True Colors (Elder Races #3.5)(10)

She opened the fridge, pulled out a Corona and handed it to him. He took it, his eyes lit with a tentative gratitude. Good heavens, he looked like nobody had offered to feed him before. She turned back to assess the contents of her fridge as she tried to decide what to make. “You’re a canine of some sort, aren’t you?” she murmured. He would want a lot of protein.

“I’m a wolf,” he said.

She paused as she absorbed that. A wolf, not a dog, which meant he was not quite tame or domesticated. Yes, that fit. He would be breathtaking as a wolf if his fur was the same white-blond as his hair.

“And you’re a rainbow chameleon, right?” he asked.

The handle of the fridge door slipped out of her nerveless fingers. The door swung wide as she turned to face him and backed against a counter.

Gideon’s expression changed. He said in a calm voice, “Alice, it’s all right. Remember, you’re quite safe.”

Again, he played it to perfection. He didn’t physically advance but instead leaned back against the dining table, his massive body relaxed, one foot kicked over the other. He regarded her with the same steady calm he had shown her all evening.

She relaxed with a self-conscious laugh. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That felt like it came out of nowhere, and—we don’t like to talk about ourselves or advertise what kind of Wyr we are, you know. Some of that’s instinctive behavior, and some of it’s… Well…” She made an all-encompassing gesture.

He nodded and rubbed the back of his head, looking thoughtful. “History has not been kind to the chameleon Wyr.”

Like most of the Elder Races, Wyrkind were not only from earth. Some of the stranger species were native to the Other lands, those magic-filled places that had been formed when time and space buckled at the earth’s formation. Rainbow chameleons were such Wyr. Rare, shy creatures, they came from a remote Other land connected to the Amazon rainforest.

Rainbow chameleons had no non-Wyr counterpart. They were also unique among other, mundane species of chameleons that typically could make only a few changes in color. Rainbow chameleons had the ability to change into any color and could do so at will to blend into their surroundings.

One of the earliest explorers of the Amazon inland, Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana, made the first known European contact with rainbow chameleon Wyr in early 1542 as he traveled the length of the Amazon River and searched for the mythical city of El Dorado. Upon discovering the rainbow chameleon’s unique ability to undergo radical and complex changes in color, Orellana proceeded to commit some of the greatest atrocities in either Spanish or Elder Races history. He systematically hunted chameleon Wyr and had them dissected in an attempt to discover the source of their ability. The exact number of Wyr he murdered was unknown, but historians estimated the total to be anywhere from 3,000 to as many as 5,000, which were catastrophic numbers for such a rare species.

In his experiments, Orellana discovered the chameleon Wyr had a gland similar to the human pituitary gland. Extractions produced a fluid that, when it was used to treat textiles, could produce an arresting effect on items of clothing. Orellana never found El Dorado, but he brought vials of the chameleon extract back to Spain that he sold for a king’s ransom while keeping secret its origins. Spanish royalty and a few certain wealthy nobles flaunted elaborate court attire made of fabulous cloths that changed colors with liquid fluidity to match their surroundings.

The secret of the chameleon extract was discovered in Orellana’s papers after his death, whereupon King Carlos I and his mother, the mentally unstable Queen Joanna, outlawed the wearing of chameleon-dyed clothes upon pain of death. The Spanish monarchy made a great play at being morally outraged, but the political reality was, whatever their real reaction might have been, they had to make some gesture of public repudiation or run the risk of being destroyed by the infuriated rulers of the Elder Races.

However, rumors of the existence of such clothing had whispered through the succeeding centuries, in particular when connected to famous unsolved acts of theft. Whether those historical rumors were true or not, chameleon Wyr remained rare—Alice knew of only fifty or so currently living in the continental U.S.

The critically low numbers of chameleon Wyr made the crimes that had been committed seven years ago even more terrible. A small colony of chameleon Wyr had lived in Jacksonville, Florida, where seven of them had been found murdered the week before that December’s Festival of the Masque. Despite a much-televised, nationwide manhunt by several cooperating agencies, the chameleon killer had never been caught.

The silence was broken by the wind that drove ice shards against the building, like a nightmare tapping the windows with skeletal fingers, looking for a way in.

Alice shuddered at the dark fancy and shoved it away. She was surrounded with light and warmth, about to be nourished with good food and drink, and she had been given the unforeseen gift of comfort and companionship during a time that would have been terrible to endure alone. She gave Gideon another apologetic glance and turned back to the open fridge to begin pulling things out at random. She said again, “We don’t like to talk about our Wyr nature to outsiders. Does this have anything to do with our history?”

“You mean the conquistador massacre? We’ve found no evidence that links the present-day crimes to that.” Gideon straightened suddenly. “That’s how you hid from me, isn’t it? In Haley’s apartment. You changed into your Wyr form.”