As promised, I went and transplanted Azrael (the Angel of Death) and Ann (now renamed Elisabeth because two 'A' names was too cutesy) into their own original novel and their own original universe which will be Book 1 of a new series 'Children of the Fallen.' Here's a sample chapter and I think readers who provided reviews as 'Dogs of the Father' was being written will see despite the new 'universe' the core traits of the shy, slightly nerdy, desperately-needs-a-hug Angel of Death and the grumpy military trauma nurse with the gimpy leg who can defeat him have remained essentially unchanged despite the new backstory. Throughout the book are little ideas some of you might recognize as coming out of Dogs?

Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short,

But when we have had our swing of pleasure,

Our fill of fruit,

And our swelter of heat,

We say we have had our day

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Earth - AD February, 2003

Baghram AFB, Afghanistan

The hair stood up on the back of Elisabeth's neck.

"Go!" Kadima gave her a knowing smile. "I'll finish up here."

Elisabeth smiled down at the young man who'd come to the infirmary complaining of stomach pain and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Eighteen. First tour of duty. Arrived in Afghanistan three weeks ago. Baptized by fire clearing Taliban from caves in the Adhi Ghar mountain range during Operation Mongoose. And now … cut down at the knees by an Afghani chicken. Roast chicken, that is…

"There's a reason why they tell you not to eat street-vendor food," Elisabeth said. "The stool culture came back positive. Textbook salmonella. We'll notify your C.O. you're out of commission for the next few days."

The Private nodded and clutched his stomach, ready to puke the contents of his now-empty gut into the bucket nurse Mary held for that purpose.

"Go!" Kadima glanced towards the shadow in the corner. "There's nothing going on here we can't handle."

"You'll be fine," Elisabeth reassured the young soldier. She casually scrubbed out and grabbed her coat. She did not acknowledge his presence, but knew he followed as she made her way to the first checkpoint.

"Yer not be going out and about alone, me hopes, Lieutenant Kaiser?" a British soldier asked in a lilting north-English accent that was more akin to a Scottish brogue as she passed through the first checkpoint.

"I'm not going past the second checkpoint," Elisabeth reassured him by reaching into her pocket and pulling out his calling card. "And I'm not alone."

"Ay … very good, miss," the soldier gave her a grin. "Yer just be careful, all right? Don't wanna be hunting down no missing nurses in none of them gullies."

A legend had grown up around her. Elisabeth. The nurse who could defeat Death. In the past month, three more groups of Taliban had mysteriously appeared, dead, when so-called 'local informants' led Coalition forces into remote areas where there were rumors of Taliban feeding supplies over the border from Pakistan. The details were kept tightly under wraps, but at each site the bodies were without a mark to indicate how they had died except for the ace-of-spades neatly tucked into the neckline of their shirts.

Elisabeth found her way to a semi-secluded spot, little more than a flat rock overlooking a bit of a gully out of sight of the main area of the base, and sat down, placing her cane next to her with a satisfied sigh. Barren rock. Unless it was irrigated, Afghanistan was little more than rock.

"You can come out, now."

Azrael solidified behind her. "Hello, Elisabeth."

"Come … sit with me," Elisabeth patted the rock next to her. She needed to coax the reclusive angel to get close enough to even hold a conversation. He wasn't antisocial. Just … shy.

"It's too small." Azrael moved to the rock she indicated, but did not sit down. "I don't want to bump against you."

"I'm not going to leap at you," Elisabeth said. "I trust you're not going to thwack me with one of those big chicken-wings of yours."

Azrael's stern countenance softened into a boyish smile so sweet and innocent it almost took her breath away. Chicken wings. It was a sign of the easy rapport which had begun to develop between them now that she understood who he was and why he watched her.

"I'll be careful." Azrael sat as far away as he could while still having his posterior planted on the same boulder. He carefully arranged his glossy black wings facing away from her so an inadvertent flap wouldn't brush against her and kill her.

"How go the wars in heaven?" Elisabeth asked.

"Same old same old," Azrael said. The boyish look disappeared. "Not well. We made a mistake assuming events in different nations were isolated incidents. We weren't expecting your level of technology or economic interconnectedness to jump the way it did the past twenty years."

"I still don't understand the prohibition against giving us technology!" Elisabeth groused. "Think of how many lives I could save? We're saving lives here that Nancy couldn't have dreamed of only five years ago."

"Moloch's signature was always easy to identify because he favors advanced technology," Azrael said. "He's always had the best and brightest new toys. If we found advanced technology, we could track it back to him."

"Had?" Elisabeth asked. "Past tense?"

"He's changed tactics," Azrael said. "He's learned to hide in plain sight by giving others the advanced technology and quietly manipulating things behind the scenes. It's like trying to spot somebody using sign language in a crowd full of people using bullhorns."

"So he's like a hacker or something?"

"I think so." Azrael's expression softened and a wistful look appeared on his face. "I wouldn't know. I haven't been able to touch a piece of electronic equipment for over 2,300 years."

Elisabeth stared down into the gully. The wind cut into the tiny openings in her coat and made her shiver. She should have brought her hat, but some odd impulse had made her leave it behind. She was no Abercrombie wannabe, wishing she was thin and cool enough to step foot into one of their stores without being lambasted by some tone-deaf CEO about only popular kids being welcome to shop there, but lately she wished she could dress a little nicer. Her choices were olive green. Olive drab. Khaki green. Khaki beige. Khaki drab. Black. And taupe. With a good measure of … you guessed it … army green if she had an excuse to wear her dress uniform. Even her hair had to be kept neatly tied back in a regulation army bun.

She noticed the way Azrael's interest became even more intense whenever she allowed her hair to cascade down her back. She liked the fact he noticed. Could Kadima be right? Did her ebony friend have an interest in her that was more than mere scientific curiosity?

"I'm cold," she said. Her excuse. She reached back and pulled her hair from the elastic, watching through veiled eyelashes the way his nostrils flared and chest rose as he inhaled the scent of her shampoo as she shook loose her locks. For ten years he had watched her. Now it was her turn to watch him.

"What was it like?" Elisabeth asked softly. "Learning to re-hold your physical form after your accident?"

Little by little, Azrael had revealed how he'd ended up in the predicament he was in now. The young friend he'd tried to save. Being shunned, even by his own kind, because he was a creature of the void. His loneliness at never being able to touch a living thing without killing it, not even a blade of grass.

"Time consuming," Azrael bent to pick up a rock and tossed it into the gully below. "It took me nearly a thousand years to hold a form you might even recognize as humanoid, and another thousand to reshape my original appearance enough that people didn't run screaming in terror whenever they saw me."

Elisabeth stared off into the February sun, closing her eyes and absorbing the weak sunlight as it warmed her skin. Needing a long time to recover from an accident was something she could understand.

"Rehabilitation," Elisabeth remembered what it had been like. "They said I would never walk again. But I did. Did you know I used to imagine you came to watch over me those first two years to help me learn to walk again?"

"I did," Azrael said. "I held my breath and prayed each painful step you took. You have no idea how much it hurt watching you fall and not being able to catch you."

"I knew you were there," Elisabeth said. "And I hated you. I hated you because I couldn't understand why you would come every day and then let me fall. I wish you had said something. Made me understand you didn't catch me because you couldn't. It would have made things easier."

"It's forbidden," Azrael picked up another rock. This time, instead of throwing it into the ditch, he simply crushed it in his hand until it dissolved into black nothingness and disappeared. "But I wish I'd disobeyed. I'm sorry I hurt you."

"You're not the one who hurt me," Elisabeth said. "A drunk driver hurt me. Why didn't you throw him into hell?"

"It's not my place to interfere in the affairs of mortals." Azrael's wings involuntarily twitched in anger. He hastily got his emotions back under control and aimed the traitorous appendages as far away from her as he could, tucking them behind the rock at an angle that had to be uncomfortable. "But know that I wanted to. Even before I knew you! I'm not brave like my Archangel cousins, but even –I- loathe that kind of cowardice!"

Elisabeth felt the peculiar shudder of the rock beneath her. She glanced down. Earthquake? She noticed the way Azrael closed his eyes and breathed as he forced himself to relax. Not an earthquake. He said it required concentration to not dissolve whatever chair he sat down upon. His dark gift must be tied to his emotions.

"You threw yourself into a fiery pit to save a friend," Elisabeth said. "Even though you knew you had little chance of surviving. That sounds pretty brave to me."

"I …"

His words trailed off as he stared, not at the barren mountains, but events in a past so distant Elisabeth could hardly fathom it. Whenever she asked him about his young friend, he didn't want to talk about it. She could tell he still grieved her loss even after all these years. She was learning that, to get him to talk about himself, she needed to tie it to something about her.

"I felt like a freak," Elisabeth changed the subject back to her own rehabilitation. "All of a sudden everyone I ever cared about was gone, and the people who'd been connected to them just didn't know what to say. They avoided me like the plague because … well … I'm not sure why."

"People don't like to acknowledge bad things can happen to them," Azrael said. "I see it all the time in my work. People like Kadima. They survive. But when they tell their story, people don't want to hear it. They marginalize the victim. Blame them …even. It's why I like to check in on people I ask to bear witness."

"We don't make it easy for people to come forward and rub our noses in reality," Elisabeth sighed. "Everybody wants to live in their own perfect little world. Nobody wants to be reminded that death is around every corner. I mean …"

Azrael smiled at her slip-of-tongue.

"You know what I mean!" Elisabeth said, rolling her eyes. "I didn't mean you!"

"I'm just one person," Azrael threw his hands up into the air in a 'who me?' shrug. "I get blamed for a lot of things that I'm not there to do."

"Kind of like Santa Claus," Elisabeth laughed. "You even have a naughty list!"

Azrael reached to the pocket of his cloak and pulled out his latest scientific journal. He turned so she couldn't see as he rifled through the pages, and then flipped it open to a page full of tally marks. Doodled into one corner was scratched a remarkably good picture of an Afghani elder scolding a goat.

Elisabeth burst out laughing.

"The goat kept getting out of his enclosure and into his wife's garden," Azrael said. "The old man couldn't figure out how the goat got out of the pen because the fence was solid and the gate was always closed. The goat figured out how to jiggle the lock on the gate and open it. Because it was built out-of-plumb, gravity would make the gate shut behind him and the latch would automatically fall shut."

"And you let the poor man rip out his hair instead of just telling him what was happening?" Elisabeth asked in a mock accusatory voice.

"Shouldn't I have?" Azrael looked crushed as he misconstrued her teasing for displeasure.

"I'm sorry," Elisabeth said. "I was only teasing. How did you manage to not reveal yourself laughing your tailfeathers off as you watched?"

"He figured it out eventually," Azrael glanced at the book. "He hid around the corner of his house and watched how the goat kept getting out. He fixed the gate after that."

"And what did you learn from that little scientific study?" Elisabeth asked.

"It just reaffirmed what I already knew," Azrael said. "Your species capacity to find a way around problems is on par with some of the most advanced species in the universe. Only the ease with which your emotions can be incited to undermine your own self-interest holds you back."

Elisabeth looked down at the ground.

"That's what I used to tell Tommy," she mumbled. "We're raised to believe we want the alpha-male, and then when you get him, you realize he's a mess."

She glanced up to see the expression of jealousy dance across Azrael's face before being neatly tucked away behind a blank expression.

"Why did you choose him for a mate?" Azrael's voice was strained. "And then leave him?"

"I dunno," Elisabeth shrugged. "I was lonely, I guess. Everybody said I should be flattered the best-looking kid in school had a thing for me and … well … prom night. I was beginning to feel like a freak being the only … well … you know. I guess I just gave in. Didn't you ever have a girlfriend or anything that didn't work out? I mean … before … um …"

"No," Azrael said curtly. "Our species takes one mate. For life."

"One mate?" Elisabeth noticed the stiffness in his posture. "For life? That's … pretty romantic."

"That's the way it should be!" Azrael scolded. "Much misery in your world could be avoided if people took their interpersonal relationships more seriously."

"I wish it were that way down here," Elisabeth looked into his bottomless, black eyes that swirled with an even deeper darkness. Hurt? Had she hurt him, her immortal watcher, when she'd succumbed to her loneliness?

Elisabeth was a realist. Sex was … well … sex. You did it to scratch an itch. Or at least that was what she'd told herself after discovering Tommy had the sexual prowess of a grunting boar. Every time Tommy had fucked her, instead of seeing him, all could she imagine was the distraught look in her dark watchers eyes the day he'd jumped in front of a bullet to save her.

It was what had finally made her break things off…

Azrael … on the other hand? Elisabeth knew he'd be a sensitive and attentive lover. One mate. For life. What would it be like? To touch a man who'd never known intimate touch? To feel his form quiver beneath her fingers the way he sometimes did simply because she got close? Like now? He was already obsessed with the fact she'd once touched him and survived. How would he react if she bent across the rock and kissed him?

"Tell me about the Regent," Elisabeth changed the subject. "You said she is like you?"

"She was once human." The shadow of jealousy disappeared as he discussed one of his favorite people. "Your species periodically spits out an evolutionary leap that far surpasses anything in the universe. Like the Regent. She's the only person who can touch me without fearing death."

"But she can touch others?" Elisabeth asked.

"Yes," Azrael said. "She keeps her power firmly under control. But her physical form was not destroyed as mine was when she learned to harness the power of the void. It took her brother billions of years to figure out how to do it on his own from scratch."

"Oh," Elisabeth said, disappointed. "Billions of years? So … um … how long does she think it will take you to become … solid?"

"I don't know," Azrael sighed, staring off into the jagged mountains off in the distance. He bent down to pick up a pebble and threw it into the gully. "I can hear the Song of Creation. Faintly. She doesn't understand why I haven't been able to use it to recreate my physical form."

"I thought that's what the fires in hell did?" Elisabeth asked.

"The fire alters your essence so you can't directly manipulate the atomic structure of the material realm," Azrael said. "It's some sort of safety feature. To prevent Moloch and his Agents from simply using the matter here to escape. To rebuild your physical form, you have to know how to access power that transcends the material realm."

"Like … prayer … or something?" Elisabeth asked.

"You have to love somebody so deeply that you'd be willing to sacrifice your very existence just to be with them." Azrael's expression grew intense. "Only the most worthy are chosen by Ki to hear the Song of Creation."

Memory of the anguished look on Azrael's face when he'd suddenly materialized in front of her, stopping the bullet that had been coming for her, intruded into Elisabeth's mind. The memory which had haunted her dreams ever since that day. Was Kadima right?

"Nobody's ever loved me like that."

Azrael's mouth opened and closed without speaking. Platitudes? Or had he been about to profess he had feelings for her? The intense expression disappeared behind the cautious, shy one.

"Archangels have to be very careful who they become involved with," Azrael took a stick and pretended to be interested in jamming it into the rocky soil instead of making eye contact. "If their mate's love is false, it can kill us. Most have been unable to find mates because Moloch wiped out the Seraphim home world."

"How sad," Elisabeth said. "But I can't blame this Ki-goddess for being cautious. An evil bull-god who devours children can't understand what it means to truly love somebody."

"No," Azrael's dark wings drooping dejectedly. "He can't. But sometimes I feel … oh … I don't know!"

Elisabeth understood.

"You feel like maybe you're not healing because somehow you're not worthy?" Elisabeth guessed.

Azrael looked up, nostrils flared as he used his other senses to make up for his inability to touch. Beautiful. Elisabeth had never met a more breathtakingly beautiful creature than the chiseled angel who had shadowed her since she was a child. A plethora of emotions danced across his obsidian features. Angst. Remorse. Anger. Sorrow. Like a fine Grecian statue. Too beautiful to be real.

"You're not the only one who's ever had to pick yourself up off the ground and start from scratch, you know?" Elisabeth said. She reached towards him and stopped when he pulled away. She neatly laced her fingers together in her lap lest he jump up to maintain a safe distance.

"I know," Azrael said. "Watching you struggle has reminded me I'm not the only one who suffers because of somebody else's actions."

His black eyes were so full of sorrow that Elisabeth wanted to take him in her arms and give him a hug. How she longed to give him the simple reassuring hand on his shoulder like she'd given the sick Private back at the infirmary. Comfort she could never give. Elisabeth touched the scar which ran from her temple to her lips.

"I begged the General to remove that when he healed your spine," Azrael traced it in the air, a foot from her face. "He said it is a badge of honor. That you met Death and defeated it. Not a punishment."

"I hate it," Elisabeth said. "It makes me ugly."

"The one you call Saint Michael wished the world to see how special you are inside," Azrael said. "He, himself, keeps the scar over his heart healed by his mate even though it is within his power to remove it. He said he likes to look in the mirror each morning and be reminded every single day is a gift."

"He sounds very wise," Elisabeth touched the gnarled pink flesh that sank into her cheek. "I had no idea the scar had significance."

They sat there together, staring off at the distant craggy peaks, in a companionable silence. Azrael's notebook sat between them, still open to the page with the goat until an errant gust of wind blew it to another page. Elisabeth stared down at a sketch of herself staring back from the page. Scarred. But the scar had an ethereal quality about it. As though it were a beauty mark. Was this how he really saw her?

Azrael looked mortified. He silently grabbed the book and tucked it back into his cloak. Elisabeth stared off into the distance, pretending she hadn't seen. Her dark watcher was a man of deep emotion and few words. Pressing the reclusive angel about his art would cause him to recede back into the woodwork.

"Tell me about heaven?" Elisabeth asked, picking a neutral topic.

Readers asked me to 'tell us a story about...' and I did :-) I hope you enjoy this sample chapter and, if you like it, 'Angel of Death: A Love Story' by Anna Erishkigal is currently at Amazon in paperback and ebook and, by late-August, will be uploaded to the other e-reader platforms as well. Who says 'real' fiction can't come out of fanfiction? Readers asked for it ... I wrote it. You guys are awesome!