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

“I need you to help me find Eve,” Hanz said. “I need you to help me end her curse.”

“And what if it ends her?” Daniel asked, peeking one eye at him again, while scooting his chair into the desk. He started to collect up papers, tucking them into a folder. Hanz caught sight of one which had on it an Egyptian style eye—the kind you would see on old artifacts. Next to it was a drawing of Celtic runes and a symbol of the triple goddess. Daniel gathered those up, shooting Hanz a hard, almost judgmental look as he tucked it away.

“What do you mean?” Hanz could feel Daniel was hiding something.

Huffing, Daniel set all those documents down on the desk again. “I’ve researched it. I did all that vimp research long ago, as soon as we found out Eve existed and was born to kill us.”

Hanz paled. That meant Daniel was preparing to destroy Eve if he had to.

“And what I found was…” Daniel shook his head. He met Hanz’s gaze. “Maybe it is better that you let this go. Let her go.”

Pulling back, Hanz sharply shook his head. “No.”

“Come on.” Daniel moaned. “You read the letter. She wrote those death angels said you could not be together—that God sent them to take her away so that she would not corrupt you—”

“I don’t care!” Hanz shouted, his face going hot.

Daniel took a sad step back. His expression said it all. He thought it was a hopeless cause.

Through his teeth, Hanz bit out, “She asked me to get you to help her end her curse.”

“And it might kill her,” Daniel shot back, clearly not desiring to do that.

Hanz felt as if Daniel had kicked him in the gut though.

Shaking his head, Daniel dragged out his laptop computer and booted it up. Once it was on and running, he pulled up a file and clicked on it. “This is all I found on the vimp curse.” He turned the computer so the screen could face Hanz.

Hanz came closer, yet kept his distance from Daniel who seemed agitated by the entire question. On the screen he read off a fact sheet Daniel had compiled. The first part was the known history and origins of the vimps. He read it out loud.

The first vimp was physically stitched together from a living vampire and imp, and brought to life by a coven of thirteen witches in ancient Egypt, using their own blood and the blood of the purest virgin. The spell was completed using the blood of a traitor to the Seven who were once called the Eight Magi.

Hanz paused, taking that in. This generation’s Seven was also eight individuals. He had heard Eve say it was the first eight in a long time.

After that first vimp incarnation died, it was mummified and put away to reincarnate every three hundred years. To date, there have been thirteen vimps on the earth—Eve McAllister being the thirteenth. It is possible she is the last incarnation, as that number has significance to the curse itself.

Drawing in a breath, Hanz stared at that. Eve could be the last? Did that mean the curse would end on its own? Yet those death angels would not tell her redemption came from ending her curse if that were not true. Eve could tell when people lied. It was a gift of hers. There had to be more to it.

He looked to Daniel. “I don’t think you have everything about this curse yet. There has to be more.”

Daniel leaned away and blinked at him. He exhaled then nodded. “Yeah. I’ve actually been thinking that lately. I had put it out of my mind when Eve proved to be good and there was no need to get end her—but I don’t think we know the half of it still. And I’m sorry I haven’t focused on Eve’s problem as I should have. It’s just…” He shook his head, his teeth clenching. “I’ve had to redirect my focus to our, uh, patron elf.”

Hanz stared. “Your what?”

Groaning, Daniel opened up the files he had just stashed into the folder. “This.”

Hans peered over the documents. It was just a list of different mythical beings and research on them. One was about a Celtic goddess called Brigidt. Another about two Egyptian goddesses—Bastet and Wadjet; the second one otherwise known as the eye of Ra. He lifted another with information on Shamsiel, who apparently was a fallen angel.

“What’s this?” Hanz held that paper up. Anything about angels made his skin tingle.

Daniel took it from his fingers and read it. “Oh. A guess. Rumor has it, our elf was once the guardian of the Tree of Life in Eden. According to the apocryphal book of Enoch, which is a questionable source—that would be Shamsiel. Shamsiel was a fallen angel and a male. However, elves come across as sort of uh, gender ambiguous sometimes, and he could have been female. And the term fallen angel describing a creature with a physical body tends to actually be an errant elf in reality. Since legends are so obscure, this could be her.” Yet Daniel put the paper back in the file. “But that is neither here nor there, and not related to Eve.”

But Hanz picked it up again. “Are you so sure? Eve is now a so-called angel. Yeah, a death angel, but I once read that the word ‘angel’ just means ‘messenger’. That could be anybody—mortal or immortal. Besides, I bet if you found that elf of yours, we might be able to get hold of Eve, whether your elf is an ex-angel or not. She’d have connections.”

He could see Daniel staring into space, considering that thought. Daniel slowly nodded. “Very good point.” He looked to Hanz. “I can see why Eve likes you. You see possibilities.”

Hanz’s heart raced as hope swelled within him. He could tell just from the look on Daniel’s face that he finally got the help that he needed.

Daniel pulled out the chair again and spread out the papers once more onto the desk. He pointed to each, describing what he had discovered so far about their elf. “…and we had traced her back to England where we believe she had settled after her own purgatory—much like what I think Eve is going through right now, actually. But we lost track of her here as we don’t have a name for this incarnation. So… Peter and I have been researching known elves in the UK, ones which have been found and registered. But I have a feeling our elf is unregistered. She’s powerful—god level.”

“God level?” Hanz stared at him, not sure he was hearing right.

Nodding earnestly, Daniel explained, “Some elves went extremely wayward and played god with the mortals within their territories. We presume that all the polytheistic gods were not in fact imagined, but were elves who were enjoying the power they had. Ra, Zeus, Odin, etc.—they are what we call a god-elves. Our elf used to be Bastet and also went by Wadjet while in Egypt. Our elf is a fallen angel, basically.”

 Hanz was left speechless. This was completely different from how he knew the universe. He didn’t know if it was true or just something made up to explain the hidden presence of these supernatural beings in the world. Most people would live their entire lives unaware of these things, thinking them hokey fictional garbage. Had he not known Eve, he would have thought the same thing.

“…The one thing that is consistent with our elf is that all her incarnations involve fire,” Daniel continued on, hardly paying attention to Hanz’s distracted state of mind. “Shamsiel was the bearer of the flaming sword in Eden. Brigidt was a Celtic goddess of smithcraft and fire. Wadjet was known as the lady of the flame. Bastet was also a goddess of the sun, just diminished in comparison to Wadjet. But then at around, uh, 1440’s BC, we lost track of her. It is presumed she was the destroying angel of Egypt that brought the ten plagues. And after that, we don’t know what happened to her, but we assume she returned to England where her true territory was. Legends among the Seven claim that they occasionally were visited by her, and she was distinctly… British wild.”

That was too much information and had nothing to do with Eve. Hanz frowned to himself. He wanted something relevant to work with.

“I think she is either hiding or dormant. Except—an elf of that nature would never abandon her post. So she would be living near or inside a wild area. But we can’t find it. We can’t find her.”

“A wild area?” Hanz murmured, pulling up the last paper which had information on medieval elves and their known names and locations. One of them included Puck, that character from a Midsummer’s Night Dream. Hanz poked it. “Is this for real?”

Peering at it, Daniel nodded. “Yeah. I met him. A real elf. And I even think the real Robin Goodfellow. That’s the name he goes by in public today. He looks like an average Joe with scruffy hair with a hat that covers the tops of his ears, and he runs an essential oils shop out of a refurbished school bus that runs on solar power and waste oil. I bumped into him in London.”

Hanz stared.

“Elves are blatantly eco-friendly,” Daniel said with raised eyebrows for meaning.

Hanz had never met an elf, so he took Daniel’s word for it. But if Puck looked like an average Joe, how in the world did Daniel know he was an elf and not just some nut who thought he was Puck? Did he take the guy’s hat off to see if he had pointed ears?

“Anyway,” Daniel said, “I think he knew her, but I don’t think he trusted us enough to let us know where she was.”

“Ok…” Hanz nodded. He didn’t know what else to say. He was not about to ask that last question about the hat and ears. He was not so sure Daniel liked him questioning his logic.

Looking around, Daniel then said to Hanz, “Do you have a place to stay?”

Hanz shrugged. “I came here first.”

Daniel pointed to his couch. “That folds out. You can sleep on it if you want and crash here while you’re over here.”

Clearly he knew that Hanz had no desire to leave after just one conversation.

That evening they ordered in pizza and Peter stopped by.

This was the first time Hanz had met Peter McCabe, the famous ‘Witchdoctor’ of soccer. Peter was built of sinews and muscle, standing tall with dark eyes and dark hair in his jeans and striped tee shirt. Like Daniel, he wore a red crystal, which hung from a chain on his neck—his on a leather strap with shark’s teeth next to a cat’s-eye stone. Unlike Daniel, he felt his age, just a year older than Eve. He was down-to-earth and personable. But he also carried a small fake shrunken head on his belt for some reason.

Peter shook Hanz’s hand upon introduction and said, “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I’ve been curious about what kind of guy would have the guts to marry a woman like Eve.”

Hanz cringed. “We’re not married.”

Wincing, Peter quickly glanced to Daniel who shot back a dirty look. “Sorry. I meant intending to. We all like her. But she’s….”

“A demon,” Hanz finished his thought, nodding.  He then sighed. “I just never saw her that way.”

Daniel and Peter exchanged yet another look.

“She was an angel,” Hanz murmured, going back to the pizza which he never would have been able to eat with Eve. The garlic would have sent her into sneezing fits, and he would not have been able to kiss her with garlic breath.

“She still is,” Daniel said