• • Short Stories
• March 30, 2025

The Angel of Death (Part II)

Speaking to the dead is a bit different then just listening to them. To speak to them, I have to go into this other realm that’s right over the living one. Here, I get to be somewhat ghost-like. 

I look like an apparition, and so do the dead souls as we’re all surrounded by a dreary mist. Some worlds have different color tints to them depending on the kind of death happening around them. There aren’t many souls still around here, so there’s a dull blue hint to everything. 

The undead souls themselves spend most of their time pining after the living, many wondering why they can’t be heard, while others usually just mentally break down at the seams.

Guardians and the more violent lot tend to pass on rather quickly, Hell or Heaven tends to claim them, but they take a lot longer to claim normal souls.

Floomf. 

Claiming souls for Heaven used to be her job. In the realm of souls waiting to be reaped, I see Azrael, with her black wings, auburn brown hair, and gains for days. I shit you not, her biceps show hard work, dedication, and a lifetime of cutting down demons, not to mention the faint outline of a six-pack. I can see it all right now because she has her tits out.

She immediately covers her breasts and yells at me, “Stop staring at my chest!”

I should mention, all the dead souls are pretty much buck naked. It doesn’t bother me much anymore. I’ve seen so many flacid dicks that the only thing dreary about the dead fat man walking past us, is how he still can’t speak through the double chin.

But back to Azrael’s naked butt, because I know she hates it when I point that out.

“I am an Archangel,” she chastises me, as if any of it matters, “and it does matter, I’m one of the most powerful and feared warriors in the multiverse, you will not speak to me with such disrespect!” 

I turn towards her, fully clothed I might add, and remind her, “You’re an Archangel who died, remember? And I’m the mortal soul you couldn’t overcome, so unless tweedle-dee and twiddle-dum need protection from the cold, let’s get back to me trying to find my lost soul. Mind you, before someone who moves at light speed notices my body just standing there.” Time passes by much faster here, but with the crowd I’m hanging with, that’s not always fast enough.

I look away from Azrael, and past all the other souls I’m too jaded to interact with. Despite all their moaning and groaning, I sense that the soul that I’m looking for is rather close. They rarely travel too far from where they died, and if they do, they’ve been dead a long time. This one only died a few minutes ago. 

“Do you have no sympathy?” Azrael asks me as she flies alongside me. 

Something weird I’ve always noticed about her… is that she has her hair in a pony tail. How is it in a ponytail, but she can’t summon clothes? 

“Venatrix.” 

She gets extra mad when I ignore her while I’m looking her. It was hard to do at first, but then I consumed two souls of the patriarchy and it got pretty easy. 

With an added snark I correct her. “The word you’re looking for is empathy.”

Azrael stops floating, letting me get away from her. 

“What made you like this?” she asks me, like I’m a bunch of wasted potential. 

I don’t know why, but I get this strong anger like I’ve had a bunch of people tell me they’re disappointed in me in some way or another before. Nice to know some things never change, that there are always stupid old people trying to comment on why you are the way you are. In my case, said old person is my reason why.

So I turn around and tell her so. 

“You, you’re the reason I’m like this, the reason I’m so jaded and apathetic to suffering and death. Why I’m slowly deteriorating into a monster like Jetta.” I walk up to where the bitch floats and stick my finger right at her chest. “When are you gonna get that this is all your fault? You tried to takeover my soul. You tried to kick me out of Heaven. You wanted to send me to the Underworld so you could get a second chance to fuck up, and guess what? You succeeded in one of those things.”

I turn around and I sense the sorrow in her, but never regret. She can hear what I’m thinking, but its a two way street where I can feel what she’s feeling. She always feels sorrow, pity, empathy for me…

… but never guilt. Never guilt.

“Vee, I’m-”

“You’re not my friend,” I snap at her, turning around with a jab of my finger. “You’re not my friend, so to you, its Venatrix.” 

I prepare the best whiny voice I can to insult her and I flap my arms around like a bird to mock her. “And if I have to listen to you go, ‘oh, I’m the Archangel of Death, I’m so fucking important I get to ruin the afterlife for anyone I want,’ one more fucking time, I promise you, every fight I have from here on out will be very painful for you.”

Then I step back and spread out my legs. “And you know what,” I say, and I pop out her wings from my back, making her lose them and fall to the ground, “tits out.” 

From her place on the cold ground, I let her wings dissipate and grow back out her back. I don’t look back long enough to see her try to restrain the pissed off face under that emotional mask of hers. I can sense it.

I hear her fly and float back to me, but we continue in silence. 

We keep walking through the mist that surrounds lost souls of this war zone, or slaughter zone to be honest and accurate. We wander until we find the soul I’m looking for in one thin looking blonde. When I get closer I can tell she’s Asian, Chinese specifically.

I point out how thin she is because she’s rail thin, like she hadn’t eaten much before she died, and the tired look on her face tells me it was by choice. 

Most people who get drained of some kind usually have a tell. Vampires leave a bite mark and visible veins from the lack of blood. Energy drainers usually leave the skin wrinkled and devoid of muscle. Then there’s the Azrael Stare, but that’s in a league of its own. 

I walk up to her with Azrael beside me, and Azrael tries to talk to her first. “Mortal, if we may just-”

“We know that you know something about what’s going on here,” I interrupt the Archangel, caring little for pleasantries. 

Somehow I doubt this woman is all that good if she knew who the Hasan was. She’s either an idiot who studied him, an idiot who challenged him, or an idiot who decided to talk to him instead of forgetting what she knew. Long story short, I’m assuming she’s an idiot in some capacity. That assumption usually carries me pretty far.

The soul holds her arms across her chest, and only moves her eyes to glare at me as she doesn’t respond. Not only can she hear me loud and clear when many can’t, she actively ignores me. 

“Annoying, isn’t it?” Azrael tries to throw in my face.

“Telling actually,” I say, making her arch her brow, “because that means that mentally she’s all there,” so I’m going to make her answer me if I need to.

I start by grabbing her shoulder, shocking her with the fact that I can indeed touch her. She should have at least considered such a thing since I’m clearly not dead… or at least not anymore.

Then I show her I mean business by pushing her to the ground. I want to say that it’s one of the asshole male souls in me, but to be honest, its the god complex. Let’s be for real here. 

I’m an aspect of death.

When she falls to the ground on her butt, she looks up at me with less fear and more shock and confusion. I take one threatening step, the one action movie heroes do when they flex more than actually walk, and she caves immediately.

“Stop! What do you want?” she asks me, her voice sounding like a loud whisper in my head, rather than an actual sound. 

“First, your name,” I demand.

She hesitates for a moment, and while I do have a schedule I should worry about, I flex on her more so out of annoyance. I summon Azrael’s angel wings over my back, stretching them far and wide to scare the hell from this soul. 

This time Azrael lands on her feet.

The soul gulps and answers, “Dr. Amora Song, I’m Dr. Song.”

“Well, Doctor Song, let’s finish this quick so we can go about our days. I can get back to making money and you can fail to pass on.” Her nostrils flare in reaction to how I speak to her, but I must say she’s pretty restrained. Most men pick this time to start cursing me out. 

“What do you want to know?” she asks, but from what I can sense from her dead soul, she’s not going to be as forthcoming as she lets on.

“You know what’s going on, you know who the Hasan is, you know what Guardians are, so tell me what it is he wants us to get?” I think I gave her all the necessary information to give me an accurate answer, but even from so close, I have a hard time getting the answer from her mind, she’s not thinking about it.

Instead, she’s thinking about what she can get out of it. “I’ll tell you on one condition,” she says, but I don’t work like that. I’m a step from knocking her out, and from the annoyed feelings I’m getting from Azrael, even she’s not feeling too sympathetic for this mortal soul. 

After the first step I take though, Dr. Song says, “If you promise to save my daughter.”

“Daughter?” Azrael whispers, feeling her own painful memories be triggered.

At the same time, the image of a baby angel with blonde hair flashes before my eyes, several images at a time. I feel a sharp headache as does Azrael, and get more scenes of the baby giving off light magic… and dark magic. 

I slam my fist into Azrael’s shoulder, to snap her out of it and save myself. The images hesitate for a moment, but clear up, leaving me with a massive headache and a near insatiable desire to hit something. 

I feel betrayed. I know these feelings aren’t mine but are mixed in with my own. These are Azrael’s feelings.

Too bad for Dr. Song, they only drive to make me angry. “No can do, I’m wasting time looking for your kid in the middle of this carnage.” 

Dr. Song finally drops the tough mask she has on, she cracks. She doesn’t immediately speak, she grinds her teeth and thinks of what to say. She’s smart, not impulsive, which would be good traits for someone who isn’t dead.

Azrael decides then and there to try speaking for me. “We’ll save your daughter.”

“Excuse me?” I question her, crossing my arms in front of me because of the nerve of this Arch-asshole.

Azrael doesn’t even respond to me, she just kneels down as the Dr. Song moves to sit up. “Tell us, what she looks like, we can keep her safe.”

“The hell we will, who knows if we can keep ourselves safe,” I remind her, “and by ourselves I mean me.”

“Venatrix, we have the opportunity to do the right thing here, we can-”

“No, no,” I stop her before she’s gone too far, and point to myself as I correct her, “I have the opportunity to do what you think is the right thing. Let’s make that clear, because the only reason you want to help her, is because of whatever you flashed in my face, because you relate to her. Stop relating to the dead people.”

Azrael doesn’t even try to deny it at this point, it’s far too obvious for her to try. She just grits her teeth, clenches her hands, and looks like she would slit my throat if she could. She tries talking to me, calmly, trying to appeal to me when she’s actually patronizing me. 

“Listen to me, Vee-” and I glare, “Venatrix, you do this for this woman, and I promise that the next time you die, I won’t hang onto you.” I’m a little taken aback by that before my common sense reminds me that its bullshit. “I’ll let death damage the connection between us even further, be that much closer to getting you free of me. How does that sound? You just have to find this woman’s child, save an innocent in all this.”

I have to admit that’s a pretty good deal… too bad I don’t believe it. “How do I know you’ll keep that promise?” I ask her. “You have literally tried to steal my soul.”

Azrael’s face pulls at its seams as she struggles against threatening me. She’s used to being in a position of power, I can tell. She’s also gotten somewhat used to being the backseat driver, but now and again, she realizes that words is all that she has, there’s no violent plan B.

“As an Archangel, you have my word,” she swears to me.

I let out a little snort at that. “What does that mean to me?”

“The only thing I have left is my word,” she admits, as she places her hand over her dead heart, “and if I were unable keep that, that would make me worse than dead.”

The feelings I’m sensing from her are genuine… 

But she’s tricked me before… but never with feelings this strong. 

I thought she was once one of the most powerful beings in the multiverse, and she’s relating to a dead soul about motherhood. For a mother, I’ve never heard Azrael ask or say anything about her kid, or a man to father it. She’s a tough cookie to crack.

But a cookie I believe right now.

“Alright,” I say, and turn towards the dead soul of Dr. Song, “if I see your daughter I’ll give her a ride out of here.”

“No, you have to find her,” she asserts and moves to grab my arm, but the tricks doesn’t work both ways. Her hands phase through me, and she realizes she has few ways of strong arming me. She turns her head up at me with fear, her eyes begging for a pound after I already gave her a decent ounce. She even begs out loud, “Please.” 

What love this woman has for her child. I haven’t met many mothers who have shown the same kind of love in my life as a daemon-angel hunting mercenary. As much as she’s annoying to me, I have to say…

I bet she’s a better mom than Azrael.

I feel a pinch of anger flare from the angel over that.

I tell Dr. Song, “Tell me what I want to know, and then we’ll talk,” and then I remind her that I can hurt her by grabbing her hands in mine and squeezing. “I don’t do guilt trips, and I barely do fairness, so give me a reason to save your kid or stop wasting my time.”

I let her hands go with a throw, and she pulls her arms to herself. The image of a woman creeping away hits me with flashbacks from bad men I’ve consumed. 

The fear in the way she backs away, in the way they cowered, it hits me like Azrael’s flashback did. I hate this, having to deal with other people’s shitty decisions and personalities. Why can’t I just deal with my own? 

I try to regain my composure, stop trying to look tough to the soul in front of me when she’s never been a threat to me. I just cross my arms. 

Dr. Song rubs her wrist, and almost takes a step back from me, but she needs me. She finally tells me what I want to know. “You’ll find what you’re looking for towards the tallest point of the tallest tower in the city.” 

I roll my eyes immediately. “Of course it is,” I can’t help but complain, “always at the top, never ground level, always making us take the fucking stairs…” 

“Why would you leave the things you love the most where monsters can touch them?” Azrael asks me. 

“Fuck, didn’t expect the dramatic poetry.” 

She hit a lot of mortals with that pretty rude insult. I’d almost approve… if the rats weren’t just people trying to survive. Maybe what you love could learn a thing or too by getting down and dirty with the rats and build a better immune system.

Dr. Song, still at my mercy in almost every way, asks me, “Is that enough? Will you save my daughter?”

“Do you know anything else?” I ask her, but I don’t expect her to tell me, I just start reading her mind. She should be thinking about the answer to my question even if she doesn’t want to say it.

What I get is a flush of images, some moving, and some are like really blurry gifs. 

From a first person view, there’s her hand carrying this box back when she was alive and flush with color. The box is made of glass, with an object that looks like a large moving atom. It pulsates, releasing energy contained in its small case, energy I can’t recognize by looking at. 

There’s no doubt though, Hasan said we’d know what he wants when we see it.

Then the first person view turns, and there’s this little Chinese girl with long black hair, and T-shirt too big for her. It’s big, black, and clearly from a heavy metal rock band I can’t remember, assuming I ever knew them. 

She hands the girl off to a man who the doctor didn’t look at as she placed the special device in a vault. As the vault closes the thing… whatever it is… begins to light up. 

Dr. Song turns around, seeing the white of the girl’s eyes as she watches the flash. 

I close my eyes as the vision ends and Dr. Song lies to me. “No, that’s it, isn’t that enough? Pleas-”

“Don’t beg,” I interrupt her, and raise my finger, “liars shouldn’t beg, they should just tell the truth,” and turn away from her.

“What about my daughter?!” she screams at my back as I close my eyes and focus on leaving the realm of abandoned souls.

Azrael rushes in front of me, trying to plead with me, “Vee, you promised!”

“You need to learn to listen, the only promise I made was to give her a ride,” and right as the realm around me swirls around my exit, the woman screams.

“NOO!!!” 

The dead soul triggered one of the only ways she could hurt me. As I’m leaving, she causes Azrael and me to be hit with more memories. A flash of her daughter’s happy face, melting into that of a ghostly demon for but a moment. They keep trying to reform, to capture Song’s little girl, her perfect face.

No, she’s trying to force her love and her feelings into me. She’s trying to make me want to put my own desires aside but… my mind is mine, no matter how little history is there. 

I am manipulated by no one, not even for a little girl.

I fall to my knees, hands on my head, no idea where I am as another memory burns it’s place into my brain.

This one truly infects my mind, and I hear more screams to match. These screams aren’t my own, but yet they are. I was on the ground but now I’m floating through a groundless sky, and I feel my wings turning inside out. My wings…?

Everything burns, it’s like my blood is flipping on itself as if there were such a thing. 

And my arms are covered in a black angelic armor, not my leather jacket.  

My face reflects in the metal. I’m not Venatrix.

I’m Azrael.

This is her memory, of all the white feathers falling from her wing, with the sky turning red around her. She’s surrounded by angels, dead and alive, one with flowing brown hair trying to reach out to her. I try to reach for him, I’ve known the touch of his skin and the beat of his heart from when he was mine, but I can’t feel him now, not as I’ve poisoned myself.

I feel my hair being washed over, bleeding out the brown as new feathers burgeoning out from the skinless wings. I look around, brown drips of blood flowing from my face, getting in the way. 

My wings grow black feathers… I didn’t always have black feathers, they replaced the old ones, when… when…

When she fell from Virtue, into Sin.

And Azrael screams still, but she holds this pain in. She chokes it down, and she pushes. She pushes as hard as she can, to save what’s left before death awaits her, then a warm hand caresses her face. 

A face that knows Humility looks down and holds her hand, telling her that she’s doing a good job, but despite the fact that she’s doing the best she can, she still has to push.

And Azrael does with her eyes closed shut. When they open again, they open to a baby girl, an angel with wings that are white like hers used to be. She can hide, be hidden…

… without her mother.

Azrael made that choice though, to sacrifice herself. She held her daughter for only a moment before the face of Humility took their daughter and flew away, leaving her to the crows waiting to feast on her flesh. 

They broke the door down and descended on her like crows with white wings, killing Azrael in her bed, covered in the blood of her womb.

The only thing I can hear over the screaming blare in my ears and the screaming sounds of a person’s memories, are Azrael’s own beside me. I’m with her as she relives her death, her terror, one she never told me about, but that’s fine.

I understand now why she wanted my soul. She wanted the chance to be with her daughter once again, to be an angel of Virtue, with her brown hair and white wings. To go back to life before she had fallen. She let her pride turn her black, and the frolicks on her head bled from her as punishment.

I understand why she never told me. I understand why she never thought to gain any sympathy, because she took the same from me… 

Which I learn from her getting to experience my memory.

We go together, as I scream and I fight, the nurses holding me down as no father-to-be is there to hold my hand. 

I’m told by a stranger in a surgeon mask the same things Azrael was. I’m told to push, and that I’m doing great, but I wasn’t doing great, I wasn’t pushing fast enough, and I knew I was failing.

I was failing, and my body couldn’t handle it.

Azrael gets to be me, on my deathbed, failing to give birth to my child as my heart was never strong enough for the pregnancy. She gets to feel what happens to a mortal woman when she can’t survive giving birth, goes into labor a month early, and doesn’t make it to the hospital in time for a c-section.

She feels what I felt when the Southern doctors made the choice. They could save me or  my baby. They chose my baby, and cut me open. 

I don’t remember if I was awake, half-dead, or medically induced when they cut me open. Even if I could remember everything, I doubt I would want to remember that.

I died on that bed, and when my soul went to Heaven, as I felt myself rising to that paradise up on high, a dark fury came down at me, and tried to take me.

“That’s why I hate you,” I tell her, as I open my eyes to the back of my hands, to the burning world around me. “To get the chance to be with your baby, you took away mine.” My voice cracks at that last part.

‘You wouldn’t have been revived, you-’

“Shut up,” I growl, not to any of the dead Guardians around me but to the voice in my head. “You… you chose my soul after I went through the same hell as you!” I scream into the dirt, and I feel the presence in my mind next to my heart and soul… grow cold. 

“Now… you’re silent, after you know what you did…” 

‘I’m sorry,’ she has the gall to tell me, and now has the gall to feel regret.

“Your apology, your regret…” I say, every word holding the venom of a woman who knows nothing but what she has lost, and nothing else. “You should have given it before you tried to take over my soul. You deserve every torture I will bring upon you, Azrael, I swear it.”

‘Vee, I-’

“You’re not the Angel of Death anymore!” I scream at the top of my lungs and into the sky. Azrael, the Archangel of Death, is dead and gone, never to return. 

“I am,” I am the new Angel of Death, and I will spend my immortality torturing one deserving soul.

But first, I have an atom to take, and a girl not to save.

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This short story follows a character who originated in an older short story, The Thrill of the Kill. Look forward to the next few parts! Check out the YouTube Channel for audio versions of one of our other short stories!