Love Bites Then it Sucks, Julie Steimle [top 50 books to read .TXT] 📗

you have to let go of mortality and even time itself.”

Let go of time? How would I be able to do that? I wondered as I took his hand.

We lifted off the roof.

“I will go at a slow pace for you, so you can feel it,” he said. He winked at me. “We learn by doing.”

I nodded. He really wasn’t that bad of a guy.

But then he zipped into the sky, nearly yanking arm from its socket.

“Stop being mortal!” he shouted at me through the whizzing air. “Let go of the physical!”

Let go of the physical? I strained to figure out how to do that, feeling into my gut for that immaterial feather weight.

We went automatically faster. It was like he had lost some drag which I was bringing to the journey.

We landed on a roof. I stumbled, but he popped down like Peter Pan.

“Better!” he said, grinning at me.

It still felt winded

He walked over to the edge, patting me on the shoulder as I regained my balance. “Don’t feel bad if you don’t get it the first time. It takes centuries for some recruits to learn angel flight.”

Centuries? I felt sick. I did not want to stay in this state for centuries. I wanted to be freed as soon as possible.

“Are all death angels as fast as you?” I asked, catching my breath.

He shook his head. “No. Some are faster.”

I frowned. But when seeing his mouth crook up to one side, I knew he was teasing. “Funny.”

He laughed out loud. But then he pointed down to the parking lot below. That’s when I saw where we were. An ambulance pulled up. EMTs scrambled out

“A hospital,” I muttered with grief.

“The perfect place to start,” he said with a nod. “You will get used to handling the dead here. It is where most of the outflow happens except for hospices, of course.”

That would be true. Hospices were where people waited to die, though I had a feeling that people in hospices did not need a death angel. They would not be clinging to life.”

“Care to go in?” biker George said with a smile to me.

“Not really,” I replied. I hated hospitals.

Yet with another laugh, he then tugged on my arm then sank through the floor. With an inward groan, I sank down after him.

We dropped to the top floor of the building.

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “Be careful when walking among mortals. Though you cannot affect the material world, you can affect anything that has a soul—and that goes for animals and plants as well.”

I stared at him.

“You can touch any living thing,” he said, “But be forewarned that you will cause trauma if you do. Some people have heart attacks upon contact with a reaper. Those marked for death simply die.”

My mouth popped open this time. “What?”

He nodded to me. “If you touch someone marked for death, it can kill them. You don’t need your scythe to do it. It is in your hand either way.”

Cold chills settled over me. I really had become the embodiment of death. Death angel, no mistake.

“Most would just feel severe chills, the feeling they just had a ‘brush with death’ or as someone ‘walking over their grave’,” he explained. “So whatever you do, dodge—like you did with your co-worker this afternoon.”

But bringing that up set a nasty taste in my mouth. It reminded me that I had been stolen from my life.

However, I looked around at the dark hospital corridor. We were up in a more experimental section of the hospital, one set for prosthetics and other services that did not need to be used in the day. It smelled of antiseptic, ozone, and plastic. No one was around.

“My rule is simple when doing this job,” he said, gesturing for me to follow him down the hall. “Walk around like a regular human and quietly greet the dead. They can sense you, but they don’t notice you…” yet his eyes trailed up to my wings and then onto my orange eyes. “Ok, so they will probably spot you easily, so scratch that. You can’t retract your wings at all? I know they change size.”

I pulled my wings in as far as they would go, fluttering down to hand-size yet going no further. I shrugged. “It’s your fault they won’t go in.”

He nodded, smirking at me with a blush. “Ok. My fault—but also yours. Until you let go of the fleshy rules of your crazy body, I don’t think you will ever be able to look mostly human again.”

Frowning at him, I muttered. “Not my fault. You said I was not dead. For me to be immaterial, as a half imp, my wings need to be out.

Biker George cocked his head to the side, eying me. Approaching me, he leaned into my face so much that I backed away. “You just think that’s the case. But did it ever occur to you that it might be only in your head?”

He then went on.

Shivers going down me, I froze. Was he right? I tried to pull my wings in more, but they would not budge. Frowning, watching him go to the stairs, then following him, I decided he was just saying that. I was, after all, the first vimp that had ever been selected to be a death angel. How would they know if that was the truth?

We walked down several floors to the departments where people were actually sick. I noticed a number of the sick were marked with a glowing sigil the likes I had never seen before. It looked like ancient writing, one I clearly could not read. I gestured to them, whispering to biker George, “Are they slated to die?”

George glanced to them and shrugged. “Possibly. I think the better term would be ‘at risk of death’. When the mark glows red they are near death’s door. That’s when you really watch.”

I nodded. None of these had red marks.

He pointed down the hall to one end. “That’s the psychiatric wing, over there. The mental state of some is so tricky, it is wise to avoid it altogether.”

“Why?” I asked.

With a grieving nod, he said, “Because many in that ward can see us. Something about the breaking mind… Not all schizophrenics are imagining the people they see. Some are seeing the unseen.”

I stared. “What?”

He sighed, nodding. “Yes. And the worst part of it is that some of what they are seeing are demons—demons who would harm them.”

I felt sick.

“It is a sad thing when the human mind is manipulated,” biker George said. “Especially by the interfering demonic realm.”

A question occurred to me as we went on. I asked, “How is it that there is an unseen world? Why are some demons invisible?”

“Most demons are invisible,” he said with a knowing look. “You, my dear, are the rare exception.”

“But why?” A nasty feeling was rising in me. It did not seem right that such things were so hidden, that they could manipulate others with their agenda.

Shrugging, biker George said, “I’m not sure. I think part of it has to do with true salvation comes by faith. But also, the adversary does not want to give the atheists proof of his existence.”

That made sense.

“Fact is, most things of a spiritual nature are unseen—and the supernatural realm is spiritual in nature,” he said, now leading me down another floor. “They just slap a different name on it to make it sound cool.”

“Cool?” I asked, wondering what he meant.

He grinned at me. “The word supernatural is cooler than spiritual. It sounds more dangerous and mysterious.”

I rolled my eyes. Perhaps the word spiritual was just more peaceful. The supernatural included ghosts and magic.

Seeing what I was thinking he clarified, “Don’t think magic is not spiritual in nature. It is just a name. What some people call a magic spell in one case could be called a prayer in another.”

That felt wrong. I was about to protest, but he added, “The question is: who are they praying to?”

I stiffened. In a nasty way, he had a point. Those witches who had enacted a spell upon me back when I was kidnapped and taken to Middleton Village briefly with the intent to kill the Holy Seven were not servants of God but followers of this adversary biker George spoke of. And it did feel like a prayer to the devil.

“The societies we live in uses words to twist around meaning to create an exciting or even harmless façade for things that are very dangerous and should not be touched,” he said. “You are either a follower of God or of the adversary.”

“But what if you don’t choose a side?” I asked.

He laughed. “Choosing not to choose is actually choosing the adversary—as his plan was to remove all choice from the universe and rule in the stead of God. Inaction sets you in default into his camp.”

I felt sick. I wondered if my inaction on anything had made me actually help the adversary.

“You are now thinking about it, aren’t you?” he asked.

I shuddered, nodding.

“Good.” He then led me further. We got down to the maternity ward.

Walking in, I was surprised to see a number of the babies with a glowing mark on their heads. I looked to George, but he shushed me, pointing toward a nurse, who at first glance looked like she was holding an oddly shaped billboard. But when we got closer I saw it was an old roman style shield. Rectangular with a cross on it. She even had one of those roman statue kind of faces. Her eyes set on George and me automatically, threat in her eyes.

“Just passing through,” he said to her.

But she glared most intently on me. My eyes flickered to the newborns then her. “Why are they—?”

“I said shhhh!” he hissed under his breath.

“But they are newborns,” I hissed.

Hearing me, the nurse with the shield eyed me funny. But then she beckoned me near. Apparently she was a guardian—fitting that she looked like a nurse and was protecting the newly born.

She said with a thick accent, “You are not eager?”

I blinked at her, not comprehending.

“You will not kill,” she said.

Peering over at the babies I nodded. “Of course not. But why are so many marked?”

She stiffened, raising her shield. “Fragile state. Safer with their mothers. But they are put here by the hospital. Nothing I can do but guard from you.”

I raised my hands up in surrender. “I have no intention of doing anything to them. Man, I’d save any baby I could.”

The nurse angel eyed me critically for a second as she said, “Why?”

Rolling my eyes, I replied, “They’re newborns, for pity’s sake. They’re just staring life. I mean, my birthfather did everything to protect me. What right do I have to prevent others from having the chance at life that I have been given?”

She lowered her shield, relief on her face. She looked to George. “You bring a gift.”

Biker George merely shook his head, smirking. “I’m under orders. Maybe God saw to this assignment in particular.”

My eyes widened on him. If that were the case, then maybe me being ripped out of my life had a good reason. And though I mourned the loss of that life, the loss of Hanz, quite possibly there was something important I needed to do here. Hanz always said that God had a purpose for us, and not just a general purpose of living life properly and gaining eternal salvation. We, us living beings, were meant to bless others. That was his personal mantra at least. As an aspiring doctor, Hanz had wanted to use his skills and time blessing as many lives as he could. I had faith that he would. He was that kind of person.

So, with this in mind, I followed George into the rest of the hospital, learning what I as a death angel had to do.

*

Hanz had been so busy trying to find Eve that evening, talking with the police and reporting her as a missing person that he