Atonement Sky, page 2
part #9 of Psy-Changeling Trinity Series
It was too fertile, too abundant. As if it had been plucked out of the Pacific Northwest and dropped into this landscape of desert browns and rust reds, an intruder that had decided to settle in for the long haul.
Shaking off the sense of wrongness but making note of it because it might be a sign of mental degradation, she lowered her speed. This seemed like the kind of place where children might run across roads while neighbors gossiped on corners.
Turned out she’d been a little too early in her caution; she didn’t see any sign of true civilization until at least five minutes later. The houses that began to pop up at that point were small and neat, with well-maintained front yards, some of which had a number of desert rocks in them.
Greenery crawled over the rock, life defying the desert Eleri had just traversed.
But the green was no challenge to the soaring rock faces striated with orange and yellow, red and pink, that rose on either side of the town. They rippled like water, the rough surface appearing smooth as glass from this distance.
Raintree, she realized, was based inside a canyon that leaned in to shadow the town from both sides; the sunlight that reached Raintree would mostly be on either end of the day rather than in the blistering middle. Add in its proximity to water, and no wonder the town had such an unexpected microclimate.
Almost at a standstill on the road now, she looked up to the looming canyon wall to the left of the town and frowned. Either she was having vision issues or someone was standing high up on the side of the rock face.
A rock climber on a ledge?
Her vision wasn’t sharp enough to make out details from so far out, but then she saw a pair of wings sweep out over the person on the ledge and sucked in a breath.
Falcons.
She understood now. They were linked to Raintree, but it wasn’t their home. That sat high above the town. She should’ve realized that; why would winged changelings want to live on the ground when they could live in a nest in the sky?
Liar! You fucking liar!
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel, the renewed roar of the memory a thunderous force…as if it had gained strength from the sight of the lone falcon who stood so high above Raintree, his confidence apparent in his stance even from this distance.
Eleri. That’s pretty. My name is Adam.
Chapter 2
Winged changelings, especially the raptors, are interesting in the most fascinating way. While their clans follow a similar internal structure to those of earthbound predatory packs like the wolves and bears, they have a unique culture built on the freedom extended by their wings.
A clan will consider itself a clan even if its people are scattered in a hundred tiny pairs or groups across the country.
Yet, despite the fact that winged changelings travel far and wide, often alone, they are one of the most tight-knit of the changeling species. Harm one and you become the enemy of them all.
—From the 2037 archives of Wild magazine (now known as Wild Woman magazine: “Skin Privileges, Style & Primal Sophistication”)
Adam watched the black SUV with tinted windows drive into Raintree’s small but active main street from his vantage point high above the town.
He didn’t know why the vehicle had caught his attention. Raintree was no metropolis but neither was it a dead-end town. Not only did it house WindHaven’s cutting-edge aeronautics facility and thus play host to the attendant business traffic, it was also home to a thriving arts scene that drew visitors from around the state and country. Its remote location meant Raintree would never be overrun, but the traffic in and out was steady.
Maybe it was the simple fact that it had been the only vehicle on the road at the time he stepped out onto the ledge and glanced down. He had the feeling the driver had been looking up, too—they’d pretty much stopped at one point.
An arm sliding around his waist, a head full of wild red-kissed mahogany curls tucking itself under his own arm when he lifted it. “Surveying your kingdom, oh great wing leader?” snarked his fifteen-year-old niece, Malia.
“As is my right as lord and master,” he said dryly.
She giggled, her pixie face hidden from view by that glorious mass of hair she’d inherited from Adam’s older sister, Saoirse. Both had a slight hint of red in their feathers in falcon form, too. As had Saoirse and Adam’s mother, Taazbaa’.
A living line of history.
He dropped a kiss on Malia’s hair. “Why haven’t you left for school, Mali-bug?” All WindHaven fledglings went to the Raintree schools—like most winged clans, WindHaven was a relatively small group; it didn’t make sense for them to have schools of their own.
They could have leveraged their long-held connections to other winged clans throughout the state to set up a joint school, but then the fledglings would have long commutes on the wing.
It also made sense for the kids to interact with the wider community. Especially in a clan such as WindHaven, where their home, which they simply called the Canyon, overlooked a settlement of humans—and the odd Psy who had decided to live in this quiet and striking landscape. It had been that way for centuries, humans and changelings living in relative harmony because the geography allowed it.
The humans stuck to the cool canyon floor, while the falcons claimed the space high above—but falcon territory was much wider. A mere few minutes of flight in one direction led to another canyon with a breathtaking blue-green pool, but turn their wings in another direction, and they’d soar over endless desert vistas.
“I won’t be late,” Malia said with cheerful self-assurance. “I’ve got a free period this morning and we’re allowed to come in after as long as we have something to show for it. I finished a week’s worth of physics homework already.” She buffed her pink-painted nails against her sweater. “You’re looking at the next aeronautical engineer in the family, Uncle Adam.”
He grinned, his falcon as proud of her spirit as he was of her intelligence. “You’re not planning to shift today, are you?”
“And lose my nail polish and my makeup?” She made a quintessentially teenage sound of disgust, her nose crinkling when she looked up at him. The morning sun brushed skin that wasn’t the deep copper-toned brown of Adam’s or Saoirse’s, rather a paler hue that was a meld of her parents’, but her eyes were pure Garrett: a pale tawny brown.
“Only drawback to being a changeling, honestly,” she added. “I can’t wait until I can afford that fancy DNA-encoded polish my friends in CloudNest swear doesn’t come off during a shift.” She sounded dubious. “Jessie, who’s talking it up the most, her sister’s like the CEO of the company making it, so I’m all eagle on it.”
She narrowed her eyes, as if imitating the extreme visual acuity of their cousins in the sky. Peregrine eyesight was one of the keenest in the animal kingdom, their raptors able to keep prey in sight even when diving at phenomenal speeds from the sky, but the eagles blew past them when it came to the sheer distances they could see.
Peregrines had eagles beat on speed, though, a point falcons never failed to bring up anytime the eagles got too smug.
Adam’s cheeks creased, while below, he saw the SUV—which had done a U-turn at the end of Main Street and headed back up the road as if leaving town—turn into a quiet street that led eventually to the small parking lot of the Raintree Inn. That inn was positioned at enough of a distance from Main Street that it was quiet and private—especially given that it sat nestled inside an oasis of greenery.
A figure in a black pantsuit got out of the now-parked vehicle, and his vision was sharp enough to make out that it was a woman. Going to the back of the car, she removed a small case, then headed toward the office area—at which point she disappeared from view. That part of the inn was overshadowed by cypress trees with large canopies of a green that held a bluish cast.
“Looks like Mrs. Park has a new guest. She’ll be happy,” Malia commented. “She was complaining how guest numbers were low while I was at the diner the other day.”
“She was complaining guest numbers were low when I was your age,” Adam pointed out. “Yet here she is, still the main gossip distribution system in Raintree.”
His eyes kept being drawn to the inn even though there’d been nothing unusual about the guest—she’d looked like any other businessperson who’d stopped in for a day for a meeting. Could be at the WindHaven facility, or at one of the smaller operations in town that were in related industries.
Malia’s laughter was big and wide, just like Saoirse’s.
Just like her grandfather Cormac’s had been. Adam’s mother had once told Adam that she’d fallen in love with his father before she ever saw his face. “I heard that laugh over the booth wall and my heart went, wow, I want to be with a man who finds such joy in the world.”
“Come on,” Adam said, awash on a wave of love and memory. “I’ll drive you to school so you don’t have to hitchhike.” That “hitchhiking” involved walking down the sole road in or out of the Canyon and making pleading faces at adult clanmates going about their lives until someone took pity on the student in question and let them jump in.
Otherwise, WindHaven had a normal school run on a regular schedule, where assigned clanmates drove in students who didn’t feel like flying down that day. All the kids had a change of clothes in a private locker room near the school—WindHaven had built them that private area, because while changelings might shrug off nudity after a shift as a natural part of life, the majority of their schoolmates wouldn’t.
And teenagers were teenagers: they wanted to be cool.
“Eeee!” Malia threw her arms around him. “Thanks, Uncle Adam! You’re the best! Even if the girlies are going to flutter their eyelashes at you. So rude! I’m like, he’s my uncle, stop looking, and they’re like, but he’s mega hot and only twenty-eight so totally not ancient.”
Shoulders shaking at her shudder, he nudged her back from the opening in the rock that acted as an exit from the intricate maze inside the Canyon. It housed mostly meeting rooms or other communal areas like kitchens, as the majority of Adam’s people preferred to nest either up on the plateau or in aeries on the edges of the canyon wall, where they could fly in or out at will.
The internal area had, however, been built with winged creatures in mind—the tunnels were wide and high, both so falcons could fly in or out above the heads of clanmates in human form, and so no one felt claustrophobic if their work meant they had to spend more time in a room inside.
They’d also upgraded the lighting to artificial sunlight and moonlight as soon as the tech became available, turning their internal nest from basic and functional to warm and inviting. The carvings that lined the walls further created that warmth and sense of family, for each one memorialized a falcon beloved.
The carving of his parents was near where his grandparents had nested.
A young clanmate winged by at that point, being sure to swipe a talon at Malia’s curls as he headed for the exit. Instead of yelping, she swiped up with her nails, as if attempting to pluck the errant juvenile’s feathers.
Adam knew he should really discipline the two, but he’d been the annoying little brother once, and he understood their interaction. It made his falcon chuckle deep within. “Does Tahir have a free period, too?”
“No, he’s late. Even flying.” A smug smile. “Detention for him. Oh, soooo sad.”
He grinned. “Go grab your stuff for school. I’ll meet you at the garage.” The clan parked most vehicles in a cool space inside, protecting them from the dust and grit of the arid climate as much as they could.
Their lands were breathtaking, but not always friendly.
Adam couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
He turned left while Malia ran off to the right, and saw Amir walking toward him. The man with eyes of cool blue and smooth white skin that barely tanned, his hair a dark brown feathered with strands of ash, was dressed for the day in jeans and a short-sleeved black shirt and carried a mug of coffee in hand.
“Is that Tahir’s feather on your shoulder?” Adam’s brother-in-law—and senior wing commander—drawled with an amused smile. “I warned him he’d be late, but he told me to ‘stop hovering, Daaaad—it’s so kestrel.’ Guess who’ll be explaining himself to his extremely not-amused mother today. Though I suppose at least my youngest progeny’s insults are well-informed.”
Adam picked off the feather with a grin. “Wouldn’t want to be your boy.” Quite aside from being the lead engineer on WindHaven’s jet-shield projects, Saoirse was a senior maternal in the pack hierarchy and the terror of all misbehaving juveniles. “Chirp already at work?” Adam’s sister had a tendency to rise at four a.m. bright-eyed and chirpy—hence Chirp.
Amir’s smile was slow and full of the secrets between mates. “I flew her in while the fledglings were asleep.”
And no doubt got up to all kinds of things Adam didn’t need to know about. He might be wing leader, but he was also Saoirse’s younger brother by a good six years. “I’m driving Mali down.”
“I’ll walk my girl to the garage. See you in a few.” Amir bumped fists with him.
Adam had only gone a few feet when he saw another clanmate with a mug of coffee in hand, but this one was barefoot and in a bathrobe, with her thick black hair held up by some sort of giant claw clip. He could just glimpse a lock of the white streak she’d had since she was a kid.
“Seriously?” Adam looked the tall wing-second up and down.
Dahlia just grunted before gulping down her coffee as if it was the nectar of the gods. “Hot date last night,” she said after the ritual gulping. “Damn tiger wore me out.”
“There aren’t any tigers anywhere near us.” Adam, as the most dominant being in the region, would have been alerted—for the other changeling’s own safety. Their kind didn’t fuck around when it came to territorial boundaries.
“Not an actual tiger, but man definitely could growl.” Dahlia shrugged off the memory the next second, her skin as vibrant and healthy as if she hadn’t been carousing all night. “Oh well, he was just passing through. One night is all we’ll ever have.”
Adam didn’t comment; he was used to his wing-second’s chaotic sex life over the past year. Never relationships, only ever hookups. They didn’t talk about the whys of it—because Adam had been there when Dahlia’s fiancé left her at the altar. Asshole had texted her later that day, saying that tall, voluptuous, and ruthlessly loyal Dahlia was “too domineering” and that he’d realized he needed a “more feminine wife, a woman who knows how to treat her man.”
Adam would’ve ripped off the fucker’s nonexistent balls and stuffed them in his mouth if Dahlia hadn’t told him to leave it, that she’d be humiliated if her wing leader went after a man for not wanting her. “This is my mess, Adam. I’ll clean it up.”
Worst of it was that she’d been in love with the dickhead. Enough to agree to his request of a full-on wedding, complete with a formal white gown, when she’d never been comfortable in dresses. In the aftermath, Adam had watched her rip the bottom of the fucking gown off with her talons. She hadn’t cried a single tear while doing it, and all the while, Adam had known her heart was breaking.
He—all of WindHaven—had been ready to wrap their wings around her, let her vent and rage, but Dahlia had chosen to stride out to the limo that had been meant to take her and her new husband to their exclusive “wedding night” hotel. Yet another thing the asshole had wanted—Dahlia, Adam knew, would’ve far preferred a quiet desert bungalow.
“I need to be alone,” she’d said to Adam when he’d got in her way. “I can’t stand anyone’s sympathy—please keep the clan away from me.”
It had gone against his every instinct to do as she asked, to let this wounded member of his clan fly on her own, but Dahlia so rarely asked for anything—and that day, he’d heard the tremor of tears in her voice and known this proud falcon would hate breaking down in front of him. So he’d given her the gift of space and time despite himself.
Dahlia had returned to the Canyon twenty-four hours later, dry-eyed and back to her no-nonsense self. Except she’d never been the same. It infuriated Adam that a man who’d never deserved her had damaged their fiery, dangerous Dahlia so much that she didn’t trust her own heart any longer.
“You should’ve come—my tiger arrived with a firecracker of a fellow trucker,” she added today, as a passing clanmate grabbed her empty mug and thrust a full one in her hand.
Dahlia serenaded the clanmate with thanks as he walked away.
Adam folded his arms. “Now you’re training people to shove coffee in your face in the mornings?” he said, not worried that it was because Pascal was concerned about Dahlia being functional at the scheduled meeting of the day-shift team.
Dahlia would be ready.
“Won’t happen again,” she’d promised Adam the morning after she got blackout drunk at the local bar three weeks after her aborted wedding.
“I know,” he’d said, able to see the shame in her eyes and wishing he could beat her useless ex to a pulp without crossing the boundary she’d laid down; Dahlia had always been one of the toughest and most confident of them all.
Adam hated that she was still hurting, her breezy surface no barrier to a wing leader’s ability to see through to his people’s hearts, but there was only so far anyone could go with their tough Dahlia; she’d retreat if pushed on the subject.
“Hah, it’s a gift of thanks,” Dahlia protested after a gulp of the fresh coffee. “My tiger’s smoke show of a friend? Guess who she went home with?” A wriggle of the eyebrows. “I made the introductions.” Another gulp. “Seriously, Adam, you should come out with us sometime.”
“I have and lived to tell the tale. Never again.”
While Dahlia dropped it, Adam could see the wing-second was worried about Adam’s current monk-like existence. All changelings needed tactile contact to remain stable; the more dominant the changeling, the more important the need.
Without touch, they turned aggressive, dangerous.
