Omri Read online

  I’m one of the Virtues. My job is to preside over weather events and movement of the celestial bodies. Despite my limited interaction with humans, I am drawn by this one who I witness kill a demon. From that moment on, our lives are entangled. There is more going on down here, and among my kind, than I had believed. All I know is I want him at my side through it all.

  I am…

  Omri

  Omri

  Ascension, Book Four

  by

  Hayden West

  MM, GAY, IRMC, INTERRACIAL AND MULTICULTURAL, FANTASY, PARANORMAL, AND EROTIC ROMANCE

  Twisted E-Publishing, LLC

  www.twistedepublishing.com

  A TWISTED E-PUBLISHING BOOK

  Omri

  Ascension, Book Four

  Copyright © 2019 by Hayden West

  Edited by Marie Medina

  First E-book Publication: February 2019

  Cover design by K Designs

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2019, Twisted E-Publishing.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  All characters engaging in sexual situations are over the age of 18.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Also By Hayden

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  The sound of live electricity spilled through the pre-dawn light. Ominous and eerie, Omri slowed his flight. He flew this path every morning, time just for him before his daily duties took precedence. This place had always been devoid of humans, and that had been part of the draw for him.

  He didn’t hate humans—it wasn’t part of his make up to do so—he had been created to protect them, but he didn’t really think much about them. They were something to keep safe, not more than that.

  The sound still slowed him up and he flared out his wings, slowing his movement through the lightening sky. Humans used electricity, so if he was hearing it, chances were a human was in this place. The location wasn’t the easiest to reach, so that begged the question what had brought them here and what were they doing here?

  The low moan of pain he heard in between the buzzing had him cocking his head to the side before the sound vanished.

  This isn’t right.

  However, with all the strange and deadly things that had been found around them and his kind, he was not certain he wanted to know the truth. Yet who he was wouldn’t allow him to just continue on his way without at least checking it out.

  He didn’t land but hid himself, should there actually be a human there, and flew closer to the origin of the sound. The charged air brushed along his skin even before he could fully see what he was flying into. His hair and his feathers tingled from the power emanating from the source.

  It pulsed through the air, pushing beneath his skin and into the flesh. He gritted his teeth.

  Nothing of this earth can do this without a machine of sorts to keep this up so consistently.

  Ignoring the discomfort that moved through him, he pressed on. It wasn’t pain, he’d had worse. The hum grew louder and the area lighter. As he walked around a large stone outcropping, he drew back with a sharp hiss.

  A writhing ball of electricity sat there, the sound suddenly near deafening as the power flashed along him, tearing where it hit. He lunged back, flaring out his wings and taking to the sky, just enough to remove himself from the immediate danger that was there.

  Not man made. No way.

  The main and most concerning bit of what sat before him was that he could make out a figure of someone within the inner circle.

  If it was like that for me getting close on the outside, what pain they must be enduring in there.

  He couldn’t leave them to face this alone, whoever it was. As one who had power to preside over weather events, including the wind, he called upon that power now, creating a vortex of spinning air around him to hopefully deflect the voltage.

  While not perfect, it did enough he could move closer. Squinting his eyes, he struggled to peer through to the one lying there. His heart caught when he spied the pale green feathers of a wing, lying lifeless there, already turning black from electrocution.

  His breathing seized, and he roared with fury, pushing out, utilizing all the power within him and calling upon the wind to remove the electricity. It worked, for the ball shattered like someone took a hammer to a glass dome.

  Gulping deep breaths of air, he landed by the slumped body. Taking a swift glance over the one lying there, he shook his head as his gaze landed on the infinity mark on the back of his neck, the one that only the Seraphim bore to identify them to the others in the orders.

  As he personally was a Virtue he had the arm gauntlets with four chevrons pointing down. They were black with a deep purple outlining each chevron. All the Virtues had them, they weren’t ever removed. He wasn’t entirely sure they could be, hadn’t tried. When he drew on his power, the marks themselves tended to take on one of four colors—red, brown, blue, and white—although the purple outline remained.

  Please. I have a Seraphim here who was killed. He shot his cry along the shared network for all in the orders.

  Seconds later, he winced from the brutal answering push into his mind. Nothing was said, but he didn’t need them to speak. He was aware of what was happening; they were sussing out his location as they headed for him. Grinding his teeth against the increasing pressure, he continued with the wind to ensure that nothing came back to slam into the Seraphim once more. He wasn’t aware of who this was.

  Even the man’s pale skin was tinged with black in spots. Omri’s heart broke; this wasn’t what was supposed to bring them down.

  He thought over the past few months and all the things that had been going on. Most recently was the one who had been found impaled on Gabriel’s trumpet on a statue. Someone or multiple someones were out after them, and it wasn’t an issue of what order you were in or what you were, this was across the board. And those among them who were the fighters were becoming unsettled.

  Omri had seen it as he tried to remain under the radar and continue doing his job. He was a loner, always had been.

  He lifted his head as he remained kneeling by the dead Seraphim. They were coming. One second there was nothing, the next the sky had filled with winged beings. Six of them.

  From this distance, he picked out one Domination, courtesy of her blood-red wings. One Virtue, the gauntlets gave him away. The Principality distinguished by the snow-white hair on her head. The other three, he wasn’t sure.

  Not true. One he was. Danijel. The Power who had silver wings, a feature that he’d never seen before in anyone else. The imposing black male had dark brown dreads containing golden streaks and used a chain in battle. Even had he not been able to see his face, the wings would have given it away.

  If rumors were true, the redhead with the dark grey wings on his right side would most likely be Demuri as they oft traveled and fought side by side. The third, he wasn’t sure, but also most likely a Power given the shield and spear.

  They landed around him without a single word, or sound. He had been correct, the third was also a Power, and his golden eyes shone down at Omri, as the Power made the spear and shield vanish. Short dark brown hair, spiky in a way as it stood out from his head, tan skin, and were he looking and interested, a cleft in his chin.

  “Step away, we have this.”

  Held prisoner by the golden eyes, he nodded before rising
and doing as he’d been ordered. The being watching him waited until Omri dropped his gaze then he replaced him, dropping down to his knees and reaching for the Seraphim lying there without a pulse any longer.

  “Come over here, Omri.”

  Angling his head toward the female with the blood-red wings, he swallowed and headed in her direction. He stared at her, the early morning sun gleaming off her dusky skin. The melted chocolate hair confined in a tight braid to fall down her back.

  “I’m Faiza. The one who was by you is Zelus, over there is Demuri and Danijel, the other two Powers. Baak is a Virtue like you, and Pihla is the Principality.”

  His mind whirled. They didn’t usually hang out together like this, so the stuff he’d been hearing must have been worse than they were allowing out to be public knowledge. Although when he’d been there for the body Rao had found, his suspicions were up already.

  “Did he say anything?”

  Her voice was calm and almost soothing, yet even so he didn’t ignore, couldn’t really, the strength and near compulsion that reverberated through it. And Dominations were the ones Virtues took orders from directly.

  “No, when I got here, he was like this.” A shrug. “Sort of.”

  She arched a finely plucked brow. “Sort of?” She shifted toward him, more of a glide of silk. Those blood-red feathers shone brilliantly in the sun as it crested the horizon.

  “Explain.”

  There wasn’t anything calming or remotely gentle about that deep rasp, it exuded power on a level he’d never known before. In his periphery he spied the one named Danijel moving to his side.

  It took three swallows before he had enough moisture in his throat to talk.

  “I was flying like I do before I start my day and I heard the hum, buzzing of electricity. It threw me because humans aren’t up here and they are the ones who carry those devices to give off that subtle sound. However, this time it wasn’t subtle, it was loud and unending. No up and down flux of the power, just one consistent stream of energy.”

  “What was the scene you came to?”

  The question came from the Power still beside the dead Seraphim, Zelus.

  He mulled over the words, trying to figure the best way to describe what he had been witness to upon his arrival.

  “If I had to describe it, it would have been a ball or dome of electricity around him. Heavy and bordering on painful for me the closer I got. I didn’t know it was a Seraphim immediately, I didn’t even make out the wings for a moment. When I realized I did see feathered wings, I rushed in.”

  The air shifted, and four more beings appeared, three Cheribum noted by the shaved heads and the beaded pattern on their skulls, another Virtue, one he knew who was called Loic, and another Power that he knew, Elexus.

  Loic dipped his head in silent acknowledgement as he, along with the three Cheribum, positioned the Seraphim’s body on a transport and carried him away into the morning sky. Elexus stayed, his sharp gaze skimming the entire group.

  “Continue,” Zelus said, moving closer along with the others.

  Looking at the seven beings around him, he loosely clasped his hands before him and got to telling them how it felt when he arrived and how he’d eventually removed the pulse from around the fallen.

  * * * *

  “Stop!” Mate Aarden yelled as he ran after the perp who’d broken from the containment line. “God fucking damnit, don’t make me run in this heat.”

  The desert sun beat down upon him, making him wish there were some days that he didn’t have to be covered by all this heavy black gear. Not that he didn’t appreciate all it did to keep him alive in some of the situations he ran across, but damn it, this was the southwest and the weather wasn’t like he was humping it across the arctic and would relish the soaking of heat from the sun. Here it was triple digits in the shade and now he was running in full gear after someone who was trying to cross illegally into the country.

  “Location?”

  “In pursuit,” he returned as he leapt over a fallen log, landing with a jarring thud. “Don’t rightly have a clue of where I am at the moment. This fucking desert all looks the same to me.”

  “Let him go, Mate. We don’t have any backup for you, he could be leading you into a trap.”

  He rolled his eyes as he slid down an embankment of shale into an arroyo. Out of habit, he scanned both ways because if there happened to be water moving through there, he was a dead man, no matter how good of a swimmer he was.

  Dry as a mother fucking bone out here, yet I’m still leery.

  He didn’t linger longer than he had to, just bounded up the other side, digging into the ground and scrambling after the fading dust clouds from his rabbit.

  “That’s an order, Mate!”

  He ripped out his ear bud and let it hang as he pressed on. They could kiss his ass, he wasn’t about to let this one get away. Sure, he’d get his ass chewed when he got back and yes, it could be a trap, but any time they suited up there was that chance. This wasn’t a safe office job he did on a daily basis.

  The scream pierced the air and froze him to the spot for a moment. Real, gut wrenching, and overflowing with panic, no way this was someone hoping for a pass from him. This was pure fear.

  Powering harder, he ran around the final outcropping and whipped back with a curse. The man he had been chasing lay on the ground while something dark and scaly stood over him. If Mate wasn’t hallucinating from his heated run, he would swear the thing over him was eating him.

  Without wasting another second, he lifted his H&K UMP .40 submachine gun and fired at the beast. He had no words for whatever the hell he was looking at, but it wasn’t of this earth and it sure didn’t need to be eating the man’s chest and face like a fat kid eating cake.

  “Get back! Get back! Get back!” he yelled all the while firing.

  The creature jerked as the slugs tore into him. An unholy screech left it, and it snapped out some wings, scaly and partially holed, as it took to the air.

  “Hell no,” he groused. “You’re sticking around.”

  No one was going to believe this, heck, he wasn’t sure at this moment that he did either. But he wasn’t about to let it get away, whatever the fuck it was. Cycling his weapon, he unloaded another magazine into the thing that finally fell from the sky to land in a heap on the ground.

  New magazine in, he maintained a sightline on the thing he’d just shot down from the sky as he sidestepped to the man he’d been chasing. Seconds before he reached down to check for a pulse, he put his ear bud back in and reconnected with headquarters.

  “Found him.”

  “Usually you apprehended them, what happened that you found him?” Andre Colt’s raspy voice flowed into his ear.

  Mate dipped his head ever so slightly and winced over the carnage before him. “Something killed him and was eating him when I got here.” Bile rose up, and he swallowed it back. While not unused to disgusting and disturbing scenes, this was a bit much, even for him.

  “Was eating him? The fuck? Feral dogs? What?”

  Staring ahead to the thing he’d just shot, he rose from the dead body and slowly made his way closer. Acrid scents filled the air, making him wish simply for the rotten egg smell of Sulphur to be present as opposed to this.

  “Not canine. I don’t know if you’re going to believe this or not.”

  “You forget I was out on patrol there once in my time. Try me.”

  His eyes burned, and he tugged up the bandanna he had around his neck, covering his mouth and nose. Not like this, Andre.

  “I don’t know how to describe it. Scaly, deformed. I don’t know. I have to see if it’s dead.” Talking had become more and more of a chore. He craved fresh air, not this putrid mess floating around him, seeping into his pores.

  Rocks hissed where liquid had landed on them as it ate into them. In fact, the thing was lower than he remembered it being.

  “What the fuck are you?” he muttered.

  Only his s
ixth sense saved him from an attack from behind. Launching left, he rolled, turned and came up, finger on the trigger. The man he’d been chasing had gotten up, face still missing but his chest cavity was knitting itself back together as he watched.

  “Fuck this.”

  He pulled the trigger once more. The bullets knocked it back, but it was a spear that pierced through the chest that actually dropped the creature.

  “Andre?”

  Nothing. He couldn’t hear static or anything. It was complete silence on the line. Not good.

  The spear head was yanked back through the body it had pierced, allowing it to collapse to the ground. The long weapon was just there before it vanished, and he found himself looking at something else with wings.

  Not scaly like the creature to his left, but covered in feathers. A light so bright, he had to squint flashed then he was alone. Or so he thought. flexing his fingers on the stock of his weapon, he slowly scanned the area, searching for something, anything, to give him insight into what sort of hell he’d just run into.

  Sweat rolled down his skin, and he blinked as the wind picked up. Not the hot, arid breeze that usually found him here, but a cooling one that actually offered respite from the brutal heat he stood in.

  “Andre?” he tried once more in futile hope.

  Your Andre cannot help you right now.

  The voice in his head was masculine and deep.

  “So this is what a hallucination is like out here in the desert, then?” He cut his gaze to the left and found the dead thing still there. In front of him was the one that had died, gotten up, then had the pleasure of getting a spear to the chest before he died again.