Changing Beauty (Book 2) (The Deadly Beauties Live On) by C. M. Owens Page A

stalker attacks,” Zee answers while tugging a body out for examination. “They used dragon’s breath venom most likely, which essentially keeps the bodies from ever giving off a scent. But the bodies have been drained completely dry. Aside from a few vampire myths the humans concocted long ago, there has never been a night stalker attack where the bodies were completely drained. What the hell is going on?”
    Dray appears in a puff of dark smoke, and his lips twist in a tense position. That’s not a good look. I’m fairly sure Dray is older than all of us, so he might be the only answer there is to this puzzle.
    “I’ve never seen this,” he says, confused.
    Shit.
    “The night stalkers have been blood starved.” A new, deep, male voice has us all spinning on a heel, instantly on high alert and defensive.
    What the…
    “Who the hell are you?” Gage asks.
    A guy stands several hundred feet away, barely visible through the trees. He’s wearing a hood and a mask—a black mask that stops just below his nose, revealing his mouth. It’s a damn good thing I can see so easily at night, otherwise he’d be lost in the shadows.
    A girl stands at his side, but her hood covers her head, and her red mask conceals her entire face. Either Halloween came early, or Kane is putting people in masks again—like he used to wear when saving Alyssa’s ass.
    “Do you want to know who I am, or what a blood starved night stalker is?” the guy asks callously.
    I’ve heard of them, but only in vague mentioning—blood-starved night stalkers.
    “It would take centuries of blood deprivation for something to go on a rampage this wild,” Dray says to the masked strangers. “These bodies are all within a few days’ old. We’d have noticed something escalating to this before now.”
    The guy nods while the girl remains silent and still.
    “Exactly. They’re refugees set free from the blood rings. They’re feral, confused, and very lethal. The person they were no longer exists. But they can’t stand too much noise or light, which is why they keep to the woods.”
    Ella steps up, and the guy’s lips curl into a secretive grin. “How do you know this?” she asks him.
    He cocks his head to the side while taking a step back.
    “Just helping you out, Princess . You can be suspicious or you can kill them before they expose us all. I have more important things to do. Just so you know, they burn in the sunlight—like the old human stories. It isn’t immediate—it takes about twenty minutes—but it still happens. If anyone sees that, there will be a major human panic outbreak.”
    Before Ella can say anything else, the guy and girl disappear from sight, dematerializing silently as though they were never there.
    “Burn in sunlight?” I ask in disbelief. “They have to be full of shit.”
    Ella turns around, looking a little dazed as she glances back over her shoulder to make sure they’re really gone.
    Something crunches in the grass nearby, and I turn around just in time to catch sight of a blurry figure. I start to point it out when I see a second figure blurring around. Fuuuck.
    “Ella, look—”
    Before the words can leave my mouth, Ella gets tackled to the ground by something moving so fast that it almost looks like a shadow. Gage lunges before I can, ripping the thing off, and I rush to knock Kimber away from the second shadow before it can reach her.
    Unfortunately, I don’t manage to miss the wrath of a pissed off, blood-starved, psychotic night stalker.
    “Motherfucker!” I roar when the vicious thing latches on and tears a hunk of flesh away from my shoulder before I can get my hands up to defend myself.
    A surge of power hits me hard in the back, knocking me down to the ground with the stupid son of a bitch still latched onto me.
    “Sorry,” Zee says quickly, apparently sucking at his magical fucking aim.
    “Get it the fuck off me,” I growl, but then I shift, tearing through my clothes and turning into the