Blood Omen by Kegan Tyler
Book 1 in the Blood Crusades series
General Release Date: 24th May 2022
Word Count: 34,844
Book Length: SHORT NOVEL
Pages: 142
GENRES:
CONTEMPORARY,EROTIC ROMANCE,GAY,GLBTQI,PARANORMAL,WERESHIFTERS
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Book Description
In the dark of the night…
Thomas is a lone shapeshifter living in a world where vampires and lycans are known to man. He has the unique gift of shifting into any living being, but he feels lost and alone.
Then he meets André, the alpha of the Bramwell pack of lycans, who offers him a new life—and a home. Gunter, the pack beta, sees something in Thomas. Their attraction is magnetic and undeniable. Their primal desires take hold and Thomas falls for this beautiful man—hard.
But when a coven of vampires arrives, showing great interest in shapeshifters, Gunter must protect the one he’s grown to love.
Reader advisory: This book contains scenes of smoking, the discussion of past sexual abuse, the accidental turning of someone into a werewolf, violence, character death, and scenes of sex whilst in a werewolf-shifted state.
Thomas arrived home around four a.m. He stumbled through his dark apartment in a haze. It was ethereal and intoxicating. He’d never felt so relieved in his life. Finally, after sixty-two years of searching, he’d found out there were others like him. Seclusion was his specialty, and it couldn’t be mere coincidence that he’d been led to the Bramwell pack that night.
As elated as he was, his body was weak with exhaustion, and his bed called to him. He didn’t bother flicking any light switches. He landed on his bed with a thunk.
His mind ebbed into unconsciousness and a horrifying vision replaced reality.
Thomas was standing on the edge of a cliff. The chilling night winds didn’t make him shudder—it was the sky. It wasn’t just black… It was a void. The cliff descended into darkness, and the craggy rocks he stood upon trembled. He turned around and cringed at the sight before him.
A vast landscape of decrepit, ancient buildings—what once was brown stucco was now a pile of crumbling rocks. An old fountain in the heart of the city was carved into the earth, but all remnants of water were dried up. Its alabaster was lifeless, devoid of shine. Dirt filled the cracks in the stone, and the metal spout was warped by eons of rust. The fountain, cracked in half at jagged ends, sunk into a massive pit that was once the central square. It remained erect at a forty-five-degree angle, casting a looming shadow over the rocks around it.
Death was here.
The cries of a thousand tortured souls, trapped here in a void where life could no longer exist, resounded throughout the square. A fallen city on a massive rock suspended in a sea of endless black.
An old relic materialized within reach—a porcelain doll with no eyes and half a jaw. Its hair had been singed off by a ravaging fire. Its hollow eyes stared at him without context—empty, faceless vessels. It wore a charred, blackened dress and was missing a shoe. Its arm was extended out to Thomas, as though it were pleading with him.
A woman’s piercing shriek rang through his ears. “My baby!” she cried, a wailing banshee in the wind.
Her cries grew stronger, and Thomas’ knees began to quiver. He fell to the dust and gripped the sides of his head, clenching his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut as her screams echoed.
“Please, someone—my baby—please!”
He heard a scuffle and felt dirt on his face. He opened his eyes—the doll was standing upright in front of him. Startled, he jumped back. His arms fell behind him to break the fall. The doll stared him down with those menacing black holes, ripping him apart from the inside.
Its head twisted sharply to the right. The sound of scraping porcelain made his eardrums bleed and sent tremors raging through his muscles. It floated toward him, and he scrambled back, desperate to escape its glare.
A dirty, leathery hand gripped his arm. He turned and gasped in horror at a withered corpse looking at him. It, too, had no eyes—just dried, hollow sockets. It cried out in pain and croaked, “My baby! Help, my baby!” A thick, yellow worm slithered out of the corner of its mouth.
He screamed and ripped his arm from the corpse’s grip. He scrambled to his feet and ran. His vision was blurred from hot tears and the skin where the corpse had touched him began to burn and itch.
He tripped and landed his knee on a shard of glass. His face planted into the dirt, and he howled in agony. Sharp pain jutted up his side. He could not move.
The corpse crawled toward him. The sound of rotted flesh scraping against dirt made him retch. A gray hand slapped his pool of vomit, spraying chunks against his face. The corpse pulled itself up to his head and touched his cheek. He felt another worm slither through its fingers and onto his neck. The hand grasped his jaw and propped his mouth open. The corpse leaned into him, and he screamed.
* * * *
Thomas woke instantly. He jumped out of his bed and ran his fingers all over himself. He could still feel the worm on his neck, the hot vomit on his cheek, could still smell the putrid, rotting corpse. He took a few deep breaths and felt his way in the dark to the bathroom. What the hell was that? The end of the world?
He flicked on the light, a dull fluorescent white with a bluish hue that made all the stains and grime stand out against the whitewash. He looked at his reflection in the mirror. He was dripping with sweat.
His heart was pounding in his chest, a constant thu-thunk-thu-thunk-thu-thunk. In the mirror, a hard-faced young man stared back at him. Thin, short-cropped brown hair, a chiseled jawline, and effervescent blue eyes scowled at him. The tattoo on his chest—a single red rose, inspired by his late mother—was partly concealed by chest hair. This was his true self—the appearance he’d come to know.
But Thomas lacked the confidence of a shapeshifter—a type of confidence he imagined one like him would have. He was deeply insecure, and underneath it all, what he wanted most was to belong.
His shabby apartment had become his safe zone. A four-hundred-square-foot box with a living room, kitchen, dining room and bedroom squished into a singular rectangle was all he’d ever wanted when he’d moved to Creston Bay fifteen years ago. Back then, as muscular and messy as ever, he had looked the same. In fact, he caught a wave of déjà vu from staring at his reflection. He might as well have been staring at a photograph. Nothing in this apartment had changed in those fifteen years, and because he always submitted his checks to the landlord on time every month and was never home for inspections, no questions were asked. For all his landlord knew, he was in his mid-forties.
He checked the time. It was eight a.m. on Sunday, and he didn’t have to work. He decided he’d spend the day inside—give himself some time to mull over joining the pack. Shalese could help, too.
He reached for his phone and called his best friend. She picked up after the third ring.
“Hey doll, what’s up?” Shalese said.
“I’ve got something to run by you,” Thomas said. He was hesitant to tell her—after all, she’d be the first person ever to know he had supernatural abilities—but he went on. “I’m, uh…part…lycan.”
Silence. And then—
“That’s fucking awesome!”
“You think so? I mean, you’re not freaked out by it?”
“No, not at all,” she replied. “I think lycans are cool. Vampires, too. I always knew they were real.”
Thomas chuckled. “You did. I remember when they first were discovered, you had a celebration. What did you call it—Vampire Pride Day?” They laughed at the memory.
“So that’s why you’ve always looked so youthful,” Shalese said.
“I guess so, yeah. Anyway, now, for what I need to ask. And I’m not supposed to be telling anyone about this so it has to stay between us, okay?”
“Yes, totally, I promise.”
“All right. Last night I went out for a run through Moore’s Forest and came across an alpha wolf—the leader of this pack of lycans that live in that old castle.”
“No way,” she whispered.
“And they want me to move in with them.”
“Really? Why?”
Thomas bit his lip. He hadn’t thought of what he’d tell her in this instance. He couldn’t give away his secret—a half-truth about being a lycan, sure—but he needed to keep his shapeshifting powers to himself. “They just like me. I don’t know.”
“Hmm. Well, I think that’s dope as hell. So what do you need to run by me?” Shalese asked.
“Whether I should do it.”
“Thomas! Of course you should do it! You always talk about how you have no other friends and I think it would be healthy for you. Plus, you hate that apartment.”
“I do not, I love this place.”
“Yeah, right. It’s tiny, Tom. Itty bitty. Not even a worm would be comfortable in there. Go live in that castle, okay? And send me pictures of the inside because I’ve always wondered what it looks like.”
“Sure thing, Shalese. Thanks for your advice. I’ll think about it.”
“Of course, darling,” she said. “See you at work tomorrow.”
They said goodbye and Thomas ended the call.
He’d spent fifteen monotonous years in this small apartment, night after night alone with a twenty-inch set top box and an original PlayStation, then later, an Xbox 360 and a slowly growing collection of DVDs. Now he had a modest thirty-two-inch TV and a PlayStation 4, with maybe two or three Blu-rays. It was all he needed, and all he wanted. It was just him, his tiny media collection, and his browser history of porn. Occasionally, Jonathan would stay in his apartment and tease him for not upgrading to a 4K television while they watched Pornhub, and Thomas sucked Jonathan’s dick.
Fucking Jonathan. What a waste of time that man is. I don’t need him.
And he didn’t—not for the number of times he’d offered his loyalty to this man, this self-centered egomaniac with a muscular body and a beautiful dick. Not for the countless nights he spent wondering what Jonathan was doing, and why he wasn’t responding to his text messages, or answering his calls. Nor for the constant devotion Thomas showed him whenever he, Jonathan, wanted to get off or have his ass eaten or get his dick sucked while he lounged on the couch and watched videos of other hotter people fucking. No, it was a huge waste of time, and he and Jonathan had been hooking up on average once a week for ten years. All the while, Jonathan aged and developed crow’s feet and his gorgeous mane of jet-black hair sprinkled with fine lines of silver, but Thomas looked just as he had been when they’d first met. But Jonathan had never noticed, nor cared. He prefers instead to watch hot men pound each other on a flatscreen while I suck him off, not once paying attention to my body, or my ass that constricts back to virgin tightness when I shift. What a waste of ten years…
These dizzying thoughts swirled around in his head, and he dozed off as he contemplated breaking it off with Jonathan.
* * * *
He awoke as he got a call. He checked the time again—ten p.m. He’d slept the entire day away. Groggily, he answered.
“Hullo?”
“Hey.”
It was Jonathan.
“Hey,” Thomas said back. There was a short pause. Then a sniffle. Jonathan was crying. “Everything all right?” he asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just work and deadlines and…” Another sniffle. “You know, I could really use a buddy right now.”
A buddy. What?
“You mean a fuck buddy.”
“No, Thomas, I mean…it would be nice, but…I just want someone to hold right now.”
This struck something within Thomas and suddenly, he felt bad about having those thoughts about Jonathan earlier.
“Hey,” he said, “don’t worry. I’m on my way.”
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Kegan Tyler
Kegan Tyler was born in Pennsylvania in 1993. He has always been a creative—at the age of eight, he created a comic book series, and he wrote his first novel at age fourteen. His love of vampires and werewolves paired with his love of gay erotica resulted in his passion project, The Blood Crusades.
He enjoys pop music, horror flicks, Halloween, science fiction, the works of Stephen King, and video games. In his writing, he strives to represent LGBTQIA+ individuals. You’ll find his works full of LGBTQIA+ characters living their lives passionately and with conviction.
He lives in Wisconsin.
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