, “This is great news. He’s alive.”

“He’s in a coma,” Officer Johnson cut me off. “I’ve seen these before—rescued people from hasty reapers. We’re whispering because some reapers can’t hear whispers.”

“I can,” I murmured.

“But we’re talking to you. You couldn’t hear us before, right?” Officer Johnson looked to me.

I rolled my eyes. “I can hear imp shouts. But technically, I had to get close up to hear your whispers.”

He nodded. “Exactly. But some reapers can hear spoken words from a distance. As long as we keep his survival on the down low, he might survive.”

“Oh.” I got it.

“Now, we need your help to guard him,” he said.

Matthew nodded.

“He’s a necessary witness to a crime—a supernatural crime.” The cop met my gaze so I could understand his meaning. It took me a bit, really. But glancing to Matthew, I recalled that supernatural crimes were Matthew’s specialty. “We have to have mortal evidence for a courtroom, and we think that the killers are actually dealing with something like that reaper who nearly eliminated our friend.”

“Wouldn’t it do you good to recruit a reaper also to help you, if that is the case?” I asked.

He nodded meaningfully. “That’s why we are asking you.”

I paled. “You’re kidding. I can’t