Beautiful Redeemer (Original Sinner #3)

Part One | Genesis In the beginning . . . Azrael

Part One | Genesis

In the beginning . . .

Azrael

I never understood the fuss about humanity—until the day God asked me to make Lucifer my friend.

The space inside the Nothing is thick with the scent of burning stars, the distant explosive hum of God and Lady Chaos’s latest creation still cracking and fizzling. I exist at the edge of their universe, watching, waiting as it all comes together.

It’s fragile and full of possibility, but none of it begins to interest me—not yet.

The celestial light of the first dawn flickers, teetering between the birth of the world and the silence, the Nothing that completes me.

I am both beginning and end, Destroyer of Worlds, and I watch as His angel’s rebellion comes swift and fierce—violent, unrelenting—but it isn’t my place to interfere.

Not until He asks me.

I feel the insistent tug at the back of my consciousness—a deity summoning me. If I can even bring myself to call what I am that—consciousness.

That word is too little for me.

I shift across the galaxy toward Him faster than one of those pesky little things He calls light beams, eager to get the fuck out of here.

Onto my next creation scene.

So far, this one holds little to be desired.

Lots of stars and a few awkwardly sized planets—the third one from the sun is the one He favors, apparently.

There’s barely anything resembling what I would call life on it yet.

Just a lot of green plants, plenty of water, and these odd sentient creatures He and all His angels are fighting about.

Humans. Two of them.

In the garden He made.

I find God on the highest plane—Heaven—the “home” He created for Himself and His angels, using whatever power it is Chaos gifted Him.

I’m not certain I like the idea of that, Chaos and God fucking. He’s one of her creations, too, after all, just like everything else here.

And I’m not sure I understand what their new ideas even mean.

Home. Love. Family.

These are foreign concepts, but somehow, they seem . . . important.

You summoned me? I say.

My words aren’t spoken aloud. Not like His.

I’m not corporeal, and I never have been.

God shifts as He looks down toward Eden, and the single fallen angel He just nearly eviscerated, the former leader of His angelic army.

It’s that more than anything that’s summoned me.

The sense that some kind of end is near. The angel’s existence, maybe?

“I’m going to ask something of you that’s never been asked before,” He says.

It’s a strange request, but no stranger than any other universe’s beginnings.

I’ve seen them all. I don’t remember a time when I . . . wasn’t.

I’m listening.

“I want you to go to him.” God gestures to the fallen angel He’s hurled into the dirt and His planet’s muck.

The one who’s severed and bleeding.

You want me to—

“No, not end him. I . . . want you to be his friend.”

Friend?

This word is another foreign concept.

And I don’t have time for any of this shit.

No.

I start to barrel my way across the universe, headed to the next creation, before—

The angel stirs.

I feel it.

I linger, torn between another galaxy that calls to me and the possibility of something deeper.

I glance toward the angel.

Beauty like that never falls without being pushed.

And what is all this fuss about love? Family? Humanity?

I’m down on God’s planet—Earth, as He calls it—before I can change my mind, watching the broken angel moaning before me. He’s injured and bleeding, maimed, but underneath it all he’s so fucking beautiful I can’t help but want to touch him.

I become corporeal, taking a similar form to his—bipedal, strangely hairless, with wings, like how he looked before whatever it is God did to him—so I don’t scare him. I draw closer, reaching out until—

He lashes out and cuts me.

Above my eye.

The claws on his hand slice straight through my brow.

A sudden feeling of . . . I’m not sure what to call it expands inside me.

My own hand now trembling, I touch the spot.

The angel stares up at me, panting like a cornered animal. He’s naked and bleeding, covered in his own blood and dirt, and the stumps of where his wings used to be are still raw and twitching.

“Death,” he whispers, christening me.

No one’s ever named me before.

“The fuck you just call me?” My response is raspy, hoarse. Untried from lack of use.

I’ve never even heard my voice.

Let alone laid eyes on a creature as vicious and beautiful as the one before me.

He tries to move away, scrambling and writhing in the dirt, but he doesn’t get very far. Not with how badly he’s injured.

I inch closer.

“Don’t touch me,” he snarls.

Immediately I understand why.

I glance at my own blood still fresh on my fingers. If the pain he showed me only a moment ago is any indication of how he’s feeling . . .

I look to the blood-soaked ground. To the bruises, the cuts, and lacerations that cover him.

“Did you . . . come here to take me?” he asks, his voice wavering.

Broken. Defeated.

I’m not certain I know the answer to that, but for some reason, I shake my head. “No.”

My response doesn’t change anything.

He’s still staring up at me with wild eyes, like I might lash out and do exactly what he did to me—only worse—similar to what he endured at the hands of his—

“Father,” he groans, collapsing onto the ground and staring up toward Heaven, pleading.

Pleading for the forgiveness of the Creator who nearly ended him.

Who is this confusing creature?

I must ask the question out loud, because a moment later, he puffs out his chest slightly, despite that he’s still lying there, only a stone’s throw away from me in the dirt.

“Lucifer,” he rasps.

Lucifer. God’s Lightbringer.

That’s right.

He was God’s favorite among them.

Well, previous favorite.

I take a step closer. “Let me—”

“I said, ‘Don’t touch me,’” he snarls, the fear in his eyes crackling, like that thing called fire his “Father” created recently.

It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a glimpse of what I truly am to someone.

I’m death.

It’s the whole of me, and yet I don’t want it to be.

But I see it there, playing out on his face.

The fear that I’m going to end him.

“What were you fighting for?” I crouch beside him, curiosity getting the better of me.

He swallows and closes his eyes for a moment, the muscles in his throat writhing as something wet starts to leak from them. “My pride, it seems.”

He looks away, and deep in my chest, I have the sudden, inexplicable urge to comfort him.

“Do you know what a friend is?” I lift the brow he cut, and another round of pain sears through it.

I’ve never experienced anything like it before, but I’m . . . not certain I hate it.

An odd mixture of suspicion, confusion, and curiosity plays out on his face, his gaze narrowing.

He’s still lying there, bleeding and broken, barely able to lift his own head, and yet he’s still full of that thing he just mentioned.

Pride, he called it.

“No.” His amber eyes dart over me, momentary, fleeting, before he collapses into the dirt. “My Father keeps talking about it, but my sister, Seraph, is the closest thing I’ve ever known.”

“Sister?” This is another new concept.

“One of my siblings.”

I tilt my head at him curiously. “Do you think you and I could be—”

“Friends?” he finishes, his gaze combing over my nude form, the one I created to match his.

The feeling that sparks low and deep in this angelic version of me is also new.

Unexpected.

I give a curt nod before I offer him my hand.

He stares at it for a long beat, considering, before he says, “I suppose I’m going to need someone to help me rebuild,” and then he takes it.

And that’s how it starts.

Both beginning and end.

Of me. Of him. Of all of us.

I hide him somewhere I’m certain God and none of the others will see, somewhere none of them will ever touch him again, a realm that he and I plan to create, before I return to Heaven, once I’m certain God’s newly fallen son is no longer watching me.

The Creator greets me with wide, open arms as He says, “Now, Death, let me tell you what I have planned for the ending.”