Changing Beauty (The Deadly Beauties Live On 2)

Shit. Work. Too much work and nowhere nearly enough play. I just got Roslyn warmed up to me.

Gage and I both check our phones, but I have no missed calls or texts.

“Signal in here is bad,” Roslyn says, her eyes still on my bare chest. I’ll never wear a shirt again if she keeps staring like that.

The sun is already setting, and I unfortunately do my best work at night. So that means I actually need to leave.

“Then let’s go,” I say on a reluctant breath that has Kimber giving me an I-don’t-care-that-I’m-cock-blocking-you look.

Then I turn to Roslyn, and I make sure to give her the smile she seems to love the most. “Soon, Roslyn.”

She blushes again, and I follow everyone out. I’d better get to see her before the party. I’ll be pissed if I don’t.

Chapter 5

THAD

“Good thing I have an iron stomach,” I say as I kneel in front of a very mutilated body.

Hell, there’s barely any meat left on the bones.

“That’s not the worst part,” Kimber announces. “This is one of us.”

I look around the woods, listening for the slightest creak or crack, making sure we’re alone. When not even the wind dares to make a sound, I look up at Kimber.

“How can you possibly know that?” I ask her.

Once upon a time, Kimber could see into the soul of a person and know what sort of fey they truly were. But that was before she was used to open the gates of purgatory. It fucked her up because she was way too young to tap into that sort of power. Instead of killing her, it drained her. Slowly, she became a shell of her once powerful self.

“Because I told her,” Karma says, stepping around the trees, making herself visible. Karma is a rarity because she can actually tell when someone is immortal. “I’ve sent pictures of both to Alyssa already. There’s another body in the thicker set of woods that spans for miles and miles. It looks a lot freakier than the one in front of you.”

Suddenly, Chaz appears, dropping a body down beside the mutilated one, and I take in the black veins and shock-white skin. What the fucking hell is that?

“What could have done that?” I ask, gesturing to the new body.

“I’m way younger than you,” Chaz reminds me with a shrug. “If you’ve never seen it, then what makes you think I have?”

Good point. My gaze instead shifts to Gage. He’s been around longer than me.

“No clue,” he answers to my questioning eyes. “We can contact the councils. Maybe someone will know something.”

“What were they?” I ask Karma, not bothering to acknowledge the bullshit councils. They all have their own agenda, even though Alyssa tried to rectify that. No one likes the fact we have a queen. Well, no one but our group.

“Well, I think the mauled one was a night stalker, but there’s something wrong with him. I have to stare into their eyes to see what they are, and usually something as simple as a night stalker is clear, but this one’s eyes… The soul that left made one of the darkest stains I’ve ever seen. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever dealt with anything so empty—it’s… Well, what I do is hard to explain.”

Frowning, I lean over and sniff the body. It’d be a hell of a lot easier if I could smell fey. I can only smell them when they’re in changed form—a lot of good that does any of us. But it’s the way we’ve evolved—always the hidden predator and never the stalked prey.

“All I can tell you is that whatever did this is female,” I say, sniffing the body once more. “And a very young female.”

“Figures,” Dice scoffs, walking up behind Karma. “Only a woman could be crazy enough to be this vicious. Hashtag—women be cold.”

Karma elbows him in the stomach, and he coughs in pain while she smirks. “You’re merely proving my point, woman!” he yells in an outraged whisper, glaring at her.

“Weres, lycans… any type of shifting creature could have done this.” Kimber sounds more like she’s thinking aloud than actually piecing together this mystery.

“Our own kind can’t sustain themselves off immortal blood—even though we get our rocks off on it in the bedroom. And why is this night stalker as dark as Karma says?” I ask.

Kimber rolls her eyes at part of my comment, though I can’t imagine why. It’s true—well, she doesn’t get to enjoy that fringe benefit, since she’s with a dark user. No blood play for the sweet gatekeeper and her dark user boyfriend.