Ameliora

"The masked creatures slithered out of the sewers at dawn, the second day of January, just like they always did.

They couldn’t be called people. They all had similar cold black eyes and pale white skin despite ethnicity. They were all tall and well-muscled. When they ran they became a simple, speeding blur. They also had short fangs, but they weren’t the fangs of mythical creatures such as vampires. They were the fangs of a wild animal, a predator.

They always arrived wearing grinning masks but one way or another they would fall off. Or they would be smeared in blood.

No one fought the brutes anymore. Everyone knew it was hopeless. But people still hid, holed up in rooms hidden behind bookcases or underneath beds. The few who took to the outside wouldn’t be taken away, they would most likely end up a pile of bones with no meat attached.

They had different names among different people. Feeders, reapers, angels of death, but a term that was known universally was monsters. Masked monsters. Things that stole people away, primarily children, and threw away the bones of the unlucky and unhealthy like that of food."

And yes, I stole the subtitle from BZRK by Michael Grant.