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The perpetrator is careful not to leave any traces, on the victims or otherwise. DNA, prints, other physical evidence findings have all so far been negative. The only lead we have is the method of murder: it requires telepathic ability.

Adam’s entire body jolted, his blood bond with Jacques shrieking with the kind of pain that could only mean a mortal wound.

“Jacques!” He was running almost before he’d processed the primal surge, was still in stride as he cleared the lip of the exit into the Canyon, and shifted while in his clothes. They disintegrated away, so much fine dust under the force of the act that turned a changeling into their other self.

Clanmates who’d been near him when he sensed Jacques fall flew out behind him.

His falcon called out, got no reply from his best friend—but caught the faint ripple of panicked cries across the skies. His clanmates stayed silent so those distant cries could be heard. And those falcons, the ones closer to Jacques, were relaying back that this was the worst of the worst.

Jacques, big and moody and loyal to the bone, was down.

Adam knew he didn’t have to worry about contacting Naia—he’d felt WindHaven’s healer take to the air right after him, and one of her team would already be racing down the Canyon road in a vehicle fully equipped to function as an ambulance.

Naia would’ve grabbed a locator beacon from the plateau after she shifted; it’d allow the person on the ground to track her location even if they lost sight of her or of Adam.

He didn’t wait for her—his blood bond with Jacques might mean Adam could hold him to the world long enough for Naia to help him.

His wings ached with the speed of his flight, but he still caught a glimpse of a lone figure in black looking up at him from the parking lot of the only diner in Raintree, her hand held up to shade her eyes as she watched him and others streak across the sky.

Then he’d left her and the town behind, was out in the desert.

The blood bond wasn’t a perfect homing beacon, couldn’t lead him directly to injured clanmates, but it could give him a direction—and in this case, that was all he needed.

Because others, who’d been closer when Jacques went down had heard his cry for help, found him; two of the clan circled above the location, giving Adam aerial notice that he’d arrived at the right place.

A third stood guard beside Jacques’s mangled body.

Adam landed hard in his falcon form before shifting into his human one, while the clanmate who’d stood sentinel lifted off to help guard the area.

Old memories threatened to crowd his mind, a cold wind.

He hadn’t witnessed his parents’ murder, but he’d seen the pictures taken by the cops after breaking into his grandmother’s files, and those images had haunted him every time he closed his eyes for years.

Funnily enough, his own plummet from the sky after being shot in DarkRiver territory had barely made an impact on his psyche.

Likely because his shooters—deluded though they’d been—had been fighting a kind of war.

They’d been on the wrong side of it, but they hadn’t known that.

Their actions hadn’t been done with any sense of malice toward him; he’d just been collateral damage.

His parents’ murder, in contrast, had been all about malice.

Adam shut down the unraveling past with a single grim command. Because his parents were gone; the best friend who’d run whooping through the Canyon with him after they escaped the crèche might yet make it.

“Fuck, Jacques,” he said as he took in the other man’s body.

One arm was a crumpled and broken wing, the other a human arm with the palm flat on the ground. Part of his body was feathered, while his right leg had been truncated at midthigh but wasn’t bleeding. Not torn off. Just not there.

One side of his face was falcon, the other human.

Like all changelings, Adam had heard horror stories of changelings frozen mid-shift, but he’d never seen anything like this.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the gaping holes in Jacques’s body.

The edges bore the telltale burns of high-impact lasers, and when Adam turned his friend over with care, he saw that the main injury went from one side of Jacques’s body to the other in a sideways angle.

Adam sucked in a sharp breath.

Had whoever shot Jacques hit his heart?

He couldn’t tell, not with the carnage, but the blood bond hadn’t snapped, so Jacques was holding on. Adam did the only thing he could and, taking his best friend’s hand, poured the clan’s energy into the other man, giving him the raw fuel to cling to life. “I’ve got you, J.”

Naia landed next to him with none of her usual grace and dropped the locator beacon to the side before she shifted.

Though she was as calm and competent as always while she worked to heal Jacques, he could feel the depth of her pain.

Healers were tough and stubborn enough to keep on going until they literally dropped where they stood, but they also had the softest hearts in the clan.

“Something’s wrong,” she said while their clanmates continued to keep watch in the air.

“Talk to me.”

“The physical injuries are bad enough, but I think the worst blow caught him mid-shift.” Naia’s fingers were gentle on Jacques’s twisted body, the heat of her healing energy a pulse Adam could feel through the blood bond.

“We’ve discussed this among the healer network”—her tone was absent, tight, her focus on Jacques—“and while there have been cases over the years of a changeling being hurt mid-shift, the results have either been fatal at once, or a misforming that was immediately rectified by another shift. I’ve never heard of a case where a changeling ended up locked in a partial shift. ”

Sweat beaded along Adam’s spine and it had nothing to do with the climate.

“His brain,” he said, “did it shift either way?” Either falcon or human and Jacques might come out of it okay—as long as he had a functioning brain that Adam or Naia could reach, they could nudge him to complete the shift one way or the other.

But Naia pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I can’t reach him with my healer senses, can’t tell if he’s there at all.” A look at him out of eyes gone falcon, the deep brown ringed by yellow. “Adam, he’s breathing but I can’t tell if he’s in there .”

Adam had prepared for anything—a broken back, a pierced heart, collapsed lungs, even worse injuries—but he’d never even allowed himself to consider that Jacques’s brain, that intelligent, surly, and unique organ, might be permanently damaged.

“Wake the hell up, you asshole,” he gritted out as he lifted Jacques into his arms after Naia gave him the go-ahead.

The other man didn’t weigh anywhere near what he should have; the shift did weird things to mass, with their human bodies far heavier than their falcon forms. Jacques’s lightness when he was at least seventy-five percent human right now was another indication that things had gone wrong on the cellular level.

The emergency medical vehicle screeched to a halt near them just then. Dust coated its olive green paint job, the ambulance a converted and extended four-wheel drive that could deal with their environment, especially the more challenging unpaved roads.

Adam carried his badly wounded—dying—friend to it, placed him gently inside. Naia climbed in afterward, and Adam shut the door.

As the vehicle raced off, he ordered those who remained to search the area. “All indications are that he was shot while at low altitude—he wouldn’t have gone that low without reason.” Jacques far preferred to stay high, ride the air currents. “We need to find out what attracted his attention.”

“I’ve got it, Adam,” Dahlia said, grim-eyed and nothing at all like the hungover woman he’d run into that morning. “You take care of Jacques.”

Adam shifted on her statement and was soon shadowing the ambulance. As wing leader, he could direct energy to both Naia and Jacques, the clan filling him up with unending generosity.

Together they would fight for their fallen.

···

Eleri had known something was up the instant she saw the cadre of falcons flying in a single direction, the force of their intent clear.

Her eyes had been drawn to one particular falcon—he had the distinctive coloring of a peregrine, but he was bigger and faster than the other peregrines on his tail.

She was certain that was Adam Garrett.

Instinct again, but she’d long given up pretending that that wasn’t one of her driving forces.

She’d also noticed one other falcon, but only because it hadn’t been a peregrine. Someone in Adam’s clan was a gyrfalcon, the biggest species of falcon. But even that powerful bird couldn’t keep up with Adam.

The subject of the falcons’ flight was the topic of conversation between the two officers present in the Enforcement station when she finally managed to find it open. She’d come by prior to her visit to the local diner, only to find it deserted.

“Sorry about that,” Detective Rex Beaufort said after she’d introduced herself and told him why she was in town.

“We have an admin but she’s out sick.” Older, with lines feathering the corners of his eyes, his cheekbones high and flat and his skin holding coppery tones akin to Adam’s, he added, “Look, I won’t think to tell you your job, but Raintree and a serial killer? I can’t see it.”

His younger colleague, Jocasta Whitten—a petite Black woman with her thinly braided hair worn in a bun—nodded. “Biggest excitement we usually have is when one of the kids manages to steal Donny’s prized muscle car and take it for a joyride.”

The phone on the desk rang right then and she went to grab it. Eleri heard her say, “Deputy Whitten, Raintree station.”

“You don’t mind if I investigate, however?” Eleri clarified, because having the cooperation of the local authorities was always helpful.

“Can’t see any problems with it, but you’ll have to talk to the chief when he gets back—he’s out of—” Beaufort broke off as Deputy Whitten’s voice became clipped and urgent.

“Where? Shit. We’re on our way.” Hanging up, she looked over, her pupils huge against the brown of her irises. “Someone shot down Jacques. Injuries might be fatal. Falcons have him, are out at the site.”

Beaufort’s face turned grim. “A kid acting stupid with their parent’s gun?”

“High-powered laser. Not a toy. And multiple hits.”

“Shooter’s as good as dead if Adam finds them.” A sharp look at Eleri.

“I work with Enforcement,” she said. “I understand confidentiality. Is there anything I can do to assist? I’m used to dealing with complex scenes.” And she owed Adam, would always owe him.

A speaking glance between the two cops before the older one said, “Follow us to the site. Whitten can run your credentials on the way.”

Two minutes later, as Eleri drove out behind the officers who were obviously shell-shocked at the violence despite their attempt to act professional, she considered the odds of this being unconnected to her presence in Raintree.

It seemed an unusual coincidence that a falcon would be intentionally shot down right after she’d arrived in town on the trail of a murderer.

No. She internally frowned. It didn’t make sense.

Prior to her conversation with Beaufort and Whitten, only Adam had known the reason for her presence. Everyone else she’d spoken to was under the impression that she was working a decades-old cold case.

Even if the killer had seen and recognized her in the short time that she’d been in Raintree, it was no reason for him to panic. The personality type that found amusement in sending her those letters would be exhilarated at the chance to play games with her in person.

And shooting wasn’t the Sandman’s style.

His style was terror doled out over days, the final murder a fatal and deeply personal assault to the brain. Guns were too long-distance a weapon for a man who found pleasure in locking eyes with his victim as he pulverized her brain.