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I roll my eyes. She’s such a drama queen.
“You constantly point out that we’re not human,” Ella says, bringing my attention back. “But Roslyn is. You have to treat her like a human with human views. She doesn’t understand the ways of our world.”
My mouth opens, but Sierra speaks before I can come up with any sort of rebuttal.
“I hate to interrupt, but, Gage, I need you to lift this soil. This entire section has been disturbed recently,” she says, still ignoring Amy.
Gage does it without hesitation, while Amy, Kimber, and Ella all shoot daggers at me with their eyes. But all attention goes to the disgusting sight Gage’s magic unveils the second the top of the soil is gone. There, in a deep pit, lies at least thirty dead bodies.
“Holy shit,” Gage says on a gasp, kneeling in front of the mass grave.
The bodies are all crumpled on top of each other, legs and arms entwined awkwardly from their careless placement. They look like they’ve been dead for years, but the grave i
s a few days fresh, judging by the look of the dirt before Gage removed it.
“What the hell?” Zee asks, getting closer.
“I’m calling Dray to see if he’s close by,” Sierra says, worrying her lip between her teeth as she pulls out her phone.
But there’s something missing. “Why the hell can’t we smell a grave of rotting corpses?” I ask.
“Because these are night 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.”
